ten years' exile; or memoirs of that interesting period of the life of the baroness de stael-holstein, written by herself, during the years , , , and , and now first published from the original manuscript, by her son. translated from the french london: printed for treuttel and wurtz, treuttel jun. and richter, foreign booksellers to his royal highness prince leopold of saxe-coberg, , soho square. howlett & brimmer, printers, , filth street, soho square. preface by the editor (augustus, baron de stael-holstein.) the production which is now submitted to the reader, is not a complete work, and ought not to be criticized as such. it consists of fragments of her memoirs, which my mother had intended to complete at her leisure, and which would have probably undergone alterations, of the nature of which i am ignorant, if a longer life had been allowed her to revise and finish them. this reflection was sufficient to make me examine most scrupulously if i was authorized to give them publicity. the fear of any sort of responsibility cannot be present to the mind, when our dearest affections are in question; but the heart is agitated by a painful anxiety when we are left to guess at those wishes, the declaration of which would have been a sacred and invariable rule. nevertheless, after having seriously reflected on what duty required of me, i am satisfied that i have fulfilled my mother's intentions, in engaging to leave out in this edition of her works*, no production susceptible of being printed. my fidelity in adhering to this engagement gives me the right of disavowing beforehand, all which at any future period, persons might pretend to add to this collection, which, i repeat, contains every thing, of which my mother had not formally forbid the publication. (* les oeuvres completes de madame la baronne de stael, publiees par son fils. precedees d'une notice sur le caractere et les ecrits de madame de stael, par madame necker de saussure. paris, vols. vo. and vols. in mo.) the title of ten years' exile, is that of which the authoress herself made choice; i have deemed it proper to retain it, although the work, being unfinished, comprises only a period of seven years. the narrative begins in , two years previous to my mother's first exile, and stops at , after the death of m. necker. it recommences in , and breaks off abruptly at her arrival in sweden, in the autumn of . between the first and second part of these memoirs there is therefore an interval of nearly six years. an explanation of this will be found in a faithful statement of the manner in which they were composed. i will not anticipate my mother's narrative of the persecution to which she was subjected during the imperial government: that persecution, equally mean and cruel, forms the subject of the present publication, the interest of which i should only weaken. it will be sufficient for me to remind the reader, that after having exiled her from paris, and subsequently sent her out of france, after having suppressed her work on germany with the most arbitrary caprice, and made it impossible for her to publish anything, even on subjects wholly unconnected with politics; that government went so far as to make her almost a prisoner in her own residence, to forbid her all kind of travelling, and to deprive her of the pleasures of society and the consolations of friendship. it was while she was in this situation that my mother began her memoirs, and one may readily conceive what must have been at that time the disposition of her mind. during the composition of the work, the hope of one day giving it to the world scarcely presented itself in the most distant futurity. europe was still bent to that degree under the yoke of napoleon, that no independent voice could make itself be heard: on the continent the press was completely chained, and the most rigorous measures excluded every work printed in england. my mother thought less, therefore, of composing a book, than of preserving the traces of her recollections and ideas. along with the narrative of circumstances personal to herself, she incorporated with it various reflections which were suggested to her, from the beginning of bonaparte's power, by the state of france, and the progress of events. but if the printing such a work would at that time have been an act of unheard of temerity, the mere act of writing it required a great deal of both courage and prudence, particularly in the position in which she was placed. my mother had every reason to believe that all her movements were narrowly watched by the police: the prefect who had replaced m. de barante at geneva, pretended to be acquainted with every thing that passed in her house, and the least pretence would have been sufficient to induce them to possess themselves of her papers. she was obliged therefore, to take the greatest precautions. scarcely had she written a few pages, when she made one of her most intimate friends transcribe them, taking care to substitute for the proper names those of persons taken from the history of the english revolution. under this disguise she carried off her manuscript, when in she determined to withdraw herself by flight from the rigors of a constantly increasing persecution. on her arrival in sweden, after having travelled through russia, and narrowly escaped the french armies advancing on moscow, my mother employed herself in copying out fairly the first part of her memoirs, which, as i have already mentioned, goes no farther than . but prior to continuing them in the order of time, she wished to take advantage of the moment, during which her recollections were still strong, to give a narrative of the remarkable circumstances of her flight, and of the persecution which had rendered that step in a manner a duty. she resumed, therefore, the history of her life at the year , the epoch of the suppression of her work on germany, and continued it up to her arrival at stockholm in : from that was suggested the title of ten years' exile. this explains also, why, in speaking of the imperial government, my mother expresses herself sometimes as living under its power, and at other times, as having escaped from it. finally, after she had conceived the plan of her considerations on the french revolution, she extracted from the first part of ten years exile, the historical passages and general reflections which entered into her new design, reserving the individual details for the period when she calculated on finishing the memoirs of her life, and when she flattered herself with being able to name all the persons of whom she had received generous proofs of friendship, without being afraid of compromising them by the expressions of her gratitude. the manuscript confided to my charge consisted therefore of two distinct parts: the first, the perusal of which necessarily offered less interest, contained several passages already incorporated in the considerations on the french revolution; the other formed a sort of journal, of which no part was yet known to the public. i have followed the plan traced by my mother, by striking out of the first part of the manuscript, all the passages which, with some modifications, have already found a place in her great political work. to this my labour as editor has been confined, and i have not allowed myself to make the slightest addition. the second part i deliver to the public exactly as i found it, without the least alteration, and i have scarcely felt myself entitled to make slight corrections of the style, so important did it appear to me to preserve in this sketch the entire vividness of its original character. a perusal of the opinions which she pronounces upon the political conduct of russia, will satisfy every one of my scrupulous respect for my mother's manuscript; but without taking into account the influence of gratitude on elevated minds, the reader will not fail to recollect, that at that time the sovereign of russia was fighting in the cause of liberty and independence. was it possible to foresee that so few years would elapse before the immense forces of that empire should become the instruments of the oppression of unhappy europe? if we compare the ten years' exile with the considerations on the french revolution, it will perhaps be found that the reign of napoleon is criticized in the first of these works with greater severity than in the other, and that he is there attacked with an eloquence not always exempt from bitterness. this difference may be easily explained: one of these works was written after the fall of the despot, with the calm and impartiality of the historian; the other was inspired by a courageous feeling of resistance to tyranny; and at the period of its composition, the imperial power was at its height. i have not selected one moment in preference to another for the publication of ten years' exile; the chronological order has been followed in this edition, and the posthumous works are naturally placed at the end of the collection. in other respects, i am not afraid of the charge of exhibiting a want of generosity, in publishing, after the fall of napoleon, attacks directed against his power. she, whose talents were always devoted to the defence of the noblest of causes, she, whose house was successively the asylum of the oppressed of all parties, would have been too far above such a reproach. it could only be addressed, at all events, to the editor of the ten years' exile; but i confess it would but very little affect me. it would certainly be assigning too fine a part to despotism, if, after having imposed the silence of terror during its triumph, it could call upon history to spare it after its destruction. the recollections of the last government have no doubt afforded a pretence for a great deal of persecution; no doubt men of integrity have revolted at the cowardly invectives which are still permitted against those, who having enjoyed the favors of that government, have had sufficient dignity not to disavow their past conduct; finally, there is no doubt but fallen grandeur captivates the imagination. but it is not merely the personal character of napoleon that is here in question; it is not he who can now be an object of animadversion to generous minds; no more can it be those who, under his reign, have usefully served their country in the different branches of the public administration; but that which we can never brand with too severe a stigma, is the system of selfishness and oppression of which bonaparte is the author. but is not this deplorable system still in full sway in europe? and have not the powerful of the earth carefully gathered up the shameful inheritance of him whom they have overthrown? and if we turn our eyes towards our own country, how many of these instruments of napoleon do we not see, who, after having fatigued him with their servile complaisance, have come to offer to a new power the tribute of their petty machiavelism? now, as then, is it not upon the basis of vanity and corruption that the whole edifice of their paltry science rests, and is it not from the traditions of the imperial government that the counsels of their wisdom are extracted? in painting in stronger colours, therefore, this fatal government, we are not insulting over a fallen enemy, but attacking a still powerful adversary; and if, as i hope, the ten years' exile are destined to increase the horror of arbitrary governments, i may venture to indulge the pleasing idea, that by their publication i shall be rendering a service to the sacred cause to which my mother never ceased to be faithful. table of contents preface, by the editor part the first chapter . causes of bonaparte's animosity against me chapter . commencement of opposition in the tribunate.--my first persecution on that account.--fouche chapter . system of fusion adopted by bonaparte.--publication of my work on literature chapter . conversation of my father with bonaparte.--campaign of marengo chapter . the infernal machine.--peace of luneville chapter . corps diplomatique during the consulate.--death of the emperor paul chapter . paris in chapter . journey to coppet.--preliminaries of peace with england chapter . paris in .--bonaparte president of the italian republic.--my return to coppet chapter . new symptoms of bonaparte's ill will to my father and myself.--affairs of switzerland chapter . rupture with england.--commencement of my exile chapter . departure for germany.--arrival at weimar chapter . berlin.--prince louis-ferdinand chapter . conspiracy of moreau and pichegru chapter . assassination of the duke d'enghien chapter . illness and death of m. necker chapter . trial of moreau chapter . commencement of the empire part the second chapter . suppression of my work on germany.--banishment from france chapter . return to coppet--different persecutions. chapter . journey in switzerland with m. de montmorency chapter . exile of m. de montmorency and madame recamier.--new persecutions chapter . departure from coppet chapter . passage through austria;-- chapter . residence at vienna chapter . departure from vienna chapter . passage through poland chapter . arrival in russia chapter . kiow chapter . road from kiow to moscow chapter . appearance of the country--character of the russians chapter . moscow chapter . road from moscow to petersburg chapter . st. petersburg chapter . the imperial family chapter . manners of the great russian nobility chapter . establishments for public education.--institute of st. catherine chapter . departure for sweden.--passage through finland ten years' exile part the first chapter . causes of bonaparte's animosity against me. it is not with the view of occupying the public attention with what relates to myself, that i have determined to relate the circumstances of my ten years' exile; the miseries which i have endured, however bitterly i may have felt them, are so trifling in the midst of the public calamities of which we are witnesses, that i should be ashamed to speak of myself if the events which concern me were not in some degree connected with the great cause of threatened humanity. the emperor napoleon, whose character exhibits itself entire in every action of his life, has persecuted me with a minute anxiety, with an ever increasing activity, with an inflexible rudeness; and my connections with him contributed to make him known to me, long before europe had discovered the key of the enigma. i shall not here enter into a detail of the events that preceded the appearance of bonaparte upon the political stage of europe; if i accomplish the design i have of writing the life of my father, i will there relate what i have witnessed of the early part of the revolution, whose influence has changed the fate of the whole world. my object at present is only to retrace what relates to myself in this vast picture; in casting from that narrow point of view some general surveys over the whole, i flatter myself with being frequently overlooked, in relating my own history. the greatest grievance which the emperor napoleon has against me, is the respect which i have always entertained for real liberty. these sentiments have been in a manner transmitted to me as an inheritance, and adopted as my own, ever since i have been able to reflect on the lofty ideas from which they are derived, and the noble actions which they inspire. the cruel scenes which have dishonored the french revolution, proceeding only from tyranny under popular forms, could not, it appears to me, do any injury to the cause of liberty: at the most, we could only feel discouraged with respect to france; but if that country had the misfortune not to know how to possess that noblest of blessings, it ought not on that account to be proscribed from the face of the earth. when the sun disappears from the horizon of the northern regions, the inhabitants of those countries do not curse his rays, because they are still shining upon others more favored by heaven. shortly after the th brumaire, bonaparte had heard that i had been speaking strongly in my own parties, against that dawning oppression, whose progress i foresaw as clearly as if the future had been revealed to me. joseph bonaparte, whose understanding and conversation i liked very much, came to see me, and told me, "my brother complains of you. why, said he to me yesterday, why does not madame de stael attach herself to my government? what is it she wants? the payment of the deposit of her father? i will give orders for it: a residence in paris? i will allow it her. in short, what is it she wishes?" "good god!" replied i, "it is not what i wish, but what i think, that is in question." i know not if this answer was reported to him, but if it was, i am certain that he attached no meaning to it; for he believes in the sincerity of no one's opinions; he considers every kind of morality as nothing more than a form, to which no more meaning is attached than to the conclusion of a letter; and as the having assured any one that you are his most humble servant would not entitle him to ask any thing of you, so if any one says that he is a lover of liberty,--that he believes in god,--that he prefers his conscience to his interest, bonaparte considers such professions only as an adherence to custom, or as the regular means of forwarding ambitious views or selfish calculations. the only class of human beings whom he cannot well comprehend, are those who are sincerely attached to an opinion, whatever be the consequences of it: such persons bonaparte looks upon as boobies, or as traders who outstand their market, that is to say, who would sell themselves too dear. thus, as we shall see in the sequel, has he never been deceived in his calculations but by integrity, encountered either in individuals or nations. chapter . commencement of opposition in the tribunate--my first persecution on that account--fouche. some of the tribunes, who attached a real meaning to the constitution, were desirous of establishing in their assembly an opposition analogous to that of england; as if the rights, which that constitution professed to secure, had anything of reality in them, and the pretended division of the bodies of the state were anything more than a mere affair of etiquette, a distinction between the different anti-chambers of the first consul, in which magistrates under different names could hold together, i confess that i saw with pleasure the aversion entertained by a small number of the tribunes, to rival the counsellors of state in servility. i had especially a strong belief that those who had previously allowed themselves to be carried too far in their love for the republic would continue faithful to their opinions, when they became the weakest, and the most threatened. one of these tribunes, a friend of liberty, and endowed with one of the most remarkable understandings ever bestowed upon man, m. benjamin constant, consulted me upon a speech which he purposed to deliver, for the purpose of signalizing the dawn of tyranny: i encouraged him in it with all the strength of my conviction. however, as it was well known that he was one of my intimate friends, i could not help dreading what might happen to me in consequence. i was vulnerable in my taste for society. montaigne said formerly, i am a frenchman through paris: and if he thought so three centuries ago, what must it be now, when we see so many persons of extraordinary intellect collected in one city, and so many accustomed to employ that intellect in adding to the pleasures of conversation. the demon of ennui has always pursued me; by the terror with which he inspires me, i could alone have been capable of bending the knee to tyranny, if the example of my father, and his blood which flows in my veins, had not enabled me to triumph over this weakness. be that as it may, bonaparte knew this foible of mine perfectly: he discerns quickly the weak side of any one; for it is by their weaknesses that he subjugates people to his sway. to the power with which he threatens, to the treasures with which he dazzles, he joins the dispensation of ennui, and that is a source of real terror to the french. a residence at forty leagues from the capital, contrasted with the advantages collected in the most agreeable city in the world, fails not in the long run to shake the greater part of exiles, habituated from their infancy to the charms of a parisian life. on the eve of the day when benjamin constant was to deliver his speech, i had a party, among whom were lucien bonaparte, mm. ------ and several others, whose conversation in different degrees possesses that constant novelty of interest which is produced by the strength of ideas and the grace of expression. every one of these persons, with the exception of lucien, tired of being proscribed by the directory, was preparing to serve the new government, requiring only to be well rewarded for their devotion to its power. benjamin constant came up and whispered to me, "your drawing room is now filled with persons with whom you are pleased: if i speak, tomorrow it will be deserted:--think well of it." "we must follow our conviction," said i to him. this reply was dictated by enthusiasm; but, i confess, if i had foreseen what i have suffered since that day, i should not have had the firmness to refuse m. constant's offer of renouncing his project, in order not to compromise me. at present, so far as opinion is affected, it is nothing to incur the disgrace of bonaparte: he may make you perish, but he cannot deprive you of respect. then, on the contrary, france was not enlightened as to his tyrannical views, and as all who had suffered from the revolution expected to obtain from him the return of a brother, or a friend, or the restoration of property, any one who was bold enough to resist him was branded with the name of jacobin, and you were deprived of good society along with the countenance of the government: an intolerable situation, particularly for a woman, and of which no one can know the misery without having experienced it. on the day when the signal of opposition was exhibited in the tribunate by my friend, i had invited several persons whose society i was fond of, but all of whom were attached to the new government. at five o'clock i had received ten notes of apology; the first and second i bore tolerably well, but as they succeeded each other rapidly, i began to be alarmed. in vain did i appeal to my conscience, which advised me to renounce all the pleasures attached to the favour of bonaparte: i was blamed by so many honorable people, that i knew not how to support myself on my own way of thinking. bonaparte had as yet done nothing exactly culpable; many asserted that he preserved france from anarchy: in short, if at that moment he had signified to me any wish of reconciliation, i should have been delighted: but a step of that sort he will never take without exacting a degradation, and, to induce that degradation, he generally enters into such passions of authority, as terrify into yielding every thing. i do not wish by that to say that bonaparte is not really passionate: what is not calculation in him is hatred, and hatred generally expresses itself in rage: but calculation is in him so much the strongest, that he never goes beyond what it is convenient for him to show, according to circumstances and persons. one day a friend of mine saw him storming at a commissary of war, who had not done his duty; scarcely had the poor man retired, trembling with apprehension, when bonaparte turned round to one of his aides-du-camp, and said to him, laughing, i hope i have given him a fine fright; and yet the moment before, you would have believed that he was no longer master of himself. when it suited the first consul to exhibit his ill-humour against me, he publicly reproached his brother joseph for continuing to visit me. joseph felt it necessary in consequence to absent himself from my house for several weeks, and his example was followed by three fourths of my acquaintance. those who had been proscribed on the th fructidor, pretended that at that period, i had been guilty of recommending m. de talleyrand to barras, for the ministry of foreign affairs: and yet, these people were then continually about that same talleyrand, whom they accused me of having served. all those who behaved ill to me, were cautious in concealing that they did so for fear of incurring the displeasure of the first consul. every day, however, they invented some new pretext to injure me, thus exerting all the energy of their political opinions against a defenceless and persecuted woman, and prostrating themselves at the feet of the vilest jacobins, the moment the first consul had regenerated them by the baptism of his favor. fouche, the minister of police, sent for me to say, that the first consul suspected me of having excited my friend who had spoken in the tribunate. i replied to him, which was certainly the truth, that m. constant was a man of too superior an understanding to make his opinions matter of reproach to a woman, and that besides, the speech in question contained absolutely nothing but reflections on the independence which every deliberative assembly ought to possess, and that there was not a word in it which could be construed into a personal reflection on the first consul. the minister admitted as much. i ventured to add some words on the respect due to the liberty of opinions in a legislative body; but i could easily perceive that he took no interest in these general considerations; he already knew perfectly well, that under the authority of the man whom he wished to serve, principles were out of the question, and he shaped his conduct accordingly. but as he is a man of transcendant understanding in matters of revolution, he had already laid it down as a system to do the least evil possible, the necessity of the object admitted. his preceding conduct certainly exhibited little feeling of morality, and he was frequently in the habit of talking of virtue as an old woman's story. a remarkable sagacity, however, always led him to choose the good as a reasonable thing, and his intelligence made him occasionally do what conscience would have dictated to others. he advised me to go into the country, and assured me, that in a few days, all would be quieted. but at my return, i was very far from finding it so. chapter system of fusion adopted by bonaparte--publication of my work on literature. while we have seen the christian kings take two confessors to examine their consciences more narrowly, bonaparte chose two ministers one of the old and the other of the new regime, whose business it was to place at his disposal the machiavelian means of two opposite systems. in all his nominations, bonaparte followed nearly the same rule, of taking, as it may be said, now from the right, and now from the left, that is to say, choosing alternately his officers among the aristocrats, and among the jacobins: the middle party, that of the friends of liberty, pleased him less than all the others, composed as it was of the small numbers of persons, who in france, had an opinion of their own. he liked much better to have to do with persons who were attached to royalist interests, or who had become stigmatized by popular excesses. he even went so far as to wish to name as a counsellor of state a conventionalist sullied with the vilest crimes of the days of terror; but he was diverted from it by the shuddering of those who would have had to sit along with him. bonaparte would have been delighted to have given that shining proof that he could regenerate, as well as confound, every thing. what particularly characterizes the government of bonaparte, is his profound contempt for the intellectual riches of human nature; virtue, mental dignity, religion, enthusiasm, these, these are in his eyes, the eternal enemies of the continent, to make use of his favorite expression; he would reduce man to force and cunning, and designate every thing else as folly or stupidity. the english particularly irritate him, as they have found the means of being honest, as well as successful, a thing which bonaparte would have us regard as impossible. this shining point of the world has dazzled his eyes from the very first days of his reign. i do not believe, that when bonaparte put himself at the head of affairs, he had formed the plan of universal monarchy: but i believe that his system was, what he himself described it a few days after the th brumaire to one of my friends: "something new must be done every three months, to captivate the imagination of the french nation; with them, whoever stands still is ruined." he flattered himself with being able to make daily encroachments on the liberty of france, and the independence of europe: but, without losing sight of the end, he knew how to accommodate himself to circumstances; when the obstacle was too great, he passed by it, and stopped short when the contrary wind blew too strongly. this man, at bottom so impatient, has the faculty of remaining immoveable when necessary; he derives that from the italians, who know how to restrain themselves in order to attain the object of their passion, as if they were perfectly cool in the choice of that object. it is by the alternate employment of cunning and force, that he has subjugated europe; but, to be sure, europe is but a word of great sound. in what did it then consist? in a few ministers, not one of whom had as much understanding as many men taken at hap-hazard from the nation which they governed. towards the spring of , i published my work on literature, and the success it met with restored me completely to favor with society; my drawing room became again filled, and i had once more the pleasure of conversing, and conversing in paris, which, i confess has always been to me the most fascinating of all pleasures. there was not a word about bonaparte in my book, and the most liberal sentiments were, i believe, forcibly expressed in it. but the press was then far from being enslaved as it is at present; the government exercised a censorship upon newspapers, but not upon books; a distinction which might be supported, if the censorship had been used with moderation: for newspapers exert a popular influence, while books, for the greater part, are only read by well informed people, and may enlighten, but not inflame opinion. at a later period, there were established in the senate, i believe in derision, a committee for the liberty of the press, and another for personal liberty, the members of which are still renewed every three months. certainly the bishopricks in partibus, and the sinecures in england afford more employment than these committees. since my work on literature, i have published delphine, corinne, and finally my work on germany, which was suppressed at the moment it was about to make its appearance. but although this last work has occasioned me the most bitter persecution, literature does not appear to me to be less a source of enjoyment and respect, even for a female. what i have suffered in life, i attribute to the circumstances which associated me, almost at my entry into the world, with the interests of liberty, which were supported by my father and his friends; but the kind of talent which has made me talked of as a writer, has always been to me a source of greater pleasure than pain. the criticisms of which one's works are the objects, can be very easily borne, when one is possessed of some elevation of soul, and when one is more attached to noble ideas for themselves, than for the success which their promulgation can procure us. besides, the public, at the end of a certain time, appears to me always equitable; self-love must accustom itself to do credit to praise; for in due time, we obtain as much of that as we deserve. finally, if we should have even to complain long of injustice, i conceive no better asylum against it than philosophical meditation, and the emotion of eloquence. these faculties place at our disposal a whole world of truths and sentiments, in which we can breathe at perfect freedom. chapter . conversation of my father with bonaparte.--campaign of marengo. bonaparte set out in the spring of , to make the campaign of italy, which was distinguished by the battle of marengo. he went by geneva, and as he expressed a desire to see m. necker, my father waited upon him, more with the hope of serving me, than from any other motive. bonaparte received him extremely well, and talked to him of his plans of the moment, with that sort of confidence which is in his character, or rather in his calculation; for it is thus we must always style his character. my father, at first seeing him, experienced nothing of the impression which i did; he felt no restraint in his presence, and found nothing extraordinary in his conversation. i have endeavoured to account to myself for this difference in our opinions of the same person; and, i believe, that it arose, first, because the simple and unaffected dignity of my father's manners ensured him the respect of all who conversed with him; and second, because the kind of superiority attached to bonaparte proceeding more from ability in evil action, than from the elevation of good thoughts, his conversation cannot make us conceive what distinguishes him; he neither could nor would explain his own machiavelian instinct. my father uttered not a word to him of his two millions deposited in the public treasury; he did not wish to appear interested but for me, and said to him, among other things, that as the first consul loved to surround himself with illustrious names, he ought to feel equal pleasure in encouraging persons of celebrated talent, as the ornament of his power. bonaparte replied to him very obligingly, and the result of this conversation ensured me, at least for some time longer, a residence in france. this was the last occasion when my father's protecting hand was extended over my existence; he has not been a witness of the cruel persecution i have since endured, and which would have irritated him even more than myself. bonaparte repaired to lausanne to prepare the expedition of mount st. bernard; the old austrian general could not believe in the possibility of so bold an enterprise, and in consequence made inadequate preparations to oppose it. it was said, that a small body of troops would have been sufficient to destroy the whole french army in the midst of the mountainous passes, through which bonaparte led it; but in this, as well as in several other instances, the following verses of j. b. rousseau might be very well applied to the triumphs of bonaparte: l'experience indecile du compagnon de paul emile, fit tout le succes d'annibal. (the unruly inexperience of the colleague of paulus emilius, was the cause of all the victories of hannibal). i arrived in switzerland to pass the summer according to custom with my father, nearly about the time when the french army was crossing the alps. large bodies of troops were seen continually passing through these peaceful countries, which the majestic boundary of the alps ought to shelter from political storms. in these beautiful summer evenings, on the borders of the lake of geneva, i was almost ashamed, in the presence of that beautiful sky and pure water, of the disquietude i felt respecting the affairs of this world: but it was impossible for me to overcome my internal agitation: i could not help wishing that bonaparte might be beaten, as that seemed the only means of stopping the progress of his tyranny. i durst not, however, avow this wish, and the prefect of the leman, m. eymar (an old deputy to the constituent assembly), recollecting the period when we cherished together the hope of liberty, was continually sending me couriers to inform me of the progress of the french in italy. it would have been difficult for me to make m. eymar (who was in other respects a most interesting character,) comprehend that the happiness of france required that her army should then meet with reverses, and i received the supposed good news which he sent me, with a degree of restraint which was very little in unison with my character. was it necessary since that to be continually hearing of the triumphs of him who made his successes fall indiscriminately upon the heads of all? and out of so many victories, has there ever arisen a single gleam of happiness for poor france? the battle of marengo was lost for a couple of hours: the negligence of general melas, who trusted too much to the advantages he had gained, and the audacity of general desaix, restored the victory to the french arms. while the fate of the battle was almost desperate, bonaparte rode about slowly on horseback, pensive, and looking downward, more courageous against danger than misfortune, attempting nothing, but waiting the turn of the wheel. he has behaved several times in a similar way, and has found his advantage in it. but i cannot help always thinking, that if bonaparte had fairly encountered among his adversaries a man of character and probity, he would have been stopped short in his career. his great talent lies in terrifying the feeble, and availing himself of unprincipled characters. when he encounters honour any where, it may be said that his artifices are disconcerted, as evil spirits are conjured by the sign of the cross. the armistice which was the result of the battle of marengo, the conditions of which included the cession of all the strong places in the north of italy, was most disadvantageous to austria. bonaparte could not have gained more by a succession of victories. but it might be said that the continental powers appeared to consider it honorable to give up what would have been worth still more if they had allowed them to be taken. they made haste to sanction the injustice of napoleon, and to legitimate his conquests, while they ought, if they could not conquer, at least not to have seconded him. this certainly was not asking too much of the old cabinets of europe; but they knew not how to conduct themselves in so novel a situation, and bonaparte confounded them so much by the union of promises and threats, that in giving up, they believed they were gaining, and rejoiced at the word peace, as much as if this word had preserved its old signification. the illuminations, the reverences, the dinners, and firing of cannon to celebrate this peace, were exactly the same as formerly: but far from cicatrizing the wounds, it introduced into the government which signed it a most certain and effectual principle of dissolution. the most remarkable circumstance in the fortune of napoleon is the sovereigns whom he found upon the throne. paul i. particularly did him incalculable service; he had the same enthusiasm for him that his father had felt for frederic the second, and he abandoned austria at the moment when she was still attempting to struggle. bonaparte persuaded him that the whole of europe would be pacified for centuries, if the two great empires of the east and west were agreed; and paul, who had something chivalrous in his disposition, allowed himself to be entrapped by these fallacies. it was an extraordinary piece of good fortune in bonaparte to meet with a crowned head so easily duped, and who united violence and weakness in such equal degrees: no one therefore regretted paul more than he did, for no one was it so important to him to deceive. lucien, the minister of the interior, who was perfectly acquainted with his brother's schemes, caused a pamphlet to be published, with the view of preparing men's minds for the establishment of a new dynasty. this publication was premature, and had a bad effect; fouche availed himself of it to ruin lucien. he persuaded bonaparte that the secret was revealed too soon, and told the republican party, that bonaparte disavowed what his brother had done. in consequence lucien was then sent ambassador to spain. the system of bonaparte was to advance gradually in the road to power; he was constantly spreading rumours of the plans he had in agitation, in order to feel the public opinion. generally even he was anxious to have his projects exaggerated, in order that the thing itself, when it took place, might be a softening of the apprehension which had circulated in public. the vivacity of lucien on this occasion carried him too far, and bonaparte judged it advisable to sacrifice him to appearances for some time. chapter . the infernal machine.--peace of luneville. i returned to paris in the month of november . peace was not yet made, although moreau by his victories had rendered it more and more necessary to the allied powers. has he not since regretted the laurels of stockach and hohenlinden, when france has not been less enslaved than europe, over which he made her triumph? moreau recognized only his country in the orders of the first consul; but such a man ought to have formed his opinion of the government which employed him, and to have acted under such circumstances, upon his own view of the real interests of his country. still, it must be allowed that at the period of the most brilliant victories of moreau, that is to say, in the autumn of , there were but few persons who had penetrated the secret projects of bonaparte; what was evident at a distance, was the improvement of the finances, and the restoration of order in several branches of the administration. napoleon was obliged to begin by the good to arrive at the bad; he was obliged to increase the french army, before he could employ it for the purposes of his personal ambition. one evening when i was conversing with some friends, we heard a very loud explosion, but supposing it to be merely the firing of some cannon by way of exercise, we paid no attention to it, and continued our conversation. we learned a few hours afterwards that in going to the opera, the first consul had narrowly escaped being destroyed by the explosion of what has been called the infernal machine. as he escaped, the most lively interest was expressed towards him: philosophers proposed the re-establishment of fire and the wheel for the punishment of the authors of this outrage; and he could see on all sides a nation presenting its neck to the yoke. he discussed very coolly at his own house the same evening what would have happened if he had perished. some persons said that moreau would have replaced him: bonaparte pretended that it would have been general bernadotte. "like antony," said he, "he would have presented to the inflamed populace the bloody robe of caesar." i know not if he really believed that france would have then called bernadotte to the head of affairs, but what i am quite sure of is, that he said so for the purpose of exciting envy against that general. if the infernal machine had been contrived by the jacobins, the first consul might have immediately redoubled his tyranny; public opinion would have seconded him: but as this plot proceeded from the royalist party, he could not derive much advantage from it. he endeavoured rather to stifle, than avail himself of it, as he wished the nation to believe that his enemies were only the enemies of order, and not the friends of another order, that is to say, of the old dynasty. what is very remarkable, is, that on the occasion of a royalist conspiracy, bonaparte caused, by a senatus consultum, one hundred and thirty jacobins to be transported to the island of madagascar, or rather to the bottom of the sea, for they have never been heard of since. this list was made in the most arbitrary manner possible; names were put upon it, or erased, according to the recommendations of counsellors of state, who proposed, and of senators, who sanctioned it. respectable people said, when the manner in which this list had been made was complained of, that it was composed of great criminals; that might be very true, but it is the right and not the fact which constitutes the legality of actions. when the arbitrary transportation of one hundred and thirty citizens is submitted to, there is nothing to prevent, as we have since seen, the application of the same treatment to the most respectable persons.--public opinion, it is said, will prevent this, opinion! what is it without the authority of law? what is it without independent organs to express it? opinion was in favor of the duke d'enghien, in favor of moreau, in favor of pichegru:--was it able to save them? there will be neither liberty, dignity, nor security in a country where proper names are discussed when injustice is about to be committed. every man is innocent until condemned by a legal tribunal; and the fate of even the greatest of criminals, if he is withdrawn from the law, ought to make good people tremble in common, with others. but, as is the custom in the english house of commons, when an opposition member goes out, he requests a ministerial member to pair off with him, not to alter the strength of either party, bonaparte never struck the jacobins or the royalists without dividing his blows equally between them: he thus made friends of all those whose vengeance he served. we shall see in the sequel that he always reckoned on the gratification of this passion to consolidate his government: for he knows that it is much more to be depended on than affection. after a revolution, the spirit of party is so bitter, that a new chief can subdue it more by serving its vengeance, than by supporting its interests: all abandon, if necessary, those who think like themselves, provided they can sacrifice those who think differently. the peace of luneville was proclaimed: austria only lost in this first peace the republic of venice, which she had formerly received as an indemnity for belgium; and this ancient mistress of the adriatic, once so haughty and powerful, again passed from one master to the other. chapter . corps diplomatique during the consulate.--death of the emperor paul. i passed that winter in paris very tranquilly. i never went to the first consul's--i never saw m. de talleyrand. i knew bonaparte did not like me: but he had not yet reached the degree of tyranny which he has since displayed. foreigners treated me with distinction,--the corps diplomatique were my constant visitors,--and this european atmosphere served me as a safeguard. a minister just arrived from prussia fancied that the republic still existed, and began by putting forward some of the philosophical notions he had acquired in his intercourse with frederick the great: it was hinted to him that he had quite mistaken his ground, and that he must rather avail himself of his knowledge of courts. he took the hint very quickly, for he is a man whose distinguished powers are in the service of a character particularly supple. he ends the sentence you begin, and begins that which he thinks you will end; and it is only in turning the conversation upon the transactions of former ages, on ancient literature, or upon subjects unconnected with persons or things of the present day, that you discover the superiority of his understanding. the austrian ambassador was a courtier of a totally different stamp, but not less desirous of pleasing the higher powers. the one had all the information of a literary character; the other knew nothing of literature beyond the french plays, in which he had acted the parts of crispin and chrysalde. it is a known fact, that when ambassador to catherine ii, he once received despatches from his court, when he happened to be dressed as an old woman; and it was with difficulty that the courier could be made to recognize his ambassador in that costume. m. de c. was an extremely common-place character; he said the same things to almost every one he met in a drawing room: he spoke to every person with a kind of cordiality in which sentiments and ideas had no part. his manners were engaging, and his conversation pretty well formed by the world; but to send such a man to negotiate * with the revolutionary strength and roughness that surrounded bonaparte, was a most pitiable spectacle. an aide-de-camp of bonaparte complained of the familiarity of m. de c.; he was displeased that one of the first noblemen of the austrian monarchy should squeeze his hand without ceremony. these new debutans in politeness could not conceive that ease was in good taste. in truth, if they had been at their ease, they would have committed strange inconsistencies, and arrogant stiffness was much better suited to them in the new part they wished to play. joseph bonaparte, who negociated the peace of luneville, invited m. de c. to his charming country seat of morfontaine, where i happened to meet him. joseph was extremely fond of rural occupation, and would walk with ease and pleasure in his gardens for eight hours in succession. m. de c. tried to follow him, more out of breath than the duke of mayenne, whom henry iv. amused himself with making walk about, notwithstanding his corpulence. the poor man talked very much of fishing, among the pleasures of the country, because it allowed him to sit down; he absolutely warmed in speaking of the innocent pleasure of catching some little fish with the line. when he was ambassador at petersburg, paul i. had treated him with the greatest indignity. he and i were playing at backgammon in the drawing room at morfontaine, when one of my friends came in and informed us of the sudden death of that sovereign. m. de c. immediately began making the most official lamentations possible on this event. "although i had reason to complain of him," said he, "i shall always acknowledge the excellent qualities of this prince, and i cannot help regretting his loss." he thought rightly that the death of paul was a fortunate event for austria, and for europe, but he had in his conversation, a court mourning, that was really quite intolerable. it is to be hoped, that the progress of time will rid the world of the courtier spirit, the most insipid of all others, to say nothing more. bonaparte was extremely alarmed at the death of paul, and it is said, that on that occasion he uttered the first--ah, my god! that was ever heard to proceed from his lips. he had no reason, however, to disturb himself; for the french were then more disposed to endure tyranny than the russians. i was invited to general berthier's one day, when the first consul was to be of the party; and as i knew that he expressed himself very unfavourably about me, it struck me that he might perhaps accost me with some of those rude expressions, which he often took pleasure in addressing to females, even to those who paid their court to him; i wrote down therefore as they occured to me, before i went to the entertainment, a variety of tart and piquant replies which i might make to what i supposed he might say to me. i did not wish to be taken by surprise, if he allowed himself to insult me, for that would have been to show a want both of character and understanding; and as no person could promise themselves not to be confused in the presence of such a man, i prepared myself before hand to brave him. fortunately the precaution was unnecessary; he only addressed the most common questions possible to me; and the same thing happened to all of his opponents, to whom he attributed the possibility of replying to him: at all times, however, he never attacks, but when he feels himself much the strongest. during supper, the first consul stood behind the chair of madame bonaparte, and balanced himself sometimes on one leg, and sometimes on the other, in the manner of the princes of the house of bourbon. i made my neighbour remark this vocation for royalty, already so decided. chapter . paris in the opposition in the tribunate still continued; that is to say, about twenty members out of a hundred, tried to speak out against the measures of every kind, with which tyranny was preparing. a grand question arose, in the law which gave to the government the fatal power of creating special tribunals to try persons accused of state crimes; as if the handing over a man to these extraordinary tribunals, was not already prejudging the question, that is to say, if he is a criminal, and a criminal of state; and as if, of all crimes, political crimes were not those which required the greatest precaution and independence in the manner of examining them, as the government is in such causes almost always a party interested. we have since seen what are the military commissions to try crimes of state; and the death of the duke d'eughien marks to all the horror which that hypocritical power ought to inspire, which covers murder with the mantle of the law. the resistance of the tribunate, feeble as it was, displeased the first consul; not that it was any obstacle to his designs, but it kept up the habit of thinking in the nation, which he wished to stifle entirely. he put into the journals among other things, an absurd argument against the opposition. nothing is so simple or so proper, was it there said, as an opposition in england, because the king is the enemy of the people; but in a country, where the executive government is itself named by the people, it is opposing the nation to oppose its representative. what a number of phrases of this kind have the scribes of napoleon deluged the public with for ten years! in england or america the meanest peasant would laugh in your face at a sophism of this nature; in france, all that is desired, is to have a phrase ready, with which to give to one's interest the appearance of conviction. very few persons showed themselves strangers to the desire of having places; a great number were ruined, and the interest of their wives and children, or of their nephews and nieces, if they had no children, or of their cousins, if they had no nephews, obliged them, they said, to seek employment from the government. the great strength of the heads of the state in france, is the prodigious taste that the people have for places; vanity even makes them more sought for, than the emolument attached to them. bonaparte received thousands of petitions for every office, from the highest to the lowest. if he had not had naturally a profound contempt for the human race, he would have conceived it in running over petitions, signed by names illustrious from their ancestry, or celebrated by revolutionary actions in complete opposition to the new functions they were ambitious of fulfilling. the winter of at paris was made extremely agreeable to me, by the readiness with which fouche granted the applications i made to him for the return of different emigrants: in this way he left me, in the midst of my disgrace, the pleasure of being useful, and i retain a most grateful recollection to him for it. it must be confessed, that in the actions of women, there is always a little coquetry, and that the greater part of their very virtues are mixed with the desire of pleasing, and of being surrounded by friends, whose attachment to them is heightened by the feeling of obligation. in this point of view only, can our sex be pardoned for being fond of influence: but there are occasions when we ought even to sacrifice the pleasure of obliging to preserve our dignity: for we may do every thing for the sake of others, excepting to degrade our character. our own conscience is as it were the treasure of the almighty, which we are not permitted to make use of for the advantage of others. bonaparte was still at some expense on account of the institute, upon which he piqued himself so much when he was in egypt: but there was among the men of letters, and the savants, a petty philosophical opposition, unfortunately of a very bad description, which was entirely directed against the re-establishment of religion. by a fatal caprice, the enlightened spirits in france wished to console themselves for the slavery of this world, by endeavouring to destroy the hopes of a better: this singular inconsistency would not have happened under the protestant religion; but the catholic clergy had enemies, whom their courage and misfortunes had not yet disarmed; and perhaps, it is really difficult to make the authority of the pope, and of priests subject to the pope, harmonize with the independence of a state. be that as it may, the institute exhibited for religion, independant of its ministers, none of that profound respect, inseparable from a lofty combination of mind and genius; and bonaparte was left to support, against men of more value than himself, opinions which were of more value than them. in this year ( ), the first consul ordered the king of spain to make war upon portugal, and the feeble monarch of that illustrious nation condemned his army to this expedition, equally servile and unjust, against a neighbour, who had no hostile intentions, and whose only offence was his alliance with that england, which has since shewn itself so true a friend to spain: and all this in obedience to the man who was preparing to deprive him of his very existence. when we have seen these same spaniards giving with so much energy the signal of the resurrection of the world, we learn to know what nations are, and what are the consequences of refusing them a legal means of expressing their opinion, and regulating their own destiny. towards the spring of , the first consul took it into his head to make a king, and a king of the house of bourbon: he bestowed tuscany upon him, designating it by the classical name of etruria, for the purpose of commencing the grand masquerade of europe. this infanta of spain was ordered to paris for the purpose of exhibiting to the french the spectacle of a prince of the ancient dynasty humbled before the first consul; more humbled by his gifts than he ever could have been by his persecution. bonaparte tried upon this royal lamb the experiment of making a king wait in his antechamber: he allowed himself to be applauded at the theatre, upon the recitation of this verse: "j'ai fait des rois, madame, et n'ai pas voulu l'etre:" (i have made kings, madam, and have not wished to be one:) promising himself to be more than a king, when the opportunity should offer. every day some fresh blunder of this poor king of etruria was the subject of conversation: he was taken to the museum, to the cabinet of natural history, and some of his questions about quadrupeds and fishes, which a well educated child of twelve years old would have been ashamed to put, were quoted as proofs of intelligence. in the evening, he was conducted to entertainments, where the female opera dancers came and mixed with the ladies of the new court; the little monarch, in spite of his devotion, preferred dancing with them, and in return sent them next day presents of elegant and good books for their instruction. this period of transition from revolutionary habits to monarchical pretensions in france, was a most singular one; as there was as little independence in the one, as dignity in the other, their absurdities harmonised perfectly together; each of them in their own way formed a group round the parti-coloured potentate, who at the same time employed the forcible means of both regimes. for the last time, the th of july, the anniversary of the revolution, was celebrated this year, and a pompous proclamation was put forth to remind the people of the advantages resulting from that day, not one of which advantages the first consul had not made up his mind to destroy. of all the collections that were ever made, that of the proclamations of this man is the most singular: it is a complete encyclopedia of contradictions; and if chaos itself were employed to instruct the earth, it would doubtless, in a similar way, throw at the heads of mankind, eulogiums of peace and war, of knowledge and prejudices, of liberty and despotism, praises and insults upon all governments and all religions. it was at this period that bonaparte sent general leclerc to saint domingo, and designated him in his decree our brother-in-law. this first royal we, which associated the french with the prosperity of this family, was a most bitter pill to me. he obliged his beautiful sister to accompany her husband to saint domingo, where her health was completely ruined: a singular act of despotism for a man who is not accustomed to great severity of principles in those about his person; but he makes use of morality only to harass some and dazzle others. a peace was in the sequel concluded with the chief of the negroes, toussaint-louverture. this man was, no doubt, a great criminal, but bonaparte had signed conditions with him, in complete violation of which toussaint was conducted to a prison in france, where he ended his days in the most miserable manner. perhaps bonaparte himself hardly recollects this crime, because he has been less reproached with it than others. in a great forge, we see with astonishment the violence of the machines which are set in motion by a single will: these hammers, those flatteners seem so many persons, or rather devouring animals. should you attempt to resist their force, they would annihilate you; notwithstanding, all this apparent fury is calculated beforehand, and a single mover gives action to these springs. the tyranny of bonaparte is represented to my eyes by this image; he makes thousands of men perish, as these wheels beat the iron, and his agents are the greater part of them equally insensible; the invisible impulse of these human machines proceeds from a will at once violent and methodical, which transforms moral life into its servile instrument. finally, to complete the comparison, it is sufficient to seize the mover to restore every thing to a state of repose. chapter . journey to coppet.--preliminaries of peace with england. i went, according to my usual happy custom, to spend the summer with my father. i found him extremely indignant at the state of affairs; and as he had all his life been as much attached to real liberty as he detested popular anarchy, he felt inclined to draw his pen against the tyranny of one, after having so long fought against that of the many. my father was fond of glory, and however prudent his character, hazards of every kind did not displease him, when the public esteem was to be deserved by incurring them, i was quite sensible of the danger to which any work of his which should displease the first consul, would expose myself; but i could not resolve to stifle this song of the swan, who wished to make himself heard once more on the tomb of french liberty. i encouraged him therefore in his design, but we deferred to the following year the question whether what he wrote should be published. the news of the signature of the preliminaries of peace between england and france, came to put the crown to bonaparte's good fortune. when i learned that england had recognised his power, it seemed to me that i had been wrong in hating it; but circumstances were not long in relieving me from this scruple. the most remarkable article of these preliminaries was the complete evacuation of egypt: that expedition therefore had had no other result than to make bonaparte talked of. several publications written in places beyond the reach of bonaparte's power, accuse him of having made kleber be assassinated in egypt, because he was jealous of his influence; and i have been assured by persons worthy of credit, that the duel in which general d'estaing was killed by general regnier was provoked by a discussion on this point. it appears to me, however, scarcely credible that bonaparte should have had the means of arming a turk against the life of a french general, at a moment when he was far removed from the theatre of the crime. nothing ought to be said against him of which there are not proofs; the discovery of a single error of this kind among the most notorious truths would tarnish their lustre. we must not fight bonaparte with any of his own weapons. i delayed my return to paris to avoid being present at the great fete in honour of the peace. i know no sensation more painful than these public rejoicings in which the heart refuses to participate. we feel a sort of contempt for this booby people which comes to celebrate the yoke preparing for it: these dull victims dancing before the palace of their sacrificer: this first consul designated the father of the nation which he was about to devour: this mixture of stupidity on one side, and cunning on the other: the stale hypocrisy of the courtiers throwing a veil over the arrogance of the master: all inspired me with an insurmountable disgust. it was necessary however to constrain one's feelings, and during these solemnities you were exposed to meet with official congratulations, which at other times it was more easy to avoid. bonaparte then proclaimed that peace was the first want of the world: every day he signed some new treaty, therein resembling the care with which polyphemus counted the sheep as he drove them into his den. the united states of america also made peace with france, and sent as their plenipotentiary, a man who did not know a word of french, apparently ignorant that the most complete acquaintance with the language was barely sufficient to penetrate the truth, in a government which knew so well how to conceal it. the first consul, on the presentation of mr. livingston, complimented him, through an interpreter, on the purity of manners in america, and added "the old world is very corrupt;" then turning round to m. de ----, he repeated twice, "explain to him that the old world is very corrupt: you know something of it, don't you?" this was one of the most agreeable speeches he ever addressed in public to this courtier, who was possessed of better taste than his fellows, and wished to preserve some dignity in his manners, although he sacrificed that of the mind to his ambition. meantime, however, monarchical institutions were rapidly advancing under the shadow of the republic. a pretorian guard was organized: the crown diamonds were made use of to ornament the sword of the first consul, and there was observable in his dress, as well as in the political situation of the day, a mixture of the old and new regime: he had his dresses covered with gold, and his hair cropped, a little body, and a large head, an indescribable air of awkwardness and arrogance, of disdain and embarrassment, which altogether formed a combination of the bad graces of a parvenu, with all the audacity of a tyrant. his smile has been cried up as agreeable; my own opinion is, that in any other person it would have been found unpleasant; for this smile, breaking out from a confirmed serious mood, rather resembled an involuntary twitch than a natural movement, and the expression of his eyes was never in unison with that of his mouth; but as his smile had the effect of encouraging those who were about him, the relief which it gave them made it be taken for a charm. i recollect once being told very gravely by a member of the institute, a counsellor of state, that bonaparte's nails were perfectly well made. another time a courtier exclaimed, "the first consul's hand is beautiful!" "ah! for heaven's sake, sir," replied a young nobleman of the ancient noblesse, who was not then a chamberlain, "don't let us talk politics." the same courtier, speaking affectionately of the first consul, said, "he frequently displays the most infantine sweetness." certainly, in his own family, he amused himself sometimes with innocent games; he has been seen to dance with his generals; it is even said that at munich, in the palace of the king and queen of bavaria, to whom no doubt this gaiety appeared very odd, he assumed one evening the spanish costume of the emperor charles vii. and began dancing an old french country dance, la monaco. chapter . paris in .--bonaparte president of the italian republic.--my return to coppet. every step of the first consul announced more and more openly his boundless ambition. while the peace with england was negotiating at amiens, he assembled at lyons the cisalpine consulta, consisting of the deputies from lombardy and the adjacent states, which had been formed into a republic under the directory, and who now inquired what new form of government they were to assume. as people were not yet accustomed to the idea of the unity of the french republic being transformed into the unity of one man, no one ever dreamt of the same person uniting on his own head the first consulship of france and the presidency of italy; it was expected therefore that count melzi would be nominated to the office, as the person most distinguished by his knowledge, his illustrious birth, and the respect of his fellow citizens. all of a sudden the report got abroad that bonaparte was to get himself nominated; and at this news a moment of life seemed still perceptible in the public feeling. it was said that the french constitution deprived of the right of citizenship whoever accepted employment in a foreign country; but was he a frenchman, who only wanted to make use of the great nation for the oppression of europe, and vice versa? bonaparte juggled the nomination of president out of all these italians, who only learned a few hours before proceeding to the scrutiny, that they must appoint him. they were told to join the name of count melzi, as vice-president, to that of bonaparte. they were assured that they would only be governed by the former, who would always reside among them, and that the latter was merely ambitious of an honorary title. bonaparte said to them himself in his usual emphatic manner, "cisalpines, i shall preserve only the great idea of your interests." but the great idea meant the complete power. the day after this election, they were seriously occupied in making a constitution, as if any one could exist by the side of this iron hand. the nation was divided into three classes; the possidenti, the dotti, and the commerrianti. the landholders, to be taxed; the literary men, to be silenced; and the merchants, to have all the ports shut against them. these sounding words in italian are even better adapted to the purposes of quackery than the corresponding french. bonaparte had changed the name of cisalpine republic into that of italian republic, thereby giving europe an anticipation of his future conquests in the rest of italy. such a step was every thing but pacific, and yet it did not prevent the signature of the treaty of amiens; so much did europe, and even england itself, then desire peace! i was at the english ambassador's at the moment of his receiving the terms of this treaty. he read them aloud to the persons who were dining with him, and it is impossible for me to express the astonishment i felt at every article. england restored all her conquests; she restored malta, of which it had been said, when it was taken by the french, that if there had been nobody in the fortress, they would never have been able to enter it. in short, she gave up every thing, and without compensation, to a power which she had constantly beaten at sea. what an extraordinary effect of the passion for peace! and yet this man, who had so miraculously obtained such advantages, had not the patience to make use of them for a few years, to put the french navy in a state to meet that of england. scarcely had the treaty of amiens been signed, when napoleon, by a senatus-consultum, annexed piedmont to france. during the twelve months the peace lasted, everyday was marked by some new proclamation, provoking to a breach of the treaty. the motives of this conduct it is easy to penetrate; bonaparte wished to dazzle the french nation, now by unexpected treaties of peace, at other times by wars which would make him necessary to it. he believed that a period of disturbance was favourable to usurpation. the newspapers, which were instructed to boast of the advantages of peace in the spring of , said then "we are approaching the moment when systems of politics will become of no effect." if bonaparte had really wished it, he might at that period have easily bestowed twenty years of peace upon europe, in the state of terror and ruin to which it was reduced. the friends of liberty in the tribunate were still endeavouring to struggle against the constantly increasing power of the first consul; but they had not then the advantage of being seconded by public opinion. the greater number of the opposition tribunes were every way deserving of esteem: but there were three or four persons who acted along with them, who had been guilty of revolutionary excesses, and the government took especial care to throw upon all, the blame which could only attach to a few. it is certain, however, that men collected in a public assembly generally end in electrifying themselves with the sparks of mental dignity; and this tribunate, even such as it was, would, had it been allowed to continue, have prevented the establishment of tyranny. already the majority of votes had nominated, as a candidate for the senate, daunou, an honest and enlightened republican, but certainly not a man to be dreaded. this was sufficient, however, to determine the first consul to the elimination of the tribunate; which means to make twenty of the most energetic members of the assembly retire one by one, on the designation of the senators, and to have them replaced by twenty others, devoted to the government. the eighty who remained, were each year to undergo the same operation by fourths. a lesson was in this manner given them of what they were expected to do, to retain their places, or in other words, their salary of fifteen thousand francs; the first consul wishing to preserve some time longer this mutilated assembly, which might serve for two or three years more as a popular mask to his tyrannical acts. among the proscribed tribunes were several of my friends; but my opinion was in this instance altogether independent of my attachments. perhaps, however, i might feel a greater degree of irritation at the injustice which fell upon persons with whom i was connected, and i have no doubt that i allowed myself the expression of some sarcastic remarks on this hypocritical method of interpreting the unfortunate constitution, into which they had endeavoured to prevent the entrance of the smallest spark of liberty. there was at that time formed round general bernadotte, a party of generals and senators, who wished to have his opinion, if some means could not be devised to stop the progress of the usurpation, which was now rapidly approaching. he proposed a variety of plans, all founded upon some legislative measure or other, considering any other means as contrary to his principles. but to obtain any such measure, it required a deliberation of at least some members of the senate, and not one of them was found bold enough to subscribe such an instrument. while this most perilous negociation continued, i was in the habit of seeing general bernadotte and his friends very frequently; this was more than enough to ruin me, if their designs were discovered. bonaparte remarked that people always came away from my house less attached to him than when they entered it; in short he determined to single me out as the only culprit, among many, who were much more so than i was, but whom it was of more consequence to him to spare. just at this time i set out for coppet, and reached my father's house in a most painful state of anxiety and mental oppression. my letters from paris informed me, that after my departure, the first consul had expressed himself very warmly on the subject of my connections with general bernadotte. there was every appearance of his being resolved to punish me; but he paused at the idea of sacrificing general bernadotte; either because his military talents were necessary to him; restrained by the family ties which connected them; afraid of the greater popularity of bernadotte with the french army; or finally because there is a certain charm in his manners, which renders it difficult even to bonaparte to become entirely his enemy. what provoked the first consul still more than the opinions which he attributed to me, was the number of strangers who came to visit me. the prince of orange, son of the stadtholder, did me the honour to dine with me, for which he was reproached by bonaparte. the existence of a woman, who was visited on account of her literary reputation, was but a trifle; but that trifle was totally independant of him, and was sufficient to make him resolve to crush me. in this year, , the affair of the princes, who had possessions in germany was settled. the whole of that negociation was conducted at paris, to the great profit, it was said, of the ministers who were employed in it. be that as it may, it was at this period that began the diplomatic spoliation of europe, which was only stopped at its very extremities. all the great noblemen of feudal germany, were seen at paris exhibiting their ceremonial, whose obsequious formalities were much more agreeable to the first consul than the still easy manner of the french; and asking back what belonged to them with a servility which would almost make one lose the right to one's own property, so much had it the air of regarding the authority of justice as nothing. a nation singularly proud, the english, was not at this time altogether exempt from a degree of curiosity about the person of the first consul, approaching to homage. the ministerial party regarded him in his proper light; but the opposition, which ought to have a greater hatred of tyranny, as it is supposed to be more enthusiastic for liberty, the opposition party, and fox himself, whose talents and goodness of heart one cannot recollect without admiration, and the tenderest emotion, committed the error of shewing too much attention to bonaparte, thereby serving to prolong the mistake of those, who wished still to confound with the french revolution, the most decided enemy of the first principles of that revolution. chapter . new symptoms of bonaparte's ill will to my father and myself. --affairs of switzerland. at the beginning of the winter - , when i saw by the papers that so many illustrious englishmen, and so many of the most intelligent persons in france were collected in paris, i felt, i confess, the strongest desire to be among them. i do not dissemble, that a residence in paris has always appeared to me the most agreeable of all others; i was born there--there i have passed my infancy and early youth--and there only could i meet the generation which had known my father, and the friends who had with us passed through the horrors of the revolution. this love of country, which has attached the most strongly constituted minds, lays still stronger hold of us, when it unites the enjoyments of intellect with the affections of the heart, and the habits of imagination. french conversation exists nowhere but in paris, and conversation has been since my infancy, my greatest pleasure. i experienced such grief at the apprehension of being deprived of this residence, that my reason could not support itself against it. i was then in the full vivacity of life, and it is precisely the want of animated enjoyment, which leads most frequently to despair, as it renders that resignation very difficult, without which we cannot support the vicissitudes of life. the prefect of geneva had received no orders to refuse me my passports for paris, but i knew that the first consul had said in the midst of his circle, that i would do well not to return; and he was already in the habit, on subjects of this nature, of dictating his pleasure in conversation, in order to prevent his being called upon, by the anticipation of his orders. if he had in this manner said, that such and such an individual ought to go and hang himself, i believe that he would have been displeased, if the submissive subject had not in obedience to the hint, bought a rope and prepared the gallows. another proof of his ill will to me, was the manner in which the french journals criticized my romance of delphine, which appeared at this time; they thought proper to denounce it as immoral, and the work which had received my father's approbation was condemned by these courtier criticks. there might be found in that book, that fire of youth, and ardour after happiness, which ten years, and those years of suffering, have taught me to direct in another manner. but my censors were not capable of feeling this sort of error, and merely acted in obedience to that voice which ordered them to pull to pieces the work of the father, prior to attacking that of the daughter. in fact we heard from all quarters, that the true reason of the first consul's anger, was this last work of my father, in which the whole scaffolding of his monarchy was delineated by anticipation. my father, and also my mother, during her life-time, had both the same predilection for a paris residence that i had. i was extremely sorrowful at being separated from my friends, and at being unable to give my children that taste for the fine arts, which is acquired with difficulty in the country; and as there was no positive prohibition of my return in the letter of the consul lebrun,* but merely some significant hints, i formed a hundred projects of returning, and trying if the first consul, who at that time was still tender of public opinion, would venture to brave the murmurs which my banishment would not fail to excite. my father, who condescended sometimes to reproach himself for being partly the cause of spoiling my fortune, conceived the idea of going himself to paris, to speak to the first consul in my favor. i confess, that at first i consented to accept this proof of my father's attachment; i represented to myself such an idea of the ascendancy which his presence would produce, that i thought it impossible to resist him; his age, the fine expression of his looks, and the union of so much noble mindedness, and refinement of intellect, appeared to me likely even to captivate bonaparte himself. i knew not at that time, to what a degree the consul was irritated against his book; but fortunately for me, i reflected that these very advantages were only more likely to excite in the first consul a stronger desire of humbling their possessor. assuredly he would have found means, at least in appearance, of accomplishing that desire; as power in france has many allies, and if the spirit of opposition has been frequently displayed, it has only been because the weakness of the government has offered it an easy victory. it cannot be too often repeated, that what the french love above all things, is success, and that with them, power easily succeeds in making misfortune ridiculous. finally, thank god! i awoke from the illusion to which i had given myself up, and positively refused the noble sacrifice which my father proposed to make for me. when he saw me completely decided not to accept it, i perceived how much it would have cost him. i lost him fifteen months afterwards, and if he had then executed the journey he proposed, i should have attributed his illness to that cause, and remorse would have still kept my wound festering. * this letter is the same which is spoken of in the th part of the considerations on the french revolution, chap. . editor. it was also during the winter of - , that switzerland took arms against the unitarian constitution which had been imposed upon her. singular mania of the french revolutionists to compel all countries to adopt a political organization similar to that of france! there are, doubtless, principles common to all countries, such as those which secure the civil and political rights of free people; but of what consequence is it whether there should be a limited monarchy, as in england, or a federal republic, like the united states, or the thirteen swiss cantons? and was it necessary to reduce europe to a single idea, like the roman people to a single head, in order to be able to command and to change the whole in one day! the first consul certainly attached no importance to this or that form of constitution, or even to any constitution whatever; but what was of consequence to him, was to make the best use he could of switzerland for his own interest, and with that view, he conducted himself prudently. he combined the various plans which were offered to him, and drew up a form of constitution which conciliated sufficiently well the ancient habits with the modern pretensions, and in causing himself to be named mediator of the swiss confederation, he drew more persons from that country, than he could have driven from it, if he had governed it directly. he made the deputies nominated by the cantons and principal cities of switzerland come to paris; and on the th of january , he had a conference of seven hours with ten delegates, chosen from the general deputation. he dwelt upon the necessity of re-establishing the democratic cantons in their former state, pronouncing on this occasion some declamations on the cruelty of depriving shepherds dispersed among the mountains, of their sole amusement, namely, popular assemblies; stating also, (what concerned him more nearly,) the reasons he had for mistrusting the aristocratic cantons. he insisted strongly on the importance of switzerland to france. these were his words, as they are given in a narrative of this conference: "i can declare that since i have been at the head of this government, no power has taken the least interest in switzerland: 'twas i who made the helvetic republic be acknowledged at luneville: austria cared not the least for it. at amiens i wished to do the same, and england refused it: but england has nothing to do with switzerland. if she had expressed the least apprehension that i wished to be declared your landamann, i would have been so. it has been said that england encouraged the last insurrection; if the english cabinet had taken a single official step, or if there had been a syllable said about it in the london gazette, i would have immediately united you with france." what incredible language! thus, the existence of a people who had secured their independence in the midst of europe by the most heroic efforts, and maintained it for five centuries by wisdom and moderation, this existence would have been annihilated by a movement of spleen which the least accident might have excited in a being so capricious. bonaparte added in this same conference, that it was unpleasant to him to have a constitution to make, because it exposed him to be hissed, which he had no partiality for. this expression (etre siffle) bears the stamp of the deceitfully affable vulgarity in which he frequently took pleasure in indulging. roederer and desmeunier wrote the act of mediation from his dictation, and the whole passed during the time that his troops occupied switzerland. he has since withdrawn them, and this country, it must be confessed, has been better treated by napoleon than the rest of europe, although both in a political and military point of view more completely dependent upon him; consequently it will remain tranquil in the general insurrection. the people of europe were disposed to such a degree of patience that it has required a bonaparte to exhaust it. the london newspapers attacked the first consul bitterly enough; the english nation was too enlightened not to perceive the drift of his actions. whenever any translations from the english papers were brought to him, he used to apostrophize lord whitworth, who answered him with equal coolness and propriety that the king of great britain himself was not protected from the sarcasms of newswriters, and that the constitution permitted no violation of their liberty on that score. however, the english government caused m. peltier to be prosecuted for some articles in his journal directed against the first consul. peltier had the honour to be defended by mr. mackintosh, who made upon this occasion one of the most eloquent speeches that has been read in modern times; i will mention farther on, under what circumstances this speech came into my hands. chapter . rupture with england.--commencement of my exile. i was at geneva, living from taste and from circumstances in the society of the english, when the news of the declaration of war reached us. the rumour immediately spread that the english travellers would all be made prisoners: as nothing similar had ever been heard of in the law of european nations, i gave no credit to it, and my security was nearly proving injurious to my friends: they contrived however, to save themselves. but persons entirely unconnected with political affairs, among whom was lord beverley, the father of eleven children, returning from italy with his wife and daughters, and a hundred other persons provided with french passports, some of them repairing to different universities for education, others to the south for the recovery of their health, all travelling under the safeguard of laws recognised by all nations, were arrested, and have been languishing for ten years in country towns, leading the most miserable life that the imagination can conceive. this scandalous act was productive of no advantage; scarcely two thousand english, including very few military, became the victims of this caprice of the tyrant, making a few poor individuals suffer, to gratify his spleen against the invincible nation to which they belong. during the summer of began the great farce of the invasion of england; flat-bottomed boats were ordered to be built from one end of france to the other; they were even constructed in the forests on the borders of the great roads. the french, who have in all things a very strong rage for imitation, cut out deal upon deal, and heaped phrase upon phrase: while in picardy some erected a triumphal arch, on which was inscribed, "the road to london," others wrote, "to bonaparte the great. we request you will admit us on board the vessel which will bear you to england, and with you the destiny and the vengeance of the french people." this vessel, on board of which bonaparte was to embark, has had time to wear herself out in harbour. others put, as a device for their flags in the roadstead, "a good wind, and thirty hours". in short, all france resounded with gasconades, of which bonaparte alone knew perfectly the secret. towards the autumn i believed myself forgotten by bonaparte: i heard from paris that he was completely absorbed in his english expedition, that he was preparing to set out for the coast, and to embark himself to direct the descent. i put no faith in this project; but i flattered myself that he would be satisfied if i lived at a few leagues distance from paris, with the small number of friends who would come that distance to visit a person in disgrace. i thought also that being sufficiently well known to make my banishment talked of all over europe, the first consul would wish to avoid this eclat. i had calculated according to my own wishes; but i was not yet thoroughly acquainted with the character of the man who was to domineer over europe. far from wishing to keep upon terms with persons who had distinguished themselves, in whatever line that was, he wished to make all such merely a pedestal for his own statue, either by treading them underfoot, or by making them subservient to his designs. i arrived at a little country seat, i had at ten leagues from paris, with the project of establishing myself during the winter in this retreat, as long as the system of tyranny lasted. i only wished to see my friends there, and to go occasionally to the theatre, and to the museum. this was all the residence i wished in paris, in the state of distrust and espionnage which had begun to be established, and i confess i cannot see what inconsistency there would have been in the first consul allowing me to remain in this state of voluntary exile. i had been there peaceably for a month, when a female, of that description which is so numerous, endeavouring to make herself of consequence at the expense of another female, more distinguished than herself, went and told the first consul that the roads were covered with people going to visit me. nothing certainly could be more false. the exiles whom the world went to see, were those who in the eighteenth century were almost as powerful as the monarchs who banished them; but when power is resisted, it is because it is not tyrannical; for it can only be so by the general submission. be that as it may, bonaparte immediately seized the pretext, or the motive that was given him to banish me, and i was apprized by one of my friends, that a gendarme would be with me in a few days with an order for me to depart. one has no idea, in countries where routine at least secures individuals from any act of injustice, of the terror which the sudden news of arbitrary acts of this nature inspires. it is besides extremely easy to shake me; my imagination more readily lays hold of trouble than hope, and although i have often found my chagrin dissipated by the occurrence of novel circumstances, it always appears to me, when it does come, that nothing can deliver me from it. in fact it is very easy to be unhappy, especially when we aspire to the privileged lots of existence. i withdrew immediately on receiving the above intimation to the house of a most excellent and intelligent lady*, to whom i ought to acknowledge i was recommended by a person who held an important office in the government*; i shall never forget the courage with which he offered me an asylum himself: but he would have the same good intentions at present, when he could not act in that manner without completely endangering his existence. in proportion as tyranny is allowed to advance, it grows, as we look at it, like a phantom, but it seizes with the strength of a real being. i arrived then, at the country seat of a person whom i scarcely knew, in the midst of a society to which i was an entire stranger, and bearing in my heart the most cutting chagrin, which i made every effort to disguise. during the night, when alone with a female who had been for several years devoted to my service, i sat listening at the window, in expectation of hearing every moment the steps of a horse gendarme; during the day i endeavoured to make myself agreeable, in order to conceal my situation. i wrote a letter from this place to joseph bonaparte, in which i described with perfect truth the extent of my unhappiness. a retreat at ten leagues distance from paris, was the sole object of my ambition, and i felt despairingly, that if i was once banished, it would be for a great length of time, perhaps for ever. joseph and his brother lucien generously used all their efforts to save me, and they were not the only ones, as will presently be seen. * madame de latour. * regnault de saint-jean-d'angely. madame recamier, so celebrated for her beauty, and whose character is even expressed in her beauty, proposed to me to come and live at her country seat at st. brice, at two leagues from paris. i accepted her offer, for i had no idea that i could thereby injure a person so much a stranger to political affairs; i believed her protected against every thing, notwithstanding the generosity of her character. i found collected there a most delightful society, and there i enjoyed for the last time, all that i was about to quit. it was during this stormy period of my existence, that i received the speech of mr. mackintosh; there i read those pages, where he gives us the portrait of a jacobin, who had made himself an object of terror during the revolution to children, women and old men, and who is now bending himself double under the rod of the corsican, who ravishes from him, even to the last atom of that liberty, for which he pretended to have taken arms. this morceau of the finest eloquence touched me to my very soul; it is the privilege of superior writers sometimes, unwittingly, to solace the unfortunate in all countries, and at all times. france was in a state of such complete silence around me, that this voice which suddenly responded to my soul, seemed to me to come down from heaven; it came from a land of liberty. after having passed a few days with madame recamier, without hearing my banishment at all spoken of, i persuaded myself that bonaparte had renounced it. nothing is more common than to tranquillize ourselves against a threatened danger, when we see no symptoms of it around us. i felt so little disposition to enter into any hostile plan or action against this man, that i thought it impossible for him not to leave me in peace; and after some days longer, i returned to my own country seat, satisfied that he had adjourned his resolution against me, and was contented with having frightened me. in truth i had been sufficiently so, not to make me change my opinion, or oblige me to deny it, but to repress completely that remnant of republican habit which had led me the year before, to speak with too much openness. i was at table with three of my friends, in a room which commanded a view of the high road, and the entrance gate; it was now the end of september. at four o'clock, a man in a brown coat, on horseback, stops at the gate and rings: i was then certain of my fate. he asked for me, and i went to receive him in the garden. in walking towards him, the perfume of the flowers, and the beauty of the sun particularly struck me. how different are the sensations which affect us from the combinations of society, from those of nature! this man informed me, that he was the commandant of the gendarmerie of versailles; but that his orders were to go out of uniform, that he might not alarm me; he shewed me a letter signed by bonaparte, which contained the order to banish me to forty leagues distance from paris, with an injunction to make me depart within four and twenty hours; at the same time, to treat me with all the respect due to a lady of distinction. he pretended to consider me as a foreigner, and as such, subject to the police: this respect for individual liberty did not last long, as very soon afterwards, other frenchmen and frenchwomen were banished without any form of trial. i told the gendarme officer, that to depart within twenty four hours, might be convenient to conscripts, but not to a woman and children, and in consequence, i proposed to him to accompany me to paris, where i had occasion to pass three days to make the necessary arrangements for my journey. i got into my carriage with my children and this officer, who had been selected for this occasion, as the most literary of the gendarmes. in truth, he began complimenting me upon my writings. "you see," said i to him, "the consequences of being a woman of intellect, and i would recommend you, if there is occasion, to dissuade any females of your family from attempting it." i endeavoured to keep up my spirits by boldness, but i felt the barb in my heart. i stopt for a few minutes at madame recamier's; i found there general junot, who from regard to her, promised to go next morning to speak to the first consul in my behalf; and he certainly did so with the greatest warmth. one would have thought, that a man so useful from his military ardor to the power of bonaparte, would have had influence enough with him, to make him spare a female; but the generals of bonaparte, even when obtaining numberless favours for themselves, have no influence with him. when they ask for money or places, bonaparte finds that in character; they are in a manner then in his power, as they place themselves in his dependance; but if, what rarely happens to them, they should think of defending an unfortunate person, or opposing an act of injustice, he would make them feel very quickly, that they are only arms employed to support slavery, by submitting to it themselves. i got to paris to a house i had recently hired, but not yet inhabited; i had selected it with care in the quarter and exposition which pleased me; and had already in imagination set myself down in the drawing room with some friends, whose conversation is in my opinion, the greatest pleasure the human mind can enjoy. now, i only entered this house, with the certainty of quitting it, and i passed whole nights in traversing the apartments, in which i regretted the deprivation of still more happiness than i could have hoped for in it. my gendarme returned every morning, like the man in blue-beard, to press me to set out on the following day, and every day i was weak enough to ask for one more day. my friends came to dine with me, and sometimes we were gay, as if to drain the cup of sorrow, in exhibiting ourselves in the most amiable light to each other, at the moment of separating perhaps for ever. they told me that this man, who came every day to summon me to depart, reminded them of those times of terror, when the gendarmes came to summon their victims to the scaffold. some persons may perhaps be surprized at my comparing exile to death; but there have been great men, both in ancient and modern times, who have sunk under this punishment. we meet with more persons brave against the scaffold, than against the loss of country. in all codes of law, perpetual banishment is regarded as one of the severest punishments; and the caprice of one man inflicts in france, as an amusement, what conscientious judges only condemn criminals to with regret. private circumstances offered me an asylum, and resources of fortune, in switzerland, the country of my parents; in those respects, i was less to be pitied than many others, and yet i have suffered cruelly. i consider it, therefore, to be doing a service to the world, to signalize the reasons, why no sovereign should ever be allowed to possess the arbitrary power of banishment. no deputy, no writer, will ever express his thoughts freely, if he can be banished when his frankness has displeased; no man will dare to speak with sincerity, if the happiness of his whole family is to suffer for it. women particularly, who are destined to be the support and reward of enthusiasm, will endeavour to stifle generous feelings in themselves, if they find that the result of their expression will be, either to have themselves torn from the objects of their affection, or their own existence sacrificed, by accompanying them in their exile. on the eve of the last day which was granted me, joseph bonaparte made one more effort in my favour; and his wife, who is a lady of the most perfect sweetness and simplicity, had the kindness to come and propose to me to pass a few days at her country seat at morfontaine. i accepted her invitation most gratefully, for i could not but feel sensibly affected at the goodness of joseph, who received me in his own house, at the very time that i was the object of his brother's persecution. i passed three days there, and notwithstanding the perfect politeness of the master and mistress of the house, felt my situation very painfully. i saw only men connected with the government and breathed only the air of that authority which had declared itself my enemy; and yet the simplest rules of politeness and gratitude forbid me from shewing what i felt. i had only my eldest son with me, who was then too young for me to converse with him on such subjects. i passed whole hours in examining the gardens of morfontaine, among the finest that could be seen in france, and the possessor of which, then tranquil, appeared to me really an object of envy. he has been since exiled upon thrones, where i am sure he has often regretted his beautiful retreat. chapter . departure for germany.--arrival at weimar. i hesitated about the course i was to adopt on quitting france. should i return to my father, or should i go into germany? my father would have welcomed his poor bird, ruffled by the storm, with ineffable goodness; but i dreaded the disgust of returning, sent back in this manner, to a country, which i was accused of finding rather monotonous. i was also desirous of exhibiting myself, by the kind reception which i had been promised in germany, superior to the outrage i had received from the first consul; and of placing in public contrast the kind reception of the ancient dynasties, with the rude impertinence of that which was preparing to subjugate france. this movement of self-love triumphed, for my misfortune; i should have again seen my father, if i had returned to geneva. i requested joseph to ascertain if i might go into prussia, for it was necessary for me to be at least certain, that the french ambassador would not reclaim me abroad as a frenchwoman, while in france i was proscribed as a foreigner. joseph went in consequence to st. cloud. i was obliged to wait his answer at a public-house, at two leagues from paris, not daring to return to my own house in the city. a whole day passed before this answer reached me. not wishing to attract notice by remaining longer at the house where i was, i made a tour of the walls of paris in search of another, at the same distance of two leagues, but on a different road. this wandering life, at a few steps from my friends and my own residence, occasioned me such painful sensations as i cannot recollect without shuddering. the room is still present to me; the window where i passed the whole day, looking out for the messenger, a thousand painful details, which misfortune always draws after it, the extreme generosity of some friends, the veiled calculations of others, altogether put my mind in such a cruel state of agitation, as i could not wish to my greatest enemy. at last this message, on which i still placed some hopes, arrived. joseph sent me some excellent letters of recommendation for berlin, and bid me adieu in a most noble and touching manner. i was obliged, therefore, to depart. benjamin constant was good enough to accompany me; but as he also was very fond of paris, i felt extremely for the sacrifice he made me. every step the horses advanced made me ill, and when the postillions boasted of having driven me quickly, i could not help sighing at the disagreeable service they were rendering me. in this way i travelled forty leagues without being able to regain my self-possession. at last we stopped at chalons, and benjamin constant, rallying his spirits, relieved by his wonderful powers of conversation, at least for some moments, the weight which oppressed me. next day we continued our route as far as metz, where i wished to stop to wait for news from my father. there i passed fifteen days, and met one of the most amiable and intelligent men whom france and germany combined could produce, m. charles villers. i was delighted with his society, but it renewed my regret for that first of pleasures, a conversation, in which there reigns the most perfect harmony in all that is felt, with all that is expressed. my father was extremely indignant at the treatment i had received at paris; he considered that his family were in this manner proscribed, and driven as criminals out of that country which he had so faithfully served. he recommended me to pass the winter in germany, and not to return to him until the spring. alas! alas! i calculated on then carrying back to him the harvest of new ideas which i was going to collect in this journey. for several years preceding he was frequently telling me that my letters and conversation were all that kept up his connection with the world. his mind had so much vivacity and penetration, that one was excited to think by the pleasure of talking to him. i made observations to report to him,--i listened, to repeat to him. ever since i have lost him, i see and feel only half what i did, when i had the object in view of giving him pleasure by the picture of my impressions. at frankfort, my daughter, then five years old, fell dangerously ill. i knew nobody in that city, and was entirely ignorant of the language; even the physician to whose care i entrusted my child scarcely spoke a word of french. oh! how much my father shared with me in all my trouble! what letters he wrote me! what a number of consultations of physicians, all copied with his own hand, he sent me from geneva! never were the harmony of sensibility and reason carried further; never was there any one like him, possessed of such lively emotion for the sufferings of his friends, always active in assisting them, always prudent in the choice of the means of being so; in short, admirable in every thing. my heart absolutely requires this declaration, for what is now to him even the voice of posterity! i arrived at weimar, where i resumed my courage, on seeing, through the difficulties of the language, the immense intellectual riches which existed out of france. i learned to read german; i listened attentively to goethe and wieland, who, fortunately for me, spoke french extremely well. i comprehended the mind and genius of schiller, in spite of the difficulty he felt in expressing himself in a foreign language. the society of the duke and duchess of weimar pleased me exceedingly, and i passed three months there, during which the study of german literature gave all the occupation to my mind which it requires to prevent me from being devoured by my own feelings. chapter . berlin.--prince louis-ferdinand. i left weimar for berlin, and there i saw that charming queen, since destined to so many misfortunes. the king received me with great kindness, and i may say that during the six weeks i remained in that city, i never heard an individual who did not speak in praise of the justice of his government. this, however does not prevent me from thinking it always desirable for a country to possess constitutional forms, to guarantee to it, by the permanent co-operation of the nation, the advantages it derives from the virtues of a good king. prussia, under the reign of its present monarch, no doubt possessed the greater part of these advantages; but the public spirit which misfortune has developed in it did not then exist; the military regime had prevented public opinion from acquiring strength, and the absence of a constitution, in which every individual could make himself known by his merit, had left the state unprovided with men of talent, capable of defending it. the favor of a king, being necessarily arbitrary, cannot be sufficient to excite emulation; circumstances which are peculiar to the interior of courts, may keep a man of great merit from the helm of affairs, or place there a very ordinary person. routine, likewise, is singularly powerful in countries where the regal power has no one to contradict it; even the justice of a king leads him to place barriers around him, by keeping every one in his place; and it was almost without example in prussia, to find a man deprived of his civil or military employments on account of incapacity. what an advantage therefore ought not the french army to have, composed almost entirely of men born of the revolution, like the soldiers of cadmus from the teeth of the dragon! what an advantage it had over those old commanders of the prussian fortified places and armies, to whom every thing that was new was entirely unknown! a conscientious monarch who has not the happiness, and i use the word designedly, the happiness to have a parliament as in england, makes a habit of every thing, in order to avoid making too much use of his own will: and in the present times we must abandon ancient usages, and look for strength of character and understanding, wherever they can be found. be that as it may, berlin was one of the happiest and most enlightened cities in the world. the writers of the eighteenth century were certainly productive of infinite good to europe, by the spirit of moderation, and the taste for literature, with which their works inspired the greater part of the sovereigns: it must be admitted, however, that the respect which the friends of knowledge paid to french intellect has been one of the causes which has ruined germany for such a length of time. many people regarded the french armies as the propagators of the ideas of montesquieu, rousseau, and voltaire; while the fact was, that, if any traces of the opinions of these great men remained in the instruments of the power of bonaparte, it was only to liberate them from what they called prejudices, and not to establish a single regenerating principle. but there were at berlin and in the north of germany, at the period of the spring of , a great many old partizans of the french revolution, who had not yet discovered that bonaparte was a much more bitter enemy of the first principles of that revolution, than the ancient european aristocracy. i had the honor to form an acquaintance with prince louis-ferdinand, the same whose warlike ardor so transported him, that his death was almost the precursor of the first reverses of his country. he was a man full of ardor and enthusiasm, but who, for want of glory, cultivated too much the emotions which agitate life. what particularly irritated him against bonaparte was his practice of calumniating all the persons he dreaded, and even of degrading in public opinion those whom he employed, in order, at all risks, to keep them more strongly dependant on him. prince louis said to me frequently, "i will allow him to kill, but, moral assassination is what revolts me." and in truth let us only consider the state in which we have seen ourselves placed, since this great libeller became master of all the newspapers of the european continent, and could, as he has frequently done, pronounce the bravest men to be cowards, and the most irreproachable women to be subjects of contempt, without our having any means of contradicting or punishing such assertions. chapter . conspiracy of moreau and pichegru. the news had just arrived at berlin of the great conspiracy of moreau, of pichegru, and of george cadoudal. there was certainly among the principal heads of the republican and royalist parties a strong desire to overturn the authority of the first consul, and to oppose themselves to the still more tyrannical authority which he resolved to establish on making himself be declared emperor: but it has been said, and perhaps not without foundation, that this conspiracy, which has so well served bonaparte's tyranny, was encouraged by himself, from his wish to take advantage of it, with a machiavelian art, of which it is of consequence to observe all the springs. he sent an exiled jacobin into england, who could only obtain his return to france by services to be performed for the first consul. this man presented himself, like sinon in the city of troy describing himself as persecuted by the greeks. he saw several emigrants who had neither the vices nor the faculties necessary to detect a certain kind of villainy. he found it therefore a matter of great ease to entrap an old bishop, an old officer, in short some of the wrecks of a government, under which it was scarcely known what factions were. in the sequel he wrote a pamphlet in which he mystified, with a great deal of wit, all who had believed him, and who in truth ought to have made up what they wanted in sagacity by firmness of principle, that is to say, never to place the least confidence in a man capable of bad actions. we have all our own way at looking at things; but from the moment that a person has shewn himself to be treacherous or cruel, god alone can pardon, for it belongs to him only to read the human heart sufficiently to know if it is changed; man ought to keep himself for ever at a distance from the person who has lost his esteem. this disguised agent of bonaparte pretended that the elements of revolt existed in france to a great extent; he went to munich to find an english envoy, mr. drake, whom he also contrived to deceive. a citizen of great britain ought to have kept clear of this web of artifice, composed of the crossed threads of jacobinism and tyranny. george and pichegru, who were entirely devoted to the bourbon party, came into france secretly, and concerted with moreau, whose wish was to rid france of the first consul, but not to deprive the french nation of its right to choose that form of government by which it desired to be ruled. pichegru wished to have a conversation with general bernadotte, who refused it, being dissatisfied with the manner in which the enterprise was conducted, and desiring first of all, to have a guarantee for the constitutional freedom of france. moreau, whose moral character is most excellent, whose military talent is unquestionable, and whose understanding is just and enlightened, allowed himself in conversation, to go to great lengths in blaming the first consul, before he could be at all certain of overthrowing him. it is a defect very natural to a generous mind to express its opinion, even inconsiderately; but general moreau attracted too much the notice of bonaparte, not to make such conduct the cause of his destruction. a pretext was wanting to justify the arrest of a man who had gained so many battles, and this pretext was found in his conversation, if it could not be in his actions. republican forms were still in existence; people called each other citizen, whilst the most terrible inequality, that which liberates some from the yoke of the law, while others are under the dominion of despotism, reigned over all france. the days of the week were still reckoned according to the republican calendar; boasts were made of being at peace with the whole of continental europe; reports were, (as they still continue to be,) continually presenting upon the making of roads and canals, the building of bridges and fountains; the benefits of the government were extolled to the skies; in short, there was not the least apparent reason for endeavouring to change a state of things, with which the nation was said to be so perfectly satisfied. a plot therefore, in which the english, and the bourbons should be named, was a most desirable event to the government, in order to stir up once more the revolutionary elements of the nation, and to turn those elements to the establishment of an ultra-monarchical power, under the pretence of preventing the return of the ancient regime. the secret of this combination, which appears very complicated, is in fact very simple: it was necessary to alarm the revolutionists as to the danger to which their interests would be exposed, and to propose to complete their security, by a final abandonment of their principles; and so it was done. pichegru was become a decided royalist, as he had formerly been a republican; his opinion had been completely turned; his character was superior to his understanding; but the one was as little calculated as the other to draw men after him. george had more elasticity about him, but he was not fitted either by nature or education for the rank of chief. as soon as it was known that these two were at paris, moreau was immediately arrested, the barriers were shut, death was denounced to any one who should give an asylum to pichegru or george, and all the measures of jacobinism were put in force to protect the life of one man. this man is not only of too much importance in his own eyes to stick at any thing, when his own interests are in question, but it likewise entered into his calculations to alarm men's minds, to recall the days of terror, in short to inspire the nation, if possible, with the desire of throwing itself entirely upon him, in order to escape the troubles which it was the tendency of all his measures to increase. the retreat of pichegru was discovered, and george was arrested in a cabriolet; for, being unable to live longer in any house, he in this manner traversed the streets night and day, to keep himself out of sight of his pursuers. the police agent who seized him, was recompensed with the legion of honour. i imagine that french soldiers would have wished him any reward but that. the moniteur was filled with addresses to the first consul, congratulating him on his escape from this danger; this incessant repetition of the same phrases, bursting from every corner of france, offers such a concord in slavery as is perhaps unexampled in the history of any other people. you may in turning over the moniteur, find, according to the different epochs, exercises upon liberty, upon despotism, upon philosophy, and upon religion, in which the departments and good cities of france strive to say the same thing in different terms; and one feels astonished that men so intelligent as the french, should attach themselves entirely to success in the style, and never once have had the desire of exhibiting ideas of their own; one might say that the emulation of words was all that they required. these hymns of dictation, however, with the points of admiration which accompany them, announced that france was completely tranquil, and that the small number of the emissaries of perfidious albion were seized. one general, it is true, amused himself with reporting, that the english had thrown bales of levant cotton on the coast of normandy, to give france the plague; but these inventions of grave buffoonery were only regarded as pieces of flattery addressed to the first consul; and the chiefs of the conspiracy, as well as their agents, being in the power of the government, there was reason for believing that calm was restored in france; but bonaparte had not yet attained his object. chapter . assassination of the duke d'enghien. i resided at berlin on the spree quay, and my apartment was on the ground floor. one morning i was awoke at eight o'clock, and told that prince louis-ferdinand was on horseback under my windows, and wished me to come and speak to him. much astonished at this early visit, i hastened to get up and go to him. he was a singularly graceful horseman, and his emotion heightened the nobleness of his countenance. "do you know," said he to me, "that the duke d'enghien has been carried off from the baden territory, delivered to a military commission, and shot within twenty four hours after his arrival in paris?" "what nonsense!" i answered, "don't you see that this can only be a report spread by the enemies of france?" in fact i confess that my hatred of bonaparte, strong as it was, never went the length of making me believe in the possibility of his committing such an atrocity. "as you doubt what i tell you," replied prince louis, "i will send you the moniteur, in which you will read the sentence." he left me at these words, and the expression of his countenance was the presage of revenge or death. a quarter of an hour afterwards, i had in my hands this moniteur of the st march, ( th pluviose), which contained the sentence of death pronounced by the military commission sitting at vincennes, against the person called louis d'enghien! it is thus that the french designated the descendant of heroes, who were the glory of their country. even if they abjured all the prejudices of illustrious birth, which the return of monarchical forms would necessarily recall, could they blaspheme in thus manner the recollection of the battles of lens and rocroi? this bonaparte who has gained so many battles, does not even know how to respect them; with him there is neither past nor future; his imperious and contemptuous soul will recognize nothing for opinion to hold sacred; he admits only respect for the force which is in existence. prince louis wrote to me, beginning his note in these words, "the person called louis of prussia begs to know of madame de stael, &c." he felt the insult offered to the royal blood from which he sprung, to the recollection of the heroes, in the roll of whom he burned to place his name. how was it possible, after this horrible action, for a single monarch in europe to connect himself with such a man? necessity, will it be said? there is a sanctuary in the soul to which his empire never ought to penetrate; if there were not, what would virtue be upon this earth? a mere liberal amusement which could only suit the peaceful leisure of private individuals. a lady of my acquaintance related to me, that a few days after the death of the duke d'enghien, she went to take a walk round the castle of vincennes; the ground, still fresh, marked the spot where he had been buried; some children were playing with little quoits upon this mound of turf, the only monument for the ashes of such a man. an old invalid, with silvered locks, was sitting at a little distance, and remained some time looking at these children; at last he arose, and leading them away by the hand, said to them, shedding some tears, "do not play there, my children, i beseech you." these tears were all the honors that were paid to the descendant of the great conde, and the earth did not long bear the impression of them. for a moment at least, public opinion seemed to awaken in france, and indignation, was general. but when these generous flames were extinguished, despotism was but the more easily established, from the vain efforts which had been made to resist it. the first consul was for some days rather uneasy at the disposition of men's minds. fouche himself blamed this action; he made use of this expression, so characteristic of the present regime: "it is worse than a crime; it is a fault." there are many ideas in this short phrase; but fortunately we may reverse it with truth, by affirming that the greatest of faults is crime. bonaparte asked an honest senator, what was thought of the death of the duke d'enghien. "general," replied he, "it has given great affliction." "i am not astonished at it," said bonaparte, "a house which has long reigned in a country always interests:" thus wishing to connect with motives of party interest the most natural feeling that the human heart can experience. another time he put the same question to a tribune, who, from the desire of pleasing him, answered: "well, general, if our enemies take measures against us, we are in the right to do the same against them;" not perceiving that this was tantamount to a confession that the deed was atrocious. the first consul affected to consider this act as dictated by reasons of state. one day, about this period, in a discussion with an intelligent man about the plays of corneille, he said, "you see that the public safety, or to express it better, that state necessity, has with the moderns been substituted in the place of the fatality of the ancients: there is, for instance, such a man, who naturally would be incapable of a crime, but political circumstances impose it upon him as a law. corneille is the only one who has shewn, in his tragedies, an acquaintance with state necessity; on that account, if he had lived in my time, i would have made him my prime minister." all this appearance of good humour in the discussion was intended to prove that there was nothing of passion in the death of the duke d'enghien, and that circumstances, meaning such as the head of the state is exclusively the judge of, might cause and justify every thing. that there was nothing of passion in his resolution about the duke d'enghien, is perfectly true; people would have it that rage inspired the crime,--it had nothing to do with it. by what could this rage have been provoked? the duke d'enghien had in no way provoked the first consul: bonaparte hoped at first to have got hold of the duke de berry, who it was said, was to have landed in normandy, if pichegru had given him notice that it was a proper time. this prince is nearer the throne than the duke d'enghien, and besides, he would by coming into france have infringed the existing laws. it therefore suited bonaparte in every way better to have sacrificed him than the duke d'enghien; but as he could not get at the first, he chose the second, in discussing the matter in cold blood. between the order for carrying him off, and that for his execution, more than eight days had elapsed, and bonaparte ordered the punishment of the duke d'enghien long beforehand, as coolly, as he has since sacrificed millions of men to the caprices of his ambition. we now ask, what were the motives of this horrible action, and i believe it is very easy to penetrate them. first, bonaparte wished to secure the revolutionary party, by contracting with it an alliance of blood. an old jacobin, when he heard the news, exclaimed, "so much the better! general bonaparte is now become one of the convention." for a long time the jacobins would only have a man who had voted for the death of the king, for the first magistrate of the republic; that was what they termed, giving pledges to the revolution. bonaparte fulfilled this condition of crime, substituted for that of property required in other countries; he thus afforded the certainty that he would never serve the bourbons; and thus such of that party as attached themselves to his, burnt their vessels, never to return. on the eve of causing himself to be crowned by the same men who had proscribed royalty, and of re-establishing a noblesse composed of the partisans of equality, he believed it necessary to satisfy them by the horrible guarantee of the assassination of a bourbon. in the conspiracy of pichegru and moreau, bonaparte knew that the republicans and royalists had united against him; this strange coalition, of which the hatred he inspired was the sole bond, had astonished him. several persons who held places under him, were marked out for the service of that revolution which was to break his power, and it was of consequence to him that henceforward all his agents should consider themselves ruined beyond redemption, if their master was overturned; and, finally, above all, he wished at the moment of his seizing the crown to inspire such terror, that no one in future should think of resisting him. every thing was violated in this single action: the european law of nations, the constitution such as it then existed, public shame, humanity, and religion. nothing could go beyond it; every thing was therefore to be dreaded from the man who had committed it. it was thought for some time in france, that the murder of the duke d'enghien was the signal of a new system of revolution, and that the scaffolds were about to be re-erected. but bonaparte only wished to teach the french one thing, and that was, that he dared do every thing; in order that they might give him credit for the evil he abstained from, as others get it for the good they do. his clemency was praised when he allowed a man to live; it had been seen how easy it was for him to cause one to perish. russia, sweden, and above all england, complained of this violation of the germanic empire; the german princes themselves were silent, and the weak sovereign on whose territory the outrage had been committed, requested in a diplomatic note, that nothing more should be said of the event that had happened. did not this gentle and veiled expression, applied to such an act, characterize the meanness of those princes, who made their sovereignty consist only in their revenues, and treated a state as a capital, of which they must get the interest paid as quietly as they could? chapter . illness and death of m. necker. my father lived long enough to hear of the assassination of the duke d'enghien, and the last lines which i received, that were traced by his own hand, expressed his indignation at this atrocity. in the midst of the most complete security, i found one day upon my table two letters, announcing to me that my father was dangerously ill. the courier who brought them was concealed from me, as well as the news of his death. i set out immediately with the strongest hope, which i preserved in spite of all the circumstances which ought to have extinguished it. when the real truth became known to me at weimar, i was seized with a mingled sensation of inexpressible terror and despair. i saw myself without support in the world, and compelled to rely entirely on myself for sustaining my soul against misfortune. many objects of attachment still remained to me, but the sentiment of affectionate admiration which i felt for my father, exercised a sway over me with which no other could come in competition. grief, which is the truest of prophets, predicted to me that i should never more be happy at heart, as i had been, whilst this man of all-powerful sensibility watched over my fate; and not a single day has elapsed since the month of april , in which i have not connected all my troubles with his loss. so long as my father lived, i suffered only from imagination; for in the affairs of real life, he always found means to be of service to me; after i lost him, i came in direct communication with destiny. it is nevertheless still to the hope that he is praying for me in heaven, that i am indebted for the fortitude i retain. it is not merely the affection of a daughter, but the most intimate knowledge of his character which makes me affirm that i have never seen human nature carried nearer to perfection than it was in his soul; if i was not convinced of the truth of a future state, i should become mad with the idea that such a being could have ceased to exist. there was so much of immortality in his thoughts and feelings, that it happens to me a hundred times, whenever i feel emotions that elevate me above myself, i believe i still hear him. during my melancholy journey from weimar to coppet, i could not help envying the existence of every object that circulated in nature, even the birds and insects which were flying round me; i asked only a day, a single day, to talk to him once more, to excite his compassion; i envied those forest trees whose existence is prolonged for centuries; but the inexorable silence of the grave has something in it which confounds the human intellect; and although it is the truth of all others the best known to us, the strength of the impression it leaves can never be effaced. as i approached my father's residence, one of my friends pointed out to me on the mountain some clouds which bore the resemblance of an immense human figure, which would disappear towards the evening: it seemed to me that the heavens thus offered me the symbol of the loss i had just sustained. he was a man truly great: a man, who in no circumstances of his life ever preferred the most important of his interests to the least of his duties;--a man, whose virtues were inspired to that degree by his goodness, that he could have dispensed with principles, and whose principles were so strict that he might have dispensed with goodness. on my arrival at coppet, i learned that my father, during the illness of nine days which had deprived me of him, had been continually and anxiously occupying himself about my fate. he reproached himself for his last book, as the cause of my exile; and with a trembling hand, he wrote, during his fever, a letter to the first consul, in which he assured him that i had nothing whatever to do with the publication of his last work, but that on the contrary, i had desired that it should not be printed. this voice of a dying man had so much solemnity! this last prayer of a man who had played so important a part in france, asking as an only favor, the return of his children to the place of their birth, and an act of oblivion to the imprudences which a daughter, then young, might have committed,--all this appeared to me irresistible: and well as i ought to have known the character of the man, that happened to me, which i believe is in the nature of all who ardently desire the cessation of a great affliction:--i hoped contrary to all expectation. the first consul received this letter, and doubtless must have thought me an extreme simpleton to flatter myself for a moment that he would be in the least moved by it. certainly, i am in that point quite of his opinion. chapter . trial of moreau. the trial of moreau still proceeded, and although the journals preserved the most profound silence on the subject, the publicity of the pleadings was sufficient to rouse the minds, and never did the public opinion in paris show itself so strongly against bonaparte as it did at that period. the french have more need than any other people of a certain degree of liberty of the press; they require to think and to feel in common; the electricity of the emotions of their neighbours is necessary to make them experience the shock in their turn, and their enthusiasm never displays itself in an isolated manner. whoever wishes to become their tyrant therefore does well to allow no kind of manifestation to public opinion; bonaparte joins to this idea, which is common to all despots, an artifice peculiar to the present time, to wit, the art of proclaiming some factitious opinion in journals which have the appearance of being free, they make so many phrases in the sense which they are ordered. it must be confessed that our french writers are the only ones who can in this manner every morning embellish the same sophism, and who hug themselves in the very superfluity of servitude. while the instruction of this famous affair was in progress, the journals informed europe that pichegru had strangled himself in the temple; all the gazettes were filled with a surgical report, which appeared very improbable, notwithstanding the care with which it was drawn up. if it is true that pichegru had perished the victim of assassination, let us figure to ourselves the situation of a brave general, surprised by cowards in the bottom of his dungeon,--defenceless,--condemned for several days to that prison solitude which sinks the courage of the soul,--ignorant even if his friends will ever know in what manner he perished,--if his death will be revenged,--if his memory will not be outraged! pichegru had, in his first interrogatory, exhibited a great deal of courage, and threatened, it was said, to exhibit proofs of the promises which bonaparte had made to the vendeans of effecting the return of the bourbons. some persons pretend that he had been subjected to the torture, as well as two other conspirators, (one of whom, named picot, shewed his mutilated hands at the tribunal), and that they dared not expose to the eyes of the french people one of its old defenders subjected to the torture of slaves. i give no credit to this conjecture; we must always, in the actions of bonaparte, look for the calculation which has dictated them, and we shall find none in this latter supposition: while it is, perhaps, true, that the appearance of moreau and pichegru together at the bar of a tribunal would have inflamed public opinion to its highest pitch. already the crowd in the tribunes was immense; several officers, at the head of whom was a loyal man, general lecourbe, exhibited the most lively and courageous interest for general moreau. when he repaired to the tribunal, the gendarmes who guarded him always respectfully presented arms to him. already it had begun to be felt that honor was on the side of the persecuted; but bonaparte, by his all at once making himself be declared emperor, in the midst of this fermentation, entirely diverted mens' minds by this new perspective, and concealed his progress better in the midst of the storm by which he was surrounded, than he could have done in the calm. general moreau pronounced before the tribunal one of the best speeches which history presents to us; he recalled, with perfect modesty, the battles which he had gained since bonaparte governed france; he excused himself for having frequently expressed himself, perhaps with too much freedom, and contrasted in an indirect manner the character of a breton with that of a corsican; in short, he exhibited at once a great deal of mind, and the most perfect presence of mind, at a moment so critical. regnier at that time united the ministry of police with that of justice, in the room of fouchc, who had been disgraced. he repaired to saint cloud on leaving the tribunal. the emperor asked him what sort of speech moreau had made: "contemptible," said he. "in that case," said the emperor, "let it be printed, and distributed all over paris." when bonaparte found afterwards how much his minister had been mistaken, he returned at last to fouche, the only man who could really second him, from his carrying, unfortunately for the world, a sort of skilful moderation into a system that had no limits. an old jacobin, one of bonaparte's condemned spirits, was employed to speak to the judges, to induce them to condemn moreau to death. "that is necessary" said he to them, "to the consideration due to the emperor, who caused him to be arrested; but you ought to make the less scruple in consenting to it, as the emperor is resolved to pardon him." "and who will enable us to pardon ourselves, if we cover ourselves with such infamy?" replied one of the judges,* whose name i am not at liberty to mention, for fear of exposing him. general moreau was condemned to two years' imprisonment; george and several others of his friends to death; one of the mm. de polignac to two, and the other to four years' imprisonment: and both of them are still confined, as well as several others, of whom the police laid hold, when the period of their sentence had expired. moreau requested to have his imprisonment commuted for perpetual banishment; perpetual in this instance should be called for life, for the misery of the world is placed on the head of one man. bonaparte readily consented to this banishment, which suited his views in all respects. frequently, on moreau's passage to the place where he was to embark, the mayors of the towns, whose business it was to viser his passport of banishment, shewed him the most respectful attention. "gentlemen," said one of them to his audience, "make way for general moreau," and he made an obeisance to him as he would have done to the emperor. there was still a france in the hearts of men, but the idea of acting according to one's opinion had already ceased to exist, and at present it is difficult to know if there remains any, it has been so long stifled. when he arrived at cadiz, these same spaniards, who were a few years after destined to give so great an example, paid every possible homage to a victim of tyranny. when moreau passed through the english fleet, their vessels saluted him as if he had been the commander of an allied army. thus the supposed enemies of france took upon them to acquit her debt to one of her most illustrious defenders. when bonaparte caused moreau to be arrested, he said, "i might have made him come to me, and have told him: 'listen, you and i cannot remain upon the same soil; go therefore, as i am the strongest;' and i believe he would have gone. but these chivalrous manners are puerile in public matters." bonaparte believes, and has had the art to persuade several of the machiavelian apprentices of the new generation, that every generous feeling is mere childishness. it is high time to teach him that virtue also has something manly in it, and more manly than crime with all its audacity. * m. clavier. chapter . commencement of the empire. the motion to call bonaparte to the empire was made in the tribunate by a conventionalist, formerly a jacobin, supported by jaubert, an advocate, and deputy from the merchants of bourdeaux, and seconded by simeon, a man of understanding and good sense, who had been proscribed as a royalist under the republic. it was bonaparte's wish that the partisans of the old regime, and those of the permanent interests of the nation, should unite in choosing him. it was settled that registers should be opened all over france, to enable every one to express his wish regarding the elevation of bonaparte to the throne. but without waiting for the result of this, prepared as it was before-hand, he took the title of emperor by a senatus consultum, and this unfortunate senate had not even the strength to put constitutional limits to this new monarchy. a tribune, whose name i wish i dared mention,* had the honor to make a special motion for that purpose. bonaparte, in order to anticipate this idea, adroitly sent for some of the senators, and told them, "i feel very much at thus being placed in front; i like my present situation much better. the continuation of the republic is, however, no longer possible; people are quite tired out with it: i believe that the french wish for royalty. i had at first thought of recalling the old bourbons, but that would have only ruined them, and myself. it is my thorough conviction, that there must be at last a man at the head of all this; perhaps, however, it would be better to wait some time longer i have made france a century older in the last five years; liberty, that is a good civil code, and modern nations care little for any thing but property. however, if you will believe me, name a committee, organise the constitution, and, i tell you fairly." added he smiling, "take precautions against my tyranny; take them, believe me." this apparent good nature seduced the senators, who, to say the truth, desired nothing better than to be seduced. one of them, a men of letters, of some distinction, but one of those philosophers who are always finding philanthropic motives for being satisfied with power, said to one of my friends, "it is wonderful! with what simplicity the emperor allows himself to be told every thing! the other day, i made him a discourse an hour long, to prove the absolute necessity of founding the new dynasty on a charter which should secure the rights of the nation." and what reply did he make you? was asked. "he clapped me on the shoulder with the most perfect good humour, and told me: 'you are quite right, my dear senator; but trust me, this is not the moment for it'." and this senator, like many others, was quite satisfied with having spoken, though his opinion was not in the least degree acted upon. the feelings of self-importance have a prodigiously greater influence over the french than those of character. * m. gallois. a very odd peculiarity in the french, and which bonaparte has penetrated with great sagacity, is, that they, who are so ready to perceive what is ridiculous in others, desire nothing better than to render themselves ridiculous, as soon as their vanity finds its account in it in some other way. nothing certainly presents a greater subject for pleasantry, than the creation of an entirely new noblesse, such as bonaparte established for the support of his new throne. the princesses and queens, citizenesses of the day before, could not themselves refrain from laughing at hearing themselves styled, your majesty. others, more serious, delighted in having their title of monseigneur repeated from morning to night, like moliere's city gentleman. the old archives were rummaged for the discovery of the best documents on etiquette; men of merit found a grave occupation in making coats of armour for the new families; finally, no day passed which did not afford some scene worthy of the pen of moliere; but the terror, which formed the back ground of the picture, prevented the grotesque of the front from being laughed at as it deserved to be. the glory of the french generals illustrated all, and the obsequious courtiers contrived to slide themselves in under the shadow of military men, who doubtless deserved the severe honors of a free state, but not the vain decorations of such a court. valor and genius descend from heaven, and whoever is gifted with them has no need of other ancestors. the distinctions which are accorded in republics or limited monarchies ought to be the reward of services rendered to the country, and every one may equally pretend to them; but nothing savours so much of tartar despotism as this crowd of honors emanating from one man, and having his caprice for their source. puns without end were darted against this nobility of yesterday; and a thousand expressions of the new ladies were quoted, which presumed little acquaintance with good manners. and certainly there is nothing so difficult to learn, as the kind of politeness which is neither ceremonious nor familiar: it seems a trifle, but it requires a foundation in ourselves; for no one acquires it, if it is not inspired by early habits or elevation of mind. bonaparte himself is embarrassed on occasions of representation; and frequently in his own family, and even with foreigners, he seems to feel delighted in returning to those vulgar actions and expressions which remind him of his revolutionary youth. bonaparte knew very well that the parisians made pleasantries on his new nobility; but he knew also that their opinions would only be expressed in vulgar jokes, and not in strong actions. the energy of the oppressed went not beyond the equivoque of a pun; and as in the east they have been reduced to the apologue, in france they sunk still lower, namely, to the clashing of syllables. a single instance of a jeu de mots deserves, however, to survive the ephemeral success of such productions; one day as the princesses of the blood were announced, some one added, of the blood of enghien. and in truth, such was the baptism of this new dynasty. several of the old nobility who had been ruined by the revolution, were not unwilling to accept employments at court. it is well known by what a gross insult bonaparte rewarded their complaisance. "i proposed to give them rank in my army, and they declined it; i offered them places in the administration, and they refused them; but when i opened my anti-chambers, they rushed into them in crowds." they had no longer any asylum but in his power. several gentlemen, on this occasion, set an example of the most noble resistance; but how many others have represented themselves as menaced before they had the least reason for apprehension! and how many more have solicited for themselves or their families, employments at court, which all of them, ought to have spurned at! the military or the administrative careers are the only ones in which we can flatter ourselves with being useful to our country, whoever may be the chief who governs it; but employments at court render you dependant on the man, and not on the state. registers were made to receive votes for the empire, like those which had been opened for the consulship for life; even all those who did not sign, were, as in the former instance, reckoned as voting for; and the small number of individuals who thought proper to write no, were dismissed from their employments. m. de lafayette, the constant friend of liberty, again exhibited an invariable resistance; he had the greater merit, because already in this country of bravery, they no longer knew how to estimate courage. it is quite necessary to make this distinction, as we see the divinity of fear reign in france over the most intrepid warriors. bonaparte would not even subject himself to the law of hereditary monarchy, but reserved the power of adopting and choosing his successor in the manner of the east. as he had then no children, he wished not to give his own family the least right; and at the very moment of his elevating them to ranks to which assuredly they had no pretensions, he subjected them to his will by profoundly combined decrees, which entwined the new thrones with chains. the fourteenth of july was again celebrated this year, ( ) because it was said the empire consecrated all the benefits of the revolution. bonaparte had said that storms had strengthened the roots of government; he pretended that the throne would guarantee liberty: he repeated in all manner of ways, that europe would be tranquillized by the re-establishment of monarchy in the government of france. in fact, the whole of europe, with the exception of illustrious england, recognized his new dignity: he was styled my brother, by the knights of the ancient royal brotherhood. we have seen in what manner he has rewarded them for their fatal condescension. if he had been sincerely desirous of peace, even old king george himself, whose reign has been the most glorious in the english annals, would have been obliged to recognize him as his equal. but, a very few days after his coronation, bonaparte pronounced some words which disclosed all his purposes: "people laugh at my new dynasty; in five years time it will be the oldest in all europe." and from that moment he has never ceased tending towards this end. a pretext was required, to be always advancing, and this pretext was the liberty of the seas. it is quite incredible how easy it is to make the most intelligent people on earth swallow any nonsense for gospel. it is still one of those contrasts which would be altogether inexplicable, if unhappy france had not been stripped of religion and morality by a fatal concurrence of bad principles and unfortunate events. without religion no man is capable of any sacrifice, and as without morality no one speaks the truth, public opinion is incessantly led astray. it follows therefore, as we have already said, that there is no courage of conscience, even when that of honor exists: and that with admirable intelligence in the execution, no one even asks himself what all this is to lead to? at the time that bonaparte formed the resolution to overturn the thrones of the continent, the sovereigns who occupied them were all of them very honorable persons. the political and military genius of the world was extinct, but the people were happy; although the principles of free constitutions were not admitted into the generality of states, the philosophical ideas which had for fifty years been spreading over europe had at least the merit of preserving from intolerance, and mollifying the reign of despotism. catherine ii. and frederic ii. both cultivated the esteem of the french authors, and these two monarchs, whose genius might have subjected the world, lived in presence of the opinion of enlightened men and sought to captivate it. the natural bent of men's minds was directed to the enjoyment and application of liberal ideas, and there was scarcely an individual who suffered either in his person or in his property. the friends of liberty were undoubtedly in the right, in discovering that it was necessary to give the faculties an opportunity of developing themselves; that it was not just that a whole people should depend on one man; and that a national representation afforded the only means of guaranteeing the transitory benefits that might be derived from the reign of a virtuous sovereign. but what came bonaparte to offer? did he bring a greater liberty to foreign nations? there was not a monarch in europe who would in a whole year have committed the acts of arbitrary insolence which signalized every day of his life. he came solely to make them exchange their tranquillity, their independence, their language, their laws, their fortunes, their blood, and their children, for the misfortune and the shame of being annihilated as nations, and despised as men. he began finally that enterprize of universal monarchy, which is the greatest scourge by which mankind can be menaced, and the certain cause of eternal war. none of the arts of peace at all suit bonaparte: he finds no amusement but in the violent crises produced by battles. he has known how to make truces, but he has never said sincerely, enough; and his character, irreconcileable with the rest of the creation, is like the greek fire, which no strength in nature has been known to extinguish. end of the first part. advertisement by the editor. there is at this place in the manuscript a considerable vacuum, of which i have already given an explanation*, and which i am not sufficiently informed to make the attempt to fill up. but to put the reader in a situation to follow my mother's narrative, i will run over rapidly the principal circumstances of her life during the five years which separate the first part of these memoirs from the second. * see the preface. on her return to switzerland after the death of her father, the first desire she felt was to seek some alleviation of her sorrow in giving to the world the portrait of him whom she had just lost, and in collecting the last traces of his thoughts. in the autumn of , she published the mss. of her father, with a sketch of his public and private character. my mother's health, impaired by misfortune, necessitated her to go and breathe the air of the south. she set out for italy. the beautiful sky of naples, the recollections of antiquity, and the chefs-d'oeuvre of art, opened to her new sources of enjoyment, to which she had been hitherto a stranger; her soul, overwhelmed with grief, seemed to revive to these new impressions, and she recovered sufficient strength to think and to write. during this journey, she was treated by the diplomatic agents of france without favor, but without injustice. she was interdicted a residence at paris; she was banished from her friends and her habits; but tyranny had not, at least at that time, pursued her beyond the alps; persecution had not as yet been established as a system, as it was afterwards. i even feel a real pleasure in mentioning that some letters of recommendation sent her by joseph bonaparte, contributed to render her residence at rome more agreeable. she returned from italy in the summer of , and passed a year at coppet and geneva, where several of her friends were collected. during this period she began to write corinne. during the following year, her attachment to france, that feeling which had so much power over her heart, made her quit geneva and go nearer to paris, to the distance of forty leagues from it, which was still permitted to her. i was then pursuing my studies, preparatory to entering into the polytechnic school; and from her great goodness to her children, she wished to watch over their education, as near as her exile could allow her. she went in consequence to settle at auxerre, a little town where she had no acquaintance, but of which the prefect, m. de la bergerie, behaved to her with great kindness and delicacy. from auxerre she went to rouen: this was approaching some leagues nearer the centre to which all the recollections and all the affections of her youth attracted her. there she could at least receive letters daily from paris; she had penetrated without any obstacle the inclosure, entrance into which had been forbidden to her; she might hope that the fatal circle would progressively be contracted. those only who have suffered banishment will be able to understand what passed in her heart. m. de savoie-rollin was then prefect of the lower seine; it is well known by what glaring injustice he was removed some years afterwards, and i have reason to believe that his friendship for my mother, and the interest which he shewed for her, during her residence at rouen, were no slight causes of the rigor of which he became the object. fouche was still minister of police. his system was, as my mother has said, to do as little evil as possible, the necessity of the object admitted. the prussian monarchy had just fallen; there was no longer any enemy upon the continent to struggle with the government of napoleon; no internal resistance shackled his progress, or could afford the least pretext for the employment of arbitrary measures; what motive, therefore, could he have for prolonging the most gratuitous persecution of my mother? fouche then permitted her to come and settle at the distance of twelve leagues from paris, upon an estate belonging to m. de castellane. there she finished corinne, and superintended the printing of it. in other respects, the retired life she there led, the extreme prudence of her whole conduct, and the very small number of persons who were not prevented by the fear of disgrace from coming to visit her, might have been sufficient to tranquillize the most suspicious despotism. but all this did not satisfy bonaparte; he wanted my mother to renounce entirely the employment of her talents, and to interdict her from writing even upon subjects the most unconnected with politics. it will be seen that even at a later period this abnegation was not sufficient to preserve her from a continually increasing persecution. scarcely had corinne made her appearance, when a new exile commenced for my mother, and she saw all the hopes vanish, with which she had for some months been consoling herself. by a fatality which rendered her grief more pungent, it was on the th of april, the anniversary of her father's death, that the order which again banished her from her country, and her friends, was signified to her. she returned to coppet, with a bleeding heart, and the prodigious success of corinne afforded very little diversion to her sorrow. friendship, however, succeeded in accomplishing what literary glory had failed to do; and, thanks to the proofs of affection which she received on her return to switzerland, the summer passed more agreeably than she could have hoped. several of her friends left paris to come to see her, and prince augustus of prussia, to whom peace had restored his liberty, did us the honor to stop several months at coppet, prior to his return to his native country. ever since her journey to berlin, which had been so cruelly interrupted by the death of her father, my mother had regularly continued the study of the german literature and philosophy; but a new residence in germany was necessary to enable her to complete the picture of that country, which she proposed to present to france. in the autumn of , she set out for vienna, and she there once more found, in the society of the prince de ligne, of the princess lubomirski, &c. &c. that urbanity of manners and ease of conversation, which had such charms in her eyes. the austrian government, exhausted by the war, had not then the strength to be an oppressor on its own account, and notwithstanding preserved towards france, an attitude which was not without dignity and independence. the objects of napoleon's hatred might still find an asylum at vienna; the year she passed in that city, was therefore, the most tranquil one she had enjoyed since the commencement of her exile. on her return to switzerland, where she spent two years in writing her reflections upon germany, she was not long in perceiving the progress which the imperial tyranny was every day making, and the contagious rapidity with which the passion for places, and the fear of disgrace, were spreading. no doubt several friends, both at geneva and in france, preserved to her during her misfortunes, a courageous and unshaken fidelity; but, whoever had any connection with the government, or aspired to any employment, began to keep at a distance from her house, and to dissuade timid people from approaching it. my mother suffered a great deal from all these symptoms of servitude, which she detected with incomparable sagacity; but the more unhappy she was, the more she felt the desire of diverting from the persons who were about her, the miseries of her situation, and of diffusing around her that life and intellectual movement, which solitude seemed to exclude. her talent for declamation was the means of amusement which had the greatest influence over herself, at the same time that it varied the pleasures of her society. it was at this period, and while she was still laboring on her great work on germany, that she composed and played at coppet, the greater part of the little pieces which are collected in the th volume of her works*, under the title of dramatic essays. * or the second volume of her oeuvres inedites. finally, at the beginning of summer, , having finished the three volumes of germany, she wished to go and superintend the printing of them, at leagues distance from paris, a distance which was still permitted to her, and where she might hope to see again those of her old friends, whose affections had not bent before the disgrace of the emperor. she went, therefore, to reside in the neighbourhood of blois, in' the old castle of chaumont-sur-loire, which had in former times been inhabited by the cardinal d'amboise, diana of poitiers, and catherine de medicis. the present proprietor of this romantic residence, m. le ray, with whom my parents were connected by the ties of friendship and business, was then in america. but just at the time we were occupying his chateau, he returned from the united states with his family, and though he was very urgent in wishing us to remain in his house, the more he pressed us politely to do so, the more anxiety we felt, lest we should incommode him. m. de salaberry relieved us from this embarrassment with the greatest kindness, by placing at our disposal his house at fosse. at this period my mother's narrative recommences. part the second chapter . suppression of my work on germany.--banishment from france. being unable to remain longer in the castle of chaumont, the proprietors of which had returned from america, i went and fixed myself at a farm called fosse, which a generous friend lent me.* the house was inhabited by a vendean soldier, who certainly did not keep it in the nicest order, but who had a loyal good nature that made every thing easy, and an originality of character that was very amusing. scarcely had we arrived, when an italian musician, whom i had with me to give lessons to my daughter, began playing upon the guitar; my daughter accompanied upon the harp the sweet voice of my beautiful friend madame recamier; the peasants collected round the windows, astonished to see this colony of troubadours, which had come to enliven the solitude of their master. it was there i passed my last days in france, with some friends, whose recollection lives in my heart. certainly this intimate assemblage, this solitary residence, this agreeable occupation with the fine arts did no harm to any one. we frequently sung a charming air composed by the queen of holland, and of which the burden is: 'do what you ought, happen what may'. after dinner, we had imagined the idea of seating ourselves round a green table and writing letters to each other, instead of conversing. these varied and multiplied tetes-a-tete amused us so much, that we were impatient to get from table, where we were talking, in order to go and write to one another. when any strangers came in accidentally, we could not bear the interruption of our habits; and our penny post (it is thus we called it) always went its round. the inhabitants of the neighbouring town were somewhat astonished at these new manners, and looked upon them as pedantic, while there was nothing in this game, but a resource against the monotony of solitude. one day a gentleman of the neighbourhood who had never thought of any thing in his life but the chase, came to take my boys with him into the woods; he remained sometime seated at our active but silent table; madame recamier wrote a little note with her beautiful hand to this jolly sportsman, in order that he might not be too much a stranger to the circle in which he was placed. he excused himself from receiving it, assuring us that he could never read writing by day-light: we laughed a little at the disappointment which the benevolent coquetry of our beautiful friend had met with, and thought that a billet from her hand would not have always had the same fate. our life passed in this manner, without any of us, if i may judge from myself, finding the time at all burdensome. * m. de salaberry. the opera of cinderella was making a great noise at paris; i wished to go and see it represented at a paltry provincial theatre at blois. coming out of the theatre on foot, the people of the place followed me in crowds from curiosity, more desirous of knowing me because i was an exile, than from any other motive. this kind of celebrity which i derived from misfortune, much more than from talent, displeased the minister of police, who wrote sometime after to the prefect of loir and cher, that i was surrounded by a court. "certainly," said i to the prefect* "it is not power at least which gives it me." * m. de corbigny, an amiable and intelligent man. i had always the intention of repairing to england by the way of america; but i was anxious to terminate my work on germany. the season was now advancing; we were already at the fifteenth of september, and i began to foresee that the difficulty of embarking my daughter with me would detain me another winter, in some town, i knew not where, at forty leagues from paris. i was then desirous that it should be vendome, where i knew several clever people, and where the communication with the capital was easy. after having formerly had one of the most brilliant establishments in paris, i was now contented to anticipate considerable pleasure from establishing myself at vendome; fate however denied me even this modest happiness. on the d of september i corrected the last proof of germany; after six years' labor, i felt the greatest delight in putting the word end to my three volumes. i made a list of one hundred persons to whom i wished to send copies, in different parts of france and europe; i attached great importance to this book, which i thought well adapted to communicate new ideas to france; it appeared to me that a sentiment elevated without being hostile, had inspired it, and that people would find in it a language which was no longer spoken. furnished with a letter from my publisher, which assured me that the censorship had authorised the publication of my work, i believed that i had nothing to apprehend, and set out with my friends for an estate of m. mathieu de montmorency, at five leagues from blois. the house belonging to this estate is situated in the middle of a forest; there i walked about with the man whom i most respect in the world, since i have lost my father. the fineness of the weather, the magnificence of the forest, the historical recollections which the place recalled, being the scene of the battle of fretteval, fought between philip augustus and richard coeur-de-lion, all contributed to fill my mind with the most quiet and delightful impressions. my worthy friend, who is only occupied in this world with rendering himself worthy of heaven, in this conversation, as in all those we have had together, paid no attention to affairs of the day, and only sought to do good to my soul. we resumed our journey the next day, and in these plains of the vendomois, where you meet not with a single habitation, and which like the sea seem to present every where the same appearance, we contrived to lose ourselves completely. it was already midnight, and we knew not what road to take, in a country every where the same, and where fertility is as monotonous as sterility is elsewhere, when a young man on horseback, perceiving our embarrassment, came and requested us to pass the night in the chateau of his parents.* we accepted his invitation, which was doing us a real service, and we found ourselves all of a sudden in the midst of the luxury of asia, and the elegance of france. the masters of the house had spent a considerable time in india, and their chateau was adorned with every thing they had brought back from their travels. this residence excited my curiosity, and i found myself extremely comfortable in it. next day m. de montmorency gave me a note from my son which pressed me to return home, as my work had met with fresh difficulties from the censorship. my friends who were with me in the chateau conjured me to go; i had not the least suspicion of what they were concealing from me, and thinking there was nothing but what augustus's letter mentioned,* whiled away the time in examining the indian curiosities without any idea of what was in store for me. at last i got into the carriage, and my brave and intelligent vendean whom his own dangers had never moved, squeezed my hand, with tears in his eyes: i guessed immediately that they were making a mystery to me of some new persecution, and m. de montmorency, in reply to my interrogations, at last acquainted me that the minister of the police had sent his myrmidons to destroy the ten thousand copies which had been printed of my book, and that i had received an order to quit france within three days. my children and friends had wished me not to hear this news while i was among strangers; but they had taken every possible precaution to prevent the seizure of my manuscript, and they succeeded in saving it, some hours before i was required to deliver it up. this new blow affected me most severely, i had flattered myself with an honorable success by the publication of my book: if the censors had in the first instance refused to authorise its being printed, that would have appeared to me very simple; but after having submitted to all their observations, and made all the alterations required of me, to learn that my work was destroyed, and that i must separate my self from the friends who had supported my courage, all this made me shed tears. but i endeavored once more to get the better of my feelings, in order to determine what was best to be done in a crisis where the step i was about to take might have so much influence on the fortunes of my family. as we drew near my habitation, i gave my writing desk, which contained some further notes upon my book, to my youngest son; he jumped over a wall to get into the house by the garden. an english lady*, my excellent friend, came out to meet me and inform me of all that had happened. i observed at a distance some, gendarmes who were wandering round residence, but it did not appear that they were in search of me: they were no doubt in pursuit of some other unfortunates, conscripts, exiles, persons in surveillance, or, in short, of some of the numerous classes of oppressed which the present government of france has created. * (note of the editor.) uneasy at not seeing my mother arrive, i took horse to go and meet her, in order to soften as much as was in my power, the news which she had to learn upon her return; but i lost myself like her, in the uniform plains of the vendomois, and it was only in the middle of the night that a fortunate chance conducted me to the gate of the chateau where the rites of hospitality had been given to her. i caused m. de montmorency to be awakened, and after having informed him of this new instance of the persecution which the imperial police directed against my mother, i set off again to finish putting her papers in safety, leaving to m. de montmorency the charge of preparing her for the new blow with which she was threatened. * miss randall. the prefect of loir and cher came to require the delivery of my manuscript: i gave him, merely to gain time, a rough copy which remained with me, and with which he was satisfied. i have learned that he was extremely ill-treated a few months afterwards, to punish him for having shewn me some attention: and the chagrin he felt at having incurred the disgrace of the emperor, was, it is said, one of the causes of the illness which carried him off in the prime of life. unfortunate country, where the circumstances are such, that a man of his understanding and talent should sink under the chagrin of disgrace! i saw in the papers, that some american vessels had arrived in the ports of the channel, and i determined to make use of my passport for america, in the hope that it would be possible to touch at an english port. at all events i required some days to prepare for this voyage, and i was obliged to address myself to the minister of police to ask for that indulgence. it has been already seen that the custom of the french government is to order women, as well as soldiers, to depart within twenty-four hours. here follows the minister's reply: it is curious to observe his style*. * (note of the editor.) this is the same letter which was printed in the preface to germany, "general police. minister's cabinet. paris, d october, . "i have received the letter, madam, which you did me the honor to write to me. your son will have informed you that i saw no impropriety in your delaying your departure for seven or eight days: i hope they will be sufficient for the arrangements which you have yet to make, as i cannot grant you any more. "you must not seek for the cause of the order which i have signified to you, in the silence which you have observed with regard to the emperor in your last work; that would be a great mistake; he could find no place there which was worthy of him; but your exile is a natural consequence of the line of conduct you have constantly pursued for several years past. it has appeared to me that the air of this country did not at all agree with you, and we are not yet reduced to seek for models in the nations whom you admire. "your last work is not at all french; it is by my orders that the impression has been seized. i regret the loss which it will occasion to the bookseller; but it is not possible for me to allow it to appear. "you know, madam, that you would not have been permitted to quit coppet but for the desire you had expressed to go to america. if my predecessor allowed you to reside in the department of loir and cher, you had no reason to look upon this license as any revocation of the arrangements which had been fixed with regard to you. at present you compel me to make them be strictly executed; for this you have no one to blame but yourself. "i have signified to m. corbigny* to look to the punctual execution of the order i have given him, as soon as the term i grant you is expired. * prefect of loir and cher. "i regret extremely, madam, that you have forced me to begin my correspondence with you by an act of severity; it would have been much more agreeable to me to have only had to offer you the assurance of the high consideration with which i have the honor to be, madam, "your most humble, and most obedient servant, signed the duke of rovigo. "p. s, i have reasons, madam, for mentioning to you that the ports of lorient, la rochelle, bourdeaux, and rochefort, are the only ones in which you can embark. i request you to let me know which of them you select*." * this postscript is easily understood; its object was to prevent me from going to england. the stale hypocrisy with which i was told that the air of this country did not agree with me, and the denial of the real cause of the suppression of my book, are worthy of remark. in fact, the minister of police had shown more frankness in expressing himself verbally respecting me: he asked, why i never named the emperor or the army in my work on germany? on its being objected that the work being purely literary, i could not well have introduced such subjects, "do you think," then replied the minister, "that we have made war for eighteen years in germany, and that a person of such celebrity should print a book upon it, without saying a word about us? this book shall be destroyed, and the author deserves to be sent to vincennes." on receiving the letter of the minister of police, i paid no attention to any part but that passage of it which interdicted me the ports of the channel. i had already learned, that suspecting my intention of going to england, they would endeavour to prevent me. this new mortification was really above my strength to bear; on quitting my native country, i must go to that of my adoption; in banishing myself from the friends of my whole life, i required at least to find those friends of whatever is good and noble, with whom, without knowing them personally, the soul always sympathises. i saw at once all that supported my imagination crumbling to pieces; for a moment longer i would have embarked on board any vessel bound for america, in the hope of her being captured on her passage; but i was too much shaken to decide at once on so strong a resolution; and as the two alternatives of america and coppet were the only ones that were left me, i determined on accepting the latter; for a profound sentiment always attracted me to coppet, in spite of the disagreeables i was there subjected to. my two sons both endeavoured to see the emperor at fontainbleau, where he then was; they were told they would be arrested if they remained there; a fortiori, i was interdicted from going to it myself. i was obliged to return into switzerland from blois, where i was, without approaching paris nearer than forty leagues. the minister of police had given notice, in corsair terms, that at thirty-eight leagues i was a good prize. in this manner, when the emperor exercises the arbitrary power of banishment, neither the exiled persons, nor their friends, nor even their children, can reach his presence to plead the cause of the unfortunates who are thus torn from the objects of their affection and their habits; and these sentences of exile, which are now irrevocable, particularly where women are the objects, and which the emperor himself has rightly termed proscriptions, are pronounced without the possibility of making any justification be heard, supposing always that the crime of having displeased the emperor admits of any. although the forty leagues were ordered me, i was necessitated to pass through orleans, a very dull town, but inhabited by several very pious ladies, who had retired thither for an asylum. in walking about the town on foot, i stopped before the monument erected to the memory of joan of arc: certainly, thought i to myself, when she delivered france from the power of the english, that same france was much more free, much more france than it is at present. one feels a singular sensation in wandering through a town, where you neither know, nor are known to a soul. i felt a kind of bitter enjoyment in picturing to myself my isolated situation in its fullest extent, and in still looking at that france which i was about to quit, perhaps for ever, without speaking to a person, or being diverted from the impression which the country itself made upon me. occasionally persons passing stopped to look at me, from the circumstance i suppose of my countenance having, in spite of me, an expression of grief; but they soon went on again, as it is long since mankind have been accustomed to witness persons suffering. at fifty leagues from the swiss frontier, france is bristled with citadels, houses of detention, and towns serving as prisons; and every where you see nothing but individuals deprived of their liberty by the will of one man, conscripts of misfortune, all chained at a distance from the places where they would have wished to live. at dijon, some spanish prisoners, who had refused to take the oath, regularly came every day to the market place to feel the sun at noon, as they then regarded him rather as their countryman; they wrapt themselves up in a mantle, frequently in rags, but which they knew how to wear with grace, and they gloried in their misery, as it arose from their boldness; they hugged themselves in their sufferings, as associating them with the misfortunes of their intrepid country. they were sometimes seen going into a coffee house, solely to read the newspaper, in order to penetrate the fate of their friends through the lies of their enemies; their countenances were then immoveable, but not without expression, exhibiting strength under the command of their will. farther on, at auxonne, was the residence of the english prisoners, who had the day before saved from fire, one of the houses of the town where they were kept confined. at besancon, there were more spaniards. among the french exiles to be met with in every part of france, an angelic creature inhabited the citadel of besancon, in order not to quit her father. for a long period, and amidst every sort of danger, mademoiselle de saint simon shared the fortunes of him who had given her birth. at the entrance of switzerland, on the top of the mountains which separate it from france, you see the castle of joux, in which prisoners of state are detained, whose names frequently never reach the ear of their relations. in this prison toussaint louverture actually perished of cold; he deserved his fate on account of his cruelty, but the emperor had the least right to inflict it upon him, as he had engaged to guarantee to him his life and liberty. i passed a day at the foot of this castle, during very dreadful weather, and i could not help thinking of this negro transported all at once into the alps, and to whom this residence was the hell of ice; i thought of the more noble beings, who had been shut up there, of those who were still groaning in it, and i said to myself also that if i was there, i should never quit it with life. it is impossible to convey an idea to the small number of free nations which remain upon the earth, of that absence of all security, the habitual state of the human creatures who live under the empire of napoleon. in other despotic governments there are laws, and customs, and a religion, which the sovereign never infringes, however absolute he may be; but in france, and in europe france, as every thing is new, the past can be no guarantee, and every thing may be feared as well as hoped according as you serve, or not, the interests of the man who dares to propose himself, as the sole object of the existence of the whole human race. chapter . return to coppet.--different persecutions. in returning to coppet, dragging my wing like the pigeon in lafontaine, i saw the rainbow rise over my father's house; i dared take my part in this token of the covenant; there had been nothing in my sorrowful journey to prevent me from aspiring to it. i was then almost resigned to living in this chateau, renouncing the idea of ever publishing more on any subject; but it was at least necessary, in making the sacrifice of talents, which i flattered myself with possessing, to find happiness in my affections, and this is the manner in which my private life was arranged, after having stript me of my literary existence. the first order received by the prefect of geneva, was to intimate to my two sons, that they were interdicted going into france without a new permission of the police. this was to punish them for having wished to speak to bonaparte in favor of their mother. thus the morality of the present government is to loosen family ties, in order to substitute in all cases the emperor's will. several generals have been mentioned as declaring, that if napoleon ordered them to throw their wives and children into the river, they would not hesitate to obey him. the translation of this is, that they prefer the money which the emperor gives them, to the family which they have from nature. there are many instances of this way of thinking, but there are few who would have impudence enough to give utterance to it. i felt a mortal grief at seeing for the first time my situation bear upon my sons, scarcely entered into life. we feel ourselves very firm in our own conduct, when it is founded on sincere conviction; but when others begin to suffer on our account, it is almost impossible to keep from reproaching ourselves. both my sons, however, most generously diverted this feeling from me, and we supported each other mutually by the recollection of my father. a few days afterwards the prefect of geneva wrote me a second letter, to require me, in the name of the minister of police, to deliver up the proof sheets of my book which were still in my hands; the minister knew exactly the number i had sent and kept, and his spies had done their duty well. in my answer, i gave him the satisfaction of admitting that he had been correctly informed; but i told him at the same time that this copy was not in switzerland, and that i neither could nor would give it up. i added, however, that i would engage never to have it printed on the continent, and i had no great merit in making this promise, for what continental government would then have suffered the publication of any book forbidden, by the emperor? a short time afterwards, the prefect of geneva* was dismissed, and it was generally believed on my account; he was one of my friends, yet he had not deviated one iota from the orders he had received: although he was one of the most honorable and enlightened men in france, his principles led him to the scrupulous obedience of the government, whose servant he was; but no ambitious view, or personal calculation gave him the zeal required. it was another great source of chagrin to be, or to be regarded as being, the cause of the dismissal of such a man. he was generally regretted in his department, and from the moment it was believed that i was the cause of his disgrace, all who had any pretensions to places avoided my house as they would the most fatal contagion. there still remained to me, however at geneva, more friends than any other provincial town in france could have offered me; for the inheritance of liberty has left in that city much generous feeling; but it is impossible to have an idea of the anxiety one feels, when one is afraid of compromising those who come to visit you. i made a point of getting the most exact information of all the relations of any lady before i invited her; for if she had only a cousin who wanted a place, or had one, it was demanding an act of roman heroism to expect her to come and dine with me. at last, in the month of march , a new prefect arrived from paris. he was a man admirably well adapted to the reigning system: that is to say, having a very general acquaintance with facts, coupled with a total absence of principles in matters of government; calling every fixed rule mere abstraction, and placing his conscience in devotion to the reigning power. the first time i saw him, he told me that talents like mine were made to celebrate the emperor, who was a subject well worthy of the kind of enthusiasm which i had shown in corinna. i gave him for answer, that persecuted as i was by the emperor, any thing like praise of him coming from me, would have the air of a petition, and that i was persuaded that the emperor himself would find my eulogiums very ridiculous under such circumstances. he combatted this opinion very strongly: he returned to my house several times to beg me, in the name of my own interest, as he styled it, to write something in favor of the emperor, were it but a sheet of four pages; that would be sufficient, he assured me, to put an end to all the disagreeables i suffered. he repeated what he told me to every person of my acquaintance. finally, one day he came to propose to me to celebrate in verse the birth of the king of rome; i told him, laughing, that i had not a single idea on the subject, and that i should confine myself to wishes for his having a good nurse. this joke put an end to the prefect's negociations with me, upon the necessity of my writing in favor of the present government. * m. de barante, father of m. prosper de barante, member of the * chamber of peers. a short time afterwards the physicians ordered my youngest son the baths of aix, in savoy, at twenty leagues from coppet. i chose the early part of may to go there, a time of the year when the waters are quite deserted. i gave the prefect notice of this little journey, and went to shut myself up in a kind of village, where there was not at the time a single person of my acquaintance. i had hardly been there ten days, before a courier arrived from the prefect of geneva to order me to return. the prefect of mont-blanc, in whose department i was, was also afraid lest i should leave aix to go to england, as he said, to write against the emperor; and although london was not very near to aix in savoy, he sent his gendarmes every where about, to forbid my being furnished with post horses on the road. i am at present tempted to laugh at all this prefectorial activity against a poor thing like myself; but at that time the very sight of a gendarme was enough to make me die with fright. i was always alarmed lest from a banishment so rigorous the change might shortly be to a prison, which was to me more terrible than death itself. i knew that if i was once arrested, that if this eclat were once got over, the emperor would not allow himself again to be spoken to about me, even if any one had the courage to do so; which was not very probable at that court, where terror was the prevailing sentiment every minute of the day, and in the most trifling concerns of life. on my return to geneva, the prefect signified to me not only that he forbid me from going under any pretence to the countries united to france, but that he advised me not to travel in switzerland, and never to go in any direction beyond two leagues from coppet. i objected to him that being domiciliated in switzerland, i did not clearly understand by what right a french authority could forbid me from travelling in a foreign country. the prefect no doubt thought me rather a simpleton to discuss at that moment a point of right, repeated his advice to me in a tone singularly approaching to an order. i confined myself my protest: but the very next day i learned that one of the most distinguished literati of germany, m. schlegel, who had for eight years been employed in the education of my sons, had received an order not only to leave geneva, but to quit coppet. i wished still to represent that in switzerland the prefect of geneva had no orders to give; but i was told, that if i liked better to receive this order through the french ambassador, i might be gratified: that the ambassador would address the landamann, and the landamann would apply to the canton of vaud, who would immediately send m. schlegel from my house. by making despotism go this roundabout, i might have gained ten days, but nothing more. i then wished to know why i was deprived of the society of m. schlegel, my own friend, and that of my children. the prefect, who was accustomed, like the greater part of the emperor's agents, to couple very smooth words with very harsh acts, told me that it was from regard to me that the government banished m. schlegel from my house as he made me an anti-gallican. much affected by this proof of the paternal care of the government, i asked what mr. s. had ever done against france: the prefect objected to his literary opinions, and referred among other things to a pamphlet of his, in which, in a comparison between the phedra of euripides and that of racine, he had given the preference to the former. how very delicate for a corsican monarch to take in this manner act and cause (sic) for the slightest shades of french literature! but the real truth was, m. schlegel was banished because he was my friend, because his conversation animated my solitude, and because the system was now begun to be acted upon, which soon became evident, of making a prison of my soul, in tearing from me every enjoyment of intellect and friendship. i resumed the resolution of leaving switzerland, which the pain of quitting my friends and the ashes of my parents had made me so often give up; but there remained a very difficult problem to solve, and that was to find the means of departure. the french government threw so many difficulties in the way of a passport for america, that i durst no longer think of that plan. besides, i had reason to be afraid lest at the moment of my embarkation they should pretend to have discovered that i was going to england, and that the decree might be applied to me, which condemned to imprisonment all who attempted to go there without the authority of the government. it seemed to me, therefore, much preferable to go to sweden, that honorable country, whose new chief already gave indications of the glorious conduct which he has since known how to sustain. but by what road to get to sweden? the prefect had given me to understand in all ways, that wherever france commanded, i should be arrested, and how was i to reach the point where she did not command? i must necessarily pass through russia, as the whole of germany was under the french dominion. but to get to russia, i must cross bavaria and austria. i could trust my self in the tyrol, although it was united to a state of the confederation, on account of the courage which its unfortunate inhabitants had shewn. as to austria, in spite of the fatal debasement into which she had sunk, i had sufficient confidence in her monarch to believe that he would not deliver me up; but i knew also that he could not defend me. after having sacrificed the ancient honor of his house, what strength remained to him of any kind? i spent my days, therefore, in studying the map of europe to escape from it, as napoleon studied it to make himself its master, and my campaign, as well as his, always had russia for its field. this power was the last asylum of the oppressed; it was therefore that which the conqueror of europe wished to overthrow. chapter . journey in switzerland with m. de montmorency. determined to go by the way of russia, i required a passport to enter it. but a fresh difficulty occurred; i must write to petersburgh to obtain this passport: such was the formality which circumstances rendered necessary; and although i was certain of meeting with no refusal from the known generous character of the emperor alexander, i had reason to be afraid that in the ministerial offices it might be mentioned that i had asked for a passport, and in that way get to the french ambassador's ears, which would lead to my arrest, and prevent me from executing my project. it was necessary, therefore, to go first to vienna, to ask for my passport from thence, and there wait for it. the six weeks which would be required to send my letter and receive an answer, would be passed under the protection of a ministry which had given the archduchess of austria to bonaparte;-could i trust myself to it? it was clear, however, that by remaining as a hostage, under the hand of napoleon, i not only renounced the exercise of my own talents, but i prevented my sons from following any public career; they could enter into no service, either for bonaparte or against him; it was impossible to find an establishment for my daughter, as it was necessary either to separate myself from her, or to confine her to coppet; and yet if i was arrested in my flight, there was an end of the fortune of my children, who would not have wished to separate themselves from my destiny. it was in the midst of all these perplexities, that a friend of twenty years standing, m. mathieu de montmorency proposed to come and see me, as he had already done several times since my exile. it is true that i was written to from paris, that the emperor had expressed his displeasure against everyone who should go to coppet, and especially against m. de montmorency, if he again went there. but i confess i made light of these expressions of the emperor, which he throws out sometimes to terrify people, and struggled very feebly with m. de montmorency, who generously sought to tranquillize me by his letters. i was wrong, no doubt; but who could have persuaded themselves that an old friend of a banished woman would have it charged to him as a crime, his going to spend a few days with her. the life of m. de montmorency, entirely consecrated to works of piety, or to family affections, estranged him so completely from all politics, that unless it would even go the length of banishing the saints, it seemed to me impossible that the government would attack such a man. i asked myself likewise, cui bono; a question i have always put to myself whenever any action of napoleon was in discussion. i know that he will, without hesitation, do all the evil which can be of use to him for the least thing; but i do not always conjecture the lengths to which his prodigious egotism extends in all directions, towards the infinitely little, as well as the infinitely great. although the prefect had made me be told that he recommended me not to travel in switzerland, i paid no attention to an advice which could not be made a formal order. i went to meet m. de montmorency at orbd, and from thence i proposed to him, as the object of a promenade in switzerland, to return by way of fribourg, to see the establishment of female trappists, at a short distance front that of the men in val-sainte. we reached the convent in the midst of a severe shower, after having been obliged to come nearly a mile on foot. as we were flattering ourselves with being admitted, the procureur of la trappe, who has the direction of the female convent, told us that nobody could be received there. i tried, however, to ring the bell at the gate of the cloister; a nun appeared behind the latticed opening through which the portress may speak to strangers. "what do you want?" said she to me, in a voice without modulation as we might suppose that of a ghost. "i should wish to see the interior of your convent."--"that is impossible."--"but i am very wet, and want to dry myself."--she immediately touched a spring which opened the door of an outer apartment, in which i was allowed to rest myself; but no living creature appeared. i had hardly been seated a few minutes, when becoming impatient at being unable to penetrate into the interior of the house, i rung again; the same person again appeared, and i asked her if no females were ever admitted into the convent; she answered that it was only in cases when any one had the intention of becoming a nun. "but," said i to her, "how can i know if i wish to remain in your house, if i am not permitted to examine it."--"oh, that is quite useless," replied she, "i am very sure that you have no vocation for our state," and with these words immediately shut her wicket. i know not by what signs this nun had satisfied herself of my worldly dispositions; it is possible that a quick manner of speaking, so different from theirs, is sufficient to make them distinguish travellers, who are merely curious. the hour of vespers approaching, i could go into the church to hear the nuns sing; they were behind a black plose grating, through which nothing could be seen. you only heard the noise of their wooden shoes, and of the wooden benches as they raised them to sit down. their singing had nothing of sensibility in it, and i thought i could remark both by their manner of praying, and in the conversation which i had afterwards with the father trappist, who directed them, that it was not religious enthusiasm, such as we conceive it, but severe and grave habits which could support such a kind of life. the tenderness of piety would even exhaust the strength; a sort of ruggedness of soul is necessary to so rude an existence. the new father abbe of the trappists, settled in the vallies of the canton of fribourg, has added to the austerities of the order. one can have no idea of the minute degrees of suffering imposed upon the monks; they go so far as even to forbid them, when they have been standing for some hours in succession, from leaning against the wall, or wiping the perspiration from their forehead; in short every moment of their life is filled with suffering, as the people of the world fills theirs with enjoyment. they rarely live to be old, and those to whom this lot falls, regard it as a punishment from heaven. such an establishment would be barbarous if any one was compelled to enter it, or if there was the least concealment of what they suffer there. but on the contrary, they distribute to whoever wishes to read it, a printed statement, in which the rigors of the order are rather exaggerated than softened; and yet there are novices who are willing to take the vows, and those who are received never run away, although they might do it without the least difficulty. the whole rests, as it appears to me, upon the powerful idea of death; the institutions and amusements of society are destined in the world to turn our thoughts entirely upon life; but when the contemplation of death gets a certain hold of the human heart, joined to a firm belief in the immortality of the soul, there are no bounds to the disgust which it may take to every thing which forms a subject of interest in the world; and a state of suffering appearing the road to a future life, such minds follow it with avidity, like the traveller, who willingly fatigues himself, in order to get sooner over the road which leads him to the object of his wishes. but what equally astonished and grieved me, was to see children brought up with this severity: their poor locks shaved off, their young countenances already furrowed, that deathly dress with which they were covered before they knew any thing of life, before they had voluntarily renounced it, all this made my soul revolt against the parents who had placed them there. when such a state is not the adoption of a free and determined choice on the part of the person who professes it, it inspires as much horror as it at first created respect. the monk with whom i conversed, spoke of nothing but death; all his ideas came from that subject, or connected themselves with it; death is the sovereign monarch of this residence. as we talked of the temptations of the world, i expressed to the father trappist my admiration of his conduct in thus sacrificing all, to withdraw himself from their influence. "we are cowards" said he to me, "who have retired into a fortress, because we feel we want the courage to meet our enemy in the open field." this reply was equally modest and ingenious*. a few days after we had visited these places, the french government ordered the seizure of the father abbe, m. de l'estrange; the confiscation of the property of the order, and the dismissal of the fathers from switzerland. * (note of the editor.)i accompanied my mother in the excursion here related. struck with the wild beauty of the place, and interested by the spiritual conversation of the trappist who had attended us, i besought him to grant me hospitality until the following day, as i proposed going over the mountain on foot, in order to see the great convent of the val-sainte, and rejoining my mother and m. de montmorency at fribourg. this monk, with whom i continued to converse, had not much difficulty in discovering that i hated the imperial government, and i could guess that he fully participated in that sentiment. afterwards, after thanking him for his kindness, i entirely lost sight of him, nor did i imagine, that he had preserved the least recollection of me. five years afterwards, in the first months of the restoration, i was not a little surprised at receiving a letter from this same trappist. he had no doubt, he said, that now the legitimate monarch was restored to his throne, i must have a number of friends at court, and he requested me to employ their influence in procuring to his order the restoration of the property which it possessed in france. this letter was signed "father a .... priest and procureur of la trappe," and he added, as a postscript, "if a twenty-three years' emigration' and four campaigns in a regiment of horse-chasseurs in the army of conde, give me any claims to the royal favor, i beg you will make use of them." i could not help laughing, both at the idea which this good monk had of my influence at court, and at the use of it which he required from a protestant. i sent his letter to m. de montmorency, whose influence was much greater than mine, and i have reason to believe that the petition was granted. in other respects, these trappists were not, in the deep vales of the canton of fribourg, such strangers to politics as their residence and their habit would lead one to believe. i have since learned that they served as a medium for the correspondence of the french clergy with the pope, then a prisoner at savonne. certainly, although this does not at all excuse the rigor with which they were treated by bonaparte, it gives a sufficient explanation of it. (end of editor's note.) i know not of what m. de l'estrange was accused; but it is scarcely probable that such a man should have meddled with the affairs of the world, much less the monks, who never quitted their solitude. the swiss government caused search to be made every where for m. de l'estrange, and i hope for its honor, that it took care not to find him. however, the unfortunate magistrates of countries which are called allies of france, are very often employed to arrest persons designated to them, ignorant whether they are delivering innocent or guilty victims to the great leviathan, which thinks proper to swallow them up. the property of the trappists was seized, that is to say, their tomb, for they hardly possessed any thing else, and the order was dispersed. it is said, that a trappist at genoa had mounted the pulpit to retract the oath of allegiance which he had taken to the emperor, declaring that since the captivity of the pope, he considered every priest as released from this oath. at his coming out from performing this act of repentance, he was, report also says, tried by a military commission, and shot. one would think that he was sufficiently punished, without rendering the whole order responsible for his conduct. we regained vevay by the mountains, and i proposed to m. de montmorency to proceed as far as the entrance of the valais, which i had never seen. we stopped at bex, the last swiss village, for the valais was already united to france. a portuguese brigade had left geneva to go and occupy the valais: singular state of europe, to have a portuguese garrison at geneva going to take possession of a part of switzerland in the name of france! i had a curiosity to see the cretins of the valais, of whom i had so often heard. this miserable degradation of man affords ample subject for reflection; but it is excessively painful to see the human countenance thus become an object of horror and repugnance. i remarked, however, in several of these poor creatures, a degree of vivacity bordering on astonishment, produced on them by external objects. as they never recognize what they have already seen, they feel each time fresh surprize, and the spectacle of the world, with all its details, is thus for ever new to them; it is, perhaps, the compensation for their sad state, for certainly there is one. it is some years since a cretin, having committed assassination, was condemned to death: as he was led to the scaffold, he took it into his head, seeing himself surrounded with a crowd of people, that he was accompanied in this manner to do him honor, and he laughed, held himself erect, and put his dress in order, with the idea of rendering himself more worthy of the fete. was it right to punish such a being for the crime which his arm had committed? there is at three leagues from bex, a famous cascade, where the water falls from a very lofty mountain. i proposed to my friends to go and see it, and we returned before dinner. it is true that this cascade was upon the territory of the valais, consequently then upon the french territory, and i forgot that i was not allowed more of that than the small space of ground which separates coppet from geneva. when i returned home, the prefect not only blamed me for having presumed to travel in switzerland, but made it the greatest proof of his indulgence to keep silence on the crime i had committed, in setting my foot on the territory of the french empire. i might have said, in the words of lafontaine's fable: *je tondu de ce pre la largeur de ma langue (i grazed of this meadow the breadth of my tongue.) but i confessed with great simplicity the fault i had committed in going to see this swiss cascade, without dreaming that it was in france. chapter . exile of m. de montmorency and madame recamier--new persecutions. this continual chicanery upon my most trifling actions, rendered my life odious to me, and i could not divert myself by occupation; for the recollection of the fate of my last work, and the certainty of never being able to publish any thing in future, operated as a complete damper to my mind, which requires emulation to be capable of labor. notwithstanding, i could not yet resolve to quit for ever the borders of france, the abode of my father, and the friends who remained faithful to me. every day i thought of departing, and every day i found in my own mind some reason for remaining, until the last blow was aimed at my soul; god knows what i have suffered from it. m. de montmorency came to pass several days with me at coppet, and the wickedness of detail in the master of so great an empire is so well calculated, that by the return of the courier who announced his arrival at coppet, my friend received his letter of exile. the emperor would not have been satisfied if this order had not been signified to him at my house, and if there had not been in the letter itself of the minister of police, a word to signify that i was the cause of this exile. m. de montmorency endeavoured, in every possible way, to soften the news to me, but, i tell it to bonaparte, that he may applaud himself on the success of his scheme, i shrieked with agony on learning the calamity which i had drawn on the head of my generous friend; and never was my heart, tried as it had been for so many years, nearer to despair. i knew not how to lull the rending thoughts which succeeded each other in my bosom, and had recourse to opium to suspend for some hours the anguish which i felt. m. do montmorency, calm and religious, invited me to follow his example; the consciousness of the devotedness to me which he had condescended to show, supported him: but for me, i reproached myself for the bitter consequences of this devotedness, which now separated him from his family and friends. i prayed to the almighty without ceasing, but grief would not quit its hold of me for a moment, and life became a burden to me. while i was in this state, i received a letter from madame recamier, that beautiful person who has received the admiration of the whole of europe, and who has never abandoned an unfortunate friend. she informed me, that on her road to the waters of aix in savoy, to which she was proceeding, she intended stopping at my house, and would be there in two days. i trembled lest the lot of m. de montmorency should also become hers. however improbable it was, i was ordained to fear every thing from hatred so barbarous and minute, and i therefore sent a courier to meet madame recamier, to beseech her not to come to coppet. to know that she who had never failed to console me with the most amiable attention was only a few leagues distant from me; to know that she was there, so near to my habitation, and that i was not allowed to see her again, perhaps for the last time! all this i was obliged to bear. i conjured her not to stop at coppet; she would not yield to my entreaties; she could not pass under my windows without remaining some hours with me, and it was with convulsions of tears that i saw her enter this chateau, in which her arrival had always been a fete. she left me the next day, and repaired instantly to one of her relations at fifty leagues distance from switzerland. it was in vain; the fatal blow of exile smote her also; she had had the intention of seeing me, and that was enough; for the generous compassion which had inspired her, she must be punished. the reverses of fortune which she had met with made the destruction of her natural establishment extremely painful to her. separated from all her friends, she has passed whole months in a little provincial town, a prey to the extremes of every feeling of insipid and melancholy solitude. such was the lot to which i was the cause of condemning the most brilliant female of her time; and thus regardless did the chief of the french, that people so renowned for their gallantry, show himself towards the most beautiful woman in paris. in one day he smote virtue and distinguished birth in m. de montmorency; beauty in madame recamier, and if i dare say it, the reputation of high talents in myself. perhaps he also flattered himself with attacking the memory of my father in his daughter, in order that it might be truly said that in this world, under his reign, the dead and the living, piety, beauty, wit, and celebrity, all were as nothing. persons made themselves culpable by being found wanting in the delicate shades of flattery towards him, in refusing to abandon any one who had been visited by his disgrace. he recognises but two classes of human creatures, those who serve him, and those, who without injuring, wish to have an existence independent of him. he is unwilling that in the whole universe, from the details of housekeeping to the direction of empires, a single will should act without reference to his. "madam de stael," said the prefect of geneva, "has contrived to make herself a very pleasant life at coppet; her friends and foreigners come to see her: the emperor will not allow that." and why did he torment me in this manner? that i might print an eulogium upon him: and of what consequence was this eulogium to him, among the millions of phrases which fear and hope were constantly offering at his shrine? bonaparte once said: "if i had the choice, either of doing a noble action myself, or of inducing my adversary to do a mean one, i would not hesitate to prefer the debasement of my enemy." in this sentence you have the explanation of the particular pains which he took to torment my existence. he knew that i was attached to my friends, to france, to my works, to my tastes, to society; in taking from me every thing which composed my happiness, his wish was to trouble me sufficiently to make me write some piece of insipid flattery, in the hope that it would obtain me my recall. in refusing to lend myself to his wishes, i ought to say it, i have not had the merit of making a sacrifice; the emperor wished me to commit a meanness, but a meanness entirely useless; for at a time when success was in a manner deified, the ridicule would not have been complete, if i had succeeded in returning to paris, by whatever means i had effected it. to satisfy our master, whose skill in degrading whatever remains of lofty mind is unquestionable, it was necessary that i should dishonor myself in order to obtain my return to france,--that he should turn into mockery my zeal in praise of him, who had never ceased to persecute me,--and that this zeal should not be of the least service to me. i have denied him this truly refined satisfaction; it is all the merit i have had in the long contest which has subsisted between his omnipotence and my weakness. m. de montmorency's family, in despair at his exile, were anxious, as was natural, that he should separate himself from the sad cause of this calamity, and i saw that friend depart without knowing if he would ever again honor with his presence my residence on this earth. on the st of august, , i broke the first and last of the ties which bound me to my native country; i broke them, at least so far as regards human connections, which can no longer exist between us; but i never lift my eyes towards heaven without thinking of my excellent friend, and i venture to believe also, that in his prayers he answers me. beyond this, fate has denied me all other correspondence with him. when the exile of my two friends became known, i was assailed by a whole host of chagrins of every kind; but a great misfortune renders us in a manner insensible to fresh troubles. it was reported that the minister of police had declared that he would have a soldier's guard mounted at the bottom of the avenue of coppet, to arrest whoever came to see me. the prefect of geneva, who was instructed, by order of the emperor he said, to annul me (that was his expression), never missed an opportunity of insinuating, or even declaring publicly, that no one who had any thing either to hope or fear from the government ought to venture near me. m. de saint-priest, formerly minister of louis xvi. and the colleague of my father, honored me with his affection; his daughters who dreaded, and with reason, that he might be sent from geneva, united their entreaties with mine that he would abstain from visiting me. notwithstanding, in the middle of winter, at the age of seventy-eight, he was banished not only from geneva, but from switzerland; for it is fully admitted, as has been seen in my own case, that the emperor can banish from switzerland as well as from france; and when any objections are made to the french agents, on the score of being in a foreign country, whose independence is recognised, they shrug up their shoulders, as if you were wearying them with metaphysical quibbles. and really it is a perfect quibble to wish to distinguish in europe anything but prefect-kings, and prefects receiving their orders directly from the emperor of france. if there is any difference between the soi-disant allied countries and the french provinces, it is that the first are rather worse treated. there remains in france a certain recollection of having been called the great nation, which sometimes obliges the emperor to be measured in his proceedings; it was so at least, but every day even that becomes less necessary. the motive assigned for the banishment of m. de saint-priest was, that he had not induced his sons to abandon the service of russia. his sons had, during the emigration, met with the most generous reception in russia; they had there been promoted, their intrepid courage had there been properly rewarded; they were covered with wounds, they were distinguished among the first for their military talents; the eldest was now more than thirty years of age. how was it possible for a father to ask that the existence of his sons, thus established, should be sacrificed to the honor of coming to place themselves en surveillance on the french territory? for that was the enviable lot which was reserved for them. it was a source of melancholy satisfaction to me, that i had not seen m. de saint-priest for four months previous to his banishment; had it not been for that, no one would have doubted that it was i who had infected him with the contagion of my disgrace. not only frenchmen, but foreigners, were apprised that they must not go to my house. the prefect kept upon the watch to prevent even old friends from seeing me. one day, among others, he deprived me, by his official vigilance, of the society of a german gentleman, whose conversation was extremely agreeable to me, and i could not help telling him, on this occasion, that he might have spared himself this extraordinary degree of persecution. "how!" replied he, "it was to do you a service that i acted in this manner; i made your friend sensible that he would compromise you by going to see you." i could not refrain from a smile at this ingenious argument. "yes," continued he with the most perfect gravity, "the emperor, seeing you preferred to himself, would be displeased with you for it." "so that" i replied, "the emperor expects that my private friends, and shortly, perhaps, my own children, should forsake me to please him; that seems to me rather too much. besides, i do not well see how a person in my situation can be compromised; and what you say reminds me of a revolutionist who was applied to, in the times of terror, to use his endeavours to save one of his friends from the scaffold. i am afraid, said he, that my speaking in his favor would only injure him." the prefect smiled at my quotation, but continued that train of reasoning, which, backed as it is with four hundred thousand bayonets, always appears the soundest. a man at geneva said to me, "do not you think that the prefect declares his opinion with a great deal of frankness?" "yes," i replied, "he says with sincerity that he is devoted to the man of power; he says with courage that he is of the strongest side; i am not exactly sensible of the merit of such an avowal." several independent ladies at geneva continued to show me marks of the greatest kindness, of which i shall always retain a deep recollection. but even to the clerks in the custom houses, regarded themselves as in a state of diplomacy with me; and from prefects to sub-prefects, and from the cousins of one and the other, a profound terror would have seized them all, if i had not spared them, as much as was in my power, the anxiety of paying or not paying a visit. every courier brought reports of other friends of mine being exiled from paris, for having kept up connections with me; it became a matter of strict duty for me to avoid seeing a single frenchman of the least note; and very often i was even apprehensive of injuring persons in the country where i was living, whose courageous friendship never failed itself towards me. i felt two opposite sensations, and both, i believe, equally natural; melancholy at being forsaken, and cruel anxiety for those who showed attachment to me. it is difficult to conceive a situation in life more painful at every moment; for the space of nearly two years that i endured it, i may say truly that i never once saw the day return without a feeling of desolation at having to support the existence which that day renewed. but why should not you leave it then? will be said, and was said incessantly to me from all quarters. a man whom i ought not to name*, but who i trust knows how much i esteem the elevation of his character and conduct, said to me: "if you remain, he will treat you as elizabeth did mary stuart:--nineteen years of misery, and the catastrophe at last." another person, witty but unguarded in his expressions, wrote to me, that it was dishonorable to remain after so much ill-treatment. i had no need of these recommendations to wish, passionately wish, to depart; from the moment that i could no longer see my friends, that i was only a burden to my children's existence, was it not time to determine? the prefect, however, repeated in every possible way, that if i went off, i should be seized; that at vienna, as well as at berlin, i should be reclaimed; and that i could not make the least preparation for departure without his being informed of it; for he knew, he said, every thing that passed in my house. in that respect he was a boaster, and, as the event has proved, exhibited mere fatuity in matters of espionnage. but who would not have been terrified at the tone of assurance with which he told all my friends that i could not move a step without being seized by the gendarmes! * count elzearn de sabran. chapter . departure from coppet. i passed eight months in a state i cannot describe, every day making a trial of my courage, and every day shrinking at the idea of a prison. all the world certainly fears it; but my imagination has such a dread of solitude, my friends are so necessary to me, to support and animate me, and to turn my attention to a new perspective when i sink under the intensity of painful sensations, that never has death presented itself to me under such terrible features as a prisoner a dungeon, where i might remain for years without ever hearing a friendly voice. i have been told that one of the spaniards who defended saragossa with the most astonishing intrepidity, utters the most dreadful shrieks in the tower at vincennes, where he is kept confined; so much does this frightful solitude affect even the most energetic minds! besides, i could not disguise from myself that i was not courageous; i have a bold imagination, but a timid character, and all kinds of perils appear to me like phantoms. the species of talent which i possess brings images to me with such living freshness, that if the beauties of nature are improved by it, dangers are made more dreadful. sometimes i was afraid of a prison, sometimes of robbers, if i was obliged to go through turkey, in the event of russia being shut against me by political combinations: sometimes also the immense sea which i must cross between constantinople and london, filled me with terror for my daughter and myself. nevertheless i had always the wish to depart; an inward feeling of boldness excited me to it; but i might say, like a well known frenchman, "i tremble at the dangers to which my courage is about to expose me." in truth, what adds to the horrible barbarity of persecuting females, is, that their nature is both irritable and weak; they suffer more acutely from trouble, and are less capable of the strength required to escape from it. i was also affected by another kind of terror: i was afraid that the moment the emperor knew of my departure, he would insert in the newspapers one of those articles which he knows so well how to dictate, when he wishes to commit moral assassination. a senator told me one day, that napoleon was the best journalist he ever knew; and certainly if this expression meant to designate the art of defaming individuals and nations, he possesses it in the highest degree. nations are not affected by it; but he has acquired in the revolutionary times he has passed through, a certain tact in calumnies suitable to vulgar comprehension, which makes him find the expressions best adapted for circulation among those whose wit is confined to repeating the phrases published by the government for their use. if the moniteur accused any one of robbing on the highway, no french, german, or italian journal could admit his justification. it is almost impossible to represent to one's self what a man is, at the head of a million of soldiers, and possessed of ten millions of revenue, having all the prisons of europe at his disposal, with the kings for his gaolers, and using the press as his mouth-piece, at a time when people have hardly the intimacy of friendship to make a reply; finally, with the ability of turning misfortune into ridicule: execrable power, whose ironical enjoyment is the last insult which the infernal genii can make the human race endure! whatever independence of character one had, i believe that no one could refrain from shuddering at the idea of having such power directed against one's self; at least i confess having felt this movement very strongly; and in spite of the melancholy of my situation, i frequently said to myself, that a roof for shelter, a table for sustenance, and a garden for exercise, formed a lot with which one must learn to be contented; but even this lot, such as it was, no one could be certain of retaining in peace; a word might escape, a word might be repeated, and this man, whose power was continually on the increase, to what a point might he not at last be irritated? when the sun shone brightly, my courage returned; but when the sky was covered with clouds, travelling terrified me, and i discovered in myself a taste for indolent pursuits, foreign to my nature, but which fear had given birth to; physical happiness appeared to me then greater than i had previously regarded it, and every sort of exertion alarmed me. my health also, cruelly affected by so many troubles, weakened the energy of my character, so that during this period i put the patience of my friends to a most severe test, by an eternal discussion of the plans in deliberation, and overwhelming them with my uncertainties. i tried a second time to obtain a passport for america; they made me wait till the middle of winter before they gave me the answer i required, which terminated in a refusal. i then offered to enter into an engagement never to print any thing upon any subject, not even a bouquet to iris, provided i was allowed to live at rome; i had the vanity to remind them that it was the author of corinna who asked permission to go and live in italy. doubtless the minister of police had never found a similar motive inscribed upon his registers, and the air of the south, which was so necessary to my health, was mercilessly refused me. they never ceased declaring to me that my whole life should be spent in the circle of two leagues, which separates coppet from geneva. if i remained, i must separate myself from my sons, who were of an age to seek a profession; and if my daughter shared my fortune, i imposed upon her the most melancholy perspective. the city of geneva, which has preserved such noble traces of liberty, was, notwithstanding, gradually allowing herself to be gained over by the interests which connected her with the distributors of places in france. every day the number of persons with whom i could be in intelligence diminished; and all my feelings became a weight upon my soul, in place of being a source of life. there was an end of my talents, of my happiness, of my existence, for it is frightful to be of no service to one's children, and to be the cause of injuring one's friends. finally, the news i received, announced to me from all quarters the formidable preparations of the emperor: it was evident that he wished first to make himself master of the ports of the baltic by the destruction of russia, and that afterwards he reckoned on making use of the wrecks of that power to lead them against constantinople: and his subsequent intention was to make that the point of starting for the conquest of asia and africa. a short time before he left paris, he had said, "i am tired of this old europe." and in truth she is no longer sufficient for the activity of her master. the last outlets of the continent might be closed from one moment to another, and i was about to find myself in europe as in a garrisoned town, where all the gates are guarded by military. i determined therefore on going off, while there yet remained one means of getting to england, and that means the tour of the whole of europe. i fixed the th of may for my departure, the preparations for which had been arranged long before-hand in the most profound secrecy. on the eve of that day, my strength abandoned me entirely, and for a moment i almost persuaded myself that such a degree of terror as i felt could only proceed from the consciousness of meditating a bad action. sometimes i consulted all sort of presages in the most foolish manner; at others, which was much wiser, i interrogated my friends and myself on the morality of my resolution. it appears to me that the part of resignation in all things may be the most religious, and i am not surprised that pious men should have gone so far as to feel a sort of scruple about resolutions proceeding from free will. necessity appears to bear a sort of divine character, while man's resolution may be connected with his pride. it is certain, however, that none of our faculties have been given us in vain, and that of deciding for one's self has also its use. on another side, all persons of mediocre intellect are continually astonished that talent has different desires from theirs. when it is successful, all the world might do the same; but when it is productive of trouble, when it excites to stepping out of the common track, these same people regard it no longer but as a disease, and almost as a crime. i heard continually buzzing about me the commonplaces with which the world suffers itself to be led: "has not she plenty of money? can she not live well and sleep well in a good house?" some persons of a higher cast felt that i had not even the certainty of my sad situation, and that it might get worse, without ever getting better. but the atmosphere which surrounded me counselled repose, because, for the last six months i had not been assailed by any new persecution, and because men always believe that what is, is what will be. it was in the midst of all these dispiriting circumstances that i was called upon to take one of the strongest resolutions which can occur in the private life of a female. my servants, with the exception of two confidential persons, were entirely ignorant of my secret; the greatest part of those who visited me had not the least idea of it, and by a single action, i was going to make an entire change in my own life and that of my family. torn to pieces by uncertainty, i wandered over the park of coppet; i seated myself in all the places where my father had been accustomed to repose himself and contemplate nature; i regarded once more these same beauties of water and verdure which we had so often admired together. i bid them adieu, and recommended myself to their sweet influence. the monument which encloses the ashes of my father and my mother, and in which, if the good god permits, mine also will be deposited, was one of the principal causes of the regret i felt at banishing myself from the place of my residence; but i found almost always on approaching it, a sort of strength which appeared to me to come from on high. i passed an hour in prayer before that iron gate which inclosed the mortal remains of the noblest of human beings, and there, my soul was convinced of the necessity of departure. i recalled the famous verses of claudian*, in which he expresses the kind of doubt which arises in the most religious minds when they see the earth abandoned to the wicked, and the destiny of mortals as it were floating at the mercy of chance. i felt that i had no longer the strength necessary to feed the enthusiasm which developed in me whatever good qualities i possessed, and that i must listen to the voice of those of similar sentiments with myself, for the purpose of strengthening my confidence in my own resources, and preserving that self-respect which my father had instilled into me. in this state of anxiety, i invoked several times the memory of my father, of that man, the fenelon of politics, whose genius was in every thing opposed to that of bonaparte; and genius he certainly had, for it requires at least as much of that to put one's self in harmony with heaven, as to invoke to one's aid all the instruments which are let loose by the absence of laws divine and human. i went once more to look at my father's study, where his easy chair, his table, and his papers, still remained in their old situation; i embraced each venerated mark, i took his cloak which till then i had ordered to be left upon his chair, and carried it away with me, that i might wrap myself in it, if the messenger of death approached me. when these adieus were terminated, i avoided as much as i could any other leave-takings, which affected me too much, and wrote to the friends whom i quitted, taking care that my letters should not reach them until several days after my departure. * saepe mihi dubiam traxitisententia mentem, curarent superi terras, an nullus inesset rector, et incerto fluerent mortalia casu. abstulit hunc tandem rufini poena tumultum, absolvitque deos. jam non ad culmina rerum injustos crevisse queror; tolluntur in altum ut lapsu graviore raent. the next day, saturday the rd of may, , at two o'clock in the afternoon, i got into my carriage, saying that i should return to dinner. i took no packet whatever with me; i had my fan in my hand, and my daughter hers; only my son and mr. rocca carried in their pockets what was necessary for some days journey. in descending the avenue of coppet, in thus quitting that chateau which had become to me like an old and valued friend, i was ready to faint: my son took my hand, and said, "my dear mother, think that you are setting out for england*." that word revived my spirits: i was still, however, at nearly two thousand leagues distance from that goal, to which the usual road would have so speedily conducted me: but every step brought me at least something nearer to it. when i had proceeded a few leagues, i sent back one of my servants to apprize my establishment that i should not return until the next day, and i continued travelling night and day as far as a farmhouse beyond berne, where i had fixed to meet mr. schlegel, who was so good as to offer to accompany me; there also i had to leave my eldest son, who had been educated, up to the age of fourteen, by the example of my father, whose features he reminds one of. a second time all my courage abandoned me; that switzerland, still so tranquil and always so beautiful, her inhabitants, who know how to be free by their virtues, even though they have lost their political independence: the whole country detained me: it seemed to tell me not to quit it. it was still time to return: i had not yet made an irreparable step. although the prefect had thought proper to interdict me from travelling in switzerland, i saw clearly that it was only from the fear of my going beyond it. finally, i had not yet crossed the barrier which left me no possibility of returning; the imagination feels a difficulty in supporting this idea. on the other hand, there was also something irreparable in the resolution of remaining; for after that moment, i felt, and the event has proved the feeling correct, that i could no longer escape. besides, there is an indescribable sort of shame in recommencing such solemn farewells, and one can scarcely resuscitate for one's friends more than once. i know not what would have become of me, if this uncertainty, even at the very moment of action, had lasted much longer; for my head was quite confused with it. my children decided me, and especially my daughter, then scarcely fourteen years old. i committed myself, in a manner, to her, as if the voice of god had made itself be heard by the mouth of a child*. * england was then the hope of all who suffered for the cause of liberty; how comes it, that after the victory, her ministers have so cruelly deceived the expectation of europe? (note by the editor.) my son took his leave, and after he was out of my sight, i could say, like lord russel: the bitterness of death is past. i got into my carriage with my daughter: uncertainty once terminated, i collected all my strength within myself, and i found sufficient of that for action which had altogether failed me for deliberation. note by the editor: * it was but a trifle to have succeeded in quitting coppet, by deceiving* the vigilance of the prefect of geneva; it was also necessary to obtain passports for the purpose of going through austria, and that these passports should be under a name which would attract no attention from the different polices which then divided germany. my mother entrusted me with this commission, and the emotion which i experienced from it will never cease to be present to my thoughts. it was undoubtedly a decisive step; if the passports were refused, my mother sunk again into a much more cruel situation; her plans were known; flight was thenceforward become impracticable, and the rigors of her exile would have every day been more intolerable. i thought i could not do better than to address myself directly to the austrian minister, with that confidence in the feelings of his equals which is the first movement of every honest man. m. de schraut made no hesitation in granting me the so much desired passports, and i hope he will allow me to express in this place the gratitude which i still retain to him for them. at a period when europe was still bending under the yoke of napoleon, during which the persecution directed against my mother estranged from her persons who probably owed to her courageous friendship the preservation of their fortunes, or their lives, i was not surprised, but i was most sensibly affected by the generous proceeding of the austrian minister. i left my mother to return to coppet, to which the interests of her fortune recalled me; and some days afterwards, my brother, of whom a cruel death has deprived us almost at the moment of entrance into his career set off to rejoin my mother at vienna with her servants and travelling carriage. it was only this second departure which gave the hint to the police of the prefect of the leman: so true it is, that to the other qualities of espionnage we must still add stupidity. fortunately my mother was already far beyond the reach of the gendarmes, and she could continue the journey of which the narrative follows. (en of note by the editor). chapter . passage through austria;-- . in this manner, after ten years of continually increasing persecutions, first sent away from paris, then banished into switzerland, afterwards confined to my own chateau, and at last condemned to the dreadful punishment of never seeing my friends, and of being the cause of their banishment: in this manner was i obliged to quit, as a fugitive, two countries, france and switzerland, by order of a man less french than myself: for i was born on the borders of that seine where his tyranny alone naturalizes him. the air of this fine country is not a native air to him: can he then comprehend the pain of being banished from it, he who considers this fertile country only as the instrument of his victories? where is his country? it is the earth which is subject to him. his fellow citizens? they are the slaves who obey his orders. he complained one day of not having had under his command, like tamerlane, nations to whom reasoning was unknown. i imagine that by this time he is satisfied with europeans: their manners, like their armies, now bear a sufficient resemblance to those of tartars. i had nothing to fear in switzerland, as i could always prove that i had a right to be there; but to leave it, i had only a foreign passport: i must go through one of the confederated states, and if any french agent had required the government of bavaria to hinder me from passing, who does not know with what regret, but at the same time, with what obedience it would have executed the orders thus received? i entered into the tyrol with a great respect for that country, which had fought from attachment to its ancient masters, but with a great contempt for such of the austrian ministers as had advised the abandonment of men compromised by their attachment to their sovereign. it is said that a subaltern diplomatist, head of the spy department in austria, thought proper one day, during the war, to maintain at the emperor's table, that the tyrolese should be abandoned: m. de h., a gentleman of the tyrol, counsellor of state in the austrian service, who in his actions and writings has exhibited the courage of a warrior, and the talents of an historian, replied to these unworthy observations with the contempt they deserved: the emperor signified his entire approbation to m. de h., and showed by that at least that his private feelings were strangers to the political conduct which he was made to adopt. thus it is that the greater part of the european sovereigns, at the moment of bonaparte making himself master of france, who were extremely upright persons as individuals, were already become mere cyphers as kings, as the government of their states was entirely committed to circumstances and to their ministers. the aspect of the tyrol reminds one of switzerland: there is not, however, so much vigour and originality in the landscape, nor have the villages the same appearance of plenty; it is in short a fine country, which has been wisely governed, but never been free; and it is only as a mountaineer people, that it has shown itself capable of resistance. very few instances of remarkable men can be mentioned from the tyrol: first, the austrian government is scarcely fit to develope genius; and, besides, the tyrol, by its manners as well as by its geographical position, should have formed a part of the swiss confederation: its incorporation with the austrian monarchy not being conformable to its nature, it has only developed by that union the noble qualities of mountaineers, courage and fidelity. the postilion who drove us showed us a rock on which the emperor maximilian, grandfather of charles the fifth, had nearly perished: the ardor of the chace had stimulated him to such a degree, that he had followed the chamois to heights from which it was impossible to descend. this tradition is still popular in the country, so necessary to nations is the admiration of the past. the memory of the last war was still quite alive in the bosoms of the people; the peasants showed us the summits of mountains on which they had entrenched themselves: their imagination delighted in retracing the effect of their fine warlike music, when it echoed from the tops of the hills into the vallies. when we were shown the palace of the prince-royal of bavaria, at inspruck, they told us that hofer, the courageous peasant and head of the insurrection, had lived there; they gave us an instance of the intrepidity shown by a female, when the french entered into her chateau: in short, every thing displayed in them the desire of being a nation, much more than personal attachment to the house of austria. in one of the churches at inspruck is the famous tomb of maximilian. i went to see it, flattering myself with the certainty of not being recognized by any person, in a place remote from the capitals where the french agents reside. the figure of maximilian in bronze, is kneeling upon a sarcophagus, in the body of the church, and thirty statues of the same metal ranged on each side of the sanctuary represent the relations and ancestors of the emperor. so much past grandeur, so much of the ambition formidable in its day, collected in a family meeting round a tomb, formed a spectacle which led one to profound reflection: there you saw philip the good, charles the rash, and mary of bergundy; and in the midst of these historical personages dietrich of berne, a fabulous hero: the closed visor concealed the countenances of the knights, but when this visor was lifted up a brazen countenance appeared under a helmet of brass, and the features of the knight were of bronze, like his armour. the visor of dietrich of berne is the only one which cannot be lifted up, the artist meaning in that manner to signify the mysterious veil which covers the history of this warrior, from inspruck i had to pass by saltzburg, from thence to reach the austrian frontiers. it seemed as if all my anxieties would be at an end, when i was once entered on the territory of that monarchy which i had known so secure and so good. but the moment which i most dreaded was the passage from bavaria to austria, for it was there that a courier might have preceded me, to forbid my being allowed to pass. in spite of this apprehension, i had not been very expeditious, for my health, which had been seriously injured by all i had suffered, did not allow me to travel by night. i have often felt, during this journey, that the greatest terror cannot overcome a sort of physical depression, which makes one dread fatigue more than death. i flattered myself, however, with arriving without any obstacle, and already my fear was dissipated on approaching the object which i thought secured, when on our entrance into the inn at saltzburg, a man came up to mr. schlegel who accompanied me, and told him in german, that a french courier had been to inquire after a carriage coming from inspruck with a lady and a young girl, and that he had left word he would return to get intelligence of them. i lost not a word of what the innkeeper mentioned, and became pale with terror. mr. schlegel also was alarmed on my account: he made some farther inquiries, all of which made it certain, that this was a french courier, that he came from munich, that he had been as far as the austrian frontier to wait for me, and not finding me there, that he had returned to meet me. nothing appeared more clear: this was just what i had dreaded before my departure, and during the journey. it was impossible for me now to escape, as this courier, who it was said was already at the post-house, would necessarily overtake me. i determined on the spur of the moment to leave my carriage, my daughter, and mr. schlegel at the inn, and to go alone and on foot into the streets of the town, and take the chance' of entering the first house whose master or mistress had a physiognomy that pleased me. i would obtain of them an asylum for a few days; during this time, my daughter and mr. schlegel might say that they were going to rejoin me in austria, and i should leave salzburg afterwards in the disguise of a country woman. hazardous in the extreme as this resource appeared, no other remained to me, and i was preparing for the task, in fear and trembling, when who should enter my apartment but this so much dreaded courier, who was no other than mr. rocca. after having accompanied me the first day of my journey, he returned to geneva to terminate some business, and now came to rejoin me; he had passed himself off as a french courier, in order to take advantage of the terror which the name inspires, particularly to the allies of france, and to obtain horses more quickly. he had taken the munich road, and had hurried on as far as the austrian frontier, to make himself sure that no one had preceded or announced me. he returned to meet me, to tell me that i had nothing to fear, and to get upon the box of my carriage as we passed that frontier, which appeared to me the most dreadful, but also the last of my dangers. in this manner my cruel apprehension was changed into a most pleasing sentiment of gratefulness and security. we walked about the town of salzburg, which contains many noble edifices, but like the greater part of the ecclesiastical principalities of germany, now presents a most dreary aspect. the tranquil resources of that kind of government have terminated with it. the convents also were preservers; one is struck with the number of establishments and edifices which have been erected by bachelor masters in their residence: all these peaceable sovereigns have benefited their people. an archbishop of salzburg in the last century has cut a road which is prolonged for several hundred paces under a mountain, like the grotto of pausilippo at naples: on the front of the entrance gate there is a bust of the archbishop, under which is an inscription: tesaxa loquuntur. (the stones speak of thee). there is a degree of grandeur in this inscription. i entered at last into that austria, which four years before i had seen so happy; already i was struck by a sensible change, produced by the depreciation of paper-money, and the variations of every kind which the uncertainty of the financial measures had introduced into its value. nothing demoralizes a people so much as these continual fluctuations which make every man a broker, and hold out to the working classes a means of getting money by sharping, instead of by their labour. i no longer found in the people the same probity which had struck me four years before: this paper-money sets the imagination at work with the hope of rapid and easy gains; and the hazardous chances overturn the gradual and certain existence which is the basis of the honesty of the middling classes. during my residence in austria, a man was hanged for forging notes at the very moment when the government had reduced the value of the old ones; he called out, on his way to execution that it was not he who had robbed, but the state. and, in truth, it is impossible to make the common people comprehend that it is just to punish them for having speculated in their own affairs, in the same way as the government had done in its own. but this government was the ally of the french government, and doubly its ally, as its monarch was the very patient father-in-law of a very terrible son-in-law. what resources therefore could remain to him? the marriage of his daughter had been the means of liberating him from two millions of contributions-at most; the rest had been required with the kind of justice of which the other is so easily capable, and which consists in treating his friends and his enemies alike: from this proceeded the penury of the treasury. another misfortune also resulted from the last war, and especially from the last peace: the inutility of the generous feeling which had illustrated the austrian arms in the battles of essling and wagram, had cooled the national attachment to the sovereign, which had formerly been very strong. the same thing has happened to all the sovereigns who have treated with the emperor napoleon; he has made use of them as receivers to levy imposts on his account; he has forced them to squeeze their subjects to pay him the taxes he demanded; and when it has suited him to dethrone these sovereigns, the people, previously alienated from them by the very wrongs they had committed in obedience to the emperor, have not raised an arm to defend them against him. the emperor napoleon has the art of making countries said to be at peace, so singularly miserable that any change is agreeable to them, and having been once compelled to give men and money to france, they scarcely feel the inconvenience of being wholly united to it. they are wrong, however, for any thing is better than to lose the name of a nation, and as the miseries of europe are caused by one man, care should be taken to preserve what may be restored when he is no more. before i reached vienna, as i waited for my second son, who was to rejoin me with my servants and baggage, i stopped a day at molk, that celebrated abbey, placed upon an eminence, from which napoleon had contemplated the various windings of the danube, and praised the beauty of the country upon which he was going to pounce with his armies. he frequently amuses himself in this manner in making poetical pieces on the beauties of nature, which he is about to ravage, and upon the effects of war, with which he is going to overwhelm mankind. after all, he is in the right to amuse himself in all ways, at the expense of the human race, which tolerates his existence. man is only arrested in the career of evil by obstacles or remorse; no one has yet opposed to napoleon the one, and he has very easily rid himself of the other. for me, who, solitary, followed his footsteps on the terrace from which the country could be seen to a great distance, i admired its fertility, and felt astonished at seeing how soon the bounty of heaven repairs the disasters occasioned by man. it is only moral riches which disappear altogether, or are at least lost for centuries. chapter . residence at vienna. i arrived at vienna on the th of june, very fortunately just two hours before the departure of a courier whom count stackelberg, the russian ambassador, was dispatching to wilna, where the emperor alexander then was. m. de stackelberg, who behaved to me with that noble delicacy which is so prominent a trait in his character, wrote by this courier for my passport, and assured me that within three weeks i might reckon on having an answer. it then became a question where i was to pass these three weeks; my austrian friends, who had given me the most amiable reception, assured me that i might remain at vienna without the least fear. the court was then at dresden, at the great meeting of all the german princes, who came to present their homage to the emperor of france. napoleon had stopped at dresden under the pretext of still negociating there to avoid the war with russia, in other words, to obtain by his policy the same result as he could by his arms. he would not at first admit the king of prussia to his banquet at dresden; he knew too well what repugnance the heart of that unfortunate monarch must have to what he conceives himself obliged to do. it is said that m. de metternich obtained this humiliating favor for him. m. de hardenberg, who accompanied him, made the remark to the emperor napoleon, that prussia had paid one third more than the promised contributions. the emperor turning his back to him, replied: "an apothecary's bill,"-- for he has a secret pleasure in making use of vulgar expressions, the more to humble those who are the objects of it. he assumed a sufficient degree of coquetry in his way of living with the emperor and empress of austria as it was of importance to him that the austrian government should take an active part in his war with russia. in a conversation with m. de metternich, i have been assured that he said, "you see very well that i can never have the least interest in diminishing the power of austria, as it now exists; for, first of all, it suits me that my father-in-law should be a prince of great consideration: besides, i have more confidence in the old than in the new dynasties. has not general bernadotte already taken the side of making peace with england?" and in fact, the prince royal of sweden, as will be seen in the sequel, had courageously declared himself for the interests of the country which he governed. the emperor of france having left dresden to review his armies, the empress went to spend some time at prague with her own family. napoleon himself, at his departure, regulated the etiquette that was to subsist between the father and the daughter, and one may conjecture that it was not very easy, as he loves etiquette almost as much from suspicion as from vanity, in other words, as a means of isolating individuals among themselves, under the pretence of marking the distinction of their ranks. the first ten days, which i passed at vienna, passed unclouded, and i was delighted at thus finding myself again in a pleasing society, whose manner of thinking corresponded with my own; for the public opinion was unfavorable to the alliance with napoleon, and the government had concluded it without being supported by the national assent. in fact, how could a war, the ostensible object of which was the re-establishment of poland, be undertaken by the power which had contributed to the partition, and which still retained in its hands with greater obstinacy than ever the third of that same poland? thirty thousand men were sent by the austrian government to restore the confederation of poland at warsaw, and nearly as many spies were attached to the movements of the poles in gallicia, who wished to have deputies at this confederation. the austrian government was therefore obliged to speak against the poles, at the very time that it was acting in their cause, and to say to her subjects of gallicia: "i forbid you to be of the opinion which i support." what metaphysics! they would be found very intricate, if fear did not explain every thing. the poles are the only nation, of those which bonaparte drags after him, that create any interest. i believe they know as well as we do, that they are only the pretence for the war, and that the emperor does not care a fig for their independence. he has not even been able to refrain from expressing several times to the emperor alexander his disdain for poland, solely because she wishes to be free: but it suits his purposes to put her in the van against russia, and the poles avail themselves of that circumstance to restore their national independence. i know not if they will succeed, for it is with difficulty that despotism ever gives liberty, and what they will regain in their own cause, if successful, they will lose in the cause of europe. they will be poles, but poles as much enslaved as the three nations upon whom they will no longer depend. be that as it may, the poles are the only europeans who can serve under the banners of napoleon without blushing. the princes of the rhenish confederation think to find their interest in it by the loss of their honor; but austria by a combination truly remarkable, at once sacrifices in it both her honor and her interest. the emperor napoleon wished the archduke charles to take the command of these thirty thousand men; but the archduke fortunately saved himself from this insult; and when i saw him walking alone in a brown coat, in the alleys of the prater, i recovered all my old respect for him. the same subaltern diplomatist who had so unworthily advised the abandonment of the tyrolese, was entrusted, during the absence of prince metternich from vienna, with the police of foreigners, and he acquitted himself as you shall see. the first few days he allowed me to remain undisturbed; i had formerly passed a winter at vienna, and been very well received by the emperor and empress, and by the whole court: it was, therefore, rather awkward to tell me that this time i would not be received, because i was in disgrace with the emperor napoleon; particularly as this disgrace was partly occasioned by the praises which i had bestowed in my book on the morality and literary genius of the germans. but what was much more awkward was to run the risk of giving the least umbrage to a power, to which it must be confessed, they might very well sacrifice me, after all they had already done for it. i suppose, therefore, that after i had been some days at vienna, the chief of the police received some more exact information of the nature of my situation with bonaparte, and in consequence thought it necessary to watch me; and this was his method of inspection. he placed spies at my gate in the street, who followed me on foot, when my carriage drove slowly, and got into cabriolets in order not to lose sight of me, when i took an airing into the country. this method of exercising the police appeared to me to unite both the french machiavelism, and german clumsiness. the austrians have persuaded themselves that they have been beat, because they had not so much wit as the french, and that the wit of the french consists in their police system; in consequence they have set about making a methodical espionage, organizing that ostensibly which should it all events be concealed; and although destined by nature to be very honest people, they have made it a kind of duty to imitate a state which unites the extremes of jacobinism and despotism. i could not help, however, being uneasy at this espionnage, when the least common sense was sufficient to see that flight was now my only object. they tried to alarm me about the arrival of my russian passport; they pretended that i might have to wait several months for it and that then the war would prevent me from passing. it was easy for me to judge that i could not remain at vienna after the french ambassador returned to it; what would then become of me? i intreated m. de stackelberg to give me some means of passing by odessa, to repair to constantinople. but odessa being russian, a passport from petersburg was equally necessary to go there; there therefore remained no road open but the direct one to turkey through hungary; and this road passing on the borders of servia was subject to a thousand dangers. i might still reach the port of salonica by going across the interior of greece; the archduke francis had taken this road to get into sardinia; but the archduke francis is a good horseman, and of that i was scarcely capable: still less could i think of exposing so young a person as my daughter to such a journey. i was obliged, therefore, although the idea was most painful to me, to determine on parting with her, and sending her by the way of denmark and sweden in the charge of persons in whom i could confide. i concluded at all hazards an agreement with an armenian to take me to constantinople. from thence i proposed to pass by greece, sicily, cadiz, and lisbon, and however hazardous was this voyage, it offered a fine perspective to the imagination. i addressed the office for foreign affairs, directed by a subaltern during the absence of m. de metternich, for a passport which would enable me to leave austria by hungary, or by gallicia, according as i might go to petersberg or to constantinople. i was told that i must make my election; that they could not give me a passport to go by two different frontiers, and that even to go to presburg, which is the first city of hungary, only six leagues from vienna, it was necessary to have an authority from the committee of the states. certainly i could not help thinking that europe, which was formerly so open to all travellers, is become, under the influence of the emperor napoleon, like a great net, in which you get entangled at every step. how many restraints and shackles there are upon the slightest movements! and can it be conceived that the unhappy governments which france oppresses, console themselves for it by making the miserable remains of power which has been left them, fall heavy in a thousand ways upon their subjects! chapter . departure from vienna. obliged to make my election, i decided at last for gallicia, which would conduct me to the country i preferred, namely, to russia. i flattered myself, that once at a distance from vienna, all these vexations, excited no doubt by the french government, would cease; and that at all events, i might, if it was necessary, quit gallicia, and regain bucharest by transylvania. the geography of europe, such as napoleon has constituted it, is but too well learned by misfortune; the turnings which i was obliged to take to avoid his power were already near two thousand leagues; and now at my departure even from vienna i was constrained to borrow the asiatic territory to escape from it. i departed, therefore, without having received my russian passport, hoping thereby to quiet the uneasiness which the subaltern police of vienna appeared to feel about the presence of a female who was in disgrace with the emperor napoleon. i requested one of my friends to rejoin me, by travelling night and day, as soon as the answer from russia arrived, and i proceeded on my road. i did very wrong in taking this step, for at vienna i was protected by my friends and by public opinion; i could there easily address myself to the emperor or to his prime minister: but once confined to a provincial town, i had only to do with the stupid wickedness of a subaltern, who wished to make a merit with the french government, of his conduct towards me; this was the method he took. i stopped for some days at brunn, the capital of moravia, where an english colonel, a mr. mills, was detained in exile; he was a man of the most perfect goodness and obliging manners, and according to the english expression, altogether inoffensive. he was made dreadfully miserable, without the least pretence or utility. but the austrian ministry is apparently persuaded that it will derive an air of strength from turning persecutor; its counsellors are not mistaken; and as was said by a man of wit, their manner of governing in matters of police, resembles the sentinels placed upon the half destroyed citadel of brunn,--they keep a strict guard round the ruins. scarcely had i arrived at brunn when all sorts of difficulties were started about my passports, and those of my companions. i asked permission to send my son to vienna, to give the necessary explanations upon these points. i was told that neither myself nor my son would be allowed to go one league backwards. i know not if the emperor, or m. de metternich were informed of all these absurd acts, but i encountered at brunn, in the agents of government, a dread of compromising themselves which appeared to me quite worthy of the present french regime; and it must even be admitted that when the french are afraid, they are more excusable, for under the emperor napoleon they run the risk of exile, imprisonment, or death. the governor of moravia, a man in other respects very estimable, informed me that i was ordered to go through gallicia as quickly as possible, and that i was forbid stopping more than twenty-four hours at lanzut, where i had the intention of going. lanzut is the estate of the princess lubomirska, the sister of prince adam czartorinski, marshal of the polish confederation, which the austrian troops were going to support. the princess lubomirska was herself generally respected from her personal character, and the liberal use which she made of her splendid fortune; besides, her attachment to the house of austria was conspicuous, and although a pole by birth, she had never participated in the spirit of opposition which has always been exhibited in poland to the austrian government. her nephew and niece, prince henry and the princess theresa, with whom i had the honor to be intimate, are both of them endowed with the most brilliant and amiable qualities; they might no doubt be supposed to entertain a strong attachment to their polish country, but it was then rather difficult to make a crime of this opinion, when the prince of schwarzenberg was sent at the head of thirty thousand men to fight for the restoration of poland. to what miserable shifts are those princes reduced, who are constantly told that they must yield to circumstances? it is proposing to them to govern with every wind. the successes of bonaparte excite the envy of the greater part of the governors of germany; they persuade themselves that they were beat because they were too honest, whereas it was because they had not been honest enough. if the germans had imitated the spaniards, if they had said:--whatever be the consequences, we will not bear a foreign yoke: they would still be a nation, and their princes would not be dangling, i do not say in the anti-chambers of the emperor napoleon, but in those of all the persons on whom a ray of his favor is fallen. the emperor of austria and his intelligent companion certainly preserve as much dignity as they can in their situation; but this situation is so artificial in itself, that it is impossible to give lustre to it. none of the actions of the austrian government in favor of french interests can be attributed to any thing but fear; and this new muse inspires very sorrowful strains. i tried to represent to the governor of moravia, that if i was thus hurried with so much politeness towards the frontier, i knew not what would become of me, having no russian passport, and that i should be obliged, from inability to go either forward or backward, to pass my life at brody, a frontier town between russia and austria, inhabited by jews, who have settled there to carry on the trade of carrying from the one empire to the other. "what you say is very true," replied the governor, "but here is my order." for some time past governments have found the art of inculcating that a civil agent is subject to the same discipline as a military officer; with the latter reflection is altogether forbidden, or at least rarely finds a place; but one would have some difficulty in making men responsible in the eye of the law, such as are all the magistrates of england, comprehend, that they are not allowed to have an opinion upon the order that is given them. and what is the consequence of this servile obedience? if it had only the head of the state for its object, it might still be considered proper in an absolute monarchy; but during the absence of that head, or his representative, a subaltern may abuse at his pleasure those measures of police, the infernal inventions of arbitrary governments, and of which real greatness will never make use. i departed for gallicia, and this time, i confess, i was completely depressed; the phantom of tyranny followed me every where; i saw those germans, whom i had known so upright, depraved by the fatal marriage, which seemed to have even altered the blood of the subjects, as it had done that of their sovereign. i thought that europe existed only beyond the seas, or the pyrenees, and i despaired of reaching an asylum to my inclination. the spectacle of gallicia was not of a kind to revive any hopes of the destiny of the human race. the austrians have not acquired the art of making themselves beloved by the foreign nations which are subject to them. during the period they were in possession of venice, the first thing they did was to put down the carnival, which had become in a manner an institution, so long a time had elapsed since the venetian carnival was talked of. the rudest people of the monarchy were selected to govern that gay city; no wonder therefore that the nations of the south should almost prefer being pillaged by the french to being governed by the austrians. the poles love their country as an unfortunate friend: the country is dull and monotonous, the people ignorant and lazy; they have always wished for liberty; they have never known how to acquire it. but the poles think that they can and may govern poland, and the feeling is very natural. the education however of the people is so much neglected, and all kind of industry is so foreign to them, that the jews have possessed themselves of the entire trade, and make the peasants sell them for a quantity of brandy the whole harvest of the approaching year. the distance between the nobility and the peasantry is so immense, the contrast between the luxury of the one, and the frightful misery of the other is so shocking, that it is probable the austrians have given them better laws than those which previously existed. but a proud people, and the poles are so even in their misery, does not wish to be humbled, even when they are benefited, and in that point the austrians have never failed. they have divided gallicia into circles, each of which is commanded by a german functionary; sometimes a person of distinction accepts this employment, but it is much more frequently a kind of brute, taken from the subaltern ranks, and who in virtue of his office commands in the most despotic manner the greatest noblemen of poland. the police, which in the present times has replaced the secret tribunal, authorizes the most oppressive measures. now let us only imagine what the police can be, namely, the most subtle and arbitrary power in the government, entrusted to the rude hands of the captain of a circle. at every post-house in gallicia there are to be seen three descriptions of persons who gather round travellers' carriages: the jew traders, the polish beggars, and the german spies. the country appears exclusively inhabited by these three classes of men. the beggars, with their long beards and ancient sarmatian costume, excite deep commiseration; it is very true that if they would work they need not be in that state; but i know not whether it is pride or laziness which makes them disdain the culture of the enslaved earth. you meet upon the high roads processions of men and women carrying the standard of the cross, and singing psalms; a profound expression of melancholy reigns upon their countenance: i have seen them, when not money, but food of a better sort than they had been accustomed to was given them, turn up their eyes to heaven with astonishment, as if they considered themselves unfit to enjoy its bounty. the custom of the common people in poland is to embrace the knees of the nobility when they meet them; you cannot stir a step in a village without having the women, children, and old men saluting you in this manner. in the midst of this spectacle of wretchedness you might see some men in shabby attire, who were spies upon misery: for that was the only object which could offer itself to their eyes. the captains of the circles refused passports to the polish noblemen, for fear they should see one another, or lest they should go to warsaw. they obliged these noblemen to appear before them every eight days, in order to certify their presence. the austrians thus proclaimed in all manner of ways that they knew they were detested in poland, and they separated their troops into two equal divisions: the first entrusted with supporting externally the interests of poland, and the second employed in the interior to prevent the poles from aiding the same cause. i do not believe that any country was ever more wretchedly governed than gallicia was at that time, at least under political considerations; and it was apparently to conceal this spectacle from general observation that so many difficulties were made in allowing a stranger to reside in, or even to pass through the country. i return to the manner in which the austrian police behaved to me to hasten my journey. in this road it is necessary to have your passport examined by each captain of a circle; and every third post you found one of the chief towns of the circle. they had put up placards in the police offices of all these towns that a strict eye must be kept on me as i passed through. if it was not for the singular impertinence of treating a female in this manner, and that a female who had been persecuted for doing justice to germany, one could not help laughing at the excess of stupidity which could publish in capital letters measures of police, the whole strength of which consists in their secrecy. it reminded me of m. de sartines, who had formerly proposed to give spies a livery. it is not that the director of all these absurdities is, as some say, devoid of understanding: but he has such a strong desire to please the french government, that he even seeks to do himself honor by his meannesses, as publickly as possible. this proclaimed inspection was executed with as much ingenuity as it was conceived: a corporal, or a clerk, or perhaps both together, came to look at my carriage, smoking their pipes, and when they had gone the round of it, they went their way without even deigning to tell me if there was any thing the matter with it; if they had done that, they would have been at least good for something. i made very slow progress to wait for the russian passport, now my only means of safety in the circumstances in which i was placed. one morning i turned out of my road to go and see a ruined castle, which belonged to the princess lubomirska. to get to it, i had to go over roads, of which, without having travelled in poland, it is impossible to form an idea. in the middle of a sort of desert which i was crossing alone with my son, a person on horseback saluted me in french; i wished to answer him, but he was already at a distance. i cannot express the effect which the sound of that dear language produced upon me, at a moment so cruel. ah! if the french were but once free, how one would love them! they would then be the first themselves to despise their allies. i descended into the court yard of this castle, which was entirely in ruins. the keeper, with his wife and children, came to meet me, and embraced my knees. i caused them to be informed by a bad interpreter, that i knew the princess lubomirska; that name was sufficient to inspire them with confidence; they had no doubt of the truth of what i said, although i travelled with a very shabby equipage. they introduced me into a sort of hall, which resembled a prison, and at the moment of my entrance, one of the women came into it to burn perfumes. they had neither white bread nor meat, but an exquisite hungarian wine, and every where the wrecks of magnificence stood by the side of the greatest misery. this contrast is of frequent recurrence in poland: there are no beds, even in houses fitted up with the most finished elegance. every thing appears sketched in this country, and nothing terminated in it; but what one can never sufficiently praise is the goodness of the people, and the generosity of the great: both are easily excited by all that is good and beautiful, and the agents whom austria sends there seem like wooden men in the midst of this flexible nation. at last my russian passport arrived, and i shall be grateful for it to the end of my life, so great was the pleasure it gave me. my friends at vienna had succeeded at the same time in dissipating the malignant influence of those who thought to please france by tormenting me. this time i flattered myself with being entirely sheltered from any farther trouble; but i forgot that the circular order to the captains of the circles to keep me under inspection, was not yet revoked, and that it was only direct from the ministry that i had the promise of having these ridiculous torments put an end to. i thought, however, that i might venture to follow my first plan, and stop at lanzut, that castle of the princess lubomirska, so famous in poland for the union of the most perfect taste and magnificence. i anticipated extreme pleasure from again seeing prince henry lubomirska, whose society, as well as that of his amiable lady, had made me pass at geneva many agreeable moments. i proposed to myself to remain there two days, and to continue my journey with great speed, as news came from all quarters that war was declared between france and russia. i don't quite see what there was in this plan of mine so dreadful to the tranquillity of austria; it was a most singular idea to be jealous of my connection with the poles, because they served under bonaparte. no doubt, and i repeat it, the poles cannot be confounded with the other nations who are tributary to france: it is frightful to be obliged to hope for liberty only from a despot, and to expect the independence of one's own nation only from the slavery of the rest of europe. but finally, in this polish cause, the austrian ministry was more to be suspected than i was, for it furnished troops to support it, while i only consecrated my poor forces to proclaim the justice of the cause of europe, then defended by russia. besides, the austrian ministry, in common with all the governments in alliance with bonaparte, has no longer any knowledge of what constitutes opinion, conscience, or affection: the one single idea which they retain, the inconsistency of their own conduct and the art with which napoleon's diplomacy has entangled them, is that of mere brute force; and to please that they do every thing. chapter . passage through poland. i arrived in the beginning of july at the chief town of the circle, in which lanzut is situated; my carriage stopped before the posthouse, and my son went, as usual, to have my passport examined. i was astonished, at the end of a quarter of an hour, not to see him return, and i requested m. schlegel to go and ascertain the cause of his delay. they both came back immediately, followed by a man whose countenance i shall never, during my life, forget: an affected smile, upon the most stupid features, gave the most disagreeable expression to his countenance. my son, almost beside himself, informed me that the captain of the circle had declared to him that i could not remain more than eight hours at lanzut, and that to secure my obedience to this order, one of his commissaries should follow me to the castle, should enter into it with me, and should not quit me until i had left it. my son had represented to this captain, that overcome as i was with fatigue, i required more than eight hours to repose myself, and that the sight of a commissary of police, in my weak state, might give me a very fatal shock. to all these representations the captain replied with a brutality which is quite peculiar to german subalterns; nowhere also do you meet with that obsequious respect for power which immediately succeeds to arrogance towards the weak. the mental movements of these men resemble the evolutions of a review day; they make a half turn to the right, and a half turn to the left, according to the word of command which is given to them. the commissary intrusted with the inspection of me, fatigued himself in bowing to the very ground, but would not in the least modify his charge. he got into a caleche, the horses of which followed me so close that they touched the hind wheels of my berline. the idea of entering, escorted in this manner, into the residence of an old friend, into a paradise of delight, where i had been feasting my ideas by anticipation, with spending several days; this idea i say made me so ill, that i could not get the better of it; joined to that also was, i believe, the irritation of finding at my heels this insolent spy, a very fit subject, certainly, to outwit, if i had had the desire, but who did his duty with an intolerable mixture of pedantry and rigor*: i was seized with a nervous attack in the middle of the road, and they were obliged to lift me out of my carriage, and lay me down on the side of the ditch. this wretched commissary fancied that this was an occasion to take compassion on me, and without getting out of his carriage himself, he sent his servant to find me a glass of water. i cannot express how angry i felt with myself for the weakness of my nerves; the compassion of this man was a last insult, which i would at least have wished to spare myself. he set off again at the same time that i did, and i made my entry, along with him, into the court yard of the castle of lanzut. prince henry, not in the least suspecting any thing of the kind, came to meet me with the most amiable gaiety; he was at first frightened at the paleness of my looks, but when i told him, which i did immediately, what sort of guest i had brought with me, from that moment his coolness, firmness, and friendship for me did not belie themselves for a moment. but can one conceive a state of things in which a commissary of police should plant himself at the table of a great nobleman like prince henry, or rather at that of any person whatever, without his consent? (note of the editor) * to explain how strong and well-founded was the anguish which my mother experienced at this point of her journey, i ought to mention that the attention of the austrian police was not then confined to her only. the description of m. rocca had been sent all along the road, with an order to arrest him in quality of his being a french officer; and although he had resigned his commission, and his wounds had incapacitated him from continuing his military service, there is no doubt, that if he had been delivered up to france, the forfeiture of his life would have been the consequence. he had therefore travelled alone, and under a borrowed name, and it was at lanzut that he had given my mother the rendezvous. having arrived there before her, and not in the least suspecting that she would be escorted by a commissary of police, he came out to meet her, full of joy and confidence. the danger to which he was thus, insensibly, exposing himself, transfixed my mother with terror, and she had barely time to give him a signal to return back; and had it not been for the generous presence of mind of a polish gentleman, who supplied m. rocca with the means of escaping, he would infallibly have been recognized and arrested by the commissary. ignorant of what might be the fate of her manuscript, under what circumstances, public or private, she might ever publish it, my mother felt herself under the necessity of entirely suppressing these details, to which i am at present allowed to give publicity. (end of note of the editor.) after supper this commissary came up to my son, and said to him, with that coaxing tone of voice which i particularly dislike, when it is used to say cutting words, "i ought, according to my orders, to pass the night in your mother's apartment, in order to be certain that she has no communication with any one; but from regard to her, i will not do it." "you may add also," said my son, "from regard to yourself, for if you should dare to put your foot in my mother's apartment during the night, i will throw you out of the window." "ah! monsieur le baron," replied the commissary, bowing lower than usual, because this threat had a false air of power which did not fail to affect him. he went to lay down, and the next day at breakfast, the prince's secretary managed him so well, by giving him plenty to eat and drink, that i might, i believe, have remained several hours longer, but i was ashamed at having been the occasion of such a scene in the house of my amiable host. i did not even allow myself time to examine those beautiful gardens, which remind us of the southern climate whose productions they offer, nor that house, which has been the asylum of persecuted french emigrants, and where the artists have sent the tribute of their talents in return for the services rendered them by the lady of the castle. the contrast between such delightful and striking impressions and the grief and indignation i felt, was intolerable; the recollection of lanzut, which i have so many reasons for loving, even now makes me shudder, when i think of it. i took my departure then from this residence, shedding bitter tears, and not knowing what else was in store for me during the fifty leagues i had yet to travel in the austrian territory. the commissary accompanied me to the borders of his circle, and when he took his leave, asked me if i was satisfied with him; the stupidity of the fellow quite disarmed my resentment. a peculiar feature in all this persecution, which formerly never entered into the character of the austrian government, is, that it is executed by its agents with as much rudeness as awkwardness: these ci-devant honest people carry into the base commissions with which they are entrusted the same scrupulous exactness that they formerly did into the good ones, and their limited conception of this new method of government, which was not known to them, makes them commit a hundred blunders, either from want of skill or clumsiness. it is like taking the club of hercules to kill a fly, and during this useless exertion the most important matters may escape them. on leaving the circle of lanzut, i still found as far as leopol, the capital of gallicia, grenadiers placed from post to post to make sure of my progress. i should have felt regret at making these brave fellows thus lose their time, had it not been for the thought that they were much better there, than with the unfortunate army delivered by austria to napoleon. on arriving at leopol, i found again ancient austria in the governor and commandant of the province, who both received me with the greatest politeness, and gave me, what i wished above every thing, an order for passing from austria into russia. such was the end of my residence in this monarchy, which i had formerly seen powerful, just and upright. her alliance with napoleon while it lasted, degraded her to the lowest rank among nations. history will doubtless not forget that she has shown herself very warlike in her long wars against france, and that her last effort to resist bonaparte was inspired by a national enthusiasm worthy of all praise; but the sovereign of this country, by yielding to his counsellors rather than to his own character, has destroyed for ever that enthusiasm, by checking its ebullition. the unfortunate men who perished on the plains of essling and wagram, that there might still be an austrian monarchy and a german people, could have hardly expected that their companions in arms would be fighting three years afterwards for the extension of bonaparte's empire to the borders of asia, and that there might not be in the whole of europe, even a desert, where the objects of his proscription, from kings to subjects, might find an asylum; for such is the object, and the sole object, of the war excited by france against russia. chapter . arrival in russia. one had hardly been accustomed to consider russia as the most free state in europe; but such is the weight of the yoke which the emperor of france has imposed upon all the continental states, that on arriving at last in a country where his tyranny can no longer make itself felt, you fancy yourself in a republic. it was on the th of july that i made my entrance into russia; this co-incidence with the anniversary of the first day of the revolution particularly struck me; and thus closed for me the circle of the history of france which had commenced on the th of july .* when the barrier which separates austria from russia was opened to let me pass, i made an oath never to set my foot in a country subjected in any degree to the emperor napoleon. will this oath ever allow me to revisit beautiful france? * (note by the editor) it was on the th of july, , that my mother was taken from us, and received into the bosom of god. what mind is there that would not be affected with religious emotion on meditating on the mysterious co-incidences which the destiny of the human race presents! (end of note by the editor.) the first person who received me in russia was a frenchman, who had formerly been a clerk in my father's bureaux; he talked to me of him with tears in his eyes, and that name thus pronounced appeared to me of happy augury. in fact, in that russian empire, so falsely termed barbarous, i have experienced none but noble and delightful impressions: may my gratitude draw down additional blessings on this people and their sovereign! i entered russia at the moment when the french army had already penetrated a considerable distance into the russian territory, and yet no restraint or vexation of any kind impeded for a moment the progress of a foreign traveller; neither i, nor my companions, knew a syllable of russian; we only spoke french, the language of the enemies who were ravaging the empire: i had not even with me, by a succession of disagreeable chances, a single servant who could speak russian, and had it not been for a german physician (dr. renner) who in the most handsome manner volunteered his services as our interpreter as far as moscow, we should have justly merited the epithet of deaf and dumb, applied by the russians to persons unacquainted with their language. well! even in this state, our journey would have been quite safe and easy, so great is the hospitality of the nobles and the people of russia! on our first entrance we learned that the direct road to petersburg was already occupied by the armies, and that we must go to moscow in order to get the means of conveyance there. this was another round of leagues; but we had already made , and i now feel pleased at having seen moscow. the first province we had to cross, volhynia, forms a part of russian poland; it is a fertile country, over-run with jews, like gallicia, but much less miserable. i stopped at the chateau of a polish nobleman to whom i had been recommended, who advised me to hasten my journey, as the french were marching upon volhynia, and might easily enter it in eight days. the poles, in general, like the russians much better than they do the austrians; the russians and poles are both of sclavonian origin: they have been enemies, but respect each other mutually, while the germans, who are further advanced in european civilization than the sclavonians, have not learned to do them justice in other respects. it was easy to see that the poles in volhynia were not at all afraid of the entrance of the french; but although their opinions were known, they were not in the least subjected to that petty persecution which only excites hatred without restraining it. the spectacle, however, of one nation subjected by another, is always a painful one;--centuries must elapse before the union is sufficiently established to make the names of victor and vanquished be forgotten. at gitomir, the chief town of volhynia, i was told that the russian minister of police had been sent to wilna, to learn the motive of the emperor napoleon's aggression, and to make a formal protest against his entry into the russian territory. one can hardly credit the numberless sacrifices made by the emperor alexander, in order to preserve peace. and in fact, far from napoleon having it in his power to accuse the emperor alexander of violating the treaty of tilsit, the latter might have been reproached with a too scrupulous fidelity to that fatal treaty; and it was rather he who had the right of declaring war against napoleon, as having first violated it. the emperor of france in his conversation with m. balasheff, the minister of police, gave himself up to those inconceivable indiscretions which might be taken for abandon, if we did not know that it suits him to increase the terror which he inspires by exhibiting himself as superior to all kinds of calculation. "do you think," said he to m. balasheff, "that i care a straw for these polish jacobins?" and i have been really assured that there is in existence a letter, addressed several years since to m. de romanzoff by one of napoleon's ministers, in which it was proposed to strike out the name of poland and the poles from all european acts. how unfortunate for this nation that the emperor alexander had not taken the title of king of poland, and thereby associated the cause of this oppressed people with that of all generous minds! napoleon asked one of his generals, in the presence of m. de balasheff, if he had ever been at moscow, and what sort of city it was. the general replied that it had appeared to him to be rather a large village than a capital. and how many churches are there in it?--continued the emperor. about sixteen hundred:--was the reply. that is quite inconceivable, rejoined napoleon, at a time when the world has ceased to be religious. pardon me, sire, said m. de balashoff, the russians and spaniards are so still. admirable reply! and which presaged, one would hope, that the russians would be the castilians of the north. nevertheless, the french army made rapid progress, and one has been so accustomed to see the french triumphing over every thing abroad, although at home they know not how to resist any sort of yoke, that i had some reason to apprehend meeting them already on the road to moscow. what a capricious destiny, for me to flee at first from the french, among whom i was born, and who had carried my father in triumph, and now to flee from them even to the borders of asia! but, in short, what destiny is there, great or little, which the man selected to humble man does not overthrow? i thought i should be obliged to go to odessa, a city which had become prosperous under the enlightened administration of the duke of richelieu, and from thence i might have gone to constantinople and into greece; i consoled myself for this long voyage by the idea of a poem on richard coeur-de-lion, which i have the intention of writing, if life and health are spared me. this poem is designed to paint the manners and character of the east, and to consecrate a grand epoch in the english history, that when the enthusiasm of the crusades gave place to the enthusiasm of liberty. but as we cannot paint what we have not seen, no more than we can express properly what we have not felt, it was necessary for me to go to constantinople, into syria, and into sicily, there to follow the steps of richard. my travelling companions, better acquainted with my strength than i was myself, dissuaded me from such an undertaking, and assured me that by using expedition, i could travel post much quicker than an army. it will be seen that i had not in fact a great deal of time to spare. chapter . kiow. determined to continue my journey through russia, i proceeded towards kiow, the principal city of the ukraine, and formerly of all russia, for this empire began by fixing its capital in the south. the russians had then continual communication with the greeks established at constantinople, and in general with the people of the east, whose habits they have adopted in a variety of instances. the ukraine is a very fertile country, but by no means agreeable; you see large plains of wheat which appear to be cultivated by invisible hands, the habitations and inhabitants are so rare. you must not expect, in approaching kiow, or the greater part of what are called cities in russia, to find any thing resembling the cities of the west; the roads are not better kept, nor do country houses indicate a more numerous population. on my arrival at kiow, the first object that met my eyes was a cemetery, and this was the first indication to me of being near a place where men were collected. the houses at kiow generally resemble tents, and at a distance, the city appears like a camp; i could not help fancying that the moveable residences of the tartars had furnished models for the construction of those wooden houses, which have not a much greater appearance of solidity. a few days are sufficient for building them; they are very often consumed by fire, and an order is sent to the forest for a house, as you would send to market to lay in your winter stock of provisions. in the middle of these huts, however, palaces have been erected, and a number of churches, whose green and gilt cupolas singularly draw the attention. when towards the evening the sun darts his rays on these brilliant domes, you would fancy that it was rather an illumination for a festival, than a durable edifice. the russians never pass a church without making the sign of the cross, and their longbeards add greatly to the religious expression of their physiognomy. they generally wear a large blue robe, fastened round the waist by a scarlet band: the dresses of the women have also something asiatic in them: and one remarks that taste for lively colours which we derive from the east, where the sun is so beautiful, that one likes to make his eclat more conspicuous by the objects which he shines upon. i speedily contracted such a partiality to these oriental dresses, that i could not bear to see russians dressed like other europeans; they seemed to me then entering into that great regularity of the despotism of napoleon, which first makes all nations a present of the conscription, then of the war-taxes, and lastly, of the code napoleon, in order to govern in the same manner, nations of totally different characters. the dnieper, which the ancients called borysthenes, passes by kiow, and the old tradition of the country affirms, that it was a boatman, who in crossing it found its waters so pure that he was led to found a town on its banks. in fact, the rivers are the most beautiful natural objects in russia. it would be difficult to find any small streams, their course would be so much obstructed by the sand. there is scarcely any variety of trees; the melancholy birch is incessantly recurring in this uninventive nature; even the want of stones might be almost regretted, so much is the eye sometimes fatigued with meeting neither hill nor valley, and to be always making progress without encountering new objects. the rivers relieve the imagination from this fatigue; the priests, therefore, bestow their benedictions on these rivers. the emperor, empress, and the whole court attend the ceremony of the benediction of the neva, at the moment of the severest cold of winter. it is said that wladimir, at the commencement of the eleventh century, declared, that all the waters of the borysthenes were holy, and that plunging in them was sufficient to make a man a christian; the baptism of the greeks being performed by immersion, millions of men went into this river to abjure their idolatry. it was this same vladimir who sent deputies to different countries, to learn which of all the religions it best suited him to adopt; he decided for the greek ritual, on account of the pomp of its ceremonies. perhaps also he preferred it for more important reasons; in fact the greek faith by excluding the papal power, gives the sovereign of russia the spiritual and temporal power united. the greek religion is necessarily less intolerant than the roman catholic; for being itself reproached as a schism, it can hardly complain of heretics; all religions therefore are admitted into russia, and from the borders of the don to those of the neva, the fraternity of country unites men, even though their theological opinions may separate them. the greek priests are allowed to marry, and scarcely any gentleman embraces this profession: it follows that the clergy has very little political ascendancy; it acts upon the people, but it is very submissive to the emperor. the ceremonies of the greek worship are at least as beautiful as those of the catholics; the church music is heavenly; every thing in this worship leads to meditation; it has something of poetry and feeling about it, but it appears better adapted to captivate the imagination than to regulate the conduct. when the priest comes out of the sanctuary, in which he remains shut up while he communicates, you would say that you saw the gates of light opening; the cloud of incense which surrounds him, the gold and silver, and precious stones, which glitter on his robes and in the church, seem to come from countries where the sun is an object of adoration. the devout sentiments which are inspired by gothic architecture in germany, france and england, cannot be at all compared with the effect of the greek churches; they rather remind us of the minarets of the turks and arabs than of our churches. as little must we expect to find, as in italy, the splendor of the fine arts; their most remarkable ornaments are virgins and saints crowned with rubies and diamonds. magnificence is the character of every thing one sees in russia; neither the genius of man nor the gifts of nature constitute its beauties. the ceremonies of marriage, of baptism, and of burial, are noble and affecting; we find in them some ancient customs of grecian idolatry, but only those which, having no connection with doctrine, can add to the impression of the three great scenes of life, birth, marriage and death. the russian peasants still continue the custom of addressing the dead previous to a final separation from his remains. why is it, say they, that thou hast abandoned us? wert thou then unhappy on this earth? was not thy wife fair and good? why therefore hast thou left her? the dead replies not, but the value of existence is thus proclaimed in the presence of those who still preserve it. at kiow we were shown some catacombs which reminded us a little of those at rome, and to which pilgrimages are made on foot from casan and other cities bordering on asia; but these pilgrimages cost less in russia, than they would anywhere else, although the distances are much greater. it is in the character of the people to have no fear of fatigue or of any bodily suffering; in this nation there is both patience and activity, both gaiety and melancholy. you see united the most striking contrasts, and it is that which makes one predict great things of them; for generally it is only in beings of superior order that we find an union of opposite qualities; the mass is in general of a uniform color. i made at kiow the trial of russian hospitality. the governor of the province, general miloradowitsch, loaded me with the most amiable attentions; he had been an aide-de-camp of suwarow, like him intrepid; he inspired me with greater confidence than i then had in the military successes of the russians. before this, i had only happened to meet some officers of the german school, who had entirely got rid of their russian character. i saw in general miloradowitsch a real russian; brave, impetuous, confident, and wholly free from that spirit of imitation which sometimes entirely robs his countrymen even of their national character. he told me a number of anecdotes of suwarow, which prove that that warrior studied a great deal, although he preserved the original instinct which is connected with the immediate knowledge of men and things. he carefully concealed his studies to strike with greater force the imagination of his troops, by assuming in all things an air of inspiration. the russians have, in my opinion, much greater resemblance to the people of the south, or rather of the east, than to those of the north. what is european in them belongs merely to the manners of the court, which are nearly the same in all countries; but their nature is eastern. general miloradowitsch related to me that a regiment of kalmucks had been put into garrison at kiow, and that the prince of these kalmucks came to him one day, to confess that he suffered very much from passing the winter cooped up in a town, and wished to obtain permission to encamp in the neighbouring forest. such a cheap pleasure it was impossible to refuse him; he and all his regiment went in consequence, in the middle of the snow, to take up their abode in their chariots, which at the same time serve them for huts. the russian soldiers bear nearly in the same degree the fatigues and privations of climate or of war, and the people of all classes exhibit a contempt of obstacles and of physical suffering, which will carry them successfully through the greatest undertakings. this kalmuck prince, to whom wooden houses appeared a residence too delicate in the middle of winter, gave diamonds to the ladies who pleased him at a ball; and as he could not make himself understood by them, he substituted presents for compliments, in the manner practised in india and other silent countries of the east, where speech has less influence than with us. general miloradowitsch invited me the very evening of my departure, to a ball at the house of a moldavian princess, to which i regretted very much being unable to go. all these names of foreign countries and of nations which are scarcely any longer european, singularly awaken the imagination. you feel yourself in russia at the gate of another earth, near to that east from which have proceeded so many religious creeds, and which still contains in its bosom incredible treasures of perseverance and reflection. chapter . road from kiow to moscow. about nine hundred versts still separated kiow from moscow. my russian coachmen drove me along like lightning, singing airs, the words of which i was told were compliments and encouragements to their horses, "go along," they said, "my friends: we know one another: go quick." i have as yet seen nothing at all barbarous in this people; on the contrary their forms have an elegance and softness about them which you find no where else. never does a russian coachman pass a female, of whatever age or rank she may be, without saluting her, and the female returns it by an inclination of the head which is always noble and graceful. an old man who could not make himself understood by me, pointed to the earth, and then to the heaven, to signify to me, that the one would shortly be to him the road to the other. i know very well that the shocking barbarities which disfigure the history of russia may be urged, reasonably, as evidence of a contrary character; but these i should rather lay to the charge of the boyars, the class which was depraved by the despotism which it exercised or submitted to, than to the nation itself. besides, political dissentions, everywhere and at all times, distort national character, and there is nothing more deplorable than that succession of masters, whom crimes have elevated or overturned; but such is the fatal condition of absolute power on this earth. the civil servants of the government, of an inferior class, all those who look to make their fortune by their suppleness or intrigues, in no degree resemble the inhabitants of the country, and i can readily believe all the ill that has been and may be said of them; but to appreciate properly the character of a warlike nation, we must look to its soldiers, and the class from which its soldiers are taken, the peasantry. although i was driven along with great rapidity, it seemed to me that i did not advance a step, the country was so extremely monotonous. plains of sand, forests of birch tree, and villages at a great distance from each other, composed of wooden houses all built upon the same plan: these were the only objects that my eyes encountered. i felt that sort of nightmare which sometimes seizes one during the night, when you think you are always marching and never advancing. the country appeared to me like the image of infinite space, and to require eternity to traverse it. every instant you met couriers passing, who went along with incredible swiftness; they were seated on a wooden bench placed across a little cart drawn by two horses, and nothing stopped them for a moment. the jolting of their carriage sometimes made them spring two feet above it, but they fell with astonishing address, and made haste to call out in russian, forward, with an energy similar to that of the french on a day of battle. the sclavonian language is singularly echoing; i should almost say there is something metallic about it; you would think you heard a bell striking, when the russians pronounce certain letters of their alphabet, quite different from those which compose the dialects of the west. we saw passing some corps de reserve approaching by forced marches to the theatre of war; the cossacks were repairing, one by one, to the army, without order or uniform, with a long lance in their hand, and a kind of grey dress, whose ample hood they put over their head. i had formed quite another idea of these people; they live behind the dnieper; there their way of living is independent, in the manner of savages; but during war they allow themselves to be governed despotically. one is accustomed to see, in fine uniforms of brilliant colors, the most formidable armies. the dull colors of the cossack dress excite another sort of fear; one might say that they are ghosts who pounce upon you. half way between kiow and moscow, as we were already in the vicinity of the armies, horses became more scarce. i began to be afraid of being detained in my journey, at the very moment when the necessity of speed became most urgent; and when i had to wait for five or six hours in front of a post-house, (as there was seldom an apartment into which i could enter) i thought with trembling of that army which might overtake me at the extremity of europe, and render my situation at once tragical and ridiculous; for it is thus with the failure of an undertaking of this kind. the circumstances which compelled me to it not being generally known, i might have been asked why i quitted my own house, even although it had been made a prison to me, and there are good enough people who would not have failed to say, with an air of compunction, that it was very unlucky, but i should have done better to stay where i was. if tyranny had only its direct partisans on its side, it could never maintain itself; the astonishing thing, and which proves human misery more than all, is, that the greater part of mediocre people enlist themselves in the service of events: they have not the strength to think deeper than a fact, and when an oppressor has triumphed, and a victim has been destroyed, they hasten to justify, not exactly the tyrant, but the destiny whose instrument he is. weakness of mind and character is no doubt the cause of this servility: but there is also in man a certain desire of finding destiny, whatever it may be, in the right, as if it was a way of living in peace with it. i reached at last that part of my road which removed me from the theatre of war, and arrived in the governments of orel and toula, which have been so much talked of since, in the bulletins of the two armies. i was received in these solitary abodes, for so the provincial towns in russia appear, with the most perfect hospitality. several gentlemen of the neighbourhood came to my inn, to compliment me on my writings, and i confess having been flattered to find that my literary reputation had extended to this distance from my native country. the lady of the governor received me in the asiatic style, with sherbet and roses; her apartment was elegantly furnished with musical instruments and pictures. in europe you see every where the contrast of wealth and poverty; but in russia it may be said that neither one nor the other makes itself remarked. the people are not poor; the great know how to lead, when it is necessary, the same life as the people: it is the mixture of the hardest privations and of the most refined enjoyments which characterizes the country. these same noblemen, whose residence unites all that the luxury of different parts of the world has most attractive, live, while they are travelling, on much worse food than our french peasantry, and know how to bear, not only during war, but in various circumstances of life, a physical existence of the most disagreeable kind. the severity of the climate, the marshes, the forests, the deserts, of which a great part of the country is composed, place man in a continual struggle with nature. fruits, and even flowers, only grow in hot-houses; vegetables are not generally cultivated; and there are no vines any where. the habitual mode of life of the french peasants could not be obtained in russia but at a very great expense. there they have only necessaries by luxury: whence it happens that when luxury is unattainable, even necessaries are renounced. what the english call comforts are hardly to be met with in russia. you will never find any thing sufficiently perfect to satisfy in all ways the imagination of the great russian noblemen; but when this poetry of wealth fails them, they drink hydromel, sleep upon a board, and travel day and night in an open carriage, without regretting the luxury to which one would think they had been habituated. it is rather as magnificence that they love fortune, than from the pleasures they derive from it: resembling still in that point the easterns, who exercise hospitality to strangers, load them with presents, and yet frequently neglect the every day comforts of their own life. this is one of the reasons which explains that noble courage with which the russians have supported the ruin which has been occasioned them by the burning of moscow. more accustomed to external pomp than to the care of themselves, they are not mollified by luxury, and the sacrifice of money satisfies their pride as much or more than the magnificence of their expenditure. what characterizes this people, is something gigantic of all kinds: ordinary dimensions are not at all applicable to it. i do not by that mean to say that neither real grandeur nor stability are to be met with in it: but the boldness and the imagination of the russians know no bounds: with them every thing is colossal rather than well proportioned, audacious rather than reflective, and if they do not hit the mark, it is because they overshoot it. chapter . appearance of the country.--character of the russians. i was always advancing nearer to moscow, but nothing yet indicated the approach to a capital. the wooden villages were equally distant from each other, we saw no greater movement upon the immense plains which are called high roads; you heard no more noise; the country houses were not more numerous: there is so much space in russia that every thing is lost in it, even the chateaux, even the population. you might suppose you were travelling through a country from which the people had just taken their departure. the absence of birds adds to this silence; cattle also are rare, or at least they are placed at a great distance from the road. extent makes every thing disappear, except extent itself, like certain ideas in metaphysics, of which the mind can never get rid, when it has once seized them. on the eve of my arrival at moscow, i stopped in the evening of a very hot day, in a pleasant meadow: the female peasants, in picturesque dresses, according to the custom of the country, were returning from their labour, singing those airs of the ukraine, the words of which, in praise of love and liberty, breathe a sort of melancholy approaching to regret. i requested them to dance, and they consented. i know nothing more graceful than these dances of the country, which have all the originality which nature gives to the fine arts; a certain modest voluptuousness was remarkable in them; the indian bayaderes should have something analogous to that mixture of indolence and vivacity which forms the charm of the russian dance. this indolence and vivacity are indicative of reverie and passion, two elements of character which civilization has yet neither formed nor subdued. i was struck with the mild gaiety of these female peasants, as i had been, in different degrees, with that of the greater part of the common people with whom i had come in contact in russia. i can readily believe that they are terrible when their passions are provoked; and as they have no education, they know not how to curb their violence. as another result of this ignorance, they have few principles of morality, and theft is very frequent in russia as well as hospitality; they give as they take, according as their imagination is acted upon by cunning or generosity, both of which excite the admiration of this people. in this mode of life there is a little resemblance to savages; but it strikes me that at present there are no european nations who have much vigor but those who are what is called barbarous, in other words, unenlightened, or those who are free: but the nations which have only acquired from civilization an indifference for this or that yoke, provided their own fire-side is not disturbed: those nations, which have only learned from civilization the art of explaining power and of reasoning servitude, are made to be vanquished. i frequently imagine to myself what may now be the situation of the places which i have seen so tranquil, of those amiable young girls, of those long bearded peasants, who followed so peaceably the lot which providence had traced for them; they have perished or fled, for not one of them entered into the service of the victor. a thing worthy of remark, is the extent to which public spirit is displayed in russia. the reputation of invincible which their multiplied successes have given to this nation, the natural pride of the nobility, the devotedness inherent in the character of the people, the profound influence of religion, the hatred of foreigners, which peter i. endeavoured to destroy in order to enlighten and civilize his country, but which is not less settled in the blood of the russians, and is occasionally roused, all these causes combined make them a most energetic people. some bad anecdotes of the preceding reigns, some russians who have contracted debts with the parisian shopkeepers, and some bon-mots of diderot, have put it into the heads of the french, that russia consisted only of a corrupt court, military chamberlains, and a people of slaves. this is a great mistake. this nation it is true requires a long examination to know it thoroughly, but in the circumstances in which i observed it, every thing was salient, and a country can never be seen to greater advantage than at a period of misfortune and courage. it cannot be too often repeated, this nation is composed of the most striking contrasts. perhaps the mixture of european civilization and of asiatic character is the cause. the manner of the russians is so obliging that you might imagine yourself, the very first day, intimate with them, and probably at the end of ten years you would not be so! the silence of a russian is altogether extraordinary; this silence is solely occasioned by what he takes a deep interest in. in other respects, they talk as much as you will; but their conversation teaches you nothing but their politeness; it betrays neither their feelings nor opinions. they have been frequently compared to the french, in my opinion with the least justice in the world. the flexibility of their organs makes imitation in all things a matter of ease to them; they are english, french, or german in their manners, according to circumstances; but they never cease to be russians, that is to say uniting impetuosity and reserve, more capable of passion than friendship, more bold than delicate, more devout than virtuous, more brave than chivalrous, and so violent in their desires that nothing can stop them, when their gratification is in question. they are much more hospitable than the french; but society does not with them, as with us, consist of a circle of clever people of both sexes, who take pleasure in talking together. they meet, as we go to a fete, to see a great deal of company, to have fruits and rare productions from asia or europe; to hear music, to play; in short to receive vivid emotions from external objects, rather than from the heart or understanding, both of which they reserve for actions and not for company. besides, as they are in general very ignorant, they find very little pleasure in serious conversation, and do not at all pique themselves on shining by the wit they can exhibit in it. poetry, eloquence and literature are not yet to be found in russia; luxury, power, and courage are the principal objects of pride and ambition; all other methods of acquiring distinction appear as yet effeminate and vain to this nation. but the people are slaves, it will be said: what character therefore can they be supposed to have? it is not certainly necessary for me to say that all enlightened people wish to see the russian people freed from this state, and probably no one wishes it more strongly than the emperor alexander: but the russian slavery has no resemblance in its effects to that of which we form the idea in the west; it is not as under the feudal system, victors who have imposed severe laws on the vanquished; the ties which connect the grandees with the people resemble rather what was called a family of slaves among the ancients, than the state of serfs among the moderns. there is no middling class in russia, which is a great drawback on the progress of literature and the arts; for it is generally in that class that knowledge is developed: but the want of any intermedium between the nobility and the people creates a greater affection between them both. the distance between the two classes appears greater, because there are no steps between these two extremities, which in fact border very nearly on each other, not being separated by a middling class. this is a state of social organization quite unfavorable to the knowledge of the higher classes, but not so to the happiness of the lower. besides, where there is no representative government, that is to say, in countries where the sovereign still promulgates the law which he is to execute, men are frequently more degraded by the very sacrifice of their reason and character, than they are in this vast empire, in which a few simple ideas of religion and country serve to lead the great mass under the guidance of a few heads. the immense extent of the russian empire also prevents the despotism of the great from pressing heavily in detail upon the people; and finally, above all, the religious and military spirit is so predominant in the nation, that allowance may be made for a great many errors, in favor of those two great sources of noble actions. a person of fine intellect said, that russia resembled the plays of shakspeare, in which all that is not faulty is sublime, and all that is not sublime is faulty; an observation of remarkable justice. but in the great crisis in which russia was placed when i passed through it, it was impossible not to admire the energetic resistance, and resignation to sacrifices exhibited by that nation; and one could not almost dare, at the contemplation of such virtues, to allow one's self even to notice what at other times one would have censured. chapter . moscow. gilded cupolas announced moscow from afar; however, as the surrounding country is only a plain, as well as the whole of russia, you may arrive in that great city without being struck with its extent. it has been well said by some one, that moscow was rather a province than a city. in fact, you there see huts, houses, palaces, a bazaar as in the east, churches, public buildings, pieces of water, woods and parks. the variety of manners, and of the nations of which russia is composed, are all exhibited in this immense residence. will you, i was asked, buy some cashmere shawls in the tartar quarter? have you seen the chinese town? asia and europe are found united in this immense city. there is more liberty enjoyed in it than at petersburg, where the court necessarily exercises great influence. the great nobility settled at moscow were not ambitious of places; but they proved their patriotism by munificent gifts to the state, either for public establishments during peace, or as aids during the war. the colossal fortunes of the great russian nobility are employed in making collections of all kinds, and in enterprises of which the arabian nights have given the models; these fortunes are also frequently lost by the unbridled passions of their possessors. when i arrived at moscow, nothing was talked of but the sacrifices that were made on account of the war. a young count de momonoff raised a regiment for the state, and would only serve in it as a sublieutenant; a countess orloff, amiable and wealthy in the asiatic style, gave the fourth of her income. as i was passing before these palaces surrounded by gardens, where space was thrown away in a city as elsewhere in the middle of the country, i was told that the possessor of this superb residence had given a thousand peasants to the state: and another, two hundred. i had some difficulty in accommodating myself to the expression, giving men, but the peasants themselves offered their services with ardor, and their lords were in this war only their interpreters. as soon as a russian becomes a soldier, his beard is cut off, and from that moment he is free. a desire was felt that all those who might have served in the militia should also be considered as free: but in that case the nation would have been entirely so, for it rose almost en masse. let us hope that this so much desired emancipation may be effected without violence: but in the mean time one would wish to have the beards preserved, so much strength and dignity do they add to the physiognomy. the russians with long beards never pass a church without making the sign of the cross, and their confidence in the visible images of religion is very affecting. their churches bear the mark of that taste for luxury which they have from asia: you see in them only ornaments of gold, and silver, and rubies. i was told that a russian had proposed to form an alphabet with precious stones, and to write a bible in that manner. he knew the best manner of interesting the imaginations of the russians in what they read. this imagination however has not as yet manifested itself either in the fine arts or in poetry. they reach a certain point in all things very quickly, and do not go beyond that. impulse makes them take the first steps: but the second belong to reflection, and these russians, who have nothing in common with the people of the north, are as yet very little capable of meditation. several of the palaces of moscow are of wood, in order that they may be built quicker, and that the natural inconstancy of the nation, in every thing unconnected with country or religion, may be satisfied by an easy change of residence. several of these fine edifices have been constructed for an entertainment; they were destined to add to the eclat of a day, and the rich manner in which they were decorated has made them last up to this period of universal destruction. a great number of houses are painted green, yellow, or rose color, and are sculptured in detail like dessert ornaments. the citadel of the kremlin, in which the emperors of russia defended themselves against the tartars, is surrounded by a high wall, embattled and flanked with turrets, which, by their odd shapes, remind one of a turkish minaret rather than a fortress like those of the west of europe. but although the external character of the buildings of the city be oriental, the impression of christianity was found in that, multitude of churches so much venerated, and which attracted your notice at every step. one was reminded of rome in seeing moscow; certainly not from the monuments being of the same style, but because the mixture of solitary country and magnificent palaces, the grandeur of the city and the infinite number of its churches give the asiatic rome some points of resemblance to the european rome. it was about the beginning of august, that i was allowed to see the interior of the kremlin; i got there by the same staircase which the emperor alexander had ascended a few days preceding, surrounded by an immense people, who loaded him with their blessings, and promised him to defend his empire at all hazards. this people has kept its word. the halls were first thrown open to me in which the arms of the ancient warriors of russia are contained; the arsenals of this kind, in other parts of europe, are much more interesting. the russians have taken no part in the times of chivalry; they never mingled in the crusades. constantly at war with the tartars, poles, and turks, the military spirit has been formed among them in the midst of the atrocities of all kinds brought in the train of asiatic nations, and of the tyrants who governed russia. it is not therefore the generous bravery of the bayards or the percys, but the intrepidity of a fanatical courage which has been exhibited in this country for several centuries. the russians, in the relations of society, which are so new to them, are not distinguished by the spirit of chivalry, such as the people of the west conceive it; but they have always shown themselves terrible to their enemies. so many massacres have taken place in the interior of russia, up to the reign of peter the great, and even later, that the morality of the nation, and particularly that of the great nobility, must have suffered severely from them. these despotic governments, whose sole restraint is the assassination of the despot, overthrow all principles of honor and duty in the minds of men: but the love of their country and an attachment to their religious creed have been maintained in their full strength, amidst the wrecks of this bloody history, and the nation which preserves such virtues may yet astonish the world. from the ancient arsenal i was conducted into the apartments formerly occupied by the czars, and in which the robes are preserved which they wore on the day of their coronation. these apartments have no sort of beauty, but they agreed very well with the hard life which the czars led and still lead. the greatest magnificence reigns in the palace of alexander; but he himself sleeps upon the floor, and travels like a cossack officer. they exhibited in the kremlin a divided throne, which was filled at first by peter i. and ivan his brother. the princess sophia, their sister, placed herself behind the seat of ivan, and dictated to him what to say; but this borrowed strength was not able to cope long with the native strength of peter i. and he soon reigned alone. it is from the period of his reign that the czars have ceased to wear the asiatic costume. the great wig of the age of louis xiv. came in with peter i. and without touching upon the admiration inspired by this great man, one cannot help feeling the disagreeable contrast between the ferocity of his genius and the ceremonious regularity of his dress. was he in the right in doing away as much as he could, oriental manners from the bosom of his people? was it right to fix his capital in the north, and at the extremity of his empire? these are great questions which are not yet answered: centuries only can afford the proper commentaries upon such lofty ideas. i ascended to the top of the cathedral steeple, called ivan veliki, which commands a view of the whole city; from thence i saw the palace of the czars, who conquered by their arms the crowns of casan, astracan, and siberia. i heard the church music, in which the catholikos, prince of georgia, officiated in the midst of the inhabitants of moscow, and formed a christian meeting between asia and europe. fifteen hundred churches attested the devotion of the muscovite people. the commercial establishments at moscow had quite an asiatic character; men in turbans, and others dressed in the different costumes of all the people of the east, exhibited the rarest merchandize: the furs of siberia and the muslins of india there offered all the enjoyments of luxury to those great noblemen, whose imagination is equally pleased with the sables of the samoiedes and with the rubies of the persians. here, the gardens and the palace razoumowski contained the most beautiful collection of plants and minerals; there, was the fine library of the count de bouterlin, which he had spent thirty years of his life in collecting: among the books he possessed, there were several which contained manuscript notes in the hand-writing of peter i. this great man never imagined that the same european civilization, of which he was so jealous, would come to destroy the establishments for public instruction which he had founded in the middle of his empire, with a view to form by study the impatient spirit of the russians. farther on, was the foundling house, one of the most affecting institutions of europe; hospitals for all classes of society might be remarked in the different quarters of the city: finally, the eye in its wanderings could rest upon nothing but wealth or benevolence, upon edifices of luxury or of charity; upon churches or on palaces, which diffused happiness or distinction upon a large portion of the human race. you saw the windings of the moskwa, of that river, which, since the last invasion by the tartars, had never rolled with blood in its waves: the day was delightful; the sun seemed to take a pleasure in shedding his rays upon these glittering cupolas. i was reminded of the old archbishop plato, who had just written a pastoral letter to the emperor alexander, the oriental style of which had extremely affected me: he sent the image of the virgin from the borders of europe, to drive far from asia the man who wished to bear down upon the russians with the whole weight of the nations chained to his steps. for a moment the thought struck me that napoleon might yet set his foot upon this same tower from which i was admiring the city, which his presence was about to extinguish; for a moment i dreamed that he would glory in replacing, in the palace of the czars, the chief of the great horde, which had also once had possession of it: but the sky was so beautiful, that i repelled the apprehension. a month afterwards, this beautiful city was in ashes, in order that it should be said, that every country which had been in alliance with this man, should be destroyed by the fires which are at his disposal. but how gloriously have the russians and their monarch redeemed this error! the misery of moscow may be even said to have regenerated the empire, and this religious city has perished like a martyr, the shedding of whose blood gives new strength to the brethren who survive him. the famous count rostopchin, with whose name the emperor's bulletins have been filled, came to see me, and invited me to dine with him. he had been minister for foreign affairs to paul i., his conversation had something original about it, and you could easily perceive that his character would show itself in a very strong manner, if circumstances required it. the countess rostopchin was good enough to give me a book which she had written on the triumphs of religion, the style and morality of which were very pure. i went to visit her at her country-house, in the interior of moscow. i was obliged to cross a lake and a wood in order to reach it: it was to this house, one of the most agreeable residences in russia, that count rostopchin himself set-fire, on the approach of the french army. certainly an action of this kind was likely to excite a certain kind of admiration, even in enemies. the emperor napoleon has, notwithstanding, compared count rostopchin to marat, forgetting that the governor of moscow sacrificed his own interests, while marat set fire to the houses of others, which certainly makes a considerable difference. the only thing which count rostopchin could properly be reproached with, was his concealing too long the bad news from the armies, either from flattering himself, or believing it to be necessary to flatter others. the english, with that admirable rectitude which distinguishes all their actions, publish as faithful an account of their reverses as they do of their victories, and enthusiasm is with them sustained by the truth, whatever that may be. the russians cannot yet reach that moral perfection, which is the result of a free constitution. no civilized nation has so much in common with savages as the russian people, and when their nobility possess energy, they participate also in the defects and good qualities of that unshackled nature. the expression of diderot has been greatly vaunted: the russians are rotten before they are ripe. i know nothing more false; their very vices, with some exceptions, are not those of corruption, but of violence. the desires of a russian, said a very superior man, would blow up a city: fury and artifice take possession of them by turns, when they wish to accomplish any resolution, good or bad. their nature is not at all changed by the rapid civilization which was given them by peter i.; it has as yet only formed their manners: happily for them, they are always what we call barbarians, in other words, led by an instinct frequently generous, but always involuntary, which only admits of reflection in the choice of the means, and not in the examination of the end; i say happily for them, not that i wish to extol barbarism, but i designate by this name a certain primitive energy which can alone replace in nations the concentrated strength of liberty. i saw at moscow the most enlightened men in the career of science and literature; but there, as well as at petersburg, the professors' chairs are almost entirely filled with germans. there is in russia a great scarcity of well-informed men in any branch; young people in general only go to the university to be enabled sooner to enter into the military profession. civil employments in russia confer a rank corresponding to a grade in the army; the spirit of the nation is turned entirely towards war: in every thing else, in administration, in political economy, in public instruction, &c. the other nations of europe have hitherto borne away the palm from the russians. they are making attempts, however, in literature; the softness and brilliancy of the sounds of their language are remarked even by those who do not understand it; and it should be very well adapted for poetry and music. but the russians have, like so many other continental nations, the fault of imitating the french literature, which, even with all its beauties, is only fit for the french themselves. i think that the russians ought rather to make their literary studies derive from the greeks than from the latins. the characters of the russian alphabet, so similar to those of the greeks, the ancient communication of the russians with the byzantine empire, their future destinies, which will probably lead them to the illustrious monuments of athens and sparta, all this ought to turn the russians to the study of greek: but it is above all necessary that their writers should draw their poetry from the deepest inspiration of their own soul. their works, up to this time, have been composed, as one may say, by the lips, and never can a nation so vehement be stirred up by such shrill notes. chapter road from moscow to petersburg. i quitted moscow with regret: i stopped a short time in a wood near the city, where on holidays the inhabitants go to dance, and celebrate the sun, whose splendor is of such short duration, even at moscow. what is it then i see, in advancing towards the north? even these eternal birch trees, which weary you with their monotony, become very rare, it is said, as you approach archangel; they are preserved there, like orange trees in france. the country from moscow to petersburg is at first sandy, and afterwards all marsh: when it rains, the ground becomes black, and the high road becomes undistinguishable. the houses of the peasants, however, every where indicate a state of comfort; they are decorated with columns, and the windows are surrounded with arabesques carved in wood. although it was summer when i passed through this country, i already felt the threatening winter which seemed to conceal itself behind the clouds: of the fruits which were offered to me, the flavor was bitter, because their ripening had been too much hastened; a rose excited emotion in me as a recollection of our fine countries, and the flowers themselves appeared to carry their heads with less pride, as if the icy hand of the north had been already prepared to pluck them. i passed through novogorod, which was, six centuries ago, a republic associated with the hanse towns, and which has preserved for a long period a spirit of republican independence. persons have been pleased to say that freedom was not reclaimed in europe before the last century; on the contrary, it is rather despotism, which is a modern invention. even in russia the slavery of the peasants was only introduced in the sixteenth century. up to the reign of peter i. the form of all the ukases was: the boyars have advised, the czar will decree. peter i. although in many ways he has done infinite good to russia, humbled the grandees, and united in himself the temporal and spiritual power, in order to remove all obstacles to his designs. richelieu acted in the same manner in france; peter i. was therefore a great admirer of his. it will be recollected that on being shown his tomb at paris, he exclaimed, "great man! i would give one half of my empire to learn from thee how to govern the other." the czar on this occasion was a great deal too modest, for he had the advantage over richelieu of being a great warrior, and what is more, the founder of the navy and commerce of his country; while richelieu has done nothing but govern tyrannically at home, and craftily abroad. but to return to novogorod. ivan vasilewitch possessed himself of it in , and destroyed its liberties; he removed from it to the kremlin at moscow, the great bell called in russian, wetchevoy kolokol, at the sound of which the citizens had been accustomed to assemble at the market place, to deliberate on public matters. with the loss of liberty, novogorod had the mortification to see the gradual disappearance of its population, its commerce, and its wealth: so withering and destructive is the breath of arbitrary power, says the best historian of russia. even at the present day the city of novogorod presents an aspect of singular melancholy; a vast inclosure indicates that it was formerly large and populous, and you see nothing in it but scattered houses, the inhabitants of which seem to be placed there like figures weeping over the tombs. the same spectacle is now probably offered by the beautiful city of moscow; but the public spirit will rebuild it, as it has reconquered it. chapter . st. petersburg. from novogorod to petersburg, you see scarcely anything but marshes, and you arrive in one of the finest cities in the world, as if, with a magic wand, an enchanter had made all the wonders of europe and asia start up from the middle of the deserts. the foundation of petersburg offers the greatest proof of that ardor of russian will, which recognizes nothing as impossible: everything in the environs is humble; the city is built upon a marsh, and even the marble rests on piles; but you forget when looking at these superb edifices, their frail foundations, and cannot help meditating on the miracle of so fine a city being built in so short a time. this people which must always be described by contrasts, possesses an unheard of perseverance in its struggles with nature or with hostile armies. necessity always found the russians patient and invincible, but in the ordinary course of life they are very unsteady. the same men, the same masters, do not long inspire them with enthusiasm; reflection alone can guarantee the duration of feelings and opinions in the habitual quiet of life, and the russians, like all people subject to despotism, are more capable of dissimulation than reflection. on my arrival at petersburg my first sentiment was to return thanks to heaven for being on the borders of the sea. i saw waving on the neva the english flag, the symbol of liberty, and i felt that on committing myself to the ocean, i might return under the immediate power of the deity; it is an illusion which one cannot help entertaining, to believe one's self more under the hand of providence, when delivered to the elements than when depending on men, and especially on that man who appears to be a revelation of the evil principle on this earth. just facing the house which i inhabited at petersburg was the statue of peter i.; he is represented on horseback climbing a steep mountain, in the midst of serpents who try to stop the progress of his horse. these serpents, it is true, are put there to support the immense weight of the horse and his rider; but the idea is not a happy one: for in fact it is not envy which a sovereign can have to dread: neither are his adulators his enemies: and peter i. especially had nothing to fear during his life, but from russians who regretted the ancient customs of their country. the admiration of him, however, which is still preserved is the best proof of the good he did to russia: for despots have no flatterers a hundred years after their death. on the pedestal of the statue is written: to peter the first, catherine the second. this simple, yet proud, inscription has the merit of truth. these two great monarchs have elevated the russian pride to the highest pitch; and to teach a nation to regard itself as invincible, is to make it such, at least within its own territory: for conquest is a chance which probably depends more upon the faults of the vanquished than upon the genius of the victor, it is said, and properly, that you cannot, at petersburg, say of a woman, that she is as old as the streets, the streets themselves are so modern. the buildings still possess a dazzling whiteness, and at night when they are lighted by the moon, they look like large white phantoms regarding, immoveable, the course of the neva. i know not what there is particularly beautiful in this river, but the waves of no other i had yet seen ever appeared to me so limpid. a succession of granite quays, thirty versts in length, borders its course, and this magnificent labour of man is worthy of the transparent water which it adorns. had peter i. directed similar undertakings towards the south of his empire, he would not have obtained what he wished, a navy; but he would perhaps have better conformed to the character of his nation. the russian inhabitants of petersburg have the look of a people of the south condemned to live in the north, and making every effort to struggle with a climate at variance 'with their nature. the inhabitants of the north are generally very indolent, and dread the cold, precisely because he is their daily enemy. the lower classes of the russians have none of these habits; the coachmen wait for ten hours at the gate, during winter, without complaining; they sleep upon the snow, under their carriage, and transport the manners of the lazzaroni of naples to the sixtieth degree of latitude. you may see them laying on the steps of staircases, like the germans in their down; sometimes they sleep standing, with their head reclined against the wall. by turns indolent and impetuous, they give themselves up alternately to sleep, or to the most fatiguing employments. some of them get drunk, in which they differ from the people of the south, who are very sober; but the russians are so also, and to an extent hardly credible, when the difficulties of war require it. the great russian noblemen also show, in their way, the tastes of inhabitants of the south. you must go and see the different country houses which they have built in the middle of an island formed by the neva, in the centre of petersburg. the plants of the south, the perfumes of the east, and the divans of asia, embellish these residences. by immense hot houses, in which the fruits of all countries are ripened, an artificial climate is created. the possessors of these palaces endeavour not to lose the least ray of sun while he appears on their horizon; they treat him like a friend who is about to take his departure, whom they have known formerly in a more fortunate country. the day after my arrival, i went to dine with one of the most considerable merchants of the city, who exercised hospitality a la russe; that is to say, he placed a flag on the top of his house to signify that he dined at home, and this invitation was sufficient for all his friends. he made us dine in the open air, so much pleasure was felt from these poor days of summer, of which a few yet remained, to which we should have scarcely given the name in the south of europe. the garden was very agreeable; it was embellished with trees and flowers; but at four paces from the house the deserts and the marshes were again to be seen. in the environs of petersburg, nature has the look of an enemy who resumes his advantages, when man ceases for a moment to struggle with him. the next morning i repaired to the church of our lady of casan, built by paul i. on the model of st. peter's at rome. the interior of this church, decorated with a great number of columns of granite is exceedingly beautiful; but the building itself displeases, precisely because it reminds us of st. peter's: and because it differs from it so much the more, from the mere wish of imitation. it is impossible to create in two years what cost the labour of a century to the first artists of the universe. the russians would by rapidity escape from time as they do from space: but time only preserves what it has founded, and the fine arts, of which inspiration seems the first source, cannot nevertheless dispense with reflection. from our lady of casan i went to the convent of st. alexander newski, a place consecrated to one of the sovereign heroes of russia, who extended his conquests to the borders of the neva. the empress elizabeth, daughter of peter i. had a silver coffin made for him, upon which it is customary to put a piece of money, as a pledge of the vow which is recommended to the saint. the tomb of suwarow is in this convent of alexander newski, but his name is its only decoration; it is enough for him, but not for the russians, to whom he rendered such important services. this nation, however, is so thoroughly military, that lofty achievements of that description excite less astonishment in it than other nations. the greatest families of russia have erected tombs to their relatives in the cemetery which belongs to the church of newski, but none of these monuments are worthy of remark; they are not beautiful, regarded as objects of art, and no grand idea there strikes the imagination. it is certain that the idea of death produces little effect on the russians; whether it is from courage, or from the inconstancy of their impressions, long regrets are hardly in their character; they are more susceptible of superstition than emotion: superstition attaches to this life, and religion to another; superstition is allied to fatality, and religion to virtue; it is from the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious, and it is on the contrary by the sacrifice of these same desires, that we are religious. m. de romanzow, the minister of foreign affairs in russia, loaded me with the most amiable attentions, and it was with regret that i considered him as so implicated in the system of the emperor napoleon, that he must necessarily retire, like the english ministers, when that system was abandoned. doubtless, in an absolute monarchy, the will of the master explains every thing; but the dignity of a prime minister perhaps requires that words of an opposite tendency should not proceed from the same mouth. the sovereign represents the state, and the state may change its system of politics whenever circumstances require it; but the minister is only a man, and a man, on questions of this nature, ought to have but one opinion in the course of his life. it is impossible to have better manners than count romanzow, or to receive strangers more nobly. i was at his house when the english envoy, lord tyrconnel, and admiral bentinck were announced, both of them men of remarkably fine appearance: they were the first english who had re-appeared on that continent, from which the tyranny of one man had banished them. after ten years of such fearful struggle, after ten years during which victories and disasters had always found the english true to the compass of their politics' conscience, they returned at last into the country which first emancipated itself from the universal monarchy. their accent, their simplicity, their fierte, all awakened in the soul that sentiment of truth in all things, which napoleon has discovered the art of obscuring in the eyes of those who have only read his journals, and listened to his agents. i do not even know if napoleon's adversaries on the continent, constantly surrounded with a false opinion which never ceases to deafen them, can venture to trust themselves without apprehension to their own feelings. if i can judge of them by myself, i know that frequently, after having heard all the advices of prudence or meanness with which one is overwhelmed in the bonapartist atmosphere, i scarcely knew what to think of my own opinion; my blood forbid me to renounce it, but my reason was not always sufficient to preserve me from so many sophisms. it was therefore with the most lively emotion that i heard once more the voice of that england, with which we are almost always sure to agree, when we endeavour to deserve our own esteem, and that of persons of integrity. the following day, i was invited by count orloff to come and spend the day in the island which bears his name, and which is the most agreeable of all those formed by the neva; oaks, a rare production in this country, overshadow the garden. the count and countess orloff employ their fortune in receiving strangers with equal facility and magnificence; you are at your ease with them, as in a country retreat, and you enjoy there all the luxury of cities. count orloff is one of the most learned noblemen to be met with in russia, and his love of his country bears a profound character, with which it is impossible to help being affected. the first day i passed at his house, peace had just been proclaimed with england; it was a sunday; and in his garden, which was on that day opened to all comers, we saw a great number of these long-bearded merchants, who keep up in russia the costume of the moujiks, that is to say of the peasants. a number of them collected to hear the delightful band of music of count orloff; it gave us the english air of god save the king, which is the song of liberty in a country, of which the monarch is its first guardian. we were all much affected, and applauded this air, which is become national for all europeans; for there are no longer but two kinds of men in europe, those who serve tyranny, and those who have learned to hate it. count orloff went up to the russian merchants, and told them that the peace between england and russia was celebrating; they immediately made the sign of the cross, and thanked heaven that the sea was once more open to them. the isle orloff is in the centre of all those which the great noblemen of petersburg, and the emperor and empress themselves, have selected for their residence during summer. not far from it is the isle strogonoff, the rich owner of which has brought from greece antiquities of great value. his house was open every day during his life, and whoever had once been presented might return when they chose; he never invited any one to dinner or supper on a particular day; it was understood that once admitted, you were always welcome; he frequently knew not half the persons who dined at his table: but this luxurious hospitality pleased him like any other kind of magnificence. the same practice prevails in many other houses at petersburg; it is natural to conclude from that, that what we call in france the pleasures of conversation cannot be there met with: the company is much too numerous to allow a conversation of any interest even to be kept up in it. in the best society the most perfect good manners prevail, but there is neither sufficient information among the nobility, nor sufficient confidence among persons living habitually under the influence of a despotic court and government, to allow them to know any thing of the charms of intimacy. the greater part of the great noblemen of russia express themselves with so much elegance and propriety, that one frequently deceives one's self at the outset about the degree of wit and acquirements of those with whom you are conversing. the debut is almost always that of a gentleman or lady of fine understanding: but sometimes also, in the long run, you discover nothing but the debut. they are not accustomed in russia to speak from the bottom of their heart or understanding; they had in former times such fear of their masters, that they have not yet been able to accustom themselves to that wise freedom, for which they are indebted to the character of alexander. some russian gentlemen have tried to distinguish themselves in literature, and have given proofs of considerable talent in this career; but knowledge is not yet sufficiently diffused to create a public judgment formed by individual opinions. the character of the russians is too passionate to allow them to like ideas in the least degree abstract; it is by facts only that they are amused; they have not yet had time or inclination to reduce facts to general ideas. in addition, every significant idea is always more or less dangerous, in the midst of a court where mutual observation, and more frequently envy are the predominant feelings. the silence of the east is here transformed into amiable words, but which generally never penetrate beyond the surface. one feels pleasure for a moment in this brilliant atmosphere, which is an agreeable dissipation of life; but in the long run no information is acquired in it, no faculties are developed in it, and men who pass their life in this manner never acquire any capacity for study or business. far otherwise was it with the society of paris; there we have seen men whose characters have been entirely formed by the lively or serious conversation to which the intercourse between the nobility and men of letters gave birth. chapter . the imperial family. i had at last the pleasure of seeing that monarch, equally absolute by law and custom, and so moderate from his own disposition. the empress elizabeth, to whom i was at first presented, appeared to me the tutelary angel of russia. her manners are extremely reserved, but what she says is full of life, and it is from the focus of all generous ideas that her sentiments and opinions have derived strength and warmth. while i listened to her, i was affected by something inexpressible, which did not proceed from her grandeur, but from the harmony of her soul; so long was it since i had known an instance of concord between power and virtue. as i was conversing with the empress, the door opened, and the emperor alexander did me the honor to come and talk to me. what first struck me in him was such an expression of goodness and dignity, that the two qualities appear inseparable, and in him to form only one. i was also very much affected with the noble simplicity with which he entered upon the great interests of europe, almost among the first words he addressed to me. i have always regarded, as a proof of mediocrity, that apprehension of treating serious questions, with which the best part of the sovereigns of europe have been inspired; they are afraid to pronounce a word to which any real meaning can be attached. the emperor alexander on the contrary, conversed with me as statesmen in england would have done, who place their strength in themselves, and not in the barriers with which they are surrounded. the emperor alexander, whom napoleon has endeavoured to misrepresent, is a man of remarkable understanding and information, and i do not believe that in the whole extent of his empire he could find a minister better versed than himself in all that belongs to the judgment and direction of public affairs. he did not disguise from me his regret for the admiration to which he had surrendered himself in his intercourse with napoleon. his grandfather had, in the same way, entertained a great enthusiasm for frederic ii. in these sort of illusions, produced by an extraordinary character, there is always a generous motive, whatever may be the errors that result from it. the emperor alexander, however, described with great sagacity the effect produced upon him by these conversations with bonaparte, in which he said the most opposite things, as if one must be astonished at each, without thinking of their being contradictory. he related to me also the lessons a la machiavel which napoleon had thought proper to give him: "you see," said he, "i am careful to keep my ministers and generals at variance among themselves, in order that each may reveal to me the faults of the other; i keep up around me a continual jealousy by the manner i treat those who are about me: one day one thinks himself the favorite, the next day another, so that no one is ever certain of my favor." what a vulgar and vicious theory! and will there never arise a man superior to this man, who will demonstrate its inutility? that which is wanting to the sacred cause of morality, is, that it should contribute in a very striking manner to great success in this world; he who feels all the dignity of this cause will sacrifice with pleasure every success, but it is still necessary to teach those presumptuous persons who imagine they discover depth of thinking in the vices of the soul, that if in immorality there is sometimes wit, in virtue there is genius. in obtaining the conviction of the good faith of the emperor alexander, in his relations with napoleon, i was at the same time persuaded that he would not imitate the example of the unfortunate sovereigns of germany, and would sign no peace with him who is equally the enemy of people and kings. a noble soul cannot be twice deceived by the same person. alexander gives and withdraws his confidence with the greatest reflection. his youth and personal advantages have alone, at the beginning of his reign, made him be suspected of levity; but he is serious, even as much so as a man may be who has known misfortune. alexander expressed to me his regret at not being a great captain: i replied to this noble modesty, that a sovereign was much more rare than a general, and that the support of the public feelings of his people, by his example, was achieving the greatest victory, and the first of the kind which had ever been gained. the emperor talked to me with enthusiasm of his nation, and of all that it was capable of becoming. he expressed to me the desire, which all the world knows him to entertain, of ameliorating the state of the peasants still subject to slavery. "sire," said i to him, "your character is a constitution for your empire, and your conscience is the guarantee of it." "were that even the case," replied he, "i should only be a fortunate accident."* noble words! the first of the kind, i believe, which an absolute monarch ever pronounced! how many virtues it requires, in a despot, properly to estimate despotism! and how many virtues also, never to abuse it, when the nation which he governs is almost astonished at such signal moderation. at petersburg especially, the great nobility have less liberality in their principles than the emperor himself. accustomed to be the absolute masters of their peasants, they wish the monarch, in his turn, to be omnipotent, for the purpose of maintaining the hierarchy of despotism. the state of citizens does not yet exist in russia; it begins however to be forming; the sons of the clergy, those of the merchants, and some peasants who have obtained of their lords the liberty of becoming artists, may be considered as a third order in the state. the russian nobility besides bears no resemblance to that of germany or france; a man becomes noble in russia, as soon as he obtains rank in the army. no doubt the great families, such as the narischkins, the dolgoroukis, the gallitzins, &c. will always hold the first rank in the empire; but it is not less true that the advantages of the aristocracy belong to men, whom the monarch's pleasure has made noble in a day; and the whole ambition of the citizens is in consequence to have their sons made officers, in order that they may belong to the privileged class. the result of this is, that young men's education is finished at fifteen years of age; they are hurried into the army as soon as possible, and everything else is neglected. this is not the time certainly to blame an order of things, which has produced so noble a resistance; were tranquility restored, it might be truly said, that under civil considerations, there are great deficiencies in the internal administration of russia. energy and grandeur exist in the nation; but order and knowledge are still frequently wanting, both in the government, and in the private conduct of individuals. peter i. by making russia european, certainly bestowed upon her great advantages; but these advantages he more than counter-balanced by the establishment of a despotism prepared by his father, and consolidated by him; catherine ii. on the contrary tempered the use of absolute power, of which she was not the author. if the political state of europe should ever be restored to peace: in other words if one man were no longer the dispenser of evil to the world, we should see alexander solely occupied with the improvement of his country! and in attempting to establish laws which would guarantee to it that happiness, of which the duration is as yet only secured for the life of its present ruler. * (note by the editor) * this expression has been already quoted in the third volume of the considerations on the french revolution; but it deserves to be repeated. all this, however, it must be remembered, was written at the end of . (end of note by the editor.) from the emperor's i went to his respectable mother's, that princess to whom calumny has never been able to impute a sentiment unconnected with the happiness of her husband, her children, or the family of unfortunate persons of whom she is the protectress. i shall relate, farther on, in what manner she governs that empire of charity, which she exercises in the midst of the omnipotent empire of her son. she lives in the palace of the taurida, and to get to her apartments you have to cross a hall, built by prince potemkin, of incomparable grandeur; a winter garden occupies a part of it, and you see the trees and plants through the pillars which surround the middle inclosure. every thing in this residence is colossal; the conceptions of the prince who built it were fantastically gigantic. he had towns built in the crimea, solely that the empress might see them on her passage; he ordered the assault of a fortress, to please a beautiful woman, the princess dolgorouki, who had disdained his suit. the favor of his sovereign mistress created him such as he showed himself; but there is remarkable, notwithstanding, in the characters of most of the great men of russia, such as menzikoff, suwarow, peter i. himself, and in yet older times ivan vasilievitch, something fantastical, violent, and ironical combined. wit was with them rather an arm than an enjoyment, and it was by the imagination that they were led. generosity, barbarity, unbridled passions, and religious superstition, all met in the same character. even now civilization in russia has not penetrated beyond the surface, even among the great nobility; externally they imitate other nations, but all are russians at heart, and in that consists their strength and originality, the love of country being next to that of god, the noblest sentiment which men can feel. that country must certainly be exceedingly different from those which surround it to inspire a decided attachment; nations which are confounded with one another by slight shades of difference, or which are divided into several separate states, never devote themselves with real passion to the conventional association to which they have attached the name of country. chapter . manners of the great russian nobility. i went to spend a day at the country seat of prince narischkin, great chamberlain of the court, an amiable, easy and polished man, but who cannot exist without a fete; it is at his house that you obtain a correct notion of that vivacity in their tastes, which explains the defects and qualities of the russians. the house of m. de narischkin is always open, and if there happen to be only twenty persons at his country seat, he begins to be weary of this philosophical retreat. polite to strangers, always in movement, and yet perfectly capable of the reflection required to stand well at court: greedy of the enjoyments of imagination, but placing these only in things and not in books; impatient every where but at court, witty when it is to his advantage to be so, magnificent rather than ambitious, and seeking in everything for a certain asiatic grandeur, in which fortune and rank are more conspicuous than personal advantages. his country seat is as agreeable as it is possible for a place of the kind to be, created by the hand of man: all the surrounding country is marshy and barren; so as to make this residence a perfect oasis. on ascending the terrace, you see the gulph of finland, and perceive in the distance, the palace which peter i. built upon its borders; but the space which separates it from the sea and the palace is almost a waste, and the park of m. narischkin alone charms the eye of the observer. we dined in the house of the moldavians, that is to say, in a saloon built according to the taste of these people; it was arranged so as to protect from the heat of the sun, a precaution rather needless in russia. however the imagination is impressed to that degree with the idea that you are living among a people who have only come into the north by accident, that it appears natural to find there the customs of the south, as if the russians were some day or other to bring to petersburg the climate of their old country. the table was covered with the fruits of all countries, according to the custom taken from the east, of only letting the fruits appear, while a crowd of servants carried round to each guest the dishes of meat and vegetables they required. we were entertained with a concert of that horn music which is peculiar to russia, and of which mention has been often made. of twenty musicians, each plays only one and the same note, every time it returns; each of these men in consequence bears the name of the note which he is employed to execute. when one of them is seen going along, people say: that is the sol, that is the mi, or that is the re of m. narischkin. the horns go on increasing from rank to rank, and this music has been by some one called, very properly, a living organ. at a distance the effect is very fine: the exactness and the purity of the harmony excite the most noble ideas; but when you come near to these poor performers, who are there like pipes, yielding only one sound, and quite unable to participate by their own emotions in the effect produced, the pleasure dies away: one does not like to see the fine arts transformed into mechanical arts, to be acquired by dint of strength like exercise. some of the inhabitants of the ukraine, dressed in scarlet, came afterwards to sing to us some of the airs of their country, which are singularly pleasing: they are sometimes gay and sometimes melancholy, and sometimes both united. these airs sometimes break off abruptly in the midst of the melody, as if the imagination of the people was tired before finishing what at first pleased them, or found it more piquant to suspend the charm at the very moment its influence was greatest. it is thus that the sultana of the arabian nights always breaks off her story, when its interest is at the height. m. narischkin in the midst of this variety of pleasures, proposed to us to drink a toast to the united arms of the russians and english, and gave at the same moment a signal to his artillery, which gave almost as loud a salute as that of a sovereign. the inebriety of hope seized all the guests; as for me, i felt myself bathed in tears. was it possible that a foreign tyrant should reduce me to wish that the french should be beat? i wish, said i then, for the fall of him, who is equally the oppressor of france and europe; for the true french will triumph if he is repulsed. the english and the russian guests, and particularly m. narischkin, approved my idea, and the name of france, formerly like that of armida in its effects, was once more heard with kindness by the knights of the east, and of the sea, who were going to fight against her. calrnucks with flat features are still brought up in the houses of the russian nobility, as if to preserve a specimen of those tartars who were conquered by the sclavonians. in the palace of narischkin there were two or three of these half-savage calmucks running about. they are agreeable enough in their infancy, but at the age of twenty they lose all the charms of youth: obstinate, though slaves, they amuse their masters by their resistance, like a squirrel fighting with the wires of his cage. it was painful to look at this specimen of the human race debased; i thought i saw, in the midst of all the pomp of luxury, an image of what man may become, when he derives no dignity either from religion or the laws, and this spectacle was calculated to humble the pride which the enjoyments of splendor may inspire. long carriages for promenade, drawn by the most beautiful horses, conducted us, after dinner, into the park. it was now the end of august, but the sun was pale, the grass of an almost artificial green, because it was only kept up by unremitting attention. the flowers themselves appeared to be an aristocratic enjoyment, so much expense was required to have them. no warbling of birds was heard in the woods, they did not trust themselves to this summer of a moment; neither were any cattle observable in the meadows: one could not dare to give them plants which had required such pains to cultivate. the water scarcely flowed, and only by the help of machines which brought it into the gardens, where the whole of this nature had the air of being a festival decoration, which would disappear when the guests retired. our caliches stopped in front of a building in the garden, which represented a tartar camp; there, all the musicians united began a new concert: the noise of horns and cymbals quite intoxicated the ideas. the better to complete this entire banishment of thinking, we had an imitation, during summer, of their sledges, the rapidity of which consoles the russians for their winter; we rolled upon boards, from the top of a mountain in wood with the quickness of lightning. this amusement charmed the ladies as much as the gentlemen, and allowed them to participate a little in those pleasures of war, which consist in the emotion of danger, and in the animated promptitude of all the movements. thus passed the time; for every day saw a renewal of what appeared to me to be a fete. with some slight differences, the greater part of the great houses of petersburg lead the same kind of life: it is impossible, as one may readily see, for any kind of continued conversation to be kept up in it, and learning is of no utility in this kind of society; but where so much is done only from the desire of collecting in one's house a great multitude of persons, entertainments are after all the only means of preventing the ennui which a crowd in the saloons always creates. in the midst of all this noise, is there any room for love? will be asked by the italian ladies, who scarcely know any other interest in society than the pleasure of seeing the person by whom they wish to be beloved. i passed too short a time at petersburg to obtain correct ideas of the interior arrangements of families; it appeared to me, however, that on one hand, there was more domestic virtue than was said to exist; but that on the other hand, sentimental love was very rarely known. the customs of asia, which meet you at every step, prevent the females from interfering with the domestic cares of their establishment: all these are directed by the husband, and the wife only decorates herself with his gifts, and receives the persons whom he invites. the respect for morality is already much greater than it was at petersburg in the time of those emperors and empresses who depraved opinion by their example. the two present empresses have made those virtues beloved, of which they are themselves the models. in this respect, however, as in a great many others, the principles of morality are not properly fixed in the minds of the russians. the ascendancy of the master has always been so great over them, that from one reign to another, all maxims upon all subjects may be changed. the russians, both men and women, generally carry into love their characteristic impetuosity, but their disposition to change makes them also easily renounce the objects of their choice. a certain irregularity in the imagination does not allow them to find happiness in what is durable. the cultivation of the understanding, which multiplies sentiment by poetry and the fine arts, is very rare among the russians, and with these fantastic and vehement dispositions, love is rather a fete or a delirium than a profound and reflected affection. good company in russia is therefore a perpetual vortex, and perhaps the extreme prudence to which a despotic government accustoms people, may be the cause that the russians are charmed at not being led, by the enticement of conversation, to speak upon subjects which may lead to any consequence whatever. to this reserve, which, under different reigns, has been but too necessary to them, we must attribute the want of truth of which they are accused. the refinements of civilization in all countries alter the sincerity of character, but when a sovereign possesses the unlimited power of exile, imprisonment, sending to siberia, &c. &c. it is something too strong for human nature. we may meet with men independent enough to disdain favor, but heroism is required to brave persecution, and heroism cannot be an universal quality. none of these reflections, we know, apply to the present government, its head being, as emperor, perfectly just, and as a man, singularly generous. but the subjects preserve the defects of slavery long after the sovereign himself would wish to remove them. we have seen, however, during the continuance of this war, how much virtue has been shown by russians of all ranks, not even excepting the courtiers. while i was at petersburg, scarcely any young men were to be seen in company; all had gone to the army. married men, only sons, noblemen of immense fortunes, were serving in the capacity of simple volunteer, and the sight of their estates and houses ravaged, has never made them think of the losses in any other light than as motives of revenge, but never of capitulating with the enemy. such qualities more than counterbalance all the abuses, disorders, and misfortunes which an administration still vicious, a civilization yet new, and despotic institutions, may have introduced. chapter . establishments for public education.--institute of saint catherine. we went to see the cabinet of natural history, which is remarkable by the productions of siberia which it contains. the furs of that country have excited the cupidity of the russians, as the mexican gold mines did that of the spaniards. there was a time in russia, when the current money consisted of sable and squirrel skins, so universal was the desire of being provided with the means of guarding against the cold. the most curious thing in the museum at petersburg, is a rich collection of bones of antediluvian animals, and particularly the remains of a gigantic mammoth, which have been found almost whole among the ices of siberia. it appears from geological observations, that the world has a much older history than that which we know: infinity is fearful in all things. at present, the inhabitants, and even the animals of this extremity of the inhabited globe are almost penetrated with the cold, which makes nature expire, a few leagues beyond their country; the color of the animals is confounded with that of the snow, and the dearth seems to be lost in the ices and fogs which terminate this lower creation. i was struck with the countenances of the inhabitants of kamstchatka, which are perfectly imitated in the museum at petersburg. the priests of that country, called shamanes, are a kind of improvisators; they wear, over their tunick of bark, a sort of steel net, to which some pieces of iron are attached, the noise of which is very great when the improvisator is agitated; he has moments of inspiration which a good deal resemble nervous attacks, and it is rather by sorcery, than talent, that he makes an impression on the people. the imagination, in such dreary countries, is scarcely remarkable but by fear, and the earth herself appears to repel man by the terror with which she inspires him. i afterwards saw the citadel, in the circumference of which is the church where the coffins of all the sovereigns, from the time of peter the great, are deposited: these coffins are not shut up in monuments; they are exposed in the same way as they were on the day of their funeral, and one might fancy one's self quite close to these corpses, from which a single board appears to separate us. when paul i. came to the throne, he caused the remains of his father, peter i. to be crowned, who not having received that honor during his life, could not be placed in the citadel. by the orders of paul i. the ceremonial of interment for both his father and mother was recommenced. both were exposed afresh: four chamberlains once more kept guard over the bodies, as if they had only died the day before; and the two coffins are now placed by the side of each other, compelled to live in peace under the empire of death. among the sovereigns who have stayed the despotic power transmitted to them by peter i. there are several whom a bloody conspiracy has cast from the throne. the same courtiers, who have not the strength to tell their master the least truth, know how to conspire against him, and the deepest dissimulation necessarily accompanies this kind of political revolution; for they must load, with the appearance of respect, the person whom they wish to assassinate. and yet, what would become of a country governed despotically, if a lawless tyrant had not to dread the edge of the poniard? horrible alternative, and which is sufficient to show the nature of the institutions where crime must be reckoned as the balance of power. i paid homage to catherine ii. by going to her country residence, czarskozelo. this palace and garden are arranged with great art and magnificence; but the air was already very cold, although we were only at the first of september, and it was a singular contrast to see the flowers of the south agitated by the winds of the north. all the traits which have been collected of catherine ii. penetrate one with admiration for her as a sovereign; and i know not whether the russians are not more indebted to her than to peter i. for that fortunate persuasion of their invincibility which has so much contributed to their victories, the charm of a female tempered the action of power, and mingled chivalrous gallantry with the successes, the homage of which was paid to her. catherine ii. had, in the highest degree, the good sense of government; a brilliant understanding than hers would have less resembled genius, and her lofty reason inspired profound respect in the russians, who distrust their own imagination, and wish to have it directed with wisdom. close to czarskozelo is the palace of paul i., a charming residence, as the empress dowager and her daughters have there placed the chefs-d'oeuvrefc of their talents and good taste. this place reminds us of that admirable mother and her daughters, whom nothing has been able to turn aside from their domestic virtues. i allowed myself to indulge in the pleasure excited by the novel objects of my daily visits, and i know not how, i had quite forgotten the war on which the fate of europe depended; the pleasure i had in hearing expressed by all the world the sentiments which i had so long stifled in my soul, was so strong, that it appeared to me there was nothing more to dread, and that such truths were omnipotent as soon as they were known. nevertheless a succession of reverses had taken place, without the public being informed of them. a man of wit said that all was mystery at petersburg, although nothing was a secret; and in fact the truth is discovered in the end; but the habit of silence is such among the russian courtiers, that they dissemble the day before what will be notorious the next, and are always unwilling to reveal what they know. a stranger told me that smolensk was taken and moscow in the greatest danger. discouragement immediately seized me. i fancied that i already saw a repetition of the deplorable history of the austrian and prussian treaties of peace, the result of the conquest of their capitals. this was the third time the same game had been played, and it might again succeed. i did not perceive the public spirit; the apparent inconstancy of the impressions of the russians prevented me from observing it. despondency had frozen all minds, and i was ignorant, that with these men of vehement impressions, this despondency is the forerunner of a dreadful awakening. in the same way, you remark in the common people, an inconceivable idleness up to the very moment when their activity is roused; then it knows no obstacle, dreads no danger, and seems to triumph equally over the elements and men. i had understood that the internal administration, that of war as well as of justice, frequently fell into the most venal hands, and that by the dilapidations which the subaltern agents allowed themselves, it was impossible to form any just idea either of the number of troops, or of the measures taken to provision them; for lying and theft are inseparable, and in a country of such recent civilization the intermediate class have neither the simplicity of the peasantry, nor the grandeur of the boyars; and no public opinion yet exists to keep in check this third class, whose existence is so recent, and which has lost the naivete of popular faith without having acquired the point of honor. a display of jealous feeling was also remarked between the military commanders. it is in the very nature of a despotic government to create, even in spite of itself, jealousy in those who surround it: the will of one man being able to change entirely the fortune of every individual, fear and hope have too much scope not to be constantly agitating this jealousy, which is also very much excited by another feeling, the hatred of foreigners. the general who commanded the russian army, general barclay de tolly, although born on the territories of the empire, was not of the pure sclavonian race, and that was enough to make him be considered incapable of leading the russians to victory: he had, besides, turned his distinguished talents towards systems of encampment, positions, and manoeuvres, while the military art, which best suits the russians, is attack. to make them fall back, even from a wise and well reasoned calculation, is to cool in them that impetuosity from which they derive all their strength. the prospects of the campaign were therefore the most inauspicious possible, and the silence which was maintained on that account was still more alarming. the english give in their public papers the most exact account, man by man, of the wounded, prisoners and killed in each action; noble candour of a government which is equally sincere towards the nation and its monarch, recognizing in both the same right to have a knowledge of what concerns the nation. i walked about with deep melancholy in that beautiful city of petersburg which might become the prey of the conqueror. when i returned in the evening from the islands, and saw the gilded point of the citadel which seemed to spout out in the air like a ray of fire, while the neva reflected the marble quays and the palaces which surround it, i represented to myself all these wonders faded by the arrogance of a man who would come to say, like satan on the top of a mountain, "the kingdoms of the earth are mine." all that was beautiful and good at petersburg appeared to me in the presence of approaching destruction, and i could not enjoy them without having these painful ideas constantly pursuing me. i went to see the establishments for education, founded by the empress, and there, even more than in the palaces, my anxiety was redoubled; for the breath of bonaparte's tyranny is sufficient, if it approach institutions tending to the improvement of the human race, to alter their purity. the institute of st. catherine is formed of two houses, each containing two hundred and fifty young ladies of the nobility and citizens; they are educated under the inspection of the empress, with a degree of care that even exceeds what a rich family would pay to its own children. order and elegance are remarkable in the most minute details of this institute, and the sentiment of the purest religion and morality there presides over all that the fine arts can develope. the russian females have so much natural grace, that on entering the hall where all the young ladies saluted us, i did not observe one who did not give to this simple action all the politeness and modesty which it was capable of expressing. they were invited to exhibit us the different kinds of talent which distinguished them, and one of them, who knew by heart pieces of the best french authors, repeated to me several of the most eloquent pages of my father's course of religious morals. this delicate attention probably came from the empress herself. i felt the most lively emotion in hearing that language uttered, which for so many years had had no asylum but in my heart. beyond the empire of bonaparte, in all countries posterity commences, and justice is shown towards those who even in the tomb, have felt the attack of his imperial calumnies. the young ladies of the institute of st. catherine, before sitting down to table, sung psalms in chorus: this great number of voices, so pure and sweet, occasioned me an emotion of tender feeling mingled with bitterness. what would war do, in the midst of such peaceable establishments? where could these doves fly to, from the arms of the conqueror? after this meal, the young ladies assembled in a superb hall, where they all danced together. there was nothing striking in their features as to beauty, but their gracefulness was extraordinary; these were daughters of the east, with all the decency which christian manners have introduced among women. they first executed an old dance to the tune of long live henry the fourth, long live this valiant king! what a distance there was between the times which this tune reminded one of, and the present period! two little chubby girls of ten years old finished the ballet by the russian step: this dance sometimes assumes the voluptuous character of love, but executed by children, the innocence of that age was mingled with the national originality. it is impossible to paint: the interest inspired by these amiable talents, cultivated by the delicate and generous hand of a female and a sovereign. an establishment for the deaf and dumb, and another for the blind, are equally under the inspection of the empress. the emperor, on his side, pays great attention to the school of cadets, directed by a man of very superior understanding, general klinger. all these establishments are truly useful, but they might be reproached with being too splendid. at least it would be desirable to found in different parts of the empire, not schools so superior, but establishments which would communicate elementary instruction to the people. every thing has commenced in russia by luxury, and the building has, it may be said, preceded the foundation. there are only two great cities in russia, petersburg and moscow; the others scarcely deserve to be mentioned; they are besides separated at very great distances: even the chateaux of the nobility are at such distances from each other, that it is with difficulty the proprietors can communicate with each other. finally, the inhabitants are so dispersed in this empire, that the knowledge of some can hardly be of use to others. the peasants can only reckon by means of a calculating machine, and the clerks of the post themselves follow the same method. the greek popes have much less knowledge than the catholic curates, or the protestant ministers; so that the clergy in russia are really not fit to instruct the people, as in the other countries of europe. the great bond of the nation is in religion and patriotism; but there is in it no focus of knowledge, the rays of which might spread over all parts of the empire, and the two capitals have not yet learned to communicate to the provinces what they have collected in literature and the fine arts. if this country could have remained at peace, it would have experienced all sorts of improvement under the beneficent reign of alexander. but who knows if the virtues which this war has developed, may not be exactly those which are likely to regenerate nations? the russians have not yet had, up to the present time, men of genius but for the military career; in all other arts they are only imitators; printing, however, has not been introduced among them more than one hundred and twenty years. the other nations of europe have become civilized almost simultaneously, and have been able to mingle their natural genius with acquired knowledge; with the russians this mixture has not yet operated. in the same manner as we see two rivers after their junction, flow in the same channel without confounding their waters, in the same manner nature and civilization are united among the russians without identifying the one with the other: and according to circumstances the same man at one time presents himself to you as a european who seems only to exist in social forms, and at another time as a sclavonian who only listens to the most furious passions. genius will come to them in the fine arts, and particularly in literature, when they shall have found out the means of infusing their real disposition into language, as they show it in action. i witnessed the performance of a russian tragedy, the subject of which was the deliverance of the muscovites, when they drove back the tartars beyond casan. the prince of smolensko appeared in the ancient costume of the boyars, and the tartar army was called the golden horde. this piece was written almost entirely according to the rules of the french drama; the rhythm of the verses, the declamation, and the division of the scenes, was entirely french; one situation only was peculiar to russian manners, and that was the profound terror which the dread of her father's curse has inspired in a young female. paternal authority is almost as strong among the russians as among the chinese, and it is always among the people that we must seek for the germ of national character. the good company of all countries resembles each other, and nothing is so unfit as that elegant world to furnish subjects for tragedy. among all those which the history of russia presents, there is one by which i was particularly struck. ivan the terrible, already old, was besieging novorogod. the boyars seeing him very much enfeebled, asked him if he would not give the command of the assault to his son. his rage at this proposition was so great, that nothing could appease him; his son prostrated himself at his feet, but he repulsed him with a blow of such violence, that two days after the unfortunate prince died of it. the father, then reduced to despair, became equally indifferent to war and to power, and only survived his son a few months. this revolt of an old despot against the progress of time has in it something grand and solemn, and the melting tenderness which succeeds to the paroxysm of rage in that ferocious soul, represents man as he comes from the hand of nature, now irritated by selfishness, and again restrained by affection. a law of russia inflicted the same punishment on the person who lamed a man in the arm as on one who killed him. in fact, man in russia is principally valuable by his military strength; all other kinds of energy are adapted to manners and institutions which the present state of russia has not yet developed. the females at petersburg, however, seemed to be penetrated with that patriotic honor which constitutes the moral power of a state. the princess dolgoronki, the baroness strogonoff, and several others equally of the first rank, already knew that a part of their fortunes had suffered greatly by the ravaging of the province of smolensko, and they appeared not to think of it otherwise than to encourage their equals to sacrifice every thing like them. the princess dolgorouki related to me that an old long-bearded russian, seated on an eminence overlooking smoleusko, thus, in tears, addressed his little grandson, whom he held upon his knees: "formerly, my child, the russians went to gain victories at the extremity of europe; now, strangers come to attack them in their own homes." the grief of this old man was not vain, and we shall soon see how dearly his tears have been purchased. chapter . departure for sweden.--passage through finland. the emperor quitted petersburg, and i learned that he was gone to abo, where he was to meet general bernadotte, prince royal of sweden. this news left no farther doubt about the determination of that prince to take part in the present war, and nothing could be more important at that moment for the salvation of russia, and consequently for that of europe. we shall see the influence of it developed in the sequel of this narrative. the news of the entrance of the french into smolensko arrived during the conferences of the prince of sweden with the emperor of russia; and it was there that alexander contracted the engagement with himself and the prince royal, his ally, never to sign a treaty of peace. "should petersburg be taken," said he, "i will retire into siberia. i will there resume our ancient customs, and like our long-bearded ancestors, we will return anew to conquer the empire." "this resolution will liberate europe," exclaimed the prince royal, and his prediction begins to be accomplishing. i saw the emperor alexander a second time upon his return from abo, and the conversation i had the honor of holding with him, satisfied me to that degree of the firmness of his determination, that in spite of the capture of moscow, and all the reports which followed it, i firmly believed that he would never yield. he was so good as to tell me, that after the capture of smolensko, marshal berthier had written to the russian commander in chief respecting some military matters, and terminated his letter by saying that the emperor napoleon always preserved the tenderest friendship for the emperor alexander, a stale mystification which the emperor of russia received as it deserved. napoleon had given him some lessons in politics, and lessons in war, abandoning himself in the first to the quackery of vice, and in the second to the pleasure of exhibiting a disdainful carelessness. he was deceived in the emperor alexander; he had mistaken the nobleness of his character for dupery; he had not been able to perceive that if the emperor of russia had allowed himself to go too far in his enthusiasm for him, it was because he believed him a partizan of the first principles of the french revolution, which agreed with his own opinions; but never had alexander the idea of associating with napoleon to reduce europe to slavery. napoleon thought in that, as well as in all other circumstances, to succeed in blinding a man by a false representation of his interest; but he encountered conscience, and his calculations were entirely baffled; for that is an element, of the strength of which he knows nothing, and which he never allows to enter into his combinations. although general barclay de tolly was a military man of great reputation, yet as he had met with reverses at the beginning of the campaign, the general opinion designated as his successor, a general of great renown, prince kutusow; he took the command fifteen days before the entry of the french into moscow, but he got to the army only six days before the great battle which took place almost at the gates of that city, at borodino. i went to see him the day before his departure; he was an old man of the most graceful manners, and lively physiognomy, although he had lost an eye by one of the numerous wounds he had received in the course of a fifty years' service. on looking at him, i was afraid that he had not sufficient strength to struggle with the rough young men who were pouncing upon russia from all corners of europe: but the russian courtiers at petersburg become tartars at the army: and we have seen by suwarow that neither age nor honors can enervate their physical and moral energy. i was moved at taking leave of this illustrious marshal kutusow; i knew not whether i was embracing a conqueror or a martyr, but i saw that he had the fullest sense of the grandeur of the cause in which he was employed. it was for the defence, or rather for the restoration of all the moral virtues which man owes to christianity, of all the dignity he derives from god, of all the independence which he is allowed by nature; it was for the rescuing of all these advantages from the clutches of one man, for the french are as little to be accused as the germans and italians who followed his train, of the crimes of his armies. before his departure, marshal kutusow went to offer up prayers in the church of our lady of casan, and all the people who followed his steps, called out to him to be the saviour of russia. what a moment for a mortal being! his age gave him no hope of surviving the fatigues of the campaign; but there are moments when man has a wish to die for the satisfaction of his soul. certain of the generous opinions and of the noble conduct of the prince of sweden, i was more than ever confirmed in the resolution of going to stockholm, previous to embarking for england; towards the end of september i quitted petersburg to repair to sweden through finland. my new friends, those whom a community of sentiment had brought about me, came to bid me adieu; sir robert wilson, who seeks every where an opportunity of fighting, and inflaming his friends by his spirit: m. de stein, a man of antique character, who only lived in the hope of seeing the deliverance of his country; the spanish envoy; and the english minister, lord tyrconnel; the witty admiral bentinck; alexis de noailles, the only french emigrant from the imperial tyranny, the only one who was there, like me, to bear witness for france; colonel dornberg, that intrepid hessian whom nothing has turned from the object of his pursuit; and several russians, whose names have been since celebrated by their exploits. never was the fate of the world exposed to greater dangers; no one dared to say so, but all knew it: i only, as a female, was not exposed to it; but i might reckon what i had suffered as something. i knew not in bidding adieu to these worthy knights of the human race, which of them i should ever see again, and already two of them are no longer in existence. when the passions of man rouse man against his fellows, when nations attack each other with fury, we recognize, with sorrow, human destiny in the miseries of humanity; but when a single being, similar to the idols of the laplanders, to whom the incense of fear is offered up, spreads misery over the earth in torrents, we experience a sort of superstitious fear which leads us to consider all honorable persons as his victims. on entering into finland, every thing indicates that you have passed into another country, and that you have to do with a very different race from the sclavonians. the finns are said to come immediately from the north of asia; their language also is said to have no resemblance to the swedish, which is an intermediate one between the english and the german. the countenances of the finns, however, are generally perfectly german: their fair hair, and white complexions, bear no resemblance to the vivacity of the russian countenance; but their manners are also much milder; the common people have a settled probity, the result of protestant instruction, and purity of manners. on sundays, the young women are seen returning from sermon on horseback, and the young men following them. you will frequently receive hospitality from the pastors of finland, who regard it as their duty to give a lodging to travellers, and nothing can be more pure or delightful than the reception you meet with in those families; there are scarcely any noblemens' seats in finland, so that the pastors are generally the most important personages of the country. in several finnish songs, the young girls offer to their lovers to sacrifice the residence of the pastor, even if it was offered to them to share. this reminds me of the expression of a young shepherd, "if i was a king, i would keep my sheep on horseback." the imagination itself scarcely goes beyond what is known. the aspect of nature is very different in finland to what it is in russia; in place of the marshes and plains which surround st. petersburg, you find rocks, almost mountains, and forests: but after a time, these mountains, and those forests, composed of the same trees, the fir and the birch, become monotonous. the enormous blocks of granite which are seen scattered through the country, and on the borders of the high roads, give the country an air of vigor; but there is very little life around these great bones of the earth, and vegetation begins to decrease from the latitude of finland to the last degree of the animated world. we passed through a forest half consumed by fire; the north winds which add to the force of the flames, render these fires very frequent, both in the towns and in the country. man has in all ways great difficulty in maintaining the struggle with nature in these frozen climates. you meet with few towns in finland, and those few are very thinly peopled. there is no centre, no emulation, nothing to say, and very little to do, in a northern swedish or russian province, and during eight months of the year, the whole of animated nature is asleep. the emperor alexander possessed himself of finland after the treaty of tilsit, and at a period when the deranged intellects of the monarch who then reigned in sweden, gustavus iv., rendered him incapable of defending his country. the moral character of this prince was very estimable, but from his infancy, he had been sensible himself that he could not hold the reins of government. the swedes fought in finland with the greatest courage; but without a warlike chief on the throne, a nation which is not numerous cannot triumph over a powerful enemy. the emperor alexander became master of finland by conquest, and by treaties founded on force; but we must do him the justice to say, that he treated this new province very well, and respected the liberties she enjoyed. he allowed the finns all their privileges relative to the raising of taxes and men; he sent very generous assistance to the towns which had been burnt, and his favors compensated to a certain extent what the finns possessed as rights, if free men can ever accede voluntarily to that sort of exchange. finally, one of the prevailing ideas of the nineteenth century, natural boundaries, rendered finland as necessary to russia, as norway to sweden; and it must be admitted as a truth, that wherever these natural limits have not existed, they have been the source of perpetual wars. i embarked at abo, the capital of finland. there is an university in that city, and they make some attempts in it to cultivate the intellect: but the vicinity of the bears and wolves during the winter is so close, that all ideas are absorbed in the necessity of ensuring a tolerable physical existence; and the difficulty which is felt in obtaining that in the countries of the north, consumes at great part of the time which' is elsewhere consecrated to the enjoyment of the intellectual arts. as some compensation, however, it may be said that the very difficulties with which nature surrounds men give greater firmness to their character, and prevent the admission into their mind of all the disorders occasioned by idleness. i could not help, however every moment regretting those rays of the south which had penetrated to my very soul. the mythological ideas of the inhabitants of the north are constantly representing to them ghosts and phantoms; day is there equally favorable to apparitions as night; something pale and cloudy seems to summon the dead to return to the earth, to breathe the cold air, as the tomb with which the living are surrounded. in these countries the two extremities are generally more conspicuous than the intermediate ones; where men are entirely occupied with conquering their existence from nature, mental labors very easily become mystical, because man draws entirely from himself, and is in no degree inspired by external objects. since i have been so cruelly persecuted by the emperor, i have lost all kind of confidence in destiny; i have however a stronger belief in the protection of providence, but it is not in the form of happiness on this earth. the result is, that all resolutions terrify me, and yet exile obliges me frequently to adopt some. i dreaded the sea, although every one said, all the world makes this passage, and no harm happens to any one. such is the language which encourages almost all travellers: but the imagination does not allow itself to be chained by this kind of consolation, and that abyss, from which so slight an obstacle separates you, is always tormenting to the mind. mr. schlegel saw the terror i felt about the frail vessel which was to carry us to stockholm. he showed me, near abo, the prison in which one of the most unfortunate kings of sweden, eric xiv. had been confined some time before he died in another prison near gripsholm. "if you were confined there," he said to me, "how much would you envy the passage of this sea, which at present so terrifies you." this just reflection speedily gave another turn to my ideas, and the first days of our voyage were sufficiently pleasant. we passed between the islands, and although there was more danger close to the land than in the open sea, one never feels the same terror which the sight of the waves appearing to touch the sky makes one experience. i made them show me the land in the horizon, as far as i could perceive it; infinity is as fearful to the sight as it is pleasant to the soul. we passed by the isle of aland, where the plenipotentiaries of peter i. and charles xii. negociated a peace, and endeavored to fix boundaries to their ambition in this frozen part of the world, which the blood of their subjects alone had been able to thaw for a moment. we hoped to reach stockholm the following day, but a decidedly contrary wind obliged us to cast anchor by the side of an island entirely covered with rocks interspersed with trees, which hardly grew higher than the stones which surrounded them. we hastened, however, to take a walk on this island, in order to feel the earth under our feet. i have always been very subject to ennui, and far from knowing how to occupy myself at those moments of entire leisure which seem destined for study. here the manuscript breaks off. after a passage which was not without danger, my mother was landed safely at stockholm. she was received in sweden with the greatest kindness, and spent eight months there, and it was there she wrote the present journal. shortly after, she departed for london, and there published her work on germany, which the imperial police had suppressed. but her health, already cruelly affected by bonaparte's persecutions, having suffered from the fatigues of a long voyage, she felt herself obliged without farther delay to undertake the history of the political life of her father, and to adjourn to a future period all other labors, until she had finished that which her filial affection made her regard as a duty. she then conceived the plan of her considerations on the french revolution. that work even she was not spared to finish, and the manuscript of her ten years' exile remained in her portfolio in the state in which i now publish it. (end of note by the editor.) none the confessions of jean jacques rousseau (in books) privately printed for the members of the aldus society london, book i. contents: introduction--s.w. orson book i. introduction. among the notable books of later times-we may say, without exaggeration, of all time--must be reckoned the confessions of jean jacques rousseau. it deals with leading personages and transactions of a momentous epoch, when absolutism and feudalism were rallying for their last struggle against the modern spirit, chiefly represented by voltaire, the encyclopedists, and rousseau himself--a struggle to which, after many fierce intestine quarrels and sanguinary wars throughout europe and america, has succeeded the prevalence of those more tolerant and rational principles by which the statesmen of our own day are actuated. on these matters, however, it is not our province to enlarge; nor is it necessary to furnish any detailed account of our author's political, religious, and philosophic axioms and systems, his paradoxes and his errors in logic: these have been so long and so exhaustively disputed over by contending factions that little is left for even the most assiduous gleaner in the field. the inquirer will find, in mr. john money's excellent work, the opinions of rousseau reviewed succinctly and impartially. the 'contrat social', the 'lattres ecrites de la montagne', and other treatises that once aroused fierce controversy, may therefore be left in the repose to which they have long been consigned, so far as the mass of mankind is concerned, though they must always form part of the library of the politician and the historian. one prefers to turn to the man rousseau as he paints himself in the remarkable work before us. that the task which he undertook in offering to show himself--as persius puts it--'intus et in cute', to posterity, exceeded his powers, is a trite criticism; like all human enterprises, his purpose was only imperfectly fulfilled; but this circumstance in no way lessens the attractive qualities of his book, not only for the student of history or psychology, but for the intelligent man of the world. its startling frankness gives it a peculiar interest wanting in most other autobiographies. many censors have elected to sit in judgment on the failings of this strangely constituted being, and some have pronounced upon him very severe sentences. let it be said once for all that his faults and mistakes were generally due to causes over which he had but little control, such as a defective education, a too acute sensitiveness, which engendered suspicion of his fellows, irresolution, an overstrained sense of honour and independence, and an obstinate refusal to take advice from those who really wished to befriend him; nor should it be forgotten that he was afflicted during the greater part of his life with an incurable disease. lord byron had a soul near akin to rousseau's, whose writings naturally made a deep impression on the poet's mind, and probably had an influence on his conduct and modes of thought: in some stanzas of 'childe harold' this sympathy is expressed with truth and power; especially is the weakness of the swiss philosopher's character summed up in the following admirable lines: "here the self-torturing sophist, wild rousseau, the apostle of affliction, he who threw enchantment over passion, and from woe wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew the breath which made him wretched; yet he knew how to make madness beautiful, and cast o'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they passed the eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast. "his life was one long war with self-sought foes, or friends by him self-banished; for his mind had grown suspicion's sanctuary, and chose, for its own cruel sacrifice, the kind, 'gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind. but he was frenzied,-wherefore, who may know? since cause might be which skill could never find; but he was frenzied by disease or woe to that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show." one would rather, however, dwell on the brighter hues of the picture than on its shadows and blemishes; let us not, then, seek to "draw his frailties from their dread abode." his greatest fault was his renunciation of a father's duty to his offspring; but this crime he expiated by a long and bitter repentance. we cannot, perhaps, very readily excuse the way in which he has occasionally treated the memory of his mistress and benefactress. that he loved madame de warens--his 'mamma'--deeply and sincerely is undeniable, notwithstanding which he now and then dwells on her improvidence and her feminine indiscretions with an unnecessary and unbecoming lack of delicacy that has an unpleasant effect on the reader, almost seeming to justify the remark of one of his most lenient critics--that, after all, rousseau had the soul of a lackey. he possessed, however, many amiable and charming qualities, both as a man and a writer, which were evident to those amidst whom he lived, and will be equally so to the unprejudiced reader of the confessions. he had a profound sense of justice and a real desire for the improvement and advancement of the race. owing to these excellences he was beloved to the last even by persons whom he tried to repel, looking upon them as members of a band of conspirators, bent upon destroying his domestic peace and depriving him of the means of subsistence. those of his writings that are most nearly allied in tone and spirit to the 'confessions' are the 'reveries d'un promeneur solitaire' and 'la nouvelle heloise'. his correspondence throws much light on his life and character, as do also parts of 'emile'. it is not easy in our day to realize the effect wrought upon the public mind by the advent of 'la nouvelle heloise'. julie and saint-preux became names to conjure with; their ill-starred amours were everywhere sighed and wept over by the tender-hearted fair; indeed, in composing this work, rousseau may be said to have done for switzerland what the author of the waverly novels did for scotland, turning its mountains, lakes and islands, formerly regarded with aversion, into a fairyland peopled with creatures whose joys and sorrows appealed irresistibly to every breast. shortly after its publication began to flow that stream of tourists and travellers which tends to make switzerland not only more celebrated but more opulent every year. it, is one of the few romances written in the epistolary form that do not oppress the reader with a sense of languor and unreality; for its creator poured into its pages a tide of passion unknown to his frigid and stilted predecessors, and dared to depict nature as she really is, not as she was misrepresented by the modish authors and artists of the age. some persons seem shy of owning an acquaintance with this work; indeed, it has been made the butt of ridicule by the disciples of a decadent school. its faults and its beauties are on the surface; rousseau's own estimate is freely expressed at the beginning of the eleventh book of the confessions and elsewhere. it might be wished that the preface had been differently conceived and worded; for the assertion made therein that the book may prove dangerous has caused it to be inscribed on a sort of index, and good folk who never read a line of it blush at its name. its "sensibility," too, is a little overdone, and has supplied the wits with opportunities for satire; for example, canning, in his 'new morality': "sweet sensibility, who dwells enshrined in the fine foldins of the feeling mind.... sweet child of sickly fancy!-her of yore from her loved france rousseau to exile bore; and while 'midst lakes and mountains wild he ran, full of himself, and shunned the haunts of man, taught her o'er each lone vale and alpine, steep to lisp the story of his wrongs and weep." as might be imagined, voltaire had slight sympathy with our social reformer's notions and ways of promulgating them, and accordingly took up his wonted weapons--sarcasm and ridicule--against poor jean-jacques. the quarrels of these two great men cannot be described in this place; but they constitute an important chapter in the literary and social history of the time. in the work with which we are immediately concerned, the author seems to avoid frequent mention of voltaire, even where we should most expect it. however, the state of his mind when he penned this record of his life should be always remembered in relation to this as well as other occurrences. rousseau had intended to bring his autobiography down to a later date, but obvious causes prevented this: hence it is believed that a summary of the chief events that marked his closing years will not be out of place here. on quitting the ile de saint-pierre he travelled to strasbourg, where he was warmly received, and thence to paris, arriving in that city on december i , . the prince de conti provided him with a lodging in the hotel saint-simon, within the precincts of the temple--a place of sanctuary for those under the ban of authority. 'every one was eager to see the illustrious proscript, who complained of being made a daily show, "like sancho panza in his island of barataria." during his short stay in the capital there was circulated an ironical letter purporting to come from the great frederick, but really written by horace walpole. this cruel, clumsy, and ill-timed joke angered rousseau, who ascribed it to, voltaire. a few sentences may be quoted: "my dear jean-jacques,--you have renounced geneva, your native place. you have caused your expulsion from switzerland, a country so extolled in your writings; france has issued a warrant against you: so do you come to me. my states offer you a peaceful retreat. i wish you well, and will treat you well, if you will let me. but, if you persist in refusing my help, do not reckon upon my telling any one that you did so. if you are bent on tormenting your spirit to find new misfortunes, choose whatever you like best. i am a king, and can procure them for you at your pleasure; and, what will certainly never happen to you in respect of your enemies, i will cease to persecute you as soon as you cease to take a pride in being persecuted. your good friend, "frederick." early in david hume persuaded rousseau to go with him to england, where the exile could find a secure shelter. in london his appearance excited general attention. edmund burke had an interview with him and held that inordinate vanity was the leading trait in his character. mr. davenport, to whom he was introduced by hume, generously offered rousseau a home at wootton, in staffordshire, near the, peak country; the latter, however, would only accept the offer on condition that he should pay a rent of l a year. he was accorded a pension of l by george iii., but declined to draw after the first annual payment. the climate and scenery of wootton being similar to those of his native country, he was at first delighted with his new abode, where he lived with therese, and devoted his time to herborising and inditing the first six books of his confessions. soon, however, his old hallucinations acquired strength, and rousseau convinced himself that enemies were bent upon his capture, if not his death. in june, , he wrote a violent letter to hume, calling him "one of the worst of men." literary paris had combined with hume and the english government to surround him--as he supposed --with guards and spies; he revolved in his troubled mind all the reports and rumours he had heard for months and years; walpole's forged letter rankled in his bosom; and in the spring of he fled; first to spalding, in lincolnshire, and subsequently to calais, where he landed in may. on his arrival in france his restless and wandering disposition forced him continually to change his residence, and acquired for him the title of "voyageur perpetuel." while at trye, in gisors, in -- , he wrote the second part of the confessions. he had assumed the surname of renou, and about this time he declared before two witnesses that therese was his wife--a proceeding to which he attached the sanctity of marriage. in he took up his abode in paris, where he lived continuously for seven years, in a street which now bears his name, and gained a living by copying music. bernardin de saint-pierre, the author of 'paul and virginia', who became acquainted with him in , has left some interesting particulars of rousseau's daily mode of life at this period. monsieur de girardin having offered him an asylum at ermemonville in the spring of , he and therese went thither to reside, but for no long time. on the d of july, in the same year, this perturbed spirit at last found rest, stricken by apoplexy. a rumor that he had committed suicide was circulated, but the evidence of trustworthy witnesses, including a physician, effectually contradicts this accusation. his remains, first interred in the ile des peupliers, were, after the revolution, removed to the pantheon. in later times the government of geneva made some reparation for their harsh treatment of a famous citizen, and erected his statue, modelled by his compatriot, pradier, on an island in the rhone. "see nations, slowly wise and meanly just, to buried merit raise the tardy bust." november, . s. w. orson. the confessions of j. j. rousseau book i. i have entered upon a performance which is without example, whose accomplishment will have no imitator. i mean to present my fellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be myself. i know my heart, and have studied mankind; i am not made like any one i have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, i at least claim originality, and whether nature did wisely in breaking the mould with which she formed me, can only be determined after having read this work. whenever the last trumpet shall sound, i will present myself before the sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus have i acted; these were my thoughts; such was i. with equal freedom and veracity have i related what was laudable or wicked, i have concealed no crimes, added no virtues; and if i have sometimes introduced superfluous ornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory: i may have supposed that certain, which i only knew to be probable, but have never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. such as i was, i have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous and sublime; even as thou hast read my inmost soul: power eternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, i was better than that man. i was born at geneva, in , son of isaac rousseau and susannah bernard, citizens. my father's share of a moderate competency, which was divided among fifteen children, being very trivial, his business of a watchmaker (in which he had the reputation of great ingenuity) was his only dependence. my mother's circumstances were more affluent; she was daughter of a mons. bernard, minister, and possessed a considerable share of modesty and beauty; indeed, my father found some difficulty in obtaining her hand. the affection they entertained for each other was almost as early as their existence; at eight or nine years old they walked together every evening on the banks of the treille, and before they were ten, could not support the idea of separation. a natural sympathy of soul confined those sentiments of predilection which habit at first produced; born with minds susceptible of the most exquisite sensibility and tenderness, it was only necessary to encounter similar dispositions; that moment fortunately presented itself, and each surrendered a willing heart. the obstacles that opposed served only to give a decree of vivacity to their affection, and the young lover, not being able to obtain his mistress, was overwhelmed with sorrow and despair. she advised him to travel--to forget her. he consented--he travelled, but returned more passionate than ever, and had the happiness to find her equally constant, equally tender. after this proof of mutual affection, what could they resolve?--to dedicate their future lives to love! the resolution was ratified with a vow, on which heaven shed its benediction. fortunately, my mother's brother, gabriel bernard, fell in love with one of my father's sisters; she had no objection to the match, but made the marriage of his sister with her brother an indispensable preliminary. love soon removed every obstacle, and the two weddings were celebrated the same day: thus my uncle became the husband of my aunt, and their children were doubly cousins german. before a year was expired, both had the happiness to become fathers, but were soon after obliged to submit to a separation. my uncle bernard, who was an engineer, went to serve in the empire and hungary, under prince eugene, and distinguished himself both at the siege and battle of belgrade. my father, after the birth of my only brother, set off, on recommendation, for constantinople, and was appointed watchmaker to the seraglio. during his absence, the beauty, wit, and accomplishments-- [they were too brilliant for her situation, the minister, her father, having bestowed great pains on her education. she was aught drawing, singing, and to play on the theorbo; had learning, and wrote very agreeable verses. the following is an extempore piece which she composed in the absence of her husband and brother, in a conversation with some person relative to them, while walking with her sister--in--law, and their two children: ces deux messieurs, qui sont absens, nous sont chers e bien des manieres; ce sont nos amiss, nos amans, ce sont nos maris et nos freres, et les peres de ces enfans. these absent ones, who just claim our hearts, by every tender name, to whom each wish extends our husbands and our brothers are, the fathers of this blooming pair, our lovers and our friends.] of my mother attracted a number of admirers, among whom mons. de la closure, resident of france, was the most assiduous in his attentions. his passion must have been extremely violent, since after a period of thirty years i have seen him affected at the very mention of her name. my mother had a defence more powerful even than her virtue; she tenderly loved my father, and conjured him to return; his inclination seconding his request, he gave up every prospect of emolument, and hastened to geneva. i was the unfortunate fruit of this return, being born ten months after, in a very weakly and infirm state; my birth cost my mother her life, and was the first of my misfortunes. i am ignorant how my father supported her loss at that time, but i know he was ever after inconsolable. in me he still thought he saw her he so tenderly lamented, but could never forget i had been the innocent cause of his misfortune, nor did he ever embrace me, but his sighs, the convulsive pressure of his arms, witnessed that a bitter regret mingled itself with his caresses, though, as may be supposed, they were not on this account less ardent. when he said to me, "jean jacques, let us talk of your mother," my usual reply was, "yes, father, but then, you know, we shall cry," and immediately the tears started from his eyes. "ah!" exclaimed he, with agitation, "give me back my wife; at least console me for her loss; fill up, dear boy, the void she has left in my soul. could i love thee thus wert thou only my son?" forty years after this loss he expired in the arms of his second wife, but the name of the first still vibrated on his lips, still was her image engraved on his heart. such were the authors of my being: of all the gifts it had pleased heaven to bestow on them, a feeling heart was the only one that descended to me; this had been the source of their felicity, it was the foundation of all my misfortunes. i came into the world with so few signs of life, that they entertained but little hope of preserving me, with the seeds of a disorder that has gathered strength with years, and from which i am now relieved at intervals, only to suffer a different, though more intolerable evil. i owed my preservation to one of my father's sisters, an amiable and virtuous girl, who took the most tender care of me; she is yet living, nursing, at the age of four--score, a husband younger than herself, but worn out with excessive drinking. dear aunt! i freely forgive your having preserved my life, and only lament that it is not in my power to bestow on the decline of your days the tender solicitude and care you lavished on the first dawn of mine. my nurse, jaqueline, is likewise living: and in good health--the hands that opened my eyes to the light of this world may close them at my death. we suffer before we think; it is the common lot of humanity. i experienced more than my proportion of it. i have no knowledge of what passed prior to my fifth or sixth year; i recollect nothing of learning to read, i only remember what effect the first considerable exercise of it produced on my mind; and from that moment i date an uninterrupted knowledge of myself. every night, after supper, we read some part of a small collection of romances which had been my mother's. my father's design was only to improve me in reading, and he thought these entertaining works were calculated to give me a fondness for it; but we soon found ourselves so interested in the adventures they contained, that we alternately read whole nights together, and could not bear to give over until at the conclusion of a volume. sometimes, in a morning, on hearing the swallows at our window, my father, quite ashamed of this weakness, would cry, "come, come, let us go to bed; i am more a child than thou art." i soon acquired, by this dangerous custom, not only an extreme facility in reading and comprehending, but, for my age, a too intimate acquaintance with the passions. an infinity of sensations were familiar to me, without possessing any precise idea of the objects to which they related--i had conceived nothing--i had felt the whole. this confused succession of emotions did not retard the future efforts of my reason, though they added an extravagant, romantic notion of human life, which experience and reflection have never been able to eradicate. my romance reading concluded with the summer of , the following winter was differently employed. my mother's library being quite exhausted, we had recourse to that part of her father's which had devolved to us; here we happily found some valuable books, which was by no means extraordinary, having been selected by a minister that truly deserved that title, in whom learning (which was the rage of the times) was but a secondary commendation, his taste and good sense being most conspicuous. the history of the church and empire by le sueur, bossuett's discourses on universal history, plutarch's lives, the history of venice by nani, ovid's metamorphoses, la bruyere, fontenelle's world, his dialogues of the dead, and a few volumes of moliere, were soon ranged in my father's closet, where, during the hours he was employed in his business, i daily read them, with an avidity and taste uncommon, perhaps unprecedented at my age. plutarch presently became my greatest favorite. the satisfaction i derived from repeated readings i gave this author, extinguished my passion for romances, and i shortly preferred agesilaus, brutus, and aristides, to orondates, artemenes, and juba. these interesting studies, seconded by the conversations they frequently occasioned with my father, produced that republican spirit and love of liberty, that haughty and invincible turn of mind, which rendered me impatient of restraint or servitude, and became the torment of my life, as i continually found myself in situations incompatible with these sentiments. incessantly occupied with rome and athens, conversing, if i may so express myself with their illustrious heroes; born the citizen of a republic, of a father whose ruling passion was a love of his country, i was fired with these examples; could fancy myself a greek or roman, and readily give into the character of the personage whose life i read; transported by the recital of any extraordinary instance of fortitude or intrepidity, animation flashed from my eyes, and gave my voice additional strength and energy. one day, at table, while relating the fortitude of scoevola, they were terrified at seeing me start from my seat and hold my hand over a hot chafing--dish, to represent more forcibly the action of that determined roman. my brother, who was seven years older than myself, was brought up to my father's profession. the extraordinary affection they lavished on me might be the reason he was too much neglected: this certainly was a fault which cannot be justified. his education and morals suffered by this neglect, and he acquired the habits of a libertine before he arrived at an age to be really one. my father tried what effect placing him with a master would produce, but he still persisted in the same ill conduct. though i saw him so seldom that it could hardly be said we were acquainted. i loved him tenderly, and believe he had as strong an affection for me as a youth of his dissipated turn of mind could be supposed capable of. one day, i remember, when my father was correcting him severely, i threw myself between them, embracing my brother, whom i covered with my body, receiving the strokes designed for him; i persisted so obstinately in my protection, that either softened by my cries and tears, or fearing to hurt me most, his anger subsided, and he pardoned his fault. in the end, my brother's conduct became so bad that he suddenly disappeared, and we learned some time after that he was in germany, but he never wrote to us, and from that day we heard no news of him: thus i became an only son. if this poor lad was neglected, it was quite different with his brother, for the children of a king could not be treated with more attention and tenderness than were bestowed on my infancy, being the darling of the family; and what is rather uncommon, though treated as a beloved, never a spoiled child; was never permitted, while under paternal inspection, to play in the street with other children; never had any occasion to contradict or indulge those fantastical humors which are usually attributed to nature, but are in reality the effects of an injudicious education. i had the faults common to my age, was talkative, a glutton, and sometimes a liar, made no scruple of stealing sweetmeats, fruits, or, indeed, any kind of eatables; but never took delight in mischievous waste, in accusing others, or tormenting harmless animals. i recollect, indeed, that one day, while madam clot, a neighbor of ours, was gone to church, i made water in her kettle: the remembrance even now makes me smile, for madame clot (though, if you please, a good sort of creature) was one of the most tedious grumbling old women i ever knew. thus have i given a brief, but faithful, history of my childish transgressions. how could i become cruel or vicious, when i had before my eyes only examples of mildness, and was surrounded by some of the best people in the world? my father, my aunt, my nurse, my relations, our friends, our neighbors, all i had any connection with, did not obey me, it is true, but loved me tenderly, and i returned their affection. i found so little to excite my desires, and those i had were so seldom contradicted, that i was hardly sensible of possessing any, and can solemnly aver i was an absolute stranger to caprice until after i had experienced the authority of a master. those hours that were not employed in reading or writing with my father, or walking with my governess, jaqueline, i spent with my aunt; and whether seeing her embroider, or hearing her sing, whether sitting or standing by her side, i was ever happy. her tenderness and unaffected gayety, the charms of her figure and countenance have left such indelible impressions on my mind, that her manner, look, and attitude are still before my eyes; i recollect a thousand little caressing questions; could describe her clothes, her head-dress, nor have the two curls of fine black hair which hung on her temples, according to the mode of that time, escaped my memory. though my taste, or rather passion, for music, did not show itself until a considerable time after, i am fully persuaded it is to her i am indebted for it. she knew a great number of songs, which she sung with great sweetness and melody. the serenity and cheerfulness which were conspicuous in this lovely girl, banished melancholy, and made all round her happy. the charms of her voice had such an effect on me, that not only several of her songs have ever since remained on my memory, but some i have not thought of from my infancy, as i grow old, return upon my mind with a charm altogether inexpressible. would any one believe that an old dotard like me, worn out with care and infirmity, should sometime surprise himself weeping like a child, and in a voice querulous, and broken by age, muttering out one of those airs which were the favorites of my infancy? there is one song in particular, whose tune i perfectly recollect, but the words that compose the latter half of it constantly refuse every effort to recall them, though i have a confused idea of the rhymes. the beginning, with what i have been able to recollect of the remainder, is as follows: tircis, je n'ose ecouter ton chalumeau sous l'ormeau; car on en cause deja dans notre hameau. ---- ---- ------- ------ --- un berger s'engager sans danger, et toujours l'epine est sons la rose. i have endeavored to account for the invincible charm my heart feels on the recollection of this fragment, but it is altogether inexplicable. i only know, that before i get to the end of it, i always find my voice interrupted by tenderness, and my eyes suffused with tears. i have a hundred times formed the resolution of writing to paris for the remainder of these words, if any one should chance to know them: but i am almost certain the pleasure i take in the recollection would be greatly diminished was i assured any one but my poor aunt susan had sung them. such were my affections on entering this life. thus began to form and demonstrate itself, a heart, at once haughty and tender, a character effeminate, yet invincible; which, fluctuating between weakness and courage, luxury and virtue, has ever set me in contradiction to myself; causing abstinence and enjoyment, pleasure and prudence, equally to shun me. this course of education was interrupted by an accident, whose consequences influenced the rest of my life. my father had a quarrel with m. g----, who had a captain's commission in france, and was related to several of the council. this g----, who was an insolent, ungenerous man, happening to bleed at the nose, in order to be revenged, accused my father of having drawn his sword on him in the city, and in consequence of this charge they were about to conduct him to prison. he insisted (according to the law of this republic) that the accuser should be confined at the same time; and not being able to obtain this, preferred a voluntary banishment for the remainder of his life, to giving up a point by which he must sacrifice his honor and liberty. i remained under the tuition of my uncle bernard, who was at that time employed in the fortifications of geneva. he had lost his eldest daughter, but had a son about my own age, and we were sent together to bossey, to board with the minister lambercier. here we were to learn latin, with all the insignificant trash that has obtained the name of education. two years spent in this village softened, in some degree, my roman fierceness, and again reduced me to a state of childhood. at geneva, where nothing was exacted, i loved reading, which was, indeed, my principal amusement; but, at bossey, where application was expected, i was fond of play as a relaxation. the country was so new, so charming in my idea, that it seemed impossible to find satiety in its enjoyments, and i conceived a passion for rural life, which time has not been able to extinguish; nor have i ever ceased to regret the pure and tranquil pleasures i enjoyed at this place in my childhood; the remembrance having followed me through every age, even to that in which i am hastening again towards it. m. lambercier was a worthy, sensible man, who, without neglecting our instruction, never made our acquisitions burthensome, or tasks tedious. what convinces me of the rectitude of his method is, that notwithstanding my extreme aversion to restraint, the recollection of my studies is never attended with disgust; and, if my improvement was trivial, it was obtained with ease, and has never escaped memory. the simplicity of this rural life was of infinite advantage in opening my heart to the reception of true friendship. the sentiments i had hitherto formed on this subject were extremely elevated, but altogether imaginary. the habit of living in this peaceful manner soon united me tenderly to my cousin bernard; my affection was more ardent than that i had felt for my brother, nor has time ever been able to efface it. he was a tall, lank, weakly boy, with a mind as mild as his body was feeble, and who did not wrong the good opinion they were disposed to entertain for the son of my guardian. our studies, amusements, and tasks, were the same; we were alone; each wanted a playmate; to separate would in some measure, have been to annihilate us. though we had not many opportunities of demonstrating our attachment to each other, it was certainly extreme; and so far from enduring the thought of separation, we could not even form an idea that we should ever be able to submit to it. each of a disposition to be won by kindness, and complaisant, when not soured by contradiction, we agreed in every particular. if, by the favor of those who governed us he had the ascendant while in their presence, i was sure to acquire it when we were alone, and this preserved the equilibrium so necessary in friendship. if he hesitated in repeating his task, i prompted him; when my exercises were finished, i helped to write his; and, in our amusements, my disposition being most active, ever had the lead. in a word, our characters accorded so well, and the friendship that subsisted between us was so cordial, that during the five years we were at bossey and geneva we were inseparable: we often fought, it is true, but there never was any occasion to separate us. no one of our quarrels lasted more than a quarter of an hour, and never in our lives did we make any complaint of each other. it may be said, these remarks are frivolous; but, perhaps, a similiar example among children can hardly be produced. the manner in which i passed my time at bossey was so agreeable to my disposition, that it only required a longer duration absolutely to have fixed my character, which would have had only peaceable, affectionate, benevolent sentiments for its basis. i believe no individual of our kind ever possessed less natural vanity than myself. at intervals, by an extraordinary effort, i arrived at sublime ideas, but presently sunk again into my original languor. to be loved by every one who knew me was my most ardent wish. i was naturally mild, my cousin was equally so, and those who had the care of us were of similiar dispositions. everything contributed to strengthen those propensities which nature had implanted in my breast, and during the two years i was neither the victim nor witness of any violent emotions. i knew nothing so delightful as to see every one content, not only with me, but all that concerned them. when repeating our catechism at church, nothing could give me greater vexation, on being obliged to hesitate, than to see miss lambercier's countenance express disapprobation and uneasiness. this alone was more afflicting to me than the shame of faltering before so many witnesses, which, notwithstanding, was sufficiently painful; for though not oversolicitous of praise, i was feelingly alive to shame; yet i can truly affirm, the dread of being reprimanded by miss lambercier alarmed me less than the thought of making her uneasy. neither she nor her brother were deficient in a reasonable severity, but as this was scarce ever exerted without just cause, i was more afflicted at their disapprobation than the punishment. certainly the method of treating youth would be altered if the distant effects, this indiscriminate, and frequently indiscreet method produces, were more conspicuous. i would willingly excuse myself from a further explanation, did not the lesson this example conveys (which points out an evil as frequent as it is pernicious) forbid my silence. as miss lambercier felt a mother's affection, she sometimes exerted a mother's authority, even to inflicting on us when we deserved it, the punishment of infants. she had often threatened it, and this threat of a treatment entirely new, appeared to me extremely dreadful; but i found the reality much less terrible than the idea, and what is still more unaccountable, this punishment increased my affection for the person who had inflicted it. all this affection, aided by my natural mildness, was scarcely sufficient to prevent my seeking, by fresh offences, a return of the same chastisement; for a degree of sensuality had mingled with the smart and shame, which left more desire than fear of a repetition. i was well convinced the same discipline from her brother would have produced a quite contrary effect; but from a man of his disposition this was not probable, and if i abstained from meriting correction it was merely from a fear of offending miss lambercier, for benevolence, aided by the passions, has ever maintained an empire over me which has given law to my heart. this event, which, though desirable, i had not endeavored to accelerate, arrived without my fault; i should say, without my seeking; and i profited by it with a safe conscience; but this second, was also the last time, for miss lambercier, who doubtless had some reason to imagine this chastisement did not produce the desired effect, declared it was too fatiguing, and that she renounced it for the future. till now we had slept in her chamber, and during the winter, even in her bed; but two days after another room was prepared for us, and from that moment i had the honor (which i could very well have dispensed with) of being treated by her as a great boy. who would believe this childish discipline, received at eight years old, from the hands of a woman of thirty, should influence my propensities, my desires, my passions, for the rest of my life, and that in quite a contrary sense from what might naturally have been expected? the very incident that inflamed my senses, gave my desires such an extraordinary turn, that, confined to what i had already experienced, i sought no further, and, with blood boiling with sensuality, almost from my birth, preserved my purity beyond the age when the coldest constitutions lose their insensibility; long tormented, without knowing by what, i gazed on every handsome woman with delight; imagination incessantly brought their charms to my remembrance, only to transform them into so many miss lamberciers. if ever education was perfectly chaste, it was certainly that i received; my three aunts were not only of exemplary prudence, but maintained a degree of modest reserve which women have long since thought unnecessary. my father, it is true, loved pleasure, but his gallantry was rather of the last than the present century, and he never expressed his affection for any woman he regarded in terms a virgin could have blushed at; indeed, it was impossible more attention should be paid to that regard we owe the morals of children than was uniformly observed by every one i had any concern with. an equal degree of reserve in this particular was observed at m. lambercier's, where a good maid-servant was discharged for having once made use of an expression before us which was thought to contain some degree of indelicacy. i had no precise idea of the ultimate effect of the passions, but the conception i had formed was extremely disgusting; i entertained a particular aversion for courtesans, nor could i look on a rake without a degree of disdain mingled with terror. these prejudices of education, proper in themselves to retard the first explosions of a combustible constitution, were strengthened, as i have already hinted, by the effect the first moments of sensuality produced in me, for notwithstanding the troublesome ebullition of my blood, i was satisfied with the species of voluptuousness i had already been acquainted with, and sought no further. thus i passed the age of puberty, with a constitution extremely ardent, without knowing or even wishing for any other gratification of the passions than what miss lambercier had innocently given me an idea of; and when i became a man, that childish taste, instead of vanishing, only associated with the other. this folly, joined to a natural timidity, has always prevented my being very enterprising with women, so that i have passed my days in languishing in silence for those i most admired, without daring to disclose my wishes. to fall at the feet of an imperious mistress, obey her mandates, or implore pardon, were for me the most exquisite enjoyments, and the more my blood was inflamed by the efforts of a lively imagination the more i acquired the appearance of a whining lover. it will be readily conceived that this mode of making love is not attended with a rapid progress or imminent danger to the virtue of its object; yet, though i have few favors to boast of, i have not been excluded from enjoyment, however imaginary. thus the senses, in concurrence with a mind equally timid and romantic, have preserved my moral chaste, and feelings uncorrupted, with precisely the same inclinations, which, seconded with a moderate portion of effrontery, might have plunged me into the most unwarrantable excesses. i have made the first, most difficult step, in the obscure and painful maze of my confessions. we never feel so great a degree of repugnance in divulging what is really criminal, as what is merely ridiculous. i am now assured of my resolution, for after what i have dared disclose, nothing can have power to deter me. the difficulty attending these acknowledgments will be readily conceived, when i declare, that during the whole of my life, though frequently laboring under the most violent agitation, being hurried away with the impetuosity of a passion which (when in company with those i loved) deprived me of the faculty of sight and hearing, i could never, in the course of the most unbounded familiarity, acquire sufficient resolution to declare my folly, and implore the only favor that remained to bestow. in thus investigating the first traces of my sensible existence, i find elements, which, though seemingly incompatible, have united to produce a simple and uniform effect; while others, apparently the same, have, by the concurrence of certain circumstances, formed such different combinations, that it would never be imagined they had any affinity; who would believe, for example, that one of the most vigorous springs of my soul was tempered in the identical source from whence luxury and ease mingled with my constitution and circulated in my veins? before i quit this subject, i will add a striking instance of the different effects they produced. one day, while i was studying in a chamber contiguous to the kitchen, the maid set some of miss lambercier's combs to dry by the fire, and on coming to fetch them some time after, was surprised to find the teeth of one of them broken off. who could be suspected of this mischief? no one but myself had entered the room: i was questioned, but denied having any knowledge of it. mr. and miss lambercier consult, exhort, threaten, but all to no purpose; i obstinately persist in the denial; and, though this was the first time i had been detected in a confirmed falsehood, appearances were so strong that they overthrew all my protestations. this affair was thought serious; the mischief, the lie, the obstinacy, were considered equally deserving of punishment, which was not now to be administered by miss lambercier. my uncle bernard was written to; he arrived; and my poor cousin being charged with a crime no less serious, we were conducted to the same execution, which was inflicted with great severity. if finding a remedy in the evil itself, they had sought ever to allay my depraved desires, they could not have chosen a shorter method to accomplish their designs, and, i can assure my readers, i was for a long time freed from the dominion of them. as this severity could not draw from me the expected acknowledgment, which obstinacy brought on several repetitions, and reduced me to a deplorable situation, yet i was immovable, and resolutely determined to suffer death rather than submit. force, at length, was obliged to yield to the diabolical infatuation of a child, for no better name was bestowed on my constancy, and i came out of this dreadful trial, torn, it is true, but triumphant. fifty years have expired since this adventure--the fear of punishment is no more. well, then, i aver, in the face of heaven, i was absolutely innocent: and, so far from breaking, or even touching the comb, never came near the fire. it will be asked, how did this mischief happen? i can form no conception of it, i only know my own innocence. let any one figure to himself a character whose leading traits were docility and timidity, but haughty, ardent, and invincible, in its passions; a child, hitherto governed by the voice of reason, treated with mildness, equity, and complaisance, who could not even support the idea of injustice, experiencing, for the first time, so violent an instance of it, inflicted by those he most loved and respected. what perversion of ideas! what confusion in the heart, the brain, in all my little being, intelligent and moral!--let any one, i say, if possible, imagine all this, for i am incapable of giving the least idea of what passed in my mind at that period. my reason was not sufficiently established to enable me to put myself in the place of others, and judge how much appearances condemned me, i only beheld the rigor of a dreadful chastisement, inflicted for a crime i had not committed; yet i can truly affirm, the smart i suffered, though violent, was inconsiderable compared to what i felt from indignation, rage, and despair. my cousin, who was almost in similar circumstances, having been punished for an involuntary fault as guilty of a premediated crime, became furious by my example. both in the same bed, we embraced each other with convulsive transport; we were almost suffocated; and when our young hearts found sufficient relief to breathe out our indigination, we sat up in the bed, and with all our force, repeated a hundred times, carnifex! carnifex! carnifex! executioner, tormentor. even while i write this i feel my pulse quicken, and should i live a hundred thousand years, the agitation of that moment would still be fresh in my memory. the first instance of violence and oppression is so deeply engraved on my soul, that every relative idea renews my emotion: the sentiment of indignation, which in its origin had reference only to myself, has acquired such strength, and is at present so completely detached from personal motives, that my heart is as much inflamed at the sight or relation of any act of injustice (whatever may be the object, or wheresoever it may be perpetrated) as if i was the immediate sufferer. when i read the history of a merciless tyrant, or the dark and the subtle machination of a knavish designing priest, i could on the instant set off to stab the miscreants, though i was certain to perish in the attempt. i have frequently fatigued myself by running after and stoning a cock, a cow, a dog, or any animal i saw tormenting another, only because it was conscious of possessing superior strength. this may be natural to me, and i am inclined to believe it is, though the lively impression of the first injustice i became the victim of was too long and too powerfully remembered not to have added considerable force to it. this occurrence terminated my infantine serenity; from that moment i ceased to enjoy a pure unadulterated happiness, and on a retrospection of the pleasure of my childhood, i yet feel they ended here. we continue at bossey some months after this event, but were like our first parents in the garden of eden after they had lost their innocence; in appearance our situation was the same, in effect it was totally different. affection, respect; intimacy, confidence, no longer attached the pupils to their guides; we beheld them no longer as divinities, who could read the secrets of our hearts; we were less ashamed of committing faults, more afraid of being accused of them: we learned to dissemble, to rebel, to lie: all the vices common to our years began to corrupt our happy innocence, mingle with our sports, and embitter our amusements. the country itself, losing those sweet and simple charms which captivate the heart, appeared a gloomy desert, or covered with a veil that concealed its beauties. we cultivated our little gardens no more: our flowers were neglected. we no longer scratched away the mould, and broke out into exclamations of delight, on discovering that the grain we had sown began to shoot. we were disgusted with our situation; our preceptors were weary of us. in a word, my uncle wrote for our return, and we left mr. and miss lambercier without feeling any regret at the separation. near thirty years passed away from my leaving bossey, without once recalling the place to my mind with any degree of satisfaction; but after having passed the prime of life, as i decline into old age (while more recent occurrences are wearing out apace) i feel these remembrances revive and imprint themselves on my heart, with a force and charm that every day acquires fresh strength; as if, feeling life fleet from me, i endeavored to catch it again by its commencement. the most trifling incident of those happy days delight me, for no other reason than being of those days. i recall every circumstance of time, place, and persons; i see the maid or footman busy in the chamber, a swallow entering the window, a fly settling on my hand while repeating my lessons. i see the whole economy of the apartment; on the right hand mr. lambercier's closet, with a print representing all the popes, a barometer, a large almanac, the windows of the house (which stood in a hollow at the bottom of the garden) shaded by raspberry shrubs, whose shoots sometimes found entrance; i am sensible the reader has no occasion to know all this, but i feel a kind of necessity for relating it. why am i not permitted to recount all the little anecdotes of that thrice happy age, at the recollection of whose joys i ever tremble with delight? five or six particularly--let us compromise the matter--i will give up five, but then i must have one, and only one, provided i may draw it out to its utmost length, in order to prolong my satisfaction. if i only sought yours, i should choose that of miss lambercier's backside, which by an unlucky fall at the bottom of the meadow, was exposed to the view of the king of sardinia, who happened to be passing by; but that of the walnut tree on the terrace is more amusing to me, since here i was an actor, whereas, in the abovementioned scene i was only a spectator; and i must confess i see nothing that should occasion risibility in an accident, which, however laughable in itself, alarmed me for a person i loved as a mother, or perhaps something more. ye curious readers, whose expectations are already on the stretch for the noble history of the terrace, listen to the tragedy, and abstain from trembling, if you can, at the horrible catastrophe! at the outside of the courtyard door, on the left hand, was a terrace; here they often sat after dinner; but it was subject to one inconvenience, being too much exposed to the rays of the sun; to obviate this defect, mr. lambercier had a walnut tree set there, the planting of which was attended with great solemnity. the two boarders were godfathers, and while the earth was replacing round the root, each held the tree with one hand, singing songs of triumph. in order to water it with more effect, they formed a kind of luson around its foot: myself and cousin, who were every day ardent spectators of this watering, confirmed each other in the very natural idea that it was nobler to plant trees on the terrace than colors on a breach, and this glory we were resolved to procure without dividing it with any one. in pursuance of this resolution, we cut a slip off a willow, and planted it on the terrace, at about eight or ten feet distance from the august walnut tree. we did not forget to make a hollow round it, but the difficulty was how to procure a supply of water, which was brought from a considerable distance, and we not permitted to fetch it: but water was absolutely necessary for our willow, and we made use of every stratagem to obtain it. for a few days everything succeeded so well that it began to bud, and throw out small leaves, which we hourly measured convinced (tho' now scarce a foot from the ground) it would soon afford us a refreshing shade. this unfortunate willow, by engrossing our whole time, rendered us incapable of application to any other study, and the cause of our inattention not being known, we were kept closer than before. the fatal moment approached when water must fail, and we were already afflicted with the idea that our tree must perish with drought. at length necessity, the parent of industry, suggested an invention, by which we might save our tree from death, and ourselves from despair; it was to make a furrow underground, which would privately conduct a part of the water from the walnut tree to our willow. this undertaking was executed with ardor, but did not immediately succeed--our descent was not skilfully planned--the water did not run, the earth falling in and stopping up the furrow; yet, though all went contrary, nothing discouraged us, 'omnia vincit labor improbus'. we made the bason deeper, to give the water a more sensible descent; we cut the bottom of a box into narrow planks; increased the channel from the walnut tree to our willow and laying a row flat at the bottom, set two others inclining towards each other, so as to form a triangular channel; we formed a kind of grating with small sticks at the end next the walnut tree, to prevent the earth and stones from stopping it up, and having carefully covered our work with well--trodden earth, in a transport of hope and fear attended the hour of watering. after an interval, which seemed an age of expectation, this hour arrived. mr. lambercier, as usual, assisted at the operation; we contrived to get between him and our tree, towards which he fortunately turned his back. they no sooner began to pour the first pail of water, than we perceived it running to the willow; this sight was too much for our prudence, and we involuntarily expressed our transport by a shout of joy. the sudden exclamation made mr. lambercier turn about, though at that instant he was delighted to observe how greedily the earth, which surrounded the root of his walnut tree, imbibed the water. surprised at seeing two trenches partake of it, he shouted in his turn, examines, perceives the roguery, and, sending instantly for a pick axe, at one fatal blow makes two or three of our planks fly, crying out meantime with all his strength, an aqueduct! an aqueduct! his strokes redoubled, every one of which made an impression on our hearts; in a moment the planks, the channel, the bason, even our favorite willow, all were ploughed up, nor was one word pronounced during this terrible transaction, except the above mentioned exclamation. an aqueduct! repeated he, while destroying all our hopes, an aqueduct! an aqueduct! it maybe supposed this adventure had a still more melancholy end for the young architects; this, however, was not the case; the affair ended here. mr. lambercier never reproached us on this account, nor was his countenance clouded with a frown; we even heard him mention the circumstance to his sister with loud bursts of laughter. the laugh of mr. lambercier might be heard to a considerable distance. but what is still more surprising after the first transport of sorrow had subsided, we did not find ourselves violently afflicted; we planted a tree in another spot, and frequently recollected the catastrophe of the former, repeating with a significant emphasis, an aqueduct! an aqueduct! till then, at intervals, i had fits of ambition, and could fancy myself brutus or aristides, but this was the first visible effect of my vanity. to have constructed an aqueduct with our own hands, to have set a slip of willow in competition with a flourishing tree, appeared to me a supreme degree of glory! i had a juster conception of it at ten than caesar entertained at thirty. the idea of this walnut tree, with the little anecdotes it gave rise to, have so well continued, or returned to my memory, that the design which conveyed the most pleasing sensations, during my journey to geneva, in the year , was visiting bossey, and reviewing the monuments of my infantine amusement, above all, the beloved walnut tree, whose age at that time must have been verging on a third of a century, but i was so beset with company that i could not find a moment to accomplish my design. there is little appearance now of the occasion being renewed; but should i ever return to that charming spot, and find my favorite walnut tree still existing, i am convinced i should water it with my tears. on my return to geneva, i passed two or three years at my uncle's, expecting the determination of my friends respecting my future establishment. his own son being devoted to genius, was taught drawing, and instructed by his father in the elements of euclid; i partook of these instructions, but was principally fond of drawing. meantime, they were irresolute, whether to make me a watchmaker, a lawyer, or a minister. i should have preferred being a minister, as i thought it must be a charming thing to preach, but the trifling income which had been my mother's, and was to be divided between my brother and myself, was too inconsiderable to defray the expense attending the prosecution of my studies. as my age did not render the choice very pressing, i remained with my uncle, passing my time with very little improvement, and paying pretty dear, though not unreasonably, for my board. my uncle, like my father, was a man of pleasure, but had not learned, like him, to abridge his amusements for the sake of instructing his family, consequently our education was neglected. my aunt was a devotee, who loved singing psalms better than thinking of our improvement, so that we were left entirely to ourselves, which liberty we never abused. ever inseparable, we were all the world to each other; and, feeling no inclination to frequent the company of a number of disorderly lads of our own age, we learned none of those habits of libertinism to which our idle life exposed us. perhaps i am wrong in charging myself and cousin with idleness at this time, for, in our lives, we were never less so; and what was extremely fortunate, so incessantly occupied with our amusements, that we found no temptation to spend any part of our time in the streets. we made cages, pipes, kites, drums, houses, ships, and bows; spoiled the tools of my good old grandfather by endeavoring to make watches in imitation of him; but our favorite amusement was wasting paper, in drawing, washing, coloring, etc. there came an italian mountebank to geneva, called gamber-corta, who had an exhibition of puppets, that he made play a kind of comedy. we went once to see them, but could not spare time to go again, being busily employed in making puppets of our own and inventing comedies, which we immediately set about making them perform, mimicking to the best of our abilities the uncouth voice of punch; and, to complete the business, my good aunt and uncle bernard had the patience to see and listen to our imitations; but my uncle, having one day read an elaborate discourse to his family, we instantly gave up our comedies, and began composing sermons. these details, i confess, are not very amusing, but they serve to demonstrate that the former part of our education was well directed, since being, at such an early age, the absolute masters of our time, we found no inclination to abuse it; and so little in want of other companions, that we constantly neglected every occasion of seeking them. when taking our walks together, we observed their diversions without feeling any inclination to partake of them. friendship so entirely occupied our hearts, that, pleased with each other's company the simplest pastimes were sufficient to delight us. we were soon remarked for being thus inseparable: and what rendered us more conspicuous, my cousin was very tall, myself extremely short, so that we exhibited a very whimsical contrast. this meagre figure, small, sallow countenance, heavy air, and supine gait, excited the ridicule of the children, who, in the gibberish of the country, nicknamed him 'barna bredanna'; and we no sooner got out of doors than our ears were assailed with a repetition of "barna bredanna." he bore this indignity with tolerable patience, but i was instantly for fighting. this was what the young rogues aimed at. i engaged accordingly, and was beat. my poor cousin did all in his power to assist me, but he was weak, and a single stroke brought him to the ground. i then became furious, and received several smart blows, some of which were aimed at 'barna bredanna'. this quarrel so far increased the evil, that, to avoid their insults, we could only show ourselves in the streets while they were employed at school. i had already become a redresser of grievances; there only wanted a lady in the way to be a knight-errant in form. this defect was soon supplied; i presently had two. i frequently went to see my father at nion, a small city in the vaudois country, where he was now settled. being universally respected, the affection entertained for him extended to me: and, during my visits, the question seemed to be, who should show me most kindness. a madame de vulson, in particular, loaded me with caresses; and, to complete all, her daughter made me her gallant. i need not explain what kind of gallant a boy of eleven must be to a girl of two and twenty; the artful hussies know how to set these puppets up in front, to conceal more serious engagements. on my part i saw no inequality between myself and miss vulson, was flattered by the circumstance, and went into it with my whole heart, or rather my whole head, for this passion certainly reached no further, though it transported me almost to madness, and frequently produced scenes sufficient to make even a cynic expire with laughter. i have experienced two kinds of love, equally real, which have scarce any affinity, yet each differing materially from tender friendship. my whole life has been divided between these affections, and i have frequently felt the power of both at the same instant. for example, at the very time i so publically and tyrannically claimed miss vulson, that i could not suffer any other of my sex to approach her, i had short, but passionate, assignations with a miss goton, who thought proper to act the schoolmistress with me. our meetings, though absolutely childish, afforded me the height of happiness. i felt the whole charm of mystery, and repaid miss vulson in kind, when she least expected it, the use she made of me in concealing her amours. to my great mortification, this secret was soon discovered, and i presently lost my young schoolmistress. miss goton was, in fact, a singular personage. she was not handsome, yet there was a certain something in her figure which could not easily be forgotten, and this for an old fool, i am too often convinced of. her eyes, in particular, neither corresponded with her age, her height, nor her manner; she had a lofty imposing air, which agreed extremely well with the character she assumed, but the most extraordinary part of her composition was a mixture of forwardness and reserve difficult to be conceived; and while she took the greatest liberties with me, would never permit any to be taken with her in return, treating me precisely like a child. this makes me suppose she had either ceased herself to be one, or was yet sufficiently so to behold us play the danger to which this folly exposed her. i was so absolutely in the power of both these mistresses, that when in the presence of either, i never thought of her who was absent; in other respects, the effects they produced on me bore no affinity. i could have passed my whole life with miss vulson, without forming a wish to quit her; but then, my satisfaction was attended with a pleasing serenity; and, in numerous companies, i was particularly charmed with her. the sprightly sallies of her wit, the arch glance of her eye, even jealousy itself, strengthened my attachment, and i triumphed in the preference she seemed to bestow on me, while addressed by more powerful rivals; applause, encouragement, and smiles, gave animation to my happiness. surrounded by a throng of observers, i felt the whole force of love--i was passionate, transported; in a tete-a-tete, i should have been constrained, thoughtful, perhaps unhappy. if miss vulson was ill, i suffered with her; would willingly have given up my own health to establish hers (and, observe i knew the want of it from experience); if absent, she employed my thoughts, i felt the want of her; when present, her caresses came with warmth and rapture to my heart, though my senses were unaffected. the familiarities she bestowed on me i could not have supported the idea of her granting to another; i loved her with a brother's affection only, but experienced all the jealousy of a lover. with miss goton this passion might have acquired a degree of fury; i should have been a turk, a tiger, had i once imagined she bestowed her favors on any but myself. the pleasure i felt on approaching miss vulson was sufficiently ardent, though unattended with uneasy sensations; but at sight of miss goton, i felt myself bewildered--every sense was absorbed in ecstasy. i believe it would have been impossible to have remained long with her; i must have been suffocated with the violence of my palpitations. i equally dreaded giving either of them displeasure; with one i was more complaisant; with the other, more submissive. i would not have offended miss vulson for the world; but if miss goton had commanded me to throw myself into the flames, i think i should have instantly obeyed her. happily, both for her and myself, our amours; or rather rendezvous, were not of long duration: and though my connection with miss vulson was less dangerous, after a continuance of some greater length, that likewise had its catastrophe; indeed the termination of a love affair is good for nothing, unless it partakes of the romantic, and can furnish out at least an exclamation. though my correspondence with miss vulson was less animated, it was perhaps more endearing; we never separated without tears, and it can hardly be conceived what a void i felt in my heart. i could neither think nor speak of anything but her. these romantic sorrows were not affected, though i am inclined to believe they did not absolutely centre in her, for i am persuaded (though i did not perceive it at that time) being deprived of amusement bore a considerable share in them. to soften the rigor of absence, we agreed to correspond with each other, and the pathetic expressions these letters contained were sufficient to have split a rock. in a word, i had the honor of her not being able to endure the pain of separation. she came to see me at geneva. my head was now completely turned; and during the two days she remained here, i was intoxicated with delight. at her departure, i would have thrown myself into the water after her, and absolutely rent the air with my cries. the week following she sent me sweetmeats, gloves, etc. this certainly would have appeared extremely gallant, had i not been informed of her marriage at the same instant, and that the journey i had thought proper to give myself the honor of, was only to buy her wedding suit. my indignation may easily be conceived; i shall not attempt to describe it. in this heroic fury, i swore never more to see the perfidious girl, supposing it the greatest punishment that could be inflicted on her. this, however, did not occasion her death, for twenty years after, while on a visit to my father, being on the lake, i asked who those ladies were in a boat not far from ours. "what!" said my father smiling, "does not your heart inform you? it is your former flame, it is madame christin, or, if you please, miss vulson." i started at the almost forgotten name, and instantly ordered the waterman to turn off, not judging it worth while to be perjured, however favorable the opportunity for revenge, in renewing a dispute of twenty years past, with a woman of forty. thus, before my future destination was determined, did i fool away the most precious moments of my youth. after deliberating a long time on the bent of my natural inclination, they resolved to dispose of me in a manner the most repugnant to them. i was sent to mr. masseron, the city register, to learn (according to the expression of my uncle bernard) the thriving occupation of a scraper. this nickname was inconceivably displeasing to me, and i promised myself but little satisfaction in the prospect of heaping up money by a mean employment. the assiduity and subjection required, completed my disgust, and i never set foot in the office without feeling a kind of horror, which every day gained fresh strength. mr. masseron, who was not better pleased with my abilities than i was with the employment, treated me with disdain, incessantly upbraiding me with being a fool and blockhead, not forgetting to repeat, that my uncle had assured him i was a knowing one, though he could not find that i knew anything. that he had promised to furnish him with a sprightly boy, but had, in truth, sent him an ass. to conclude, i was turned out of the registry, with the additional ignominy of being pronounced a fool by all mr. masseron's clerks, and fit only to handle a file. my vocation thus determined, i was bound apprentice; not, however, to a watchmaker, but to an engraver, and i had been so completely humiliated by the contempt of the register, that i submitted without a murmur. my master, whose name was m. ducommon, was a young man of a very violent and boorish character, who contrived in a short time to tarnish all the amiable qualities of my childhood, to stupefy a disposition naturally sprightly, and reduce my feelings, as well as my condition, to an absolute state of servitude. i forgot my latin, history, and antiquities; i could hardly recollect whether such people as romans ever existed. when i visited my father, he no longer beheld his idol, nor could the ladies recognize the gallant jean jacques; nay, i was so well convinced that mr. and miss lambercier would scarce receive me as their pupil, that i endeavored to avoid their company, and from that time have never seen them. the vilest inclinations, the basest actions, succeeded my amiable amusements and even obliterated the very remembrance of them. i must have had, in spite of my good education, a great propensity to degenerate, else the declension could not have followed with such ease and rapidity, for never did so promising a caesar so quickly become a laradon. the art itself did not displease me. i had a lively taste for drawing. there was nothing displeasing in the exercise of the graver; and as it required no very extraordinary abilities to attain perfection as a watchcase engraver, i hoped to arrive at it. perhaps i should have accomplished my design, if unreasonable restraint, added to the brutality of my master, had not rendered my business disgusting. i wasted his time, and employed myself in engraving medals, which served me and my companions as a kind of insignia for a new invented order of chivalry, and though this differed very little from my usual employ, i considered it as a relaxation. unfortunately, my master caught me at this contraband labor, and a severe beating was the consequence. he reproached me at the same time with attempting to make counterfeit money because our medals bore the arms of the republic, though, i can truly aver, i had no conception of false money, and very little of the true, knowing better how to make a roman as than one of our threepenny pieces. my master's tyranny rendered insupportable that labor i should otherwise have loved, and drove me to vices i naturally despised, such as falsehood, idleness, and theft. nothing ever gave me a clearer demonstration of the difference between filial dependence and abject slavery, than the remembrance of the change produced in me at that period. hitherto i had enjoyed a reasonable liberty; this i had suddenly lost. i was enterprising at my father's, free at mr. lambercier's, discreet at my uncle's; but, with my master, i became fearful, and from that moment my mind was vitiated. accustomed to live on terms of perfect equality, to be witness of no pleasures i could not command, to see no dish i was not to partake of, or be sensible of a desire i might not express; to be able to bring every wish of my heart to my lips--what a transition!--at my master's i was scarce allowed to speak, was forced to quit the table without tasting what i most longed for, and the room when i had nothing particular to do there; was incessantly confined to my work, while the liberty my master and his journeymen enjoyed, served only to increase the weight of my subjection. when disputes happened to arise, though conscious that i understood the subject better than any of them, i dared not offer my opinion; in a word, everything i saw became an object of desire, for no other reason than because i was not permitted to enjoy anything. farewell gayety, ease, those happy turns of expressions, which formerly even made my faults escape correction. i recollect, with pleasure, a circumstance that happened at my father's, which even now makes me smile. being for some fault ordered to bed without my supper, as i was passing through the kitchen, with my poor morsel of bread in my hand, i saw the meat turning on the spit; my father and the rest were round the fire; i must bow to every one as i passed. when i had gone through this ceremony, leering with a wistful eye at the roast meat, which looked so inviting, and smelt so savory, i could not abstain from making that a bow likewise, adding in a pitiful tone, good bye, roast meal! this unpremeditated pleasantry put them in such good humor, that i was permitted to stay, and partake of it. perhaps the same thing might have produced a similar effect at my master's, but such a thought could never have occurred to me, or, if it had, i should not have had courage to express it. thus i learned to covet, dissemble, lie, and, at length, to steal, a propensity i never felt the least idea of before, though since that time i have never been able entirely to divest myself of it. desire and inability united naturally led to this vice, which is the reason pilfering is so common among footmen and apprentices, though the latter, as they grow up, and find themselves in a situation where everything is at their command, lose this shameful propensity. as i never experienced the advantage, i never enjoyed the benefit. good sentiments, ill-directed, frequently lead children into vice. notwithstanding my continual wants and temptations, it was more than a year before i could resolve to take even eatables. my first theft was occasioned by complaisance, but it was productive of others which had not so plausible an excuse. my master had a journeyman named verrat, whose mother lived in the neighborhood, and had a garden at a considerable distance from the house, which produced excellent asparagus. this verrat, who had no great plenty of money, took it in his head to rob her of the most early production of her garden, and by the sale of it procure those indulgences he could not otherwise afford himself; but not being very nimble, he did not care to run the hazard of a surprise. after some preliminary flattery, which i did not comprehend the meaning of, he proposed this expedition to me, as an idea which had that moment struck him. at first i would not listen to the proposal; but he persisted in his solicitation, and as i could never resist the attacks of flattery, at length prevailed. in pursuance of this virtuous resolution, i every morning repaired to the garden, gathered the best of the asparagus, and took it to the holard where some good old women, who guessed how i came by it, wishing to diminish the price, made no secret of their suspicions; this produced the desired effect, for, being alarmed, i took whatever they offered, which being taken to mr. verrat, was presently metamorphosed into a breakfast, and divided with a companion of his; for, though i procured it, i never partook of their good cheer, being fully satisfied with an inconsiderable bribe. i executed my roguery with the greatest fidelity, seeking only to please my employer; and several days passed before it came into my head, to rob the robber, and tithe mr. verrat's harvest. i never considered the hazard i run in these expeditions, not only of a torrent of abuse, but what i should have been still more sensible of, a hearty beating; for the miscreant, who received the whole benefit, would certainly have denied all knowledge of the fact, and i should only have received a double portion of punishment for daring to accuse him, since being only an apprentice, i stood no chance of being believed in opposition to a journeyman. thus, in every situation, powerful rogues know how to save themselves at the expense of the feeble. this practice taught me it was not so terrible to thieve as i had imagined: i took care to make this discovery turn to some account, helping myself to everything within my reach, that i conceived an inclination for. i was not absolutely ill-fed at my master's, and temperance was only painful to me by comparing it with the luxury he enjoyed. the custom of sending young people from table precisely when those things are served up which seem most tempting, is calculated to increase their longing, and induces them to steal what they conceive to be so delicious. it may be supposed i was not backward in this particular: in general my knavery succeeded pretty well, though quite the reverse when i happened to be detected. i recollect an attempt to procure some apples, which was attended with circumstances that make me smile and shudder even at this instant. the fruit was standing in the pantry, which by a lattice at a considerable height received light from the kitchen. one day, being alone in the house, i climbed up to see these precious apples, which being out of my reach, made this pantry appear the garden of hesperides. i fetched the spit--tried if it would reach them--it was too short--i lengthened it with a small one which was used for game,--my master being very fond of hunting, darted at them several times without success; at length was more fortunate; being transported to find i was bringing up an apple, i drew it gently to the lattice--was going to seize it when (who can express my grief and astonishment!) i found it would not pass through--it was too large. i tried every expedient to accomplish my design, sought supporters to keep the spits in the same position, a knife to divide the apple, and a lath to hold it with; at length, i so far succeeded as to effect the division, and made no doubt of drawing the pieces through; but it was scarcely separated, (compassionate reader, sympathize with my affliction) when both pieces fell into the pantry. though i lost time by this experiment, i did not lose courage, but, dreading a surprise, i put off the attempt till next day, when i hoped to be more successful, and returned to my work as if nothing had happened, without once thinking of what the two obvious witnesses i had left in the pantry deposed against me. the next day (a fine opportunity offering) i renew the trial. i fasten the spits together; get on the stool; take aim; am just going to dart at my prey--unfortunately the dragon did not sleep; the pantry door opens, my master makes his appearance, and, looking up, exclaims, "bravo!" --the horror of that moment returns--the pen drops from my hand. a continual repetition of ill treatment rendered me callous; it seemed a kind of composition for my crimes, which authorized me to continue them, and, instead of looking back at the punishment, i looked forward to revenge. being beat like a slave, i judged i had a right to all the vices of one. i was convinced that to rob and be punished were inseparable, and constituted, if i may so express myself, a kind of traffic, in which, if i perform my part of the bargain, my master would take care not to be deficient in his; that preliminary settled, i applied myself to thieving with great tranquility, and whenever this interrogatory occurred to my mind, "what will be the consequence?" the reply was ready, "i know the worst, i shall be beat; no matter, i was made for it." i love good eating; am sensual, but not greedy; i have such a variety of inclinations to gratify, that this can never predominate; and unless my heart is unoccupied, which very rarely happens, i pay but little attention to my appetite; to purloining eatables, but extended this propensity to everything i wished to possess, and if i did not become a robber in form, it was only because money never tempted me. my master had a closet in the workshop, which he kept locked; this i contrived to open and shut as often as i pleased, and laid his best tools, fine drawings, impressions, in a word, everything he wished to keep from me, under contribution. these thefts were so far innocent, that they were always employed in his service, but i was transported at having the trifles in my possession, and imagined i stole the art with its productions. besides what i have mentioned, his boxes contained threads of gold and silver, a number of small jewels, valuable medals, and money; yet, though i seldom had five sous in my pocket, i do not recollect ever having cast a wishful look at them; on the contrary, i beheld these valuables rather with terror than with delight. i am convinced the dread of taking money was, in a great measure, the effect of education. there was mingled with the idea of it the fear of infamy, a prison, punishment, and death: had i even felt the temptation, these objects would have made me tremble; whereas my failings appeared a species of waggery, and, in truth, they were little else; they could but occasion a good trimming, and this i was already prepared for. a sheet of fine drawing paper was a greater temptation than money sufficient to have purchased a ream. this unreasonable caprice is connected with one of the most striking singularities of my character, and has so far influenced my conduct, that it requires a particular explanation. my passions are extremely violent; while under their influence, nothing can equal my impetuosity; i am an absolute stranger to discretion, respect, fear, or decorum; rude, saucy, violent, and intrepid: no shame can stop, no danger intimidate me. my mind is frequently so engrossed by a single object, that beyond it the whole world is not worth a thought; this is the enthusiasm of a moment, the next, perhaps, i am plunged in a state of annihilation. take me in my moments of tranquility, i am indolence and timidity itself; a word to speak, the least trifle to perform, appear an intolerable labor; everything alarms and terrifies me; the very buzzing of a fly will make me shudder; i am so subdued by fear and shame, that i would gladly shield myself from mortal view. when obliged to exert myself, i am ignorant what to do! when forced to speak, i am at a loss for words; and if any one looks at me, i am instantly out of countenance. if animated with my subject, i express my thoughts with ease, but, in ordinary conversations, i can say nothing --absolutely nothing; and, being obliged to speak, renders them insupportable. i may add, that none of my predominant inclinations centre in those pleasures which are to be purchased: money empoisons my delight; i must have them unadulterated; i love those of the table, for instance, but cannot endure the restraints of good company, or the intemperance of taverns; i can enjoy them only with a friend, for alone it is equally impossible; my imagination is then so occupied with other things, that i find no pleasure in eating. women who are to be purchased have no charms for me; my beating heart cannot be satisfied without affection; it is the same with every other enjoyment, if not truly disinterested, they are absolutely insipid; in a word, i am fond of those things which are only estimable to minds formed for the peculiar enjoyment of them. i never thought money so desirable as it is usually imagined; if you would enjoy you must transform it; and this transformation is frequently attended with inconvenience; you must bargain, purchase, pay dear, be badly served, and often duped. i buy an egg, am assured it is new-laid --i find it stale; fruit in its utmost perfection--'tis absolutely green. i love good wine, but where shall i get it? not at my wine merchant's --he will poison me to a certainty. i wish to be universally respected; how shall i compass my design? i must make friends, send messages, write letters, come, go, wait, and be frequently deceived. money is the perpetual source of uneasiness; i fear it more than i love good wine. a thousand times, both during and since my apprenticeship, have i gone out to purchase some nicety, i approach the pastry-cook's, perceive some women at the counter, and imagine they are laughing at me. i pass a fruit shop, see some fine pears, their appearance tempts me; but then two or three young people are near, or a man i am acquainted with is standing at the door; i take all that pass for persons i have some knowledge of, and my near sight contributes to deceive me. i am everywhere intimidated, restrained by some obstacle, and with money in my pocket return as i went, for want of resolution to purchase what i long for. i should enter into the most insipid details was i to relate the trouble, shame, repugnance, and inconvenience of all kinds which i have experienced in parting with my money, whether in my own person, or by the agency of others; as i proceed, the reader will get acquainted with my disposition, and perceive all this without my troubling him with the recital. this once comprehended, one of my apparent contradictions will be easily accounted for, and the most sordid avarice reconciled with the greatest contempt of money. it is a movable which i consider of so little value, that, when destitute of it, i never wish to acquire any; and when i have a sum i keep it by me, for want of knowing how to dispose of it to my satisfaction; but let an agreeable and convenient opportunity present itself, and i empty my purse with the utmost freedom; not that i would have the reader imagine i am extravagant from a motive of ostentation, quite the reverse; it was ever in subservience to my pleasures, and, instead of glorying in expense, i endeavor to conceal it. i so well perceive that money is not made to answer my purposes, that i am almost ashamed to have any, and, still more, to make use of it. had i ever possessed a moderate independence, i am convinced i should have had no propensity to become avaricious. i should have required no more, and cheerfully lived up to my income; but my precarious situation has constantly and necessarily kept me in fear. i love liberty, and i loathe constraint, dependence, and all their kindred annoyances. as long as my purse contains money it secures my independence, and exempts me from the trouble of seeking other money, a trouble of which i have always had a perfect horror; and the dread of seeing the end of my independence, makes me proportionately unwilling to part with my money. the money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery. thence it is that i hold fast to aught that i have, and yet covet nothing more. my disinterestedness, then, is in reality only idleness, the pleasure of possessing is not in my estimation worth the trouble of acquiring: and my dissipation is only another form of idleness; when we have an opportunity of disbursing pleasantly we should make the best possible use of it. i am less tempted by money than by other objects, because between the moment of possessing the money and that of using it to obtain the desired object there is always an interval, however short; whereas to possess the thing is to enjoy it. i see a thing and it tempts me; but if i see not the thing itself but only the means of acquiring it, i am not tempted. therefore it is that i have been a pilferer, and am so even now, in the way of mere trifles to which i take a fancy, and which i find it easier to take than to ask for; but i never in my life recollect having taken a farthing from any one, except about fifteen years ago, when i stole seven francs and ten sous. the story is worth recounting, as it exhibits a concurrence of ignorance and stupidity i should scarcely credit, did it relate to any but myself. it was in paris: i was walking with m. de franceul at the palais royal; he pulled out his watch, he looked at it, and said to me, "suppose we go to the opera?"--"with all my heart." we go: he takes two box tickets, gives me one, and enters himself with the other; i follow, find the door crowded; and, looking in, see every one standing; judging, therefore, that m. de franceul might suppose me concealed by the company, i go out, ask for my ticket, and, getting the money returned, leave the house, without considering, that by then i had reached the door every one would be seated, and m. de franceul might readily perceive i was not there. as nothing could be more opposite to my natural inclination than this abominable meanness, i note it, to show there are moments of delirium when men ought not to be judged by their actions: this was not stealing the money, it was only stealing the use of it, and was the more infamous for wanting the excuse of a temptation. i should never end these accounts, was i to describe all the gradations through which i passed, during my apprenticeship, from the sublimity of a hero to the baseness of a villain. though i entered into most of the vices of my situation, i had no relish for its pleasures; the amusements of my companions were displeasing, and when too much restraint had made my business wearisome, i had nothing to amuse me. this renewed my taste for reading which had long been neglected. i thus committed a fresh offence, books made me neglect my work, and brought on additional punishment, while inclination, strengthened by constraint, became an unconquerable passion. la tribu, a well-known librarian, furnished me with all kinds; good or bad, i perused them with avidity, and without discrimination. it will be said; "at length, then, money became necessary"--true; but this happened at a time when a taste for study had deprived me both of resolution and activity; totally occupied by this new inclination, i only wished to read, i robbed no longer. this is another of my peculiarities; a mere nothing frequently calls me off from what i appear the most attached to; i give in to the new idea; it becomes a passion, and immediately every former desire is forgotten. reading was my new hobby; my heart beat with impatience to run over the new book i carried in my pocket; the first moment i was alone, i seized the opportunity to draw it out, and thought no longer of rummaging my master's closet. i was even ashamed to think that i had been guilty of such meanness; and had my amusements been more expensive, i no longer felt an inclination to continue it. la tribu gave me credit, and when once i had the book in my possession, i thought no more of the trifle i was to pay for it; as money came it naturally passed to this woman; and when she chanced to be pressing, nothing was so conveniently at hand as my own effects; to steal in advance required foresight, and robbing to pay was no temptation. the frequent blows i received from my master, with my private and ill-chosen studies, rendered me reserved, unsociable, and almost deranged my reason. though my taste had not preserved me from silly unmeaning books, by good fortune i was a stranger to licentious or obscene ones; not that la tribu (who was very accommodating) had any scruple of lending these, on the contrary, to enhance their worth she spoke of them with an air of mystery; this produced an effect she had not foreseen, for both shame and disgust made me constantly refuse them. chance so well seconded my bashful disposition, that i was past the age of thirty before i saw any of those dangerous compositions. in less than a year i had exhausted la tribu's scanty library, and was unhappy for want of further amusement. my reading, though frequently bad, had worn off my childish follies, and brought back my heart to nobler sentiments than my condition had inspired; meantime disgusted with all within my reach, and thinking everything charming that was out of it, my present situation appeared extremely miserable. my passions began to acquire strength, i felt their influence, without knowing whither they would conduct me. i sometimes, indeed, thought of my former follies, but sought no further. at this time my imagination took a turn which helped to calm my increasing emotions; it was, to contemplate those situations in the books i had read, which produced the most striking effect on my mind; to recall, combine, and apply them to myself in such a manner, as to become one of the personages my recollection presented, and be continually in those fancied circumstances which were most agreeable to my inclinations; in a word, by contriving to place myself in these fictitious situations, the idea of my real one was in a great measure obliterated. this fondness for imaginary objects, and the facility with which i could gain possession of them, completed my disgust for everything around me, and fixed that inclination for solitude which has ever since been predominant. we shall have more than once occasion to remark the effects of a disposition, misanthropic and melancholy in appearance, but which proceed, in fact, from a heart too affectionate, too ardent, which, for want of similar dispositions, is constrained to content itself with nonentities, and be satisfied with fiction. it is sufficient, at present, to have traced the origin of a propensity which has modified my passions, set bounds to each, and by giving too much ardor to my wishes, has ever rendered me too indolent to obtain them. thus i attained my sixteenth year, uneasy, discontented with myself and everything that surrounded me; displeased with my occupation; without enjoying the pleasures common to my age, weeping without a cause, sighing i knew not why, and fond of my chimerical ideas for want of more valuable realities. every sunday, after sermon-time, my companions came to fetch me out, wishing me to partake of their diversions. i would willingly have been excused, but when once engaged in amusement, i was more animated and enterprising than any of them; it was equally difficult to engage or restrain me; indeed, this was ever a leading trait in my character. in our country walks i was ever foremost, and never thought of returning till reminded by some of my companions. i was twice obliged to be from my master's the whole night, the city gates having been shut before i could reach them. the reader may imagine what treatment this procured me the following mornings; but i was promised such a reception for the third, that i made a firm resolution never to expose myself to the danger of it. notwithstanding my determination, i repeated this dreaded transgression, my vigilance having been rendered useless by a cursed captain, named m. minutoli, who, when on guard, always shut the gate he had charge of an hour before the usual time. i was returning home with my two companions, and had got within half a league of the city, when i heard them beat the tattoo; i redouble my pace, i run with my utmost speed, i approach the bridge, see the soldiers already at their posts, i call out to them in a suffocated voice--it is too late; i am twenty paces from the guard, the first bridge is already drawn up, and i tremble to see those terrible horns advanced in the air which announce the fatal and inevitable destiny, which from this moment began to pursue me. i threw myself on the glacis in a transport of despair, while my companions, who only laughed at the accident, immediately determined what to do. my resolution, though different from theirs, was equally sudden; on the spot, i swore never to return to my master's, and the next morning, when my companions entered the city, i bade them an eternal adieu, conjuring them at the same time to inform my cousin bernard of my resolution, and the place where he might see me for the last time. from the commencement of my apprenticeship i had seldom seen him; at first, indeed, we saw each other on sundays, but each acquiring different habits, our meetings were less frequent. i am persuaded his mother contributed greatly towards this change; he was to consider himself as a person of consequence, i was a pitiful apprentice; notwithstanding our relationship, equality no longer subsisted between us, and it was degrading himself to frequent my company. as he had a natural good heart his mother's lessons did not take an immediate effect, and for some time he continued to visit me. having learned my resolution, he hastened to the spot i had appointed, not, however, to dissuade me from it, but to render my flight agreeable, by some trifling presents, as my own resources would not have carried me far. he gave me among other things, a small sword, which i was very proud of, and took with me as far as turin, where absolute want constrained me to dispose of it. the more i reflect on his behavior at this critical moment, the more i am persuaded he followed the instructions of his mother, and perhaps his father likewise: for, had he been left to his own feelings, he would have endeavored to retain, or have been tempted to accompany me; on the contrary, he encouraged the design, and when he saw me resolutely determined to pursue it, without seeming much affected, left me to my fate. we never saw or wrote to each other from that time; i cannot but regret this loss, for his heart was essentially good, and we seemed formed for a more lasting friendship. before i abandon myself to the fatality of my destiny, let me contemplate for a moment the prospect that awaited me had i fallen into the hands of a better master. nothing could have been more agreeable to my disposition, or more likely to confer happiness, than the peaceful condition of a good artificer, in so respectable a line as engravers are considered at geneva. i could have obtained an easy subsistence, if not a fortune; this would have bounded my ambition; i should have had means to indulge in moderate pleasures, and should have continued in my natural sphere, without meeting with any temptation to go beyond it. having an imagination sufficiently fertile to embellish with its chimeras every situation, and powerful enough to transport me from one to another, it was immaterial in which i was fixed: that was best adapted to me, which, requiring the least care or exertion, left the mind most at liberty; and this happiness i should have enjoyed. in my native country, in the bosom of my religion, family and friends, i should have passed a calm and peaceful life, in the uniformity of a pleasing occupation, and among connections dear to my heart. i should have been a good christian, a good citizen, a good friend, a good man. i should have relished my condition, perhaps have been an honor to it, and after having passed a life of happy obscurity, surrounded by my family, i should have died at peace. soon it may be forgotten, but while remembered it would have been with tenderness and regret. instead of this--what a picture am i about to draw!--alas! why should i anticipate the miseries i have endured? the reader will have but too much of the melancholy subject. the confessions of jean jacques rousseau (in books) privately printed for the members of the aldus society london, book vii. after two years' silence and patience, and notwithstanding my resolutions, i again take up my pen: reader, suspend your judgment as to the reasons which force me to such a step: of these you can be no judge until you shall have read my book. my peaceful youth has been seen to pass away calmly and agreeably without any great disappointments or remarkable prosperity. this mediocrity was mostly owing to my ardent yet feeble nature, less prompt in undertaking than easy to discourage; quitting repose for violent agitations, but returning to it from lassitude and inclinations, and which, placing me in an idle and tranquil state for which alone i felt i was born, at a distance from the paths of great virtues and still further from those of great vices, never permitted me to arrive at anything great, either good or bad. what a different account will i soon have to give of myself! fate, which for thirty years forced my inclinations, for thirty others has seemed to oppose them; and this continued opposition, between my situation and inclinations, will appear to have been the source of enormous faults, unheard of misfortunes, and every virtue except that fortitude which alone can do honor to adversity. the history of the first part of my life was written from memory, and is consequently full of errors. as i am obliged to write the second part from memory also, the errors in it will probably be still more numerous. the agreeable remembrance of the finest portion of my years, passed with so much tranquillity and innocence, has left in my heart a thousand charming impressions which i love incessantly to call to my recollection. it will soon appear how different from these those of the rest of my life have been. to recall them to my mind would be to renew their bitterness. far from increasing that of my situation by these sorrowful reflections, i repel them as much as possible, and in this endeavor often succeed so well as to be unable to find them at will. this facility of forgetting my misfortunes is a consolation which heaven has reserved to me in the midst of those which fate has one day to accumulate upon my head. my memory, which presents to me no objects but such as are agreeable, is the happy counterpoise of my terrified imagination, by which i foresee nothing but a cruel futurity. all the papers i had collected to aid my recollection, and guide me in this undertaking, are no longer in my possession, nor can i ever again hope to regain them. i have but one faithful guide on which i can depend: this is the chain of the sentiments by which the succession of my existence has been marked, and by these the events which have been either the cause or the effect of the manner of it. i easily forget my misfortunes, but i cannot forget my faults, and still less my virtuous sentiments. the remembrance of these is too dear to me ever to suffer them to be effaced from my mind. i may omit facts, transpose events, and fall into some errors of dates; but i cannot be deceived in what i have felt, nor in that which from sentiment i have done; and to relate this is the chief end of my present work. the real object of my confessions is to communicate an exact knowledge of what i interiorly am and have been in every situation of my life. i have promised the history of my mind, and to write it faithfully i have no need of other memoirs: to enter into my own heart, as i have hitherto done, will alone be sufficient. there is, however, and very happily, an interval of six or seven years, relative to which i have exact references, in a collection of letters copied from the originals, in the hands of m. du peyrou. this collection, which concludes in , comprehends the whole time of my residence at the hermitage, and my great quarrel with those who called themselves my friends; that memorable epocha of my life, and the source of all my other misfortunes. with respect to more recent original letters which may remain in my possession, and are but few in number, instead of transcribing them at the end of this collection, too voluminous to enable me to deceive the vigilance of my arguses, i will copy them into the work whenever they appear to furnish any explanation, be this either for or against myself; for i am not under the least apprehension lest the reader should forget i make my confession, and be induced to believe i make my apology; but he cannot expect i shall conceal the truth when it testifies in my favor. the second part, it is likewise to be remembered, contains nothing in common with the first, except truth; nor has any other advantage over it, but the importance of the facts; in everything else, it is inferior to the former. i wrote the first with pleasure, with satisfaction, and at my ease, at wootton, or in the castle trie: everything i had to recollect was a new enjoyment. i returned to my closet with an increased pleasure, and, without constraint, gave that turn to my descriptions which most flattered my imagination. at present my head and memory are become so weak as to render me almost incapable of every kind of application: my present undertaking is the result of constraint, and a heart full of sorrow. i have nothing to treat of but misfortunes, treacheries, perfidies, and circumstances equally afflicting. i would give the world, could i bury in the obscurity of time, every thing i have to say, and which, in spite of myself, i am obliged to relate. i am, at the same time, under the necessity of being mysterious and subtle, of endeavoring to impose and of descending to things the most foreign to my nature. the ceiling under which i write has eyes; the walls of my chamber have ears. surrounded by spies and by vigilant and malevolent inspectors, disturbed, and my attention diverted, i hastily commit to paper a few broken sentences, which i have scarcely time to read, and still less to correct. i know that, notwithstanding the barriers which are multiplied around me, my enemies are afraid truth should escape by some little opening. what means can i take to introduce it to the world? this, however, i attempt with but few hopes of success. the reader will judge whether or not such a situation furnishes the means of agreeable descriptions, or of giving them a seductive coloring! i therefore inform such as may undertake to read this work, that nothing can secure them from weariness in the prosecution of their task, unless it be the desire of becoming more fully acquainted with a man whom they already know, and a sincere love of justice and truth. in my first part i brought down my narrative to my departure with infinite regret from paris, leaving my heart at charmettes, and, there building my last castle in the air, intending some day to return to the feet of mamma, restored to herself, with the treasures i should have acquired, and depending upon my system of music as upon a certain fortune. i made some stay at lyons to visit my acquaintance, procure letters of recommendation to paris, and to sell my books of geometry which i had brought with me. i was well received by all whom i knew. m. and madam de malby seemed pleased to see me again, and several times invited me to dinner. at their house i became acquainted with the abbe de malby, as i had already done with the abbe de condillac, both of whom were on a visit to their brother. the abbe de malby gave me letters to paris; among others, one to m. de pontenelle, and another to the comte de caylus. these were very agreeable acquaintances, especially the first, to whose friendship for me his death only put a period, and from whom, in our private conversations, i received advice which i ought to have more exactly followed. i likewise saw m. bordes, with whom i had been long acquainted, and who had frequently obliged me with the greatest cordiality and the most real pleasure. he it was who enabled me to sell my books; and he also gave me from himself good recommendations to paris. i again saw the intendant for whose acquaintance i was indebted to m. bordes, and who introduced me to the duke de richelieu, who was then passing through lyons. m. pallu presented me. the duke received me well, and invited me to come and see him at paris; i did so several times; although this great acquaintance, of which i shall frequently have occasion to speak, was never of the most trifling utility to me. i visited the musician david, who, in one of my former journeys, and in my distress, had rendered me service. he had either lent or given me a cap and a pair of stockings, which i have never returned, nor has he ever asked me for them, although we have since that time frequently seen each other. i, however, made him a present, something like an equivalent. i would say more upon this subject, were what i have owned in question; but i have to speak of what i have done, which, unfortunately, is far from being the same thing. i also saw the noble and generous perrichon, and not without feeling the effects of his accustomed munificence; for he made me the same present he had previously done to the elegant bernard, by paying for my place in the diligence. i visited the surgeon parisot, the best and most benevolent of men; as also his beloved godefroi, who had lived with him ten years, and whose merit chiefly consisted in her gentle manners and goodness of heart. it was impossible to see this woman without pleasure, or to leave her without regret. nothing better shows the inclinations of a man, than the nature of his attachments. [unless he be deceived in his choice, or that she, to whom he attaches himself, changes her character by an extraordinary concurrence of causes, which is not absolutely impossible. were this consequence to be admitted without modification, socrates must be judged of by his wife xantippe, and dion by his friend calippus, which would be the most false and iniquitous judgment ever made. however, let no injurious application be here made to my wife. she is weak and more easily deceived than i at first imagined, but by her pure and excellent character she is worthy of all my esteem.] those who had once seen the gentle godefroi, immediately knew the good and amiable parisot. i was much obliged to all these good people, but i afterwards neglected them all; not from ingratitude, but from that invincible indolence which so often assumes its appearance. the remembrance of their services has never been effaced from my mind, nor the impression they made from my heart; but i could more easily have proved my gratitude, than assiduously have shown them the exterior of that sentiment. exactitude in correspondence is what i never could observe; the moment i began to relax, the shame and embarrassment of repairing my fault made me aggravate it, and i entirely desist from writing; i have, therefore, been silent, and appeared to forget them. parisot and perrichon took not the least notice of my negligence, and i ever found them the same. but, twenty years afterwards it will be seen, in m. bordes, to what a degree the self-love of a wit can make him carry his vengeance when he feels himself neglected. before i leave lyons, i must not forget an amiable person, whom i again saw with more pleasure than ever, and who left in my heart the most tender remembrance. this was mademoiselle serre, of whom i have spoken in my first part; i renewed my acquaintance with her whilst i was at m. de malby's. being this time more at leisure, i saw her more frequently, and she made the most sensible impressions on my heart. i had some reason to believe her own was not unfavorable to my pretensions; but she honored me with her confidence so far as to remove from me all temptation to allure her partiality. she had no fortune, and in this respect exactly resembled myself; our situations were too similar to permit us to become united; and with the views i then had, i was far from thinking of marriage. she gave me to understand that a young merchant, one m. geneve, seemed to wish to obtain her hand. i saw him once or twice at her lodgings; he appeared to me to be an honest man, and this was his general character. persuaded she would be happy with him, i was desirous he should marry her, which he afterwards did; and that i might not disturb their innocent love, i hastened my departure; offering up, for the happiness of that charming woman, prayers, which, here below were not long heard. alas! her time was very short, for i afterwards heard she died in the second or third year after her marriage. my mind, during the journey, was wholly absorbed in tender regret. i felt, and since that time, when these circumstances have been present to my recollection, have frequently done the same; that although the sacrifices made to virtue and our duty may sometimes be painful, we are well rewarded by the agreeable remembrance they leave deeply engravers in our hearts. i this time saw paris in as favorable a point of view as it had appeared to me in an unfavorable one at my first journey; not that my ideas of its brilliancy arose from the splendor of my lodgings; for in consequence of an address given me by m. bordes, i resided at the hotel st. quentin, rue des cordier, near the sorbonne; a vile street, a miserable hotel, and a wretched apartment: but nevertheless a house in which several men of merit, such as gresset, bordes, abbe malby, condillac, and several others, of whom unfortunately i found not one, had taken up their quarters; but i there met with m. bonnefond, a man unacquainted with the world, lame, litigious, and who affected to be a purist. to him i owe the acquaintance of m. roguin, at present the oldest friend i have and by whose means i became acquainted with diderot, of whom i shall soon have occasion to say a good deal. i arrived at paris in the autumn of , with fifteen louis in my purse, and with my comedy of narcissus and my musical project in my pocket. these composed my whole stock; consequently i had not much time to lose before i attempted to turn the latter to some advantage. i therefore immediately thought of making use of my recommendations. a young man who arrives at paris, with a tolerable figure, and announces himself by his talents, is sure to be well received. this was my good fortune, which procured me some pleasure without leading to anything solid. of all the persons to whom i was recommended, three only were useful to me. m. damesin, a gentleman of savoy, at that time equerry, and i believe favorite, of the princess of carignan; m. de boze, secretary of the academy of inscriptions, and keeper of the medals of the king's cabinet; and father castel, a jesuit, author of the 'clavecin oculaire'.--[ocular harpsichord.] all these recommendations, except that to m. damesin, were given me by the abbe de malby. m. damesin provided me with that which was most needful, by means of two persons with whom he brought me acquainted. one was m. gase, 'president a mortier' of the parliament of bordeaux, and who played very well upon the violin; the other, the abbe de leon, who then lodged in the sorbonne, a young nobleman; extremely amiable, who died in the flower of his age, after having, for a few moments, made a figure in the world under the name of the chevalier de rohan. both these gentlemen had an inclination to learn composition. in this i gave them lessons for a few months, by which means my decreasing purse received some little aid. the abbe leon conceived a friendship for me, and wished me to become his secretary; but he was far from being rich, and all the salary he could offer me was eight hundred livres, which, with infinite regret, i refused; since it was insufficient to defray the expenses of my lodging, food, and clothing. i was well received by m. de boze. he had a thirst for knowledge, of which he possessed not a little, but was somewhat pedantic. madam de boze much resembled him; she was lively and affected. i sometimes dined with them, and it is impossible to be more awkward than i was in her presence. her easy manner intimidated me, and rendered mine more remarkable. when she presented me a plate, i modestly put forward my fork to take one of the least bits of what she offered me, which made her give the plate to her servant, turning her head aside that i might not see her laugh. she had not the least suspicion that in the head of the rustic with whom she was so diverted there was some small portion of wit. m. de boze presented me to m. de reaumur, his friend, who came to dine with him every friday, the day on which the academy of sciences met. he mentioned to him my project, and the desire i had of having it examined by the academy. m. de reaumur consented to make the proposal, and his offer was accepted. on the day appointed i was introduced and presented by m. de reaumur, and on the same day, august d, , i had the honor to read to the academy the memoir i had prepared for that purpose. although this illustrious assembly might certainly well be expected to inspire me with awe, i was less intimidated on this occasion than i had been in the presence of madam de boze, and i got tolerably well through my reading and the answers i was obliged to give. the memoir was well received, and acquired me some compliments by which i was equally surprised and flattered, imagining that before such an assembly, whoever was not a member of it could not have commonsense. the persons appointed to examine my system were m. mairan, m. hellot, and m. de fouchy, all three men of merit, but not one of them understood music, at least not enough of composition to enable them to judge of my project. during my conference with these gentlemen, i was convinced with no less certainty than surprise, that if men of learning have sometimes fewer prejudices than others, they more tenaciously retain those they have. however weak or false most of their objections were, and although i answered them with great timidity, and i confess, in bad terms, yet with decisive reasons, i never once made myself understood, or gave them any explanation in the least satisfactory. i was constantly surprised at the facility with which, by the aid of a few sonorous phrases, they refuted, without having comprehended me. they had learned, i know not where, that a monk of the name of souhaitti had formerly invented a mode of noting the gamut by ciphers: a sufficient proof that my system was not new. this might, perhaps, be the case; for although i had never heard of father souhaitti, and notwithstanding his manner of writing the seven notes without attending to the octaves was not, under any point of view, worthy of entering into competition with my simple and commodious invention for easily noting by ciphers every possible kind of music, keys, rests, octaves, measure, time, and length of note; things on which souhaitti had never thought it was nevertheless true, that with respect to the elementary expression of the seven notes, he was the first inventor. but besides their giving to this primitive invention more importance than was due to it, they went still further, and, whenever they spoke of the fundamental principles of the system, talked nonsense. the greatest advantage of my scheme was to supersede transpositions and keys, so that the same piece of music was noted and transposed at will by means of the change of a single initial letter at the head of the air. these gentlemen had heard from the music--masters of paris that the method of executing by transposition was a bad one; and on this authority converted the most evident advantage of my system into an invincible objection against it, and affirmed that my mode of notation was good for vocal music, but bad for instrumental; instead of concluding as they ought to have done, that it was good for vocal, and still better for instrumental. on their report the academy granted me a certificate full of fine compliments, amidst which it appeared that in reality it judged my system to be neither new nor useful. i did not think proper to ornament with such a paper the work entitled 'dissertation sur la musique moderne', by which i appealed to the public. i had reason to remark on this occasion that, even with a narrow understanding, the sole but profound knowledge of a thing is preferable for the purpose of judging of it, to all the lights resulting from a cultivation of the sciences, when to these a particular study of that in question has not been joined. the only solid objection to my system was made by rameau. i had scarcely explained it to him before he discovered its weak part. "your signs," said he, "are very good inasmuch as they clearly and simply determine the length of notes, exactly represent intervals, and show the simple in the double note, which the common notation does not do; but they are objectionable on account of their requiring an operation of the mind, which cannot always accompany the rapidity of execution. the position of our notes," continued he, "is described to the eye without the concurrence of this operation. if two notes, one very high and the other very low, be joined by a series of intermediate ones, i see at the first glance the progress from one to the other by conjoined degrees; but in your system, to perceive this series, i must necessarily run over your ciphers one after the other; the glance of the eye is here useless." the objection appeared to me insurmountable, and i instantly assented to it. although it be simple and striking, nothing can suggest it but great knowledge and practice of the art, and it is by no means astonishing that not one of the academicians should have thought of it. but what creates much surprise is, that these men of great learning, and who are supposed to possess so much knowledge, should so little know that each ought to confine his judgment to that which relates to the study with which he has been conversant. my frequent visits to the literati appointed to examine my system and the other academicians gave me an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the most distinguished men of letters in paris, and by this means the acquaintance that would have been the consequence of my sudden admission amongst them, which afterwards came to pass, was already established. with respect to the present moment, absorbed in my new system of music, i obstinately adhered to my intention of effecting a revolution in the art, and by that means of acquiring a celebrity which, in the fine arts, is in paris mostly accompanied by fortune. i shut myself in my chamber and labored three or four months with inexpressible ardor, in forming into a work for the public eye, the memoir i had read before the academy. the difficulty was to find a bookseller to take my manuscript; and this on account of the necessary expenses for new characters, and because booksellers give not their money by handfuls to young authors; although to me it seemed but just my work should render me the bread i had eaten while employed in its composition. bonnefond introduced me to quillau the father, with whom i agreed to divide the profits, without reckoning the privilege, of which i paid the whole expense. such were the future proceedings of this quillau that i lost the expenses of my privilege, never having received a farthing from that edition; which, probably, had but very middling success, although the abbe des fontaines promised to give it celebrity, and, notwithstanding the other journalists, had spoken of it very favorably. the greatest obstacle to making the experiment of my system was the fear, in case of its not being received, of losing the time necessary to learn it. to this i answered, that my notes rendered the ideas so clear, that to learn music by means of the ordinary characters, time would be gained by beginning with mine. to prove this by experience, i taught music gratis to a young american lady, mademoiselle des roulins, with whom m. roguin had brought me acquainted. in three months she read every kind of music, by means of my notation, and sung at sight better than i did myself, any piece that was not too difficult. this success was convincing, but not known; any other person would have filled the journals with the detail, but with some talents for discovering useful things, i never have possessed that of setting them off to advantage. thus was my airy castle again overthrown; but this time i was thirty years of age, and in paris, where it is impossible to live for a trifle. the resolution i took upon this occasion will astonish none but those by whom the first part of these memoirs has not been read with attention. i had just made great and fruitless efforts, and was in need of relaxation. instead of sinking with despair i gave myself up quietly to my indolence and to the care of providence; and the better to wait for its assistance with patience, i lay down a frugal plan for the slow expenditure of a few louis, which still remained in my possession, regulating the expense of my supine pleasures without retrenching it; going to the coffee-house but every other day, and to the theatre but twice a week. with respect to the expenses of girls of easy virtue, i had no retrenchment to make; never having in the whole course of my life applied so much as a farthing to that use except once, of which i shall soon have occasion to speak. the security, voluptuousness, and confidence with which i gave myself up to this indolent and solitary life, which i had not the means of continuing for three months, is one of the singularities of my life, and the oddities of my disposition. the extreme desire i had, the public should think of me was precisely what discouraged me from showing myself; and the necessity of paying visits rendered them to such a degree insupportable, that i ceased visiting the academicians and other men of letters, with whom i had cultivated an acquaintance. marivaux, the abbe malby, and fontenelle, were almost the only persons whom i sometimes went to see. to the first i showed my comedy of narcissus. he was pleased with it, and had the goodness to make in it some improvements. diderot, younger than these, was much about my own age. he was fond of music, and knew it theoretically; we conversed together, and he communicated to me some of his literary projects. this soon formed betwixt us a more intimate connection, which lasted fifteen years, and which probably would still exist were not i, unfortunately, and by his own fault, of the same profession with himself. it would be impossible to imagine in what manner i employed this short and precious interval which still remained to me, before circumstances forced me to beg my bread:--in learning by memory passages from the poets which i had learned and forgotten a hundred times. every morning at ten o'clock, i went to walk in the luxembourg with a virgil and a rousseau in my pocket, and there, until the hour of dinner, i passed away the time in restoring to my memory a sacred ode or a bucolic, without being discouraged by forgetting, by the study of the morning, what i had learned the evening before. i recollected that after the defeat of nicias at syracuse the captive athenians obtained a livelihood by reciting the poems of homer. the use i made of this erudition to ward off misery was to exercise my happy memory by learning all the poets by rote. i had another expedient, not less solid, in the game of chess, to which i regularly dedicated, at maugis, the evenings on which i did not go to the theatre. i became acquainted with m. de legal, m. husson, philidor, and all the great chess players of the day, without making the least improvement in the game. however, i had no doubt but, in the end, i should become superior to them all, and this, in my own opinion, was a sufficient resource. the same manner of reasoning served me in every folly to which i felt myself inclined. i said to myself: whoever excels in anything is sure to acquire a distinguished reception in society. let us therefore excel, no matter in what, i shall certainly be sought after; opportunities will present themselves, and my own merit will do the rest. this childishness was not the sophism of my reason; it was that of my indolence. dismayed at the great and rapid efforts which would have been necessary to call forth my endeavors, i strove to flatter my idleness, and by arguments suitable to the purpose, veiled from my own eyes the shame of such a state. i thus calmly waited for the moment when i was to be without money; and had not father castel, whom i sometimes went to see in my way to the coffee-house, roused me from my lethargy, i believe i should have seen myself reduced to my last farthing without the least emotion. father castel was a madman, but a good man upon the whole; he was sorry to see me thus impoverish myself to no purpose. "since musicians and the learned," said he, "do not sing by your scale, change the string, and apply to the women. you will perhaps succeed better with them. i have spoken of you to madam de beuzenval; go to her from me; she is a good woman who will be glad to see the countryman of her son and husband. you will find at her house madam de broglie, her daughter, who is a woman of wit. madam dupin is another to whom i also have mentioned you; carry her your work; she is desirous of seeing you, and will receive you well. no thing is done in paris without the women. they are the curves, of which the wise are the asymptotes; they incessantly approach each other, but never touch." after having from day to day delayed these very disagreeable steps, i at length took courage, and called upon madam de beuzenval. she received me with kindness; and madam de broglio entering the chamber, she said to her: "daughter, this is m. rousseau, of whom father castel has spoken to us." madam de broglie complimented me upon my work, and going to her harpsichord proved to me she had already given it some attention. perceiving it to be about one o'clock, i prepared to take my leave. madam de beuzenval said to me: "you are at a great distance from the quarter of the town in which you reside; stay and dine here." i did not want asking a second time. a quarter of an hour afterwards, i understood, by a word, that the dinner to which she had invited me was that of her servants' hall. madam de beuzenval was a very good kind of woman, but of a confined understanding, and too full of her illustrious polish nobility: she had no idea of the respect due to talents. on this occasion, likewise, she judged me by my manner rather than by my dress, which, although very plain, was very neat, and by no means announced a man to dine with servants. i had too long forgotten the way to the place where they eat to be inclined to take it again. without suffering my anger to appear, i told madam de beuzenval that i had an affair of a trifling nature which i had just recollected obliged me to return home, and i immediately prepared to depart. madam de broglie approached her mother, and whispered in her ear a few words which had their effect. madam de beuzenval rose to prevent me from going, and said, "i expect that you will do us the honor to dine with us." in this case i thought to show pride would be a mark of folly, and i determined to stay. the goodness of madam de broglie had besides made an impression upon me, and rendered her interesting in my eyes. i was very glad to dine with her, and hoped, that when she knew me better, she would not regret having procured me that honor. the president de lamoignon, very intimate in the family, dined there also. he, as well as madam de broglie, was a master of all the modish and fashionable small talk jargon of paris. poor jean jacques was unable to make a figure in this way. i had sense enough not to pretend to it, and was silent. happy would it have been for me, had i always possessed the same wisdom; i should not be in the abyss into which i am now fallen. i was vexed at my own stupidity, and at being unable to justify to madam de broglie what she had done in my favor. after dinner i thought of my ordinary resource. i had in my pocket an epistle in verse, written to parisot during my residence at lyons. this fragment was not without some fire, which i increased by my manner of reading, and made them all three shed tears. whether it was vanity, or really the truth, i thought the eyes of madam de broglie seemed to say to her mother: "well, mamma, was i wrong in telling you this man was fitter to dine with us than with your women?" until then my heart had been rather burdened, but after this revenge i felt myself satisfied. madam de broglie, carrying her favorable opinion of me rather too far, thought i should immediately acquire fame in paris, and become a favorite with fine ladies. to guide my inexperience she gave me the confessions of the count de -----. "this book," said she, "is a mentor, of which you will stand in need in the great world. you will do well by sometimes consulting it." i kept the book upwards of twenty years with a sentiment of gratitude to her from whose hand i had received it, although i frequently laughed at the opinion the lady seemed to have of my merit in gallantry. from the moment i had read the work, i was desirous of acquiring the friendship of the author. my inclination led me right; he is the only real friend i ever possessed amongst men of letters. [i have so long been of the same opinion, and so perfectly convinced of its being well founded, that since my return to paris i confided to him the manuscript of my confessions. the suspicious j. j. never suspected perfidy and falsehood until he had been their victim.] from this time i thought i might depend on the services of madam the baroness of beuzenval, and the marchioness of broglie, and that they would not long leave me without resource. in this i was not deceived. but i must now speak of my first visit to madam dupin, which produced more lasting consequences. madam dupin was, as every one in paris knows, the daughter of samuel bernard and madam fontaine. there were three sisters, who might be called the three graces. madam de la touche who played a little prank, and went to england with the duke of kingston. madam darby, the eldest of the three; the friend, the only sincere friend of the prince of conti; an adorable woman, as well by her sweetness and the goodness of her charming character, as by her agreeable wit and incessant cheerfulness. lastly, madam dupin, more beautiful than either of her sisters, and the only one who has not been reproached with some levity of conduct. she was the reward of the hospitality of m. dupin, to whom her mother gave her in marriage with the place of farmer general and an immense fortune, in return for the good reception he had given her in his province. when i saw her for the first time, she was still one of the finest women in paris. she received me at her toilette, her arms were uncovered, her hair dishevelled, and her combing-cloth ill-arranged. this scene was new to me; it was too powerful for my poor head, i became confused, my senses wandered; in short, i was violently smitten by madam dupin. my confusion was not prejudicial to me; she did not perceive it. she kindly received the book and the author; spoke with information of my plan, sung, accompanied herself on the harpsichord, kept me to dinner, and placed me at table by her side. less than this would have turned my brain; i became mad. she permitted me to visit her, and i abused the permission. i went to see her almost every day, and dined with her twice or thrice a week. i burned with inclination to speak, but never dared attempt it. several circumstances increased my natural timidity. permission to visit in an opulent family was a door open to fortune, and in my situation i was unwilling to run the risk of shutting it against myself. madam dupin, amiable as she was, was serious and unanimated; i found nothing in her manners sufficiently alluring to embolden me. her house, at that time, as brilliant as any other in paris, was frequented by societies the less numerous, as the persons by whom they were composed were chosen on account of some distinguished merit. she was fond of seeing every one who had claims to a marked superiority; the great men of letters, and fine women. no person was seen in her circle but dukes, ambassadors, and blue ribbons. the princess of rohan, the countess of forcalquier, madam de mirepoix, madam de brignole, and lady hervey, passed for her intimate friends. the abbes de fontenelle, de saint pierre, and saltier, m. de fourmont, m. de berms, m. de buffon, and m. de voltaire, were of her circle and her dinners. if her reserved manner did not attract many young people, her society inspired the greater awe, as it was composed of graver persons, and the poor jean-jacques had no reason to flatter himself he should be able to take a distinguished part in the midst of such superior talents. i therefore had not courage to speak; but no longer able to contain myself, i took a resolution to write. for the first two days she said not a word to me upon the subject. on the third day, she returned me my letter, accompanying it with a few exhortations which froze my blood. i attempted to speak, but my words expired upon my lips; my sudden passion was extinguished with my hopes, and after a declaration in form i continued to live with her upon the same terms as before, without so much as speaking to her even by the language of the eyes. i thought my folly was forgotten, but i was deceived. m. de francueil, son to m. dupin, and son-in-law to madam dupin, was much the same with herself and me. he had wit, a good person, and might have pretensions. this was said to be the case, and probably proceeded from his mother-in-law's having given him an ugly wife of a mild disposition, with whom, as well as with her husband, she lived upon the best of terms. m. de francueil was fond of talents in others, and cultivated those he possessed. music, which he understood very well, was a means of producing a connection between us. i frequently saw him, and he soon gained my friendship. he, however, suddenly gave me to understand that madam dupin thought my visits too frequent, and begged me to discontinue them. such a compliment would have been proper when she returned my letter; but eight or ten days afterwards, and without any new cause, it appeared to me ill-timed. this rendered my situation the more singular, as m. and madam de francueil still continued to give me the same good reception as before. i however made the intervals between my visits longer, and i should entirely have ceased calling on them, had not madam dupin, by another unexpected caprice, sent to desire i would for a few days take care of her son, who changing his preceptor, remained alone during that interval. i passed eight days in such torments as nothing but the pleasure of obeying madam dupin could render supportable: i would not have undertaken to pass eight other days like them had madam dupin given me herself for the recompense. m. de francueil conceived a friendship for me, and i studied with him. we began together a course of chemistry at rouelles. that i might be nearer at hand, i left my hotel at quentin, and went to lodge at the tennis court, rue verdelet, which leads into the rue platiere, where m. dupin lived. there, in consequence of a cold neglected, i contracted an inflammation of the lungs that had liked to have carried me off. in my younger days i frequently suffered from inflammatory disorders, pleurisies, and especially quinsies, to which i was very subject, and which frequently brought me near enough to death to familiarize me to its image. during my convalescence i had leisure to reflect upon my situation, and to lament my timidity, weakness and indolence; these, notwithstanding the fire with which i found myself inflamed, left me to languish in an inactivity of mind, continually on the verge of misery. the evening preceding the day on which i was taken ill, i went to an opera by royer; the name i have forgotten. notwithstanding my prejudice in favor of the talents of others, which has ever made me distrustful of my own, i still thought the music feeble, and devoid of animation and invention. i sometimes had the vanity to flatter myself: i think i could do better than that. but the terrible idea i had formed of the composition of an opera, and the importance i heard men of the profession affix to such an undertaking, instantly discouraged me, and made me blush at having so much as thought of it. besides, where was i to find a person to write the words, and one who would give himself the trouble of turning the poetry to my liking? these ideas of music and the opera had possession of my mind during my illness, and in the delirium of my fever i composed songs, duets, and choruses. i am certain i composed two or three little pieces, 'di prima infenzione', perhaps worthy of the admiration of masters, could they have heard them executed. oh, could an account be taken of the dreams of a man in a fever, what great and sublime things would sometimes proceed from his delirium! these subjects of music and opera still engaged my attention during my convalescence, but my ideas were less energetic. long and frequent meditations, and which were often involuntary, and made such an impression upon my mind that i resolved to attempt both words and music. this was not the first time i had undertaken so difficult a task. whilst i was at chambery i had composed an opera entitled 'iphis and anaxarete', which i had the good sense to throw into the fire. at lyons i had composed another, entitled 'la decouverte du nouveau monde', which, after having read it to m. bordes, the abbes malby, trublet, and others, had met the same fate, notwithstanding i had set the prologue and the first act to music, and although david, after examining the composition, had told me there were passages in it worthy of buononcini. before i began the work i took time to consider of my plan. in a heroic ballet i proposed three different subjects, in three acts, detached from each other, set to music of a different character, taking for each subject the amours of a poet. i entitled this opera les muses galantes. my first act, in music strongly characterized, was tasso; the second in tender harmony, ovid; and the third, entitled anacreon, was to partake of the gayety of the dithyrambus. i tried my skill on the first act, and applied to it with an ardor which, for the first time, made me feel the delightful sensation produced by the creative power of composition. one evening, as i entered the opera, feeling myself strongly incited and overpowered by my ideas, i put my money again into my pocket, returned to my apartment, locked the door, and, having close drawn all the curtains, that every ray of light might be excluded, i went to bed, abandoning myself entirely to this musical and poetical 'oestrum', and in seven or eight hours rapidly composed the greatest part of an act. i can truly say my love for the princess of ferrara (for i was tasso for the moment) and my noble and lofty sentiment with respect to her unjust brother, procured me a night a hundred times more delicious than one passed in the arms of the princess would have been. in the morning but a very little of what i had done remained in my head, but this little, almost effaced by sleep and lassitude, still sufficiently evinced the energy of the pieces of which it was the scattered remains. i this time did, not proceed far with my undertaking, being interrupted by other affairs. whilst i attached myself to the family of dupin, madam de beuzenval and madam de broglie, whom i continued to visit, had not forgotten me. the count de montaigu, captain in the guards, had just been appointed ambassador to venice. he was an ambassador made by barjac, to whom he assiduously paid his court. his brother, the chevalier de montaigu, 'gentilhomme de la manche' to the dauphin, was acquainted with these ladies, and with the abbe alary of the french academy, whom i sometimes visited. madam de broglie having heard the ambassador was seeking a secretary, proposed me to him. a conference was opened between us. i asked a salary of fifty guineas, a trifle for an employment which required me to make some appearance. the ambassador was unwilling to give more than a thousand livres, leaving me to make the journey at my own expense. the proposal was ridiculous. we could not agree, and m. de francueil, who used all his efforts to prevent my departure, prevailed. i stayed, and m. de montaigu set out on his journey, taking with him another secretary, one m. follau, who had been recommended to him by the office of foreign affairs. they no sooner arrived at venice than they quarrelled. bollau perceiving he had to do with a madman, left him there, and m. de montaigu having nobody with him, except a young abbe of the name of binis, who wrote under the secretary, and was unfit to succeed him, had recourse to me. the chevalier, his brother, a man of wit, by giving me to understand there were advantages annexed to the place of secretary, prevailed upon me to accept the thousand livres. i was paid twenty louis in advance for my journey, and immediately departed. at lyons i would most willingly have taken the road to mount cenis, to see my poor mamma. but i went down the rhone, and embarked at toulon, as well on account of the war, and from a motive of economy, as to obtain a passport from m. de mirepoix, who then commanded in provence, and to whom i was recommended. m. de montaigu not being able to do without me, wrote letter after letter, desiring i would hasten my journey; this, however, an accident considerably prolonged. it was at the time of the plague at messina, and the english fleet had anchored there, and visited the felucca, on board of which i was, and this circumstance subjected us, on our arrival, after a long and difficult voyage, to a quarantine of one--and--twenty days. the passengers had the choice of performing it on board or in the lazaretto, which we were told was not yet furnished. they all chose the felucca. the insupportable heat, the closeness of the vessel, the impossibility of walking in it, and the vermin with which it swarmed, made me at all risks prefer the lazaretto. i was therefore conducted to a large building of two stories, quite empty, in which i found neither window, bed, table, nor chair, not so much as even a joint-stool or bundle of straw. my night sack and my two trunks being brought me, i was shut in by great doors with huge locks, and remained at full liberty to walk at my ease from chamber to chamber and story to story, everywhere finding the same solitude and nakedness. this, however, did not induce me to repent that i had preferred the lazaretto to the felucca; and, like another robinson crusoe, i began to arrange myself for my one-and twenty days, just as i should have done for my whole life. in the first place, i had the amusement of destroying the vermin i had caught in the felucca. as soon as i had got clear of these, by means of changing my clothes and linen, i proceeded to furnish the chamber i had chosen. i made a good mattress with my waistcoats and shirts; my napkins i converted, by sewing them together, into sheets; my robe de chambre into a counterpane; and my cloak into a pillow. i made myself a seat with one of my trunks laid flat, and a table with the other. i took out some writing paper and an inkstand, and distributed, in the manner of a library, a dozen books which i had with me. in a word, i so well arranged my few movables, that except curtains and windows, i was almost as commodiously lodged in this lazeretto, absolutely empty as it was, as i had been at the tennis court in the rue verdelet. my dinners were served with no small degree of pomp; they were escorted by two grenadiers with bayonets fixed; the staircase was my dining--room, the landing-place my table, and the steps served me for a seat; and as soon as my dinner was served up a little bell was rung to inform me i might sit down to table. between my repasts, when i did not either read or write or work at the furnishing of my apartment, i went to walk in the burying-ground of the protestants, which served me as a courtyard. from this place i ascended to a lanthorn which looked into the harbor, and from which i could see the ships come in and go out. in this manner i passed fourteen days, and should have thus passed the whole time of the quarantine without the least weariness had not m. joinville, envoy from france, to whom i found means to send a letter, vinegared, perfumed, and half burnt, procured eight days of the time to be taken off: these i went and spent at his house, where i confess i found myself better lodged than in the lazaretto. he was extremely civil to me. dupont, his secretary, was a good creature: he introduced me, as well at genoa as in the country, to several families, the company of which i found very entertaining and agreeable; and i formed with him an acquaintance and a correspondence which we kept up for a considerable length of time. i continued my journey, very agreeably, through lombardy. i saw milan, verona, brescie, and padua, and at length arrived at venice, where i was impatiently expected by the ambassador. i found there piles of despatches, from the court and from other ambassadors, the ciphered part of which he had not been able to read, although he had all the ciphers necessary for that purpose, never having been employed in any office, nor even seen the cipher of a minister. i was at first apprehensive of meeting with some embarrassment; but i found nothing could be more easy, and in less than a week i had deciphered the whole, which certainly was not worth the trouble; for not to mention the little activity required in the embassy of venice, it was not to such a man as m. de montaigu that government would confide a negotiation of even the most trifling importance. until my arrival he had been much embarrassed, neither knowing how to dictate nor to write legibly. i was very useful to him, of which he was sensible; and he treated me well. to this he was also induced by another motive. since the time of m. de froulay, his predecessor, whose head became deranged, the consul from france, m. le blond, had been charged with the affairs of the embassy, and after the arrival of m. de montaigu, continued to manage them until he had put him into the track. m. de montaigu, hurt at this discharge of his duty by another, although he himself was incapable of it, became disgusted with the consul, and as soon as i arrived deprived him of the functions of secretary to the embassy to give them to me. they were inseparable from the title, and he told me to take it. as long as i remained with him he never sent any person except myself under this title to the senate, or to conference, and upon the whole it was natural enough he should prefer having for secretary to the embassy a man attached to him, to a consul or a clerk of office named by the court. this rendered my situation very agreeable, and prevented his gentlemen, who were italians, as well as his pages, and most of his suite from disputing precedence with me in his house. i made an advantageous use of the authority annexed to the title he had conferred upon me, by maintaining his right of protection, that is, the freedom of his neighborhood, against the attempts several times made to infringe it; a privilege which his venetian officers took no care to defend. but i never permitted banditti to take refuge there, although this would have produced me advantages of which his excellency would not have disdained to partake. he thought proper, however, to claim a part of those of the secretaryship, which is called the chancery. it was in time of war, and there were many passports issued. for each of these passports a sequin was paid to the secretary who made it out and countersigned it. all my predecessors had been paid this sequin by frenchmen and others without distinction. i thought this unjust, and although i was not a frenchman, i abolished it in favor of the french; but i so rigorously demanded my right from persons of every other nation, that the marquis de scotti, brother to the favorite of the queen of spain, having asked for a passport without taking notice of the sequin: i sent to demand it; a boldness which the vindictive italian did not forget. as soon as the new regulation i had made, relative to passports, was known, none but pretended frenchmen, who in a gibberish the most mispronounced, called themselves provencals, picards, or burgundians, came to demand them. my ear being very fine, i was not thus made a dupe, and i am almost persuaded that not a single italian ever cheated me of my sequin, and that not one frenchman ever paid it. i was foolish enough to tell m. de montaigu, who was ignorant of everything that passed, what i had done. the word sequin made him open his ears, and without giving me his opinion of the abolition of that tax upon the french, he pretended i ought to account with him for the others, promising me at the same time equivalent advantages. more filled with indignation at this meanness, than concern for my own interest, i rejected his proposal. he insisted, and i grew warm. "no, sir," said i, with some heat, "your excellency may keep what belongs to you, but do not take from me that which is mine; i will not suffer you to touch a penny of the perquisites arising from passports." perceiving he could gain nothing by these means he had recourse to others, and blushed not to tell me that since i had appropriated to myself the profits of the chancery, it was but just i should pay the expenses. i was unwilling to dispute upon this subject, and from that time i furnished at my own expense, ink, paper, wax, wax-candle, tape, and even a new seal, for which he never reimbursed me to the amount of a farthing. this, however, did not prevent my giving a small part of the produce of the passports to the abbe de binis, a good creature, and who was far from pretending to have the least right to any such thing. if he was obliging to me my politeness to him was an equivalent, and we always lived together on the best of terms. on the first trial i made of his talents in my official functions, i found him less troublesome than i expected he would have been, considering he was a man without experience, in the service of an ambassador who possessed no more than himself, and whose ignorance and obstinacy constantly counteracted everything with which common-sense and some information inspired me for his service and that of the king. the next thing the ambassador did was to connect himself with the marquis mari, ambassador from spain, an ingenious and artful man, who, had he wished so to do, might have led him by the nose, yet on account of the union of the interests of the two crowns he generally gave him good advice, which might have been of essential service, had not the other, by joining his own opinion, counteracted it in the execution. the only business they had to conduct in concert with each other was to engage the venetians to maintain their neutrality. these did not neglect to give the strongest assurances of their fidelity to their engagement at the same time that they publicly furnished ammunition to the austrian troops, and even recruits under pretense of desertion. m. de montaigu, who i believe wished to render himself agreeable to the republic, failed not on his part, notwithstanding my representation to make me assure the government in all my despatches, that the venetians would never violate an article of the neutrality. the obstinacy and stupidity of this poor wretch made me write and act extravagantly: i was obliged to be the agent of his folly, because he would have it so, but he sometimes rendered my employment insupportable and the functions of it almost impracticable. for example, he insisted on the greatest part of his despatches to the king, and of those to the minister, being written in cipher, although neither of them contained anything that required that precaution. i represented to him that between the friday, the day the despatches from the court arrived, and saturday, on which ours were sent off, there was not sufficient time to write so much in cipher, and carry on the considerable correspondence with which i was charged for the same courier. he found an admirable expedient, which was to prepare on thursday the answer to the despatches we were expected to receive on the next day. this appeared to him so happily imagined, that notwithstanding all i could say on the impossibility of the thing, and the absurdity of attempting its execution, i was obliged to comply during the whole time i afterwards remained with him, after having made notes of the few loose words he spoke to me in the course of the week, and of some trivial circumstances which i collected by hurrying from place to place. provided with these materials i never once failed carrying to him on the thursday morning a rough draft of the despatches which were to be sent off on saturday, excepting the few additions and corrections i hastily made in answer to the letters which arrived on the friday, and to which ours served for answer. he had another custom, diverting enough and which made his correspondence ridiculous beyond imagination. he sent back all information to its respective source, instead of making it follow its course. to m. amelot he transmitted the news of the court; to m. maurepas, that of paris; to m. d' havrincourt, the news from sweden; to m. de chetardie, that from petersbourg; and sometimes to each of those the news they had respectively sent to him, and which i was employed to dress up in terms different from those in which it was conveyed to us. as he read nothing of what i laid before him, except the despatches for the court, and signed those to other ambassadors without reading them, this left me more at liberty to give what turn i thought proper to the latter, and in these therefore i made the articles of information cross each other. but it was impossible for-me to do the same by despatches of importance; and i thought myself happy when m. de montaigu did not take it into his head to cram into them an impromptu of a few lines after his manner. this obliged me to return, and hastily transcribe the whole despatch decorated with his new nonsense, and honor it with the cipher, without which he would have refused his signature. i was frequently almost tempted, for the sake of his reputation, to cipher something different from what he had written, but feeling that nothing could authorize such a deception, i left him to answer for his own folly, satisfying myself with having spoken to him with freedom, and discharged at my own peril the duties of my station. this is what i always did with an uprightness, a zeal and courage, which merited on his part a very different recompense from that which in the end i received from him. it was time i should once be what heaven, which had endowed me with a happy disposition, what the education that had been given me by the best of women, and that i had given myself, had prepared me for, and i became so. left to my own reflections, without a friend or advice, without experience, and in a foreign country, in the service of a foreign nation, surrounded by a crowd of knaves, who, for their own interest, and to avoid the scandal of good example, endeavored to prevail upon me to imitate them; far from yielding to their solicitations, i served france well, to which i owed nothing, and the ambassador still better, as it was right and just i should do to the utmost of my power. irreproachable in a post, sufficiently exposed to censure, i merited and obtained the esteem of the republic, that of all the ambassadors with whom we were in correspondence, and the affection of the french who resided at venice, not even excepting the consul, whom with regret i supplanted in the functions which i knew belonged to him, and which occasioned me more embarrassment than they afforded me satisfaction. m. de montaigu, confiding without reserve to the marquis mari, who did not thoroughly understand his duty, neglected it to such a degree that without me the french who were at venice would not have perceived that an ambassador from their nation resided there. always put off without being heard when they stood in need of his protection, they became disgusted and no longer appeared in his company or at his table, to which indeed he never invited them. i frequently did from myself what it was his duty to have done; i rendered to the french, who applied to me, all the services in my power. in any other country i should have done more, but, on account of my employment, not being able to see persons in place, i was often obliged to apply to the consul, and the consul, who was settled in the country with his family, had many persons to oblige, which prevented him from acting as he otherwise would have done. however, perceiving him unwilling and afraid to speak, i ventured hazardous measures, which sometimes succeeded. i recollect one which still makes me laugh. no person would suspect it was to me, the lovers of the theatre at paris, owe coralline and her sister camille, nothing however, can be more true. veronese, their father, had engaged himself with his children in the italian company, and after having received two thousand livres for the expenses of his journey, instead of setting out for france, quietly continued at venice, and accepted an engagement in the theatre of saint luke, to which coralline, a child as she still was, drew great numbers of people. the duke de greves, as first gentleman of the chamber, wrote to the ambassador to claim the father and the daughter. m. de montaigu when he gave me the letter, confined his instructions to saying, 'voyez cela', examine and pay attention to this. i went to m. blond to beg he would speak to the patrician, to whom the theatre belonged, and who, i believe, was named zustinian, that he might discharge veronese, who had engaged in the name of the king. le blond, to whom the commission was not very agreeable, executed it badly. zustinian answered vaguely, and veronese was not discharged. i was piqued at this. it was during the carnival, and having taken the bahute and a mask, i set out for the palace zustinian. those who saw my gondola arrive with the livery of the ambassador, were lost in astonishment. venice had never seen such a thing. i entered, and caused myself to be announced by the name of 'una siora masehera'. as soon as i was introduced i took off my mask and told my name. the senator turned pale and appeared stupefied with surprise. "sir;" said i to him in venetian, "it is with much regret i importune your excellency with this visit; but you have in your theatre of saint luke, a man of the name of veronese, who is engaged in the service of the king, and whom you have been requested, but in vain, to give up: i come to claim him in the name of his majesty." my short harangue was effectual. i had no sooner left the palace than zustinian ran to communicate the adventure to the state inquisitors, by whom he was severely reprehended. veronese was discharged the same day. i sent him word that if he did not set off within a week i would have him arrested. he did not wait for my giving him this intimation a second time. on another occasion i relieved from difficulty solely by my own means, and almost without the assistance of any other person, the captain of a merchant-ship. this was one captain olivet, from marseilles; the name of the vessel i have forgotten. his men had quarreled with the sclavonians in the service of the republic, some violence had been committed, and the vessel was under so severe an embargo that nobody except the master was suffered to go on board or leave it without permission. he applied to the ambassador, who would hear nothing he had to say. he afterwards went to the consul, who told him it was not an affair of commerce, and that he could not interfere in it. not knowing what further steps to take he applied to me. i told m. de montaigu he ought to permit me to lay before the senate a memoir on the subject. i do not recollect whether or not he consented, or that i presented the memoir; but i perfectly remember that if i did it was ineffectual, and the embargo still continuing, i took another method, which succeeded. i inserted a relation of the affairs in one of our letters to m. de maurepas, though i had difficulty in prevailing upon m. de montaigne to suffer the article to pass. i knew that our despatches, although their contents were insignificant, were opened at venice. of this i had a proof by finding the articles they contained, verbatim in the gazette, a treachery of which i had in vain attempted to prevail upon the ambassador to complain. my object in speaking of the affair in the letter was to turn the curiosity of the ministers of the republic to advantage, to inspire them with some apprehensions, and to induce the state to release the vessel: for had it been necessary to this effect to wait for an answer from the court, the captain would have been ruined before it could have arrived. i did still more, i went alongside the vessel to make inquiries of the ship's company. i took with me the abbe patizel, chancellor of the consulship, who would rather have been excused, so much were these poor creatures afraid of displeasing the senate. as i could not go on board, on account of the order from the states, i remained in my gondola, and there took the depositions successively, interrogating each of the mariners, and directing my questions in such a manner as to produce answers which might be to their advantage. i wished to prevail upon patizel to put the questions and take depositions himself, which in fact was more his business than mine; but to this he would not consent; he never once opened his mouth and refused to sign the depositions after me. this step, somewhat bold, was however, successful, and the vessel was released long before an answer came from the minister. the captain wished to make me a present; but without being angry with him on that account, i tapped him on the shoulder, saying, "captain olivet, can you imagine that he who does not receive from the french his perquisite for passports, which he found his established right, is a man likely to sell them the king's protection?" he, however, insisted on giving me a dinner on board his vessel, which i accepted, and took with me the secretary to the spanish embassy, m. carrio, a man of wit and amiable manners, to partake of it: he has since been secretary to the spanish embassy at paris and charge des affaires. i had formed an intimate connection with him after the example of our ambassadors. happy should i have been, if, when in the most disinterested manner i did all the service i could, i had known how to introduce sufficient order into all these little details, that i might not have served others at my own expense. but in employments similar to that i held, in which the most trifling faults are of consequence, my whole attention was engaged in avoiding all such mistakes as might be detrimental to my service. i conducted, till the last moment, everything relative to my immediate duty, with the greatest order and exactness. excepting a few errors which a forced precipitation made me commit in ciphering, and of which the clerks of m. amelot once complained, neither the ambassador nor any other person had ever the least reason to reproach me with negligence in any one of my functions. this is remarkable in a man so negligent as i am. but my memory sometimes failed me, and i was not sufficiently careful in the private affairs with which i was charged; however, a love of justice always made me take the loss on myself, and this voluntarily, before anybody thought of complaining. i will mention but one circumstance of this nature; it relates to my departure from venice, and i afterwards felt the effects of it in paris. our cook, whose name was rousselot, had brought from france an old note for two hundred livres, which a hairdresser, a friend of his, had received from a noble venetian of the name of zanetto nani, who had had wigs of him to that amount. rousselot brought me the note, begging i would endeavor to obtain payment of some part of it, by way of accommodation. i knew, and he knew it also, that the constant custom of noble venetians was, when once returned to their country, never to pay the debts they had contracted abroad. when means are taken to force them to payment, the wretched creditor finds so many delays, and incurs such enormous expenses, that he becomes disgusted and concludes by giving up his debtor accepting the most trifling composition. i begged m. le blond to speak to zanetto. the venetian acknowledged the note, but did not agree to payment. after a long dispute he at length promised three sequins; but when le blond carried him the note even these were not ready, and it was necessary to wait. in this interval happened my quarrel with the ambassador and i quitted his service. i had left the papers of the embassy in the greatest order, but the note of rousselot was not to be found. m. le blond assured me he had given it me back. i knew him to be too honest a man to have the least doubt of the matter; but it was impossible for me to recollect what i had done with it. as zanetto had acknowledged the debt, i desired m. le blond to endeavor to obtain from him the three sequins on giving him a receipt for the amount, or to prevail upon him to renew the note by way of duplicate. zanetto, knowing the note to be lost, would not agree to either. i offered rousselot the three sequins from my own purse, as a discharge of the debt. he refused them, and said i might settle the matter with the creditor at paris, of whom he gave me the address. the hair-dresser, having been informed of what had passed, would either have his note or the whole sum for which it was given. what, in my indignation, would i have given to have found this vexatious paper! i paid the two hundred livres, and that in my greatest distress. in this manner the loss of the note produced to the creditor the payment of the whole sum, whereas had it, unfortunately for him, been found, he would have had some difficulty in recovering even the ten crowns, which his excellency, zanetto nani, had promised to pay. the talents i thought i felt in myself for my employment made me discharge the functions of it with satisfaction, and except the society of my friend de carrio, that of the virtuous altuna, of whom i shall soon have an occasion to speak, the innocent recreations of the place saint mark, of the theatre, and of a few visits which we, for the most part, made together, my only pleasure was in the duties of my station. although these were not considerable, especially with the aid of the abbe de binis, yet as the correspondence was very extensive and there was a war, i was a good deal employed. i applied to business the greatest part of every morning, and on the days previous to the departure of the courier, in the evenings, and sometimes till midnight. the rest of my time i gave to the study of the political professions i had entered upon, and in which i hoped, from my successful beginning, to be advantageously employed. in fact i was in favor with every one; the ambassador himself spoke highly of my services, and never complained of anything i did for him; his dissatisfaction proceeded from my having insisted on quitting him, inconsequence of the useless complaints i had frequently made on several occasions. the ambassadors and ministers of the king with whom we were in correspondence complimented him on the merit of his secretary, in a manner by which he ought to have been flattered, but which in his poor head produced quite a contrary effect. he received one in particular relative to an affair of importance, for which he never pardoned me. he was so incapable of bearing the least constraint, that on the saturday, the day of the despatches for most of the courts he could not contain himself, and wait till the business was done before he went out, and incessantly pressing me to hasten the despatches to the king and ministers, he signed them with precipitation, and immediately went i know not where, leaving most of the other letters without signing; this obliged me, when these contained nothing but news, to convert them into journals; but when affairs which related to the king were in question it was necessary somebody should sign, and i did it. this once happened relative to some important advice we had just received from m. vincent, charge des affaires from the king, at vienna. the prince lobkowitz was then marching to naples, and count gages had just made the most memorable retreat, the finest military manoeuvre of the whole century, of which europe has not sufficiently spoken. the despatch informed us that a man, whose person m. vincent described, had set out from vienna, and was to pass by venice, in his way into abruzzo, where he was secretly to stir up the people at the approach of the austrians. in the absence of m. le comte de montaigu, who did not give himself the least concern about anything, i forwarded this advice to the marquis de l'hopital, so apropos, that it is perhaps to the poor jean jacques, so abused and laughed at, that the house of bourbon owes the preservation of the kingdom of naples. the marquis de l'hopital, when he thanked his colleague, as it was proper he should do, spoke to him of his secretary, and mentioned the service he had just rendered to the common cause. the comte de montaigu, who in that affair had to reproach himself with negligence, thought he perceived in the compliment paid him by m. de l'hopital, something like a reproach, and spoke of it to me with signs of ill-humor. i found it necessary to act in the same manner with the count de castellane, ambassador at constantinople, as i had done with the marquis de l'hopital, although in things of less importance. as there was no other conveyance to constantinople than by couriers, sent from time to time by the senate to its bailli, advice of their departure was given to the ambassador of france, that he might write by them to his colleague, if he thought proper so to do. this advice was commonly sent a day or two beforehand; but m. de montaigu was held in so little respect, that merely for the sake of form he was sent to, a couple of hours before the couriers set off. this frequently obliged me to write the despatch in his absence. m. de castellane, in his answer made honorable mention of me; m. de jonville, at genoa, did the same, and these instances of their regard and esteem became new grievances. i acknowledge i did not neglect any opportunity of making myself known; but i never sought one improperly, and in serving well i thought i had a right to aspire to the natural return for essential services; the esteem of those capable of judging of, and rewarding them. i will not say whether or not my exactness in discharging the duties of my employment was a just subject of complaint from the ambassador; but i cannot refrain from declaring that it was the sole grievance he ever mentioned previous to our separation. his house, which he had never put on a good footing, was constantly filled with rabble; the french were ill-treated in it, and the ascendancy was given to the italians; of these even, the more honest part, they who had long been in the service of the embassy, were indecently discharged, his first gentleman in particular, whom he had taken from the comte de froulay, and who, if i remember right, was called comte de peati, or something very like that name. the second gentleman, chosen by m. de montaigu, was an outlaw highwayman from mantua, called dominic vitali, to whom the ambassador intrusted the care of his house, and who had by means of flattery and sordid economy, obtained his confidence, and became his favorite to the great prejudice of the few honest people he still had about him, and of the secretary who was at their head. the countenance of an upright man always gives inquietude to knaves. nothing more was necessary to make vitali conceive a hatred against me: but for this sentiment there was still another cause which rendered it more cruel. of this i must give an account, that i may be condemned if i am found in the wrong. the ambassador had, according to custom, a box at each of the theaters. every day at dinner he named the theater to which it was his intention to go: i chose after him, and the gentlemen disposed of the other boxes. when i went out i took the key of the box i had chosen. one day, vitali not being in the way, i ordered the footman who attended on me, to bring me the key to a house which i named to him. vitali, instead of sending the key, said he had disposed of it. i was the more enraged at this as the footman delivered his message in public. in the evening vitali wished to make me some apology, to which however i would not listen. "to--morrow, sir," said i to him, "you will come at such an hour and apologize to me in the house where i received the affront, and in the presence of the persons who were witnesses to it; or after to--morrow, whatever may be the consequences, either you or i will leave the house." this firmness intimidated him. he came to the house at the hour appointed, and made me a public apology, with a meanness worthy of himself. but he afterwards took his measures at leisure, and at the same time that he cringed to me in public, he secretly acted in so vile a manner, that although unable to prevail on the ambassador to give me my dismission, he laid me under the necessity of resolving to leave him. a wretch like him, certainly, could not know me, but he knew enough of my character to make it serviceable to his purposes. he knew i was mild to an excess, and patient in bearing involuntary wrongs; but haughty and impatient when insulted with premeditated offences; loving decency and dignity in things in which these were requisite, and not more exact in requiring the respect due to myself, than attentive in rendering that which i owed to others. in this he undertook to disgust me, and in this he succeeded. he turned the house upside down, and destroyed the order and subordination i had endeavored to establish in it. a house without a woman stands in need of rather a severe discipline to preserve that modesty which is inseparable from dignity. he soon converted ours into a place of filthy debauch and scandalous licentiousness, the haunt of knaves and debauchees. he procured for second gentleman to his excellency, in the place of him whom he got discharged, another pimp like himself, who kept a house of ill--fame, at the cross of malta; and the indecency of these two rascals was equalled by nothing but their insolence. except the bed-chamber of the ambassador, which, however, was not in very good order, there was not a corner in the whole house supportable to an modest man. as his excellency did not sup, the gentleman and myself had a private table, at which the abbe binis and the pages also eat. in the most paltry ale-house people are served with more cleanliness and decency, have cleaner linen, and a table better supplied. we had but one little and very filthy candle, pewter plates, and iron forks. i could have overlooked what passed in secret, but i was deprived of my gondola. i was the only secretary to an ambassador, who was obliged to hire one or go on foot, and the livery of his excellency no longer accompanied me, except when i went to the senate. besides, everything which passed in the house was known in the city. all those who were in the service of the other ambassadors loudly exclaimed; dominic, the only cause of all, exclaimed louder than anybody, well knowing the indecency with which we were treated was more affecting to me than to any other person. though i was the only one in the house who said nothing of the matter abroad, i complained loudly of it to the ambassador, as well as of himself, who, secretly excited by the wretch, entirely devoted to his will, daily made me suffer some new affront. obliged to spend a good deal to keep up a footing with those in the same situation with myself, and to make are appearance proper to my employment, i could not touch a farthing of my salary, and when i asked him for money, he spoke of his esteem for me, and his confidence, as if either of these could have filled my purse, and provided for everything. these two banditti at length quite turned the head of their master, who naturally had not a good one, and ruined him by a continual traffic, and by bargains, of which he was the dupe, whilst they persuaded him they were greatly in his favor. they persuaded him to take upon the brenta, a palazzo, at twice the rent it was worth, and divided the surplus with the proprietor. the apartments were inlaid with mosaic, and ornamented with columns and pilasters, in the taste of the country. m. de montaigu, had all these superbly masked by fir wainscoting, for no other reason than because at paris apartments were thus fitted up. it was for a similar reason that he only, of all the ambassadors who were at venice, took from his pages their swords, and from his footmen their canes. such was the man, who, perhaps from the same motive took a dislike to me on account of my serving him faithfully. i patiently endured his disdain, his brutality, and ill-treatment, as long as, perceiving them accompanied by ill-humor, i thought they had in them no portion of hatred; but the moment i saw the design formed of depriving me of the honor i merited by my faithful services, i resolved to resign my employment. the first mark i received of his ill will was relative to a dinner he was to give to the duke of modena and his family, who were at venice, and at which he signified to me i should not be present. i answered, piqued, but not angry, that having the honor daily to dine at his table, if the duke of modena, when he came, required i should not appear at it, my duty as well as the dignity of his excellency would not suffer me to consent to such a request. "how;" said he passionately, "my secretary, who is not a gentleman, pretends to dine with a sovereign when my gentlemen do not!" "yes, sir," replied i, "the post with which your excellency has honored me, as long as i discharge the functions of it, so far ennobles me that my rank is superior to that of your gentlemen or of the persons calling themselves such; and i am admitted where they cannot appear. you cannot but know that on the day on which you shall make your public entry, i am called to the ceremony by etiquette; and by an immemorial custom, to follow you in a dress of ceremony, and afterwards to dine with you at the palace of st. mark; and i know not why a man who has a right and is to eat in public with the doge and the senate of venice should not eat in private with the duke of modena." though this argument was unanswerable, it did not convince the ambassador; but we had no occasion to renew the dispute, as the duke of modena did not come to dine with him. from that moment he did everything in his power to make things disagreeable to me; and endeavored unjustly to deprive me of my rights, by taking from me the pecuniary advantages annexed to my employment, to give them to his dear vitali; and i am convinced that had he dared to send him to the senate, in my place, he would have done it. he commonly employed the abbe binis in his closet, to write his private letters: he made use of him to write to m. de maurepas an account of the affair of captain olivet, in which, far from taking the least notice of me, the only person who gave himself any concern about the matter, he deprived me of the honor of the depositions, of which he sent him a duplicate, for the purpose of attributing them to patizel, who had not opened his mouth. he wished to mortify me, and please his favorite; but had no desire to dismiss me his service. he perceived it would be more difficult to find me a successor, than m. follau, who had already made him known to the world. an italian secretary was absolutely necessary to him, on account of the answers from the senate; one who could write all his despatches, and conduct his affairs, without his giving himself the least trouble about anything; a person who, to the merit of serving him well, could join the baseness of being the toad-eater of his gentlemen, without honor, merit, or principles. he wished to retain, and humble me, by keeping me far from my country, and his own, without money to return to either, and in which he would, perhaps, had succeeded, had he began with more moderation: but vitali, who had other views, and wished to force me to extremities, carried his point. the moment i perceived, i lost all my trouble, that the ambassador imputed to me my services as so many crimes, instead of being satisfied with them; that with him i had nothing to expect, but things disagreeable at home, and injustice abroad; and that, in the general disesteem into which he was fallen, his ill offices might be prejudicial to me, without the possibility of my being served by his good ones; i took my resolution, and asked him for my dismission, leaving him sufficient time to provide himself with another secretary. without answering yes or no, he continued to treat me in the same manner, as if nothing had been said. perceiving things to remain in the same state, and that he took no measures to procure himself a new secretary, i wrote to his brother, and, explaining to him my motives, begged he would obtain my dismission from his excellency, adding that whether i received it or not, i could not possibly remain with him. i waited a long time without any answer, and began to be embarrassed: but at length the ambassador received a letter from his brother, which must have remonstrated with him in very plain terms; for although he was extremely subject to ferocious rage, i never saw him so violent as on this occasion. after torrents of unsufferable reproaches, not knowing what more to say, he accused me of having sold his ciphers. i burst into a loud laughter, and asked him, in a sneering manner, if he thought there was in venice a man who would be fool enough to give half a crown for them all. he threatened to call his servants to throw me out of the window. until then i had been very composed; but on this threat, anger and indignation seized me in my turn. i sprang to the door, and after having turned a button which fastened it within: "no, count," said i, returning to him with a grave step, "your servants shall have nothing to do with this affair; please to let it be settled between ourselves." my action and manner instantly made him calm; fear and surprise were marked in his countenance. the moment i saw his fury abated, i bid him adieu in a very few words, and without waiting for his answer, went to the door, opened it, and passed slowly across the antechamber, through the midst of his people, who rose according to custom, and who, i am of opinion, would rather have lent their assistance against him than me. without going back to my apartment, i descended the stairs, and immediately went out of the palace never more to enter it. i hastened immediately to m. le blond and related to him what had happened. knowing the man, he was but little surprised. he kept me to dinner. this dinner, although without preparation, was splendid. all the french of consequence who were at venice, partook of it. the ambassador had not a single person. the consul related my case to the company. the cry was general, and by no means in favor of his excellency. he had not settled my account, nor paid me a farthing, and being reduced to the few louis i had in my pocket, i was extremely embarrassed about my return to france. every purse was opened to me. i took twenty sequins from that of m. le blond, and as many from that of m. st. cyr, with whom, next to m. le blond, i was the most intimately connected. i returned thanks to the rest; and, till my departure, went to lodge at the house of the chancellor of the consulship, to prove to the public, the nation was not an accomplice in the injustice of the ambassador. his excellency, furious at seeing me taken notice of in my misfortune, at the same time that, notwithstanding his being an ambassador, nobody went near his house, quite lost his senses and behaved like a madman. he forgot himself so far as to present a memoir to the senate to get me arrested. on being informed of this by the abbe de binis, i resolved to remain a fortnight longer, instead of setting off the next day as i had intended. my conduct had been known and approved of by everybody; i was universally esteemed. the senate did not deign to return an answer to the extravagant memoir of the ambassador, but sent me word i might remain in venice as long as i thought proper, without making myself uneasy about the attempts of a madman. i continued to see my friends: i went to take leave of the ambassador from spain, who received me well, and of the comte de finochietti, minister from naples, whom i did not find at home. i wrote him a letter and received from his excellency the most polite and obliging answer. at length i took my departure, leaving behind me, notwithstanding my embarrassment, no other debts than the two sums i had borrowed, and of which i have just spoken; and an account of fifty crowns with a shopkeeper, of the name of morandi, which carrio promised to pay, and which i have never reimbursed him, although we have frequently met since that time; but with respect to the two sums of money, i returned them very exactly the moment i had it in my power. i cannot take leave of venice without saying something of the celebrated amusements of that city, or at least of the little part of them of which i partook during my residence there. it has been seen how little in my youth i ran after the pleasures of that age, or those that are so called. my inclinations did not change at venice, but my occupations, which moreover would have prevented this, rendered more agreeable to me the simple recreations i permitted myself. the first and most pleasing of all was the society of men of merit. m. le blond, de st. cyr, carrio altuna, and a forlinian gentleman, whose name i am very sorry to have forgotten, and whom i never call to my recollection without emotion: he was the man of all i ever knew whose heart most resembled my own. we were connected with two or three englishmen of great wit and information, and, like ourselves, passionately fond of music. all these gentlemen had their wives, female friends, or mistresses: the latter were most of them women of talents, at whose apartments there were balls and concerts. there was but little play; a lively turn, talents, and the theatres rendered this amusement incipid. play is the resource of none but men whose time hangs heavy on their hands. i had brought with me from paris the prejudice of that city against italian music; but i had also received from nature a sensibility and niceness of distinction which prejudice cannot withstand. i soon contracted that passion for italian music with which it inspires all those who are capable of feeling its excellence. in listening to barcaroles, i found i had not yet known what singing was, and i soon became so fond of the opera that, tired of babbling, eating, and playing in the boxes when i wished to listen, i frequently withdrew from the company to another part of the theater. there, quite alone, shut up in my box, i abandoned myself, notwithstanding the length of the representation, to the pleasure of enjoying it at ease unto the conclusion. one evening at the theatre of saint chrysostom, i fell into a more profound sleep than i should have done in my bed. the loud and brilliant airs did not disturb my repose. but who can explain the delicious sensations given me by the soft harmony of the angelic music, by which i was charmed from sleep; what an awaking! what ravishment! what ecstasy, when at the same instant i opened my ears and eyes! my first idea was to believe i was in paradise. the ravishing air, which i still recollect and shall never forget, began with these words: conservami la bella, che si m'accende il cor. i was desirous of having it; i had and kept it for a time; but it was not the same thing upon paper as in my head. the notes were the same but the thing was different. this divine composition can never be executed but in my mind, in the same manner as it was the evening on which it woke me from sleep. a kind of music far superior, in my opinion, to that of operas, and which in all italy has not its equal, nor perhaps in the whole world, is that of the 'scuole'. the 'scuole' are houses of charity, established for the education of young girls without fortune, to whom the republic afterwards gives a portion either in marriage or for the cloister. amongst talents cultivated in these young girls, music is in the first rank. every sunday at the church of each of the four 'scuole', during vespers, motettos or anthems with full choruses, accompanied by a great orchestra, and composed and directed by the best masters in italy, are sung in the galleries by girls only; not one of whom is more than twenty years of age. i have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music; the richness of the art, the exquisite taste of the vocal part, the excellence of the voices, the justness of the execution, everything in these delightful concerts concurs to produce an impression which certainly is not the mode, but from which i am of opinion no heart is secure. carrio and i never failed being present at these vespers of the 'mendicanti', and we were not alone. the church was always full of the lovers of the art, and even the actors of the opera came there to form their tastes after these excellent models. what vexed me was the iron grate, which suffered nothing to escape but sounds, and concealed from me the angels of which they were worthy. i talked of nothing else. one day i spoke of it at le blond's; "if you are so desirous," said he, "to see those little girls, it will be an easy matter to satisfy your wishes. i am one of the administrators of the house, i will give you a collation with them." i did not let him rest until he had fulfilled his promise. in entering the saloon, which contained these beauties i so much sighed to see, i felt a trembling of love which i had never before experienced. m. le blond presented to me one after the other, these celebrated female singers, of whom the names and voices were all with which i was acquainted. come, sophia,--she was horrid. come, cattina,--she had but one eye. come, bettina,--the small-pox had entirely disfigured her. scarcely one of them was without some striking defect. le blond laughed at my surprise; however, two or three of them appeared tolerable; these never sung but in the choruses; i was almost in despair. during the collation we endeavored to excite them, and they soon became enlivened; ugliness does not exclude the graces, and i found they possessed them. i said to myself, they cannot sing in this manner without intelligence and sensibility, they must have both; in fine, my manner of seeing them changed to such a degree that i left the house almost in love with each of these ugly faces. i had scarcely courage enough to return to vespers. but after having seen the girls, the danger was lessened. i still found their singing delightful; and their voices so much embellished their persons that, in spite of my eyes, i obstinately continued to think them beautiful. music in italy is accompanied with so trifling an expense, that it is not worth while for such as have a taste for it to deny themselves the pleasure it affords. i hired a harpsichord, and, for half a crown, i had at my apartment four or five symphonists, with whom i practised once a week in executing such airs, etc., as had given me most pleasure at the opera. i also had some symphonies performed from my 'muses galantes'. whether these pleased the performers, or the ballet-master of st. john chrysostom wished to flatter me, he desired to have two of them; and i had afterwards the pleasure of hearing these executed by that admirable orchestra. they were danced to by a little bettina, pretty and amiable, and kept by a spaniard, m. fagoaga, a friend of ours with whom we often went to spend the evening. but apropos of girls of easy virtue: it is not in venice that a man abstains from them. have you nothing to confess, somebody will ask me, upon this subject? yes: i have something to say upon it, and i will proceed to the confession with the same ingenuousness with which i have made my former ones. i always had a disinclination to girls of pleasure, but at venice those were all i had within my reach; most of the houses being shut against me on account of my place. the daughters of m. le blond were very amiable, but difficult of access; and i had too much respect for the father and mother ever once to have the least desire for them. i should have had a much stronger inclination to a young lady named mademoiselle de cataneo, daughter to the agent from the king of prussia, but carrio was in love with her there was even between them some question of marriage. he was in easy circumstances, and i had no fortune: his salary was a hundred louis (guineas) a year, and mine amounted to no more than a thousand livres (about forty pounds sterling) and, besides my being unwilling to oppose a friend, i knew that in all places, and especially at venice, with a purse so ill furnished as mine was, gallantry was out of the question. i had not lost the pernicious custom of deceiving my wants. too busily employed forcibly to feel those proceeding from the climate, i lived upwards of a year in that city as chastely as i had done in paris, and at the end of eighteen months i quitted it without having approached the sex, except twice by means of the singular opportunities of which i am going to speak. the first was procured me by that honest gentleman, vitali, some time after the formal apology i obliged him to make me. the conversation at the table turned on the amusements of venice. these gentlemen reproached me with my indifference with regard to the most delightful of them all; at the same time extolling the gracefulness and elegant manners of the women of easy virtue of venice; and adding that they were superior to all others of the same description in any other part of the world. "dominic," said i, "(i)must make an acquaintance with the most amiable of them all," he offered to take me to her apartments, and assured me i should be pleased with her. i laughed at this obliging offer: and count piati, a man in years and venerable, observed to me, with more candor than i should have expected from an italian, that he thought me too prudent to suffer myself to be taken to such a place by my enemy. in fact i had no inclination to do it: but notwithstanding this, by an incoherence i cannot myself comprehend, i at length was prevailed upon to go, contrary to my inclination, the sentiment of my heart, my reason, and even my will; solely from weakness, and being ashamed to show an appearance to the least mistrust; and besides, as the expression of the country is, 'per non parer troppo cogliono'--[not to appear too great a blockhead.]--the 'padoana' whom we went to visit was pretty, she was even handsome, but her beauty was not of that kind that pleased me. dominic left me with her, i sent for sorbetti, and asked her to sing. in about half an hour i wished to take my leave, after having put a ducat on the table, but this by a singular scruple she refused until she had deserved it, and i from as singular a folly consented to remove her doubts. i returned to the palace so fully persuaded that i should feel the consequences of this step, that the first thing i did was to send for the king's surgeon to ask him for ptisans. nothing can equal the uneasiness of mind i suffered for three weeks, without its being justified by any real inconvenience or apparent sign. i could not believe it was possible to withdraw with impunity from the arms of the 'padoana'. the surgeon himself had the greatest difficulty in removing my apprehensions; nor could he do this by any other means than by persuading me i was formed in such a manner as not to be easily infected: and although in the experiment i exposed myself less than any other man would have done, my health in that respect never having suffered the least inconvenience, in my opinion a proof the surgeon was right. however, this has never made me imprudent, and if in fact i have received such an advantage from nature i can safely assert i have never abused it. my second adventure, although likewise with a common girl, was of a nature very different, as well in its origin as in its effects; i have already said that captain olivet gave me a dinner on board his vessel, and that i took with me the secretary of the spanish embassy. i expected a salute of cannon. the ship's company was drawn up to receive us, but not so much as a priming was burnt, at which i was mortified, on account of carrio, whom i perceived to be rather piqued at the neglect. a salute of cannon was given on board merchant-ships to people of less consequence than we were; i besides thought i deserved some distinguished mark of respect from the captain. i could not conceal my thoughts, because this at all times was impossible to me, and although the dinner was a very good one, and olivet did the honors of it perfectly well, i began it in an ill humor, eating but little, and speaking still less. at the first health, at least, i expected a volley; nothing. carrio, who read what passed within, me, laughed at hearing me grumble like a child. before dinner was half over i saw a gondola approach the vessel. "bless me, sir," said the captain, "take care of yourself, the enemy approaches." i asked him what he meant, and he answered jocosely. the gondola made the ship's side, and i observed a gay young damsel come on board very lightly, and coquettishly dressed, and who at three steps was in the cabin, seated by my side, before i had time to perceive a cover was laid for her. she was equally charming and lively, a brunette, not more than twenty years of age. she spoke nothing but italian, and her accent alone was sufficient to turn my head. as she eat and chattered she cast her eyes upon me; steadfastly looked at me for a moment, and then exclaimed, "good virgin! ah, my dear bremond, what an age it is since i saw thee!" then she threw herself into my arms, sealed her lips to mine, and pressed me almost to strangling. her large black eyes, like those of the beauties of the east, darted fiery shafts into my heart, and although the surprise at first stupefied my senses, voluptuousness made a rapid progress within, and this to such a degree that the beautiful seducer herself was, notwithstanding the spectators, obliged to restrain my ardor, for i was intoxicated, or rather become furious. when she perceived she had made the impression she desired, she became more moderate in her caresses, but not in her vivacity, and when she thought proper to explain to us the real or false cause of all her petulance, she said i resembled m. de bremond, director of the customs of tuscany, to such a degree as to be mistaken for him; that she had turned this m. de bremond's head, and would do it again; that she had quitted him because he was a fool; that she took me in his place; that she would love me because it pleased her so to do, for which reason i must love her as long as it was agreeable to her, and when she thought proper to send me about my business, i must be patient as her dear bremond had been. what was said was done. she took possession of me as of a man that belonged to her, gave me her gloves to keep, her fan, her cinda, and her coif, and ordered me to go here or there, to do this or that, and i instantly obeyed her. she told me to go and send away her gondola, because she chose to make use of mine, and i immediately sent it away; she bid me to move from my place, and pray carrio to sit down in it, because she had something to say to him; and i did as she desired. they chatted a good while together, but spoke low, and i did not interrupt them. she called me, and i approached her. "hark thee, zanetto," said she to me, "i will not be loved in the french manner; this indeed will not be well. in the first moment of lassitude, get thee gone: but stay not by the way, i caution thee." after dinner we went to see the glass manufactory at murano. she bought a great number of little curiosities; for which she left me to pay without the least ceremony. but she everywhere gave away little trinkets to a much greater amount than of the things we had purchased. by the indifference with which she threw away her money, i perceived she annexed to it but little value. when she insisted upon a payment, i am of opinion it was more from a motive of vanity than avarice. she was flattered by the price her admirers set upon her favors. in the evening we conducted her to her apartments. as we conversed together, i perceived a couple of pistols upon her toilette. "ah! ah!" said i, taking one of them up, "this is a patchbox of a new construction: may i ask what is its use? i know you have other arms which give more fire than those upon your table." after a few pleasantries of the same kind, she said to us, with an ingenuousness which rendered her still more charming, "when i am complaisant to persons whom i do not love, i make them pay for the weariness they cause me; nothing can be more just; but if i suffer their caresses, i will not bear their insults; nor miss the first who shall be wanting to me in respect." at taking leave of her, i made another appointment for the next day. i did not make her wait. i found her in 'vestito di conidenza', in an undress more than wanton, unknown to northern countries, and which i will not amuse myself in describing, although i recollect it perfectly well. i shall only remark that her ruffles and collar were edged with silk network ornamented with rose--colored pompons. this, in my eyes, much enlivened a beautiful complexion. i afterwards found it to be the mode at venice, and the effect is so charming that i am surprised it has never been introduced in france. i had no idea of the transports which awaited me. i have spoken of madam de larnage with the transport which the remembrance of her still sometimes gives me; but how old, ugly and cold she appeared, compared with my zulietta! do not attempt to form to yourself an idea of the charms and graces of this enchanting girl, you will be far too short of truth. young virgins in cloisters are not so fresh: the beauties of the seraglio are less animated: the houris of paradise less engaging. never was so sweet an enjoyment offered to the heart and senses of a mortal. ah! had i at least been capable of fully tasting of it for a single moment! i had tasted of it, but without a charm. i enfeebled all its delights: i destroyed them as at will. no; nature has not made me capable of enjoyment. she has infused into my wretched head the poison of that ineffable happiness, the desire of which she first placed in my heart. if there be a circumstance in my life, which describes my nature, it is that which i am going to relate. the forcible manner in which i at this moment recollect the object of my book, will here make me hold in contempt the false delicacy which would prevent me from fulfilling it. whoever you may be who are desirous of knowing a man, have the courage to read the two or three following pages, and you will become fully acquainted with j. j. rousseau. i entered the chamber of a woman of easy virtue, as the sanctuary of love and beauty: and in her person, i thought i saw the divinity. i should have been inclined to think that without respect and esteem it was impossible to feel anything like that which she made me experience. scarcely had i, in her first familiarities, discovered the force of her charms and caresses, before i wished, for fear of losing the fruit of them, to gather it beforehand. suddenly, instead of the flame which consumed me, i felt a mortal cold run through all my veins; my legs failed me; and ready to faint away, i sat down and wept like a child. who would guess the cause of my tears, and what, at this moment, passed within me? i said to myself: the object in my power is the masterpiece of love; her wit and person equally approach perfection; she is as good and generous as she is amiable and beautiful. yet she is a miserable prostitute, abandoned to the public. the captain of a merchantship disposed of her at will; she has thrown herself into my arms, although she knows i have nothing; and my merit with which she cannot be acquainted, can be to her no inducement. in this there is something inconceivable. either my heart deceives me, fascinates my senses, and makes me the dupe of an unworthy slut, or some secret defect, of which i am ignorant, destroys the effect of her charms, and renders her odious in the eyes of those by whom her charms would otherwise be disputed. i endeavored, by an extraordinary effort of mind, to discover this defect, but it did not so much as strike me that even the consequences to be apprehended, might possibly have some influence. the clearness of her skin, the brilliancy of her complexion, her white teeth, sweet breath, and the appearance of neatness about her person, so far removed from me this idea, that, still in doubt relative to my situation after the affair of the 'padoana', i rather apprehended i was not sufficiently in health for her: and i am firmly persuaded i was not deceived in my opinion. these reflections, so apropos, agitated me to such a degree as to make me shed tears. zuliette, to whom the scene was quite novel, was struck speechless for a moment. but having made a turn in her chamber, and passing before her glass, she comprehended, and my eyes confirmed her opinion, that disgust had no part in what had happened. it was not difficult for her to recover me and dispel this shamefacedness. but, at the moment in which i was ready to faint upon a bosom, which for the first time seemed to suffer the impression of the hand and lips of a man, i perceived she had a withered 'teton'. i struck my forehead: i examined, and thought i perceived this teton was not formed like the other. i immediately began to consider how it was possible to have such a defect, and persuaded of its proceeding from some great natural vice, i was clearly convinced, that, instead of the most charming person of whom i could form to myself an idea, i had in my arms a species of a monster, the refuse of nature, of men and of love. i carried my stupidity so far as to speak to her of the discovery i had made. she, at first, took what i said jocosely; and in her frolicsome humor, did and said things which made me die of love. but perceiving an inquietude i could not conceal, she at length reddened, adjusted her dress, raised herself up, and without saying a word, went and placed herself at a window. i attempted to place myself by her side: she withdrew to a sofa, rose from it the next moment, and fanning herself as she walked about the chamber, said to me in a reserved and disdainful tone of voice, "zanetto, 'lascia le donne, a studia la matematica."--[leave women and study mathematics.] before i took leave i requested her to appoint another rendezvous for the next day, which she postponed for three days, adding, with a satirical smile, that i must needs be in want of repose. i was very ill at ease during the interval; my heart was full of her charms and graces; i felt my extravagance, and reproached myself with it, regretting the loss of the moments i had so ill employed, and which, had i chosen, i might have rendered more agreeable than any in my whole life; waiting with the most burning impatience for the moment in which i might repair the loss, and yet, notwithstanding all my reasoning upon what i had discovered, anxious to reconcile the perfections of this adorable girl with the indignity of her situation. i ran, i flew to her apartment at the hour appointed. i know not whether or not her ardor would have been more satisfied with this visit, her pride at least would have been flattered by it, and i already rejoiced at the idea of my convincing her, in every respect, that i knew how to repair the wrongs i had done. she spared me this justification. the gondolier whom i had sent to her apartment brought me for answer that she had set off, the evening before, for florence. if i had not felt all the love i had for her person when this was in my possession, i felt it in the most cruel manner on losing her. amiable and charming as she was in my eyes, i could not console myself for the loss of her; but this i have never been able to do relative to the contemptuous idea which at her departure she must have had of me. these are my two narratives. the eighteen months i passed at venice furnished me with no other of the same kind, except a simple prospect at most. carrio was a gallant. tired of visiting girls engaged to others, he took a fancy to have one to himself, and, as we were inseparable, he proposed to mean arrangement common enough at venice, which was to keep one girl for us both. to this i consented. the question was, to find one who was safe. he was so industrious in his researches that he found out a little girl from eleven to twelve years of age, whom her infamous mother was endeavoring to sell, and i went with carrio to see her. the sight of the child moved me to the most lively compassion. she was fair and as gentle as a lamb. nobody would have taken her for an italian. living is very cheap in venice; we gave a little money to the mother, and provided for the subsistence of her daughter. she had a voice, and to procure her some resource we gave her a spinnet, and a singing--master. all these expenses did not cost each of us more than two sequins a month, and we contrived to save a much greater sum in other matters; but as we were obliged to wait until she became of a riper age, this was sowing a long time before we could possibly reap. however, satisfied with passing our evenings, chatting and innocently playing with the child, we perhaps enjoyed greater pleasure than if we had received the last favors. so true is it that men are more attached to women by a certain pleasure they have in living with them, than by any kind of libertinism. my heart became insensibly attached to the little anzoletta, but my attachment was paternal, in which the senses had so little share, that in proportion as the former increased, to have connected it with the latter would have been less possible; and i felt i should have experienced, at approaching this little creature when become nubile, the same horror with which the abominable crime of incest would have inspired me. i perceived the sentiments of carrio take, unobserved by himself, exactly the same turn. we thus prepared for ourselves, without intending it, pleasure not less delicious, but very different from that of which we first had an idea; and i am fully persuaded that however beautiful the poor child might have become, far from being the corrupters of her innocence we should have been the protectors of it. the circumstance which shortly afterwards befell me deprived me, of the happiness of taking a part in this good work, and my only merit in the affair was the inclination of my heart. i will now return to my journey. my first intentions after leaving m. de montaigu, was to retire to geneva, until time and more favorable circumstances should have removed the obstacles which prevented my union with my poor mamma; but the quarrel between me and m. de montaigu being become public, and he having had the folly to write about it to the court, i resolved to go there to give an account of my conduct and complain of that of a madman. i communicated my intention, from venice, to m. du theil, charged per interim with foreign affairs after the death of m. amelot. i set off as soon as my letter, and took my route through bergamo, como, and domo d'oscela, and crossing saint plomb. at sion, m. de chaignon, charge des affaires from france, showed me great civility; at geneva m. de la closure treated me with the same polite attention. i there renewed my acquaintance with m. de gauffecourt, from whom i had some money to receive. i had passed through nion without going to see my father: not that this was a matter of indifference to me, but because i was unwilling to appear before my mother-in-law, after the disaster which had befallen me, certain of being condemned by her without being heard. the bookseller, du villard, an old friend of my father's, reproached me severely with this neglect. i gave him my reasons for it, and to repair my fault, without exposing myself to meet my mother-in-law, i took a chaise and we went together to nion and stopped at a public house. du villard went to fetch my father, who came running to embrace me. we supped together, and, after passing an evening very agreeable to the wishes of my heart, i returned the next morning to geneva with du villard, for whom i have ever since retained a sentiment of gratitude in return for the service he did me on this occasion. lyons was a little out of my direct road, but i was determined to pass through that city in order to convince myself of a knavish trick played me by m. de montaigu. i had sent me from paris a little box containing a waistcoat, embroidered with gold, a few pairs of ruffles, and six pairs of white silk stockings; nothing more. upon a proposition made me by m. de montaigu, i ordered this box to be added to his baggage. in the apothecary's bill he offered me in payment of my salary, and which he wrote out himself, he stated the weight of this box, which he called a bale, at eleven hundred pounds, and charged me with the carriage of it at an enormous rate. by the cares of m. boy de la tour, to whom i was recommended by m. roquin, his uncle, it was proved from the registers of the customs of lyons and marseilles, that the said bale weighed no more than forty-five pounds, and had paid carriage according to that weight. i joined this authentic extract to the memoir of m, de montaigu, and provided with these papers and others containing stronger facts, i returned to paris, very impatient to make use of them. during the whole of this long journey i had little adventures; at como, in valais, and elsewhere. i there saw many curious things, amongst others the boroma islands, which are worthy of being described. but i am pressed by time, and surrounded by spies. i am obliged to write in haste, and very imperfectly, a work which requires the leisure and tranquility i do not enjoy. if ever providence in its goodness grants me days more calm, i shall destine them to new modelling this work, should i be able to do it, or at least to giving a supplement, of which i perceive it stands in the greatest need.--[i have given up this project.] the news of my quarrel had reached paris before me and on my arrival i found the people in all the offices, and the public in general, scandalized at the follies of the ambassador. notwithstanding this, the public talk at venice, and the unanswerable proof i exhibited, i could not obtain even the shadow of justice. far from obtaining satisfaction or reparation, i was left at the discretion of the ambassador for my salary, and this for no other reason than because, not being a frenchman, i had no right to national protection, and that it was a private affair between him and myself. everybody agreed i was insulted, injured, and unfortunate; that the ambassador was mad, cruel, and iniquitous, and that the whole of the affair dishonored him forever. but what of this! he was the ambassador, and i was nothing more than the secretary. order, or that which is so called, was in opposition to my obtaining justice, and of this the least shadow was not granted me. i supposed that, by loudly complaining, and by publicly treating this madman in the manner he deserved, i should at length be told to hold my tongue; this was what i wished for, and i was fully determined not to obey until i had obtained redress. but at that time there was no minister for foreign affairs. i was suffered to exclaim, nay, even encouraged to do it, and joined with; but the affair still remained in the same state, until, tired of being in the right without obtaining justice, my courage at length failed me, and let the whole drop. the only person by whom i was ill received, and from whom i should have least expected such an injustice, was madam de beuzenval. full of the prerogatives of rank and nobility, she could not conceive it was possible an ambassador could ever be in the wrong with respect to his secretary. the reception she gave me was conformable to this prejudice. i was so piqued at it that, immediately after leaving her, i wrote her perhaps one of the strongest and most violent letters that ever came from my pen, and since that time i never once returned to her house. i was better received by father castel; but, in the midst of his jesuitical wheedling i perceived him faithfully to follow one of the great maxims of his society, which is to sacrifice the weak to the powerful. the strong conviction i felt of the justice of my cause, and my natural greatness of mind did not suffer me patiently to endure this partiality. i ceased visiting father castel, and on that account, going to the college of the jesuits, where i knew nobody but himself. besides the intriguing and tyrannical spirit of his brethren, so different from the cordiality of the good father hemet, gave me such a disgust for their conversation that i have never since been acquainted with, nor seen anyone of them except father berthier, whom i saw twice or thrice at m. dupin's, in conjunction with whom he labored with all his might at the refutation of montesquieu. that i may not return to the subject, i will conclude what i have to say of m. de montaigu. i had told him in our quarrels that a secretary was not what he wanted, but an attorney's clerk. he took the hint, and the person whom he procured to succeed me was a real attorney, who in less than a year robbed him of twenty or thirty thousand livres. he discharged him, and sent him to prison, dismissed his gentleman with disgrace, and, in wretchedness, got himself everywhere into quarrels, received affronts which a footman would not have put up with, and, after numerous follies, was recalled, and sent from the capital. it is very probable that among the reprimands he received at court, his affair with me was not forgotten. at least, a little time after his return he sent his maitre d' hotel, to settle my account, and give me some money. i was in want of it at that moment; my debts at venice, debts of honor, if ever there were any, lay heavy upon my mind. i made use of the means which offered to discharge them, as well as the note of zanetto nani. i received what was offered me, paid all my debts, and remained as before, without a farthing in my pocket, but relieved from a weight which had become insupportable. from that time i never heard speak of m. de montaigu until his death, with which i became acquainted by means of the gazette. the peace of god be with that poor man! he was as fit for the functions of an ambassador as in my infancy i had been for those of grapignan.--[i have not been able to find this word in any dictionary, nor does any frenchman of letters of my acquaintance know what it means. --t.]--however, it was in his power to have honorably supported himself by my services, and rapidly to have advanced me in a career to which the comte de gauvon had destined me in my youth, and of the functions of which i had in a more advanced age rendered myself capable. the justice and inutility of my complaints, left in my mind seeds of indignation against our foolish civil institutions, by which the welfare of the public and real justice are always sacrificed to i know not what appearance of order, and which does nothing more than add the sanction of public authority to the oppression of the weak, and the iniquity of the powerful. two things prevented these seeds from putting forth at that time as they afterwards did: one was, myself being in question in the affair, and private interest, whence nothing great or noble ever proceeded, could not draw from my heart the divine soarings, which the most pure love, only of that which is just and sublime, can produce. the other was the charm of friendship which tempered and calmed my wrath by the ascendancy of a more pleasing sentiment. i had become acquainted at venice with a biscayan, a friend of my friend carrio's, and worthy of being that of every honest man. this amiable young man, born with every talent and virtue, had just made the tour of italy to gain a taste for the fine arts, and, imagining he had nothing more to acquire, intended to return by the most direct road to his own country. i told him the arts were nothing more than a relaxation to a genius like his, fit to cultivate the sciences; and to give him a taste for these, i advised him to make a journey to paris and reside there for six months. he took my advice, and went to paris. he was there and expected me when i arrived. his lodging was too considerable for him, and he offered me the half of it, which i instantly accepted. i found him absorbed in the study of the sublimest sciences. nothing was above his reach. he digested everything with a prodigious rapidity. how cordially did he thank me for having procured him this food for his mind, which was tormented by a thirst after knowledge, without his being aware of it! what a treasure of light and virtue i found in the vigorous mind of this young man! i felt he was the friend i wanted. we soon became intimate. our tastes were not the same, and we constantly disputed. both opinionated, we never could agree about anything. nevertheless we could not separate; and, notwithstanding our reciprocal and incessant contradiction, we neither of us wished the other to be different from what he was. ignacio emanuel de altuna was one of those rare beings whom only spain produces, and of whom she produces too few for her glory. he had not the violent national passions common in his own country. the idea of vengeance could no more enter his head, than the desire of it could proceed from his heart. his mind was too great to be vindictive, and i have frequently heard him say, with the greatest coolness, that no mortal could offend him. he was gallant, without being tender. he played with women as with so many pretty children. he amused himself with the mistresses of his friends, but i never knew him to have one of his own, nor the least desire for it. the emanations from the virtue with which his heart was stored, never permitted the fire of the passions to excite sensual desires. after his travels he married, died young, and left children; and, i am as convinced as of my existence, that his wife was the first and only woman with whom he ever tasted of the pleasures of love. externally he was devout, like a spaniard, but in his heart he had the piety of an angel. except myself, he is the only man i ever saw whose principles were not intolerant. he never in his life asked any person his opinion in matters of religion. it was not of the least consequence to him whether his friend was a jew, a protestant, a turk, a bigot, or an atheist, provided he was an honest man. obstinate and headstrong in matters of indifference, but the moment religion was in question, even the moral part, he collected himself, was silent, or simply said: "i am charged with the care of myself, only." it is astonishing so much elevation of mind should be compatible with a spirit of detail carried to minuteness. he previously divided the employment of the day by hours, quarters and minutes; and so scrupulously adhered to this distribution, that had the clock struck while he was reading a phrase, he would have shut his book without finishing it. his portions of time thus laid out, were some of them set apart to studies of one kind, and others to those of another: he had some for reflection, conversation, divine service, the reading of locke, for his rosary, for visits, music and painting; and neither pleasure, temptation, nor complaisance, could interrupt this order: a duty he might have had to discharge was the only thing that could have done it. when he gave me a list of his distribution, that i might conform myself thereto, i first laughed, and then shed tears of admiration. he never constrained anybody nor suffered constraint: he was rather rough with people, who from politeness, attempted to put it upon him. he was passionate without being sullen. i have often seen him warm, but never saw him really angry with any person. nothing could be more cheerful than his temper: he knew how to pass and receive a joke; raillery was one of his distinguished talents, and with which he possessed that of pointed wit and repartee. when he was animated, he was noisy and heard at a great distance; but whilst he loudly inveighed, a smile was spread over his countenance, and in the midst of his warmth he used some diverting expression which made all his hearers break out into a loud laugh. he had no more of the spanish complexion than of the phlegm of that country. his skin was white, his cheeks finely colored, and his hair of a light chestnut. he was tall and well made; his body was well formed for the residence of his mind. this wise--hearted as well as wise--headed man, knew mankind, and was my friend; this was my only answer to such as are not so. we were so intimately united, that our intention was to pass our days together. in a few years i was to go to ascoytia to live with him at his estate; every part of the project was arranged the eve of his departure; nothing was left undetermined, except that which depends not upon men in the best concerted plans, posterior events. my disasters, his marriage, and finally, his death, separated us forever. some men would be tempted to say, that nothing succeeds except the dark conspiracies of the wicked, and that the innocent intentions of the good are seldom or never accomplished. i had felt the inconvenience of dependence, and took a resolution never again to expose myself to it; having seen the projects of ambition, which circumstances had induced me to form, overturned in their birth. discouraged in the career i had so well begun, from which, however, i had just been expelled, i resolved never more to attach myself to any person, but to remain in an independent state, turning my talents to the best advantage: of these i at length began to feel the extent, and that i had hitherto had too modest an opinion of them. i again took up my opera, which i had laid aside to go to venice; and that i might be less interrupted after the departure of altuna, i returned to my old hotel st. quentin; which, in a solitary part of the town, and not far from the luxembourg, was more proper for my purpose than noisy rue st. honor. there the only consolation which heaven suffered me to taste in my misery, and the only one which rendered it supportable, awaited me. this was not a trancient acquaintance; i must enter into some detail relative to the manner in which it was made. we had a new landlady from orleans; she took for a needlewoman a girl from her own country, of between twenty--two and twenty--three years of age, and who, as well as the hostess, ate at our table. this girl, named theresa le vasseur, was of a good family; her father was an officer in the mint of orleans, and her mother a shopkeeper; they had many children. the function of the mint of orleans being suppressed, the father found himself without employment; and the mother having suffered losses, was reduced to narrow circumstances. she quitted her business and came to paris with her husband and daughter, who, by her industry, maintained all the three. the first time i saw this girl at table, i was struck with her modesty; and still more so with her lively yet charming look, which, with respect to the impression it made upon me, was never equalled. beside m. de bonnefond, the company was composed of several irish priests, gascons and others of much the same description. our hostess herself had not made the best possible use of her time, and i was the only person at the table who spoke and behaved with decency. allurements were thrown out to the young girl. i took her part, and the joke was then turned against me. had i had no natural inclination to the poor girl, compassion and contradiction would have produced it in me: i was always a great friend to decency in manners and conversation, especially in the fair sex. i openly declared myself her champion, and perceived she was not insensible of my attention; her looks, animated by the gratitude she dared not express by words, were for this reason still more penetrating. she was very timid, and i was as much so as herself. the connection which this disposition common to both seemed to remove to a distance, was however rapidly formed. our landlady perceiving its progress, became furious, and her brutality forwarded my affair with the young girl, who, having no person in the house except myself to give her the least support, was sorry to see me go from home, and sighed for the return of her protector. the affinity our hearts bore to each other, and the similarity of our dispositions, had soon their ordinary effect. she thought she saw in me an honest man, and in this she was not deceived. i thought i perceived in her a woman of great sensibility, simple in her manners, and devoid of all coquetry:--i was no more deceived in her than she in me. i began by declaring to her that i would never either abandon or marry her. love, esteem, artless sincerity were the ministers of my triumph, and it was because her heart was tender and virtuous, that i was happy without being presuming. the apprehensions she was under of my not finding in her that for which i sought, retarded my happiness more than every other circumstance. i perceived her disconcerted and confused before she yielded her consent, wishing to be understood and not daring to explain herself. far from suspecting the real cause of her embarrassment, i falsely imagined it to proceed from another motive, a supposition highly insulting to her morals, and thinking she gave me to understand my health might be exposed to danger, i fell into so perplexed a state that, although it was no restraint upon me, it poisoned my happiness during several days. as we did not understand each other, our conversations upon this subject were so many enigmas more than ridiculous. she was upon the point of believing i was absolutely mad; and i on my part was as near not knowing what else to think of her. at last we came to an explanation; she confessed to me with tears the only fault of the kind of her whole life, immediately after she became nubile; the fruit of her ignorance and the address of her seducer. the moment i comprehended what she meant, i gave a shout of joy. "a hymen!" exclaimed i; "sought for at paris, and at twenty years of age! ah my theresa! i am happy in possessing thee, virtuous and healthy as thou art, and in not finding that for which i never sought." at first amusement was my only object; i perceived i had gone further and had given myself a companion. a little intimate connection with this excellent girl, and a few reflections upon my situation, made me discover that, while thinking of nothing more than my pleasures, i had done a great deal towards my happiness. in the place of extinguished ambition, a life of sentiment, which had entire possession of my heart, was necessary to me. in a word, i wanted a successor to mamma: since i was never again to live with her, it was necessary some person should live with her pupil, and a person, too, in whom i might find that simplicity and docility of mind and heart which she had found in me. it was, moreover, necessary that the happiness of domestic life should indemnify me for the splendid career i had just renounced. when i was quite alone there was a void in my heart, which wanted nothing more than another heart to fill it up. fate had deprived me of this, or at least in part alienated me from that for which by nature i was formed. from that moment i was alone, for there never was for me the least thing intermediate between everything and nothing. i found in theresa the supplement of which i stood in need; by means of her i lived as happily as i possibly could do, according to the course of events. i at first attempted to improve her mind. in this my pains were useless. her mind is as nature formed it: it was not susceptible of cultivation. i do not blush in acknowledging she never knew how to read well, although she writes tolerably. when i went to lodge in the rue neuve des petits champs, opposite to my windows at the hotel de ponchartrain, there was a sun-dial, on which for a whole month i used all my efforts to teach her to know the hours; yet, she scarcely knows them at present. she never could enumerate the twelve months of the year in order, and cannot distinguish one numeral from another, notwithstanding all the trouble i took endeavoring to teach them to her. she neither knows how to count money, nor to reckon the price of anything. the word which when she speaks, presents itself to her mind, is frequently opposite to that of which she means to make use. i formerly made a dictionary of her phrases, to amuse m. de luxembourg, and her 'qui pro quos' often became celebrated among those with whom i was most intimate. but this person, so confined in her intellects, and, if the world pleases, so stupid, can give excellent advice in cases of difficulty. in switzerland, in england and in france, she frequently saw what i had not myself perceived; she has often given me the best advice i could possibly follow; she has rescued me from dangers into which i had blindly precipitated myself, and in the presence of princes and the great, her sentiments, good sense, answers, and conduct have acquired her universal esteem, and myself the most sincere congratulations on her merit. with persons whom we love, sentiment fortifies the mind as well as the heart; and they who are thus attached, have little need of searching for ideas elsewhere. i lived with my theresa as agreeably as with the finest genius in the world. her mother, proud of having been brought up under the marchioness of monpipeau, attempted to be witty, wished to direct the judgment of her daughter, and by her knavish cunning destroyed the simplicity of our intercourse. the fatigue of this opportunity made me in some degree surmount the foolish shame which prevented me from appearing with theresa in public; and we took short country walks, tete-a-tete, and partook of little collations, which, to me, were delicious. i perceived she loved me sincerely, and this increased my tenderness. this charming intimacy left me nothing to wish; futurity no longer gave me the least concern, or at most appeared only as the present moment prolonged: i had no other desire than that of insuring its duration. this attachment rendered all other dissipation superfluous and insipid to me. as i only went out for the purpose of going to the apartment of theresa, her place of residence almost became my own. my retirement was so favorable to the work i had undertaken, that, in less than three months, my opera was entirely finished, both words and music, except a few accompaniments, and fillings up which still remained to be added. this maneuvering business was very fatiguing to me. i proposed it to philidor, offering him at the same time a part of the profits. he came twice, and did something to the middle parts in the act of ovid; but he could not confine himself to an assiduous application by the allurement of advantages which were distant and uncertain. he did not come a third time, and i finished the work myself. my opera completed, the next thing was to make something of it: this was by much the more difficult task of the two. a man living in solitude in paris will never succeed in anything. i was on the point of making my way by means of m. de la popliniere, to whom gauffecourt, at my return to geneva had introduced me. m. de la popliniere was the mecaenas of rameau; madam de la popliniere his very humble scholar. rameau was said to govern in that house. judging that he would with pleasure protect the work of one of his disciples, i wished to show him what i had done. he refused to examine it; saying he could not read score, it was too fatiguing to him. m. de la popliniere, to obviate this difficulty, said he might hear it; and offered me to send for musicians to execute certain detached pieces. i wished for nothing better. rameau consented with an ill grace, incessantly repeating that the composition of a man not regularly bred to the science, and who had learned music without a master, must certainly be very fine! i hastened to copy into parts five or six select passages. ten symphonies were procured, and albert, berard, and mademoiselle bourbonois undertook the vocal part. remeau, the moment he heard the overture, was purposely extravagant in his eulogium, by which he intended it should be understood it could not be my composition. he showed signs of impatience at every passage: but after a counter tenor song, the air of which was noble and harmonious, with a brilliant accompaniment, he could no longer contain himself; he apostrophised me with a brutality at which everybody was shocked, maintaining that a part of what he had heard was by a man experienced in the art, and the rest by some ignorant person who did not so much as understand music. it is true my composition, unequal and without rule, was sometimes sublime, and at others insipid, as that of a person who forms himself in an art by the soarings of his own genius, unsupported by science, must necessarily be. rameau pretended to see nothing in me but a contemptible pilferer, without talents or taste. the rest of the company, among whom i must distinguish the master of the house, were of a different opinion. m. de richelieu, who at that time frequently visited m. and madam de la popliniere, heard them speak of my work, and wished to hear the whole of it, with an intention, if it pleased him, to have it performed at court. the opera was executed with full choruses, and by a great orchestra, at the expense of the king, at m. de bonneval's intendant of the menus; francoeur directed the band. the effect was surprising: the duke never ceased to exclaim and applaud; and, at the end of one of the choruses, in the act of tasso, he arose and came to me, and, pressing my hand, said: "m. rousseau, this is transporting harmony. i never heard anything finer. i will get this performed at versailles." madam de la poliniere, who was present, said not a word. rameau, although invited, refused to come. the next day, madam de la popliniere received me at her toilette very ungraciously, affected to undervalue my piece, and told me, that although a little false glitter had at first dazzled m. de richelieu, he had recovered from his error, and she advised me not to place the least dependence upon my opera. the duke arrived soon after, and spoke to me in quite a different language. he said very flattering things of my talents, and seemed as much disposed as ever to have my composition performed before the king. "there is nothing," said he, "but the act of tasso which cannot pass at court: you must write another." upon this single word i shut myself up in my apartment; and in three weeks produced, in the place of tasso, another act, the subject of which was hesiod inspired by the muses. in this i found the secret of introducing a part of the history of my talents, and of the jealousy with which rameau had been pleased to honor me. there was in the new act an elevation less gigantic and better supported than in the act of tasso. the music was as noble and the composition better; and had the other two acts been equal to this, the whole piece would have supported a representation to advantage. but whilst i was endeavoring to give it the last finishing, another undertaking suspended the completion of that i had in my hand. in the winter which succeeded the battle of fontenoi, there were many galas at versailles, and several operas performed at the theater of the little stables. among the number of the latter was the dramatic piece of voltaire, entitled 'la princesse de navarre', the music by rameau, the name of which has just been changed to that of 'fetes de ramire'. this new subject required several changes to be made in the divertissements, as well in the poetry as in the music. a person capable of both was now sought after. voltaire was in lorraine, and rameau also; both of whom were employed on the opera of the temple of glory, and could not give their attention to this. m. de richelieu thought of me, and sent to desire i would undertake the alterations; and, that i might the better examine what there was to do, he gave me separately the poem and the music. in the first place, i would not touch the words without the consent of the author, to whom i wrote upon the subject a very polite and respectful letter, such a one as was proper; and received from him the following answer: "sir: in you two talents, which hitherto have always been separated, are united. these are two good reasons for me to esteem and to endeavor to love you. i am sorry, on your account, you should employ these talents in a work which is so little worthy of them. a few months ago the duke de richelieu commanded me to make, absolutely in the twinkling of an eye, a little and bad sketch of a few insipid and imperfect scenes to be adapted to divertissements which are not of a nature to be joined with them. i obeyed with the greatest exactness. i wrote very fast, and very ill. i sent this wretched production to m. de richelieu, imagining he would make no use of it, or that i should have it again to make the necessary corrections. happily it is in your hands, and you are at full liberty to do with it whatever you please: i have entirely lost sight of the thing. i doubt not but you will have corrected all the faults which cannot but abound in so hasty a composition of such a very simple sketch, and am persuaded you will have supplied whatever was wanting. "i remember that, among other stupid inattentions, no account is given in the scenes which connect the divertissements of the manner in which the grenadian prince immediately passes from a prison to a garden or palace. as it is not a magician but a spanish nobleman who gives her the gala, i am of opinion nothing should be effected by enchantment. "i beg, sir, you will examine this part, of which i have but a confused idea. "you will likewise consider, whether or not it be necessary the prison should be opened, and the princess conveyed from it to a fine palace, gilt and varnished, and prepared for her. i know all this is wretched, and that it is beneath a thinking being to make a serious affair of such trifles; but, since we must displease as little as possible, it is necessary we should conform to reason, even in a bad divertissement of an opera. "i depend wholly upon you and m. ballot, and soon expect to have the honor of returning you my thanks, and assuring you how much i am, etc." there is nothing surprising in the great politeness of this letter, compared with the almost crude ones which he has since written to me. he thought i was in great favor with madam richelieu; and the courtly suppleness, which everyone knows to be the character of this author, obliged him to be extremely polite to a new comer, until he become better acquainted with the measure of the favor and patronage he enjoyed. authorized by m. de voltaire, and not under the necessity of giving myself the least concern about m. rameau, who endeavored to injure me, i set to work, and in two months my undertaking was finished. with respect to the poetry, it was confined to a mere trifle; i aimed at nothing more than to prevent the difference of style from being perceived, and had the vanity to think i had succeeded. the musical part was longer and more laborious. besides my having to compose several preparatory pieces, and, amongst others, the overture, all the recitative, with which i was charged, was extremely difficult on account of the necessity there was of connecting, in a few verses, and by very rapid modulations, symphonies and choruses, in keys very different from each other; for i was determined neither to change nor transpose any of the airs, that rameau might not accuse me of having disfigured them. i succeeded in the recitative; it was well accented, full of energy and excellent modulation. the idea of two men of superior talents, with whom i was associated, had elevated my genius, and i can assert, that in this barren and inglorious task, of which the public could have no knowledge, i was for the most part equal to my models. the piece, in the state to which i had brought it, was rehearsed in the great theatre of the opera. of the three authors who had contributed to the production, i was the only one present. voltaire was not in paris, and rameau either did not come, or concealed himself. the words of the first monologue were very mournful; they began with: o mort! viens terminer les malheurs de ma vie. [o death! hasten to terminate the misfortunes of my life.] to these, suitable music was necessary. it was, however, upon this that madam de la popliniere founded her censure; accusing me, with much bitterness, of having composed a funeral anthem. m. de richelieu very judiciously began by informing himself who was the author of the poetry of this monologue; i presented him the manuscript he had sent me, which proved it was by voltaire. "in that case," said the duke, "voltaire alone is to blame." during the rehearsal, everything i had done was disapproved by madam de la popliniere, and approved of by m. de richelieu; but i had afterwards to do with too powerful an adversary. it was signified to me that several parts of my composition wanted revising, and that on this it was necessary i should consult m. rameau; my heart was wounded by such a conclusion, instead of the eulogium i expected, and which certainly i merited, and i returned to my apartment overwhelmed with grief, exhausted with fatigue, and consumed by chagrin. i was immediately taken ill, and confined to my chamber for upwards of six weeks. rameau, who was charged with the alterations indicated by madam de la popliniere, sent to ask me for the overture of my great opera, to substitute it to that i had just composed. happily i perceived the trick he intended to play me, and refused him the overture. as the performance was to be in five or six days, he had not time to make one, and was obliged to leave that i had prepared. it was in the italian taste, and in a style at that time quite new in france. it gave satisfaction, and i learned from m. de valmalette, maitre d'hotel to the king, and son-in-law to m. mussard, my relation and friend, that the connoisseurs were highly satisfied with my work, and that the public had not distinguished it from that of rameau. however, he and madam de la popliniere took measures to prevent any person from knowing i had any concern in the matter. in the books distributed to the audience, and in which the authors are always named, voltaire was the only person mentioned, and rameau preferred the suppression of his own name to seeing it associated with mine. as soon as i was in a situation to leave my room, i wished to wait upon m. de richelieu, but it was too late; he had just set off for dunkirk, where he was to command the expedition destined to scotland. at his return, said i to myself, to authorize my idleness, it will be too late for my purpose, not having seen him since that time. i lost the honor of mywork and the emoluments it should have produced me, besides considering my time, trouble, grief, and vexation, my illness, and the money this cost me, without ever receiving the least benefit, or rather, recompense. however, i always thought m. de richelieu was disposed to serve me, and that he had a favorable opinion of my talents; but my misfortune, and madam de la popliniere, prevented the effect of his good wishes. i could not divine the reason of the aversion this lady had to me. i had always endeavored to make myself agreeable to her, and regularly paid her my court. gauffecourt explained to me the causes of her dislike: "the first," said he, "is her friendship for rameau, of whom she is the declared panegyrist, and who will not suffer a competitor; the next is an original sin, which ruins you in her estimation, and which she will never forgive; you are a genevese." upon this he told me the abbe hubert, who was from the same city, and the sincere friend of m. de la popliniere, had used all his efforts to prevent him from marrying this lady, with whose character and temper he was very well acquainted; and that after the marriage she had vowed him an implacable hatred, as well as all the genevese. "although la popliniere has a friendship for you, do not," said he, "depend upon his protection: he is still in love with his wife: she hates you, and is vindictive and artful; you will never do anything in that house." all this i took for granted. the same gauffecourt rendered me much about this time, a service of which i stood in the greatest need. i had just lost my virtuous father, who was about sixty years of age. i felt this loss less severely than i should have done at any other time, when the embarrassments of my situation had less engaged my attention. during his life-time i had never claimed what remained of the property of my mother, and of which he received the little interest. his death removed all my scruples upon this subject. but the want of a legal proof of the death of my brother created a difficulty which gauffecourt undertook to remove, and this he effected by means of the good offices of the advocate de lolme. as i stood in need of the little resource, and the event being doubtful, i waited for a definitive account with the greatest anxiety. one evening on entering my apartment i found a letter, which i knew to contain the information i wanted, and i took it up with an impatient trembling, of which i was inwardly ashamed. what? said i to myself, with disdain, shall jean jacques thus suffer himself to be subdued by interest and curiosity? i immediately laid the letter again upon the chimney-piece. i undressed myself, went to bed with great composure, slept better than ordinary, and rose in the morning at a late hour, without thinking more of my letter. as i dressed myself, it caught my eye; i broke the seal very leisurely, and found under the envelope a bill of exchange. i felt a variety of pleasing sensations at the same time: but i can assert, upon my honor, that the most lively of them all was that proceeding from having known how to be master of myself. i could mention twenty such circumstances in my life, but i am too much pressed for time to say everything. i sent a small part of this money to my poor mamma; regretting, with my eyes suffused with tears, the happy time when i should have laid it all at her feet. all her letters contained evident marks of her distress. she sent me piles of recipes, and numerous secrets, with which she pretended i might make my fortune and her own. the idea of her wretchedness already affected her heart and contracted her mind. the little i sent her fell a prey to the knaves by whom she was surrounded; she received not the least advantage from anything. the idea of dividing what was necessary to my own subsistence with these wretches disgusted me, especially after the vain attempt i had made to deliver her from them, and of which i shall have occasion to speak. time slipped away, and with it the little money i had; we were two, or indeed, four persons; or, to speak still more correctly, seven or eight. although theresa was disinterested to a degree of which there are but few examples, her mother was not so. she was no sooner a little relieved from her necessities by my cares, than she sent for her whole family to partake of the fruits of them. her sisters, sons, daughters, all except her eldest daughter, married to the director of the coaches of augers, came to paris. everything i did for theresa, her mother diverted from its original destination in favor of these people who were starving. i had not to do with an avaricious person; and, not being under the influence of an unruly passion, i was not guilty of follies. satisfied with genteelly supporting theresa without luxury, and unexposed to pressing wants, i readily consented to let all the earnings of her industry go to the profit of her mother; and to this even i did not confine myself; but, by a fatality by which i was pursued, whilst mamma was a prey to the rascals about her theresa was the same to her family; and i could not do anything on either side for the benefit of her to whom the succor i gave was destined. it was odd enough the youngest child of m. de la vasseur, the only one who had not received a marriage portion from her parents, should provide for their subsistence; and that, after having along time been beaten by her brothers, sisters, and even her nieces, the poor girl should be plundered by them all, without being more able to defend herself from their thefts than from their blows. one of her nieces, named gorton le duc, was of a mild and amiable character; although spoiled by the lessons and examples of the others. as i frequently saw them together, i gave them names, which they afterwards gave to each other; i called the niece my niece, and the aunt my aunt; they both called me uncle. hence the name of aunt, by which i continued to call theresa, and which my friends sometimes jocosely repeated. it will be judged that in such a situation i had not a moment to lose, before i attempted to extricate myself. imagining m. de richelieu had forgotten me, and having no more hopes from the court, i made some attempts to get my opera brought out at paris; but i met with difficulties which could not immediately be removed, and my situation became daily more painful. i presented my little comedy of narcisse to the italians; it was received, and i had the freedom of the theatre, which gave much pleasure. but this was all; i could never get my piece performed, and, tired of paying my court to players, i gave myself no more trouble about them. at length i had recourse to the last expedient which remained to me, and the only one of which i ought to have made use. while frequenting the house of m. de la popliniere, i had neglected the family of dupin. the two ladies, although related, were not on good terms, and never saw each other. there was not the least intercourse between the two families, and thieriot was the only person who visited both. he was desired to endeavor to bring me again to m. dupin's. m. de francueil was then studying natural history and chemistry, and collecting a cabinet. i believe he aspired to become a member of the academy of sciences; to this effect he intended to write a book, and judged i might be of use to him in the undertaking. madam de dupin, who, on her part, had another work in contemplation, had much the same views in respect to me. they wished to have me in common as a kind of secretary, and this was the reason of the invitations of thieriot. i required that m. de francueil should previously employ his interest with that of jelyote to get my work rehearsed at the operahouse; to this he consented. the muses galantes were several times rehearsed, first at the magazine, and afterwards in the great theatre. the audience was very numerous at the great rehearsal, and several parts of the composition were highly applauded. however, during this rehearsal, very ill-conducted by rebel, i felt the piece would not be received; and that, before it could appear, great alterations were necessary. i therefore withdrew it without saying a word, or exposing myself to a refusal; but i plainly perceived, by several indications, that the work, had it been perfect, could not have succeeded. m. de francueil had promised me to get it rehearsed, but not that it should be received. he exactly kept his word. i thought i perceived on this occasion, as well as many others, that neither madam dupin nor himself were willing i should acquire a certain reputation in the world, lest, after the publication of their books, it should be supposed they had grafted their talents upon mine. yet as madam dupin always supposed those i had to be very moderate, and never employed me except it was to write what she dictated, or in researches of pure erudition, the reproach, with respect to her, would have been unjust. this last failure of success completed my discouragement. i abandoned every prospect of fame and advancement; and, without further troubling my head about real or imaginary talents, with which i had so little success, i dedicated my whole time and cares to procure myself and theresa a subsistence in the manner most pleasing to those to whom it should be agreeable to provide for it. i therefore entirely attached myself to madam dupin and m. de francueil. this did not place me in a very opulent situation; for with eight or nine hundred livres, which i had the first two years, i had scarcely enough to provide for my primary wants; being obliged to live in their neighborhood, a dear part of the town, in a furnished lodging, and having to pay for another lodging at the extremity of paris, at the very top of the rue saint jacques, to which, let the weather be as it would, i went almost every evening to supper. i soon got into the track of my new occupations, and conceived a taste for them. i attached myself to the study of chemistry, and attended several courses of it with m. de francueil at m. rouelle's, and we began to scribble over paper upon that science, of which we scarcely possessed the elements. in , we went to pass the autumn in tourraine, at the castle of chenonceaux, a royal mansion upon the cher, built by henry the ii, for diana of poitiers, of whom the ciphers are still seen, and which is now in the possession of m. dupin, a farmer general. we amused ourselves very agreeably in this beautiful place, and lived very well: i became as fat there as a monk. music was a favorite relaxation. i composed several trios full of harmony, and of which i may perhaps speak in my supplement if ever i should write one. theatrical performances were another resource. i wrote a comedy in fifteen days, entitled 'l'engagement temeraire',--[the rash engagement]--which will be found amongst my papers; it has no other merit than that of being lively. i composed several other little things: amongst others a poem entitled, 'l'aliee de sylvie', from the name of an alley in the park upon the bank of the cher; and this without discontinuing my chemical studies, or interrupting what i had to do for madam dupin. whilst i was increasing my corpulency at chenonceaux, that of my poor theresa was augmented at paris in another manner, and at my return i found the work i had put upon the frame in greater forwardness than i had expected. this, on account of my situation, would have thrown me into the greatest embarrassment, had not one of my messmates furnished me with the only resource which could relieve me from it. this is one of those essential narratives which i cannot give with too much simplicity; because, in making an improper use of their names, i should either excuse or inculpate myself, both of which in this place are entirely out of the question. during the residence of altuna at paris, instead of going to eat at a 'traiteurs', he and i commonly eat in the neighborhood, almost opposite the cul de sac of the opera, at the house of a madam la selle, the wife of a tailor, who gave but very ordinary dinners, but whose table was much frequented on account of the safe company which generally resorted to it; no person was received without being introduced by one of those who used the house. the commander, de graville, an old debauchee, with much wit and politeness, but obscene in conversation, lodged at the house, and brought to it a set of riotous and extravagant young men; officers in the guards and mousquetaires. the commander de nonant, chevalier to all the girls of the opera, was the daily oracle, who conveyed to us the news of this motley crew. m. du plessis, a lieutenant-colonel, retired from the service, an old man of great goodness and wisdom; and m. ancelet, [it was to this m. ancelet i gave a little comedy, after my own manner entitled 'les prisouniers de guerre', which i wrote after the disasters of the french in bavaria and bohemia: i dared not either avow this comedy or show it, and this for the singular reason that neither the king of france nor the french were ever better spoken of nor praised with more sincerity of heart than in my piece though written by a professed republican, i dared not declare myself the panegyrist of a nation, whose maxims were exactly the reverse of my own. more grieved at the misfortunes of france than the french themselves i was afraid the public would construe into flattery and mean complaisance the marks of a sincere attachment, of which in my first part i have mentioned the date and the cause, and which i was ashamed to show.] an officer in the mousquetaires kept the young people in a certain kind of order. this table was also frequented by commercial people, financiers and contractors, but extremely polite, and such as were distinguished amongst those of the same profession. m. de besse, m. de forcade, and others whose names i have forgotten, in short, well-dressed people of every description were seen there; except abbes and men of the long robe, not one of whom i ever met in the house, and it was agreed not to introduce men of either of these professions. this table, sufficiently resorted to, was very cheerful without being noisy, and many of the guests were waggish, without descending to vulgarity. the old commander with all his smutty stories, with respect to the substance, never lost sight of the politeness of the old court; nor did any indecent expression, which even women would not have pardoned him, escape his lips. his manner served as a rule to every person at table; all the young men related their adventures of gallantry with equal grace and freedom, and these narratives were the more complete, as the seraglio was at the door; the entry which led to it was the same; for there was a communication between this and the shop of le duchapt, a celebrated milliner, who at that time had several very pretty girls, with whom our young people went to chat before or after dinner. i should thus have amused myself as well as the rest, had i been less modest: i had only to go in as they did, but this i never had courage enough to do. with respect to madam de selle, i often went to eat at her house after the departure of altuna. i learned a great number of amusing anecdotes, and by degrees i adopted, thank god, not the morals, but the maxims i found to be established there. honest men injured, husbands deceived, women seduced, were the most ordinary topics, and he who had best filled the foundling hospital was always the most applauded. i caught the manners i daily had before my eyes: i formed my manner of thinking upon that i observed to be the reigning one amongst amiable: and upon the whole, very honest people. i said to myself, since it is the custom of the country, they who live here may adopt it; this is the expedient for which i sought. i cheerfully determined upon it without the least scruple, and the only one i had to overcome was that of theresa, whom, with the greatest imaginable difficulty, i persuaded to adopt this only means of saving her honor. her mother, who was moreover apprehensive of a new embarrassment by an increase of family, came to my aid, and she at length suffered herself to be prevailed upon. we made choice of a midwife, a safe and prudent woman, mademoiselle gouin, who lived at the point saint eustache, and when the time came, theresa was conducted to her house by her mother. i went thither several times to see her, and gave her a cipher which i had made double upon two cards; one of them was put into the linen of the child, and by the midwife deposited with the infant in the office of the foundling hospital according to the customary form. the year following, a similar inconvenience was remedied by the same expedient, excepting the cipher, which was forgotten: no more reflection on my part, nor approbation on that of the mother; she obeyed with trembling. all the vicissitudes which this fatal conduct has produced in my manner of thinking, as well as in my destiny, will be successively seen. for the present, we will confine ourselves to this first period; its cruel and unforeseen consequences will but too frequently oblige me to refer to it. i here mark that of my first acquaintance with madam d'epinay, whose name will frequently appear in these memoirs. she was a mademoiselle d' esclavelles, and had lately been married to m. d'epinay, son of m. de lalive de bellegarde, a farmer general. she understood music, and a passion for the art produced between these three persons the greatest intimacy. madam prancueil introduced me to madam d'epinay, and we sometimes supped together at her house. she was amiable, had wit and talent, and was certainly a desirable acquaintance; but she had a female friend, a mademoiselle d'ette, who was said to have much malignancy in her disposition; she lived with the chevalier de valory, whose temper was far from being one of the best. i am of opinion, an acquaintance with these two persons was prejudicial to madam d'epinay, to whom, with a disposition which required the greatest attention from those about her, nature had given very excellent qualities to regulate or counterbalance her extravagant pretensions. m. de francueil inspired her with a part of the friendship he had conceived for me, and told me of the connection between them, of which, for that reason, i would not now speak, were it not become so public as not to be concealed from m. d'epinay himself. m. de francueil confided to me secrets of a very singular nature relative to this lady, of which she herself never spoke to me, nor so much as suspected my having a knowledge; for i never opened my lips to her upon the subject, nor will i ever do it to any person. the confidence all parties had in my prudence rendered my situation very embarrassing, especially with madam de francueil, whose knowledge of me was sufficient to remove from her all suspicion on my account, although i was connected with her rival. i did everything i could to console this poor woman, whose husband certainly did not return the affection she had for him. i listened to these three persons separately; i kept all their secrets so faithfully that not one of the three ever drew from me those of the two others, and this, without concealing from either of the women my attachment to each of them. madam de francueil, who frequently wished to make me an agent, received refusals in form, and madam d'epinay, once desiring me to charge myself with a letter to m. de francueil received the same mortification, accompanied by a very express declaration, that if ever she wished to drive me forever from the house, she had only a second time to make me a like proposition. in justice to madam d'epinay, i must say, that far from being offended with me she spoke of my conduct to m. de francueil in terms of the highest approbation, and continued to receive me as well, and as politely as ever. it was thus, amidst the heart-burnings of three persons to whom i was obliged to behave with the greatest circumspection, on whom i in some measure depended, and for whom i had conceived an attachment, that by conducting myself with mildness and complaisance, although accompanied with the greatest firmness, i preserved unto the last not only their friendship, but their esteem and confidence. notwithstanding my absurdities and awkwardness, madam d'epinay would have me make one of the party to the chevrette, a country-house, near saint denis, belonging to m. de bellegarde. there was a theatre, in which performances were not unfrequent. i had a part given me, which i studied for six months without intermission, and in which, on the evening of the representation, i was obliged to be prompted from the beginning to the end. after this experiment no second proposal of the kind was ever made to me. my acquaintance with m. d'epinay procured me that of her sister-in-law, mademoiselle de bellegarde, who soon afterwards became countess of houdetot. the first time i saw her she was upon the point of marriage; when she conversed with me a long time, with that charming familiarity which was natural to her. i thought her very amiable, but i was far from perceiving that this young person would lead me, although innocently, into the abyss in which i still remain. although i have not spoken of diderot since my return from venice, no more than of my friend m. roguin, i did not neglect either of them, especially the former, with whom i daily became more intimate. he had a nannette, as well as i a theresa; this was between us another conformity of circumstances. but my theresa, as fine a woman as his nannette, was of a mild and amiable character, which might gain and fix the affections of a worthy man; whereas nannette was a vixen, a troublesome prater, and had no qualities in the eyes of others which in any measure compensated for her want of education. however he married her, which was well done of him, if he had given a promise to that effect. i, for my part, not having entered into any such engagement, was not in the least haste to imitate him. i was also connected with the abbe de condillac, who had acquired no more literary fame than myself, but in whom there was every appearance of his becoming what he now is. i was perhaps the first who discovered the extent of his abilities, and esteemed them as they deserved. he on his part seemed satisfied with me, and, whilst shut up in my chamber in the rue jean saint denis, near the opera-house, i composed my act of hesiod, he sometimes came to dine with me tete-a-tete. we sent for our dinner, and paid share and share alike. he was at that time employed on his essay on the origin of human knowledge, which was his first work. when this was finished, the difficulty was to find a bookseller who would take it. the booksellers of paris are shy of every author at his beginning, and metaphysics, not much then in vogue, were no very inviting subject. i spoke to diderot of condillac and his work, and i afterwards brought them acquainted with each other. they were worthy of each other's esteem, and were presently on the most friendly terms. diderot persuaded the bookseller, durand, to take the manuscript from the abbe, and this great metaphysician received for his first work, and almost as a favor, a hundred crowns, which perhaps he would not have obtained without my assistance. as we lived in a quarter of the town very distant from each other, we all assembled once a week at the palais royal, and went to dine at the hotel du panier fleuri. these little weekly dinners must have been extremely pleasing to diderot; for he who failed in almost all his appointments never missed one of these. at our little meeting i formed the plan of a periodical paper, entitled 'le persifleur'--[the jeerer] --which diderot and i were alternately to write. i sketched out the first sheet, and this brought me acquainted with d'alembert, to whom diderot had mentioned it. unforeseen events frustrated our intention, and the project was carried no further. these two authors had just undertaken the 'dictionnaire encyclopedique', which at first was intended to be nothing more than a kind of translation of chambers, something like that of the medical dictionary of james, which diderot had just finished. diderot was desirous i should do something in this second undertaking, and proposed to me the musical part, which i accepted. this i executed in great haste, and consequently very ill, in the three months he had given me, as well as all the authors who were engaged in the work. but i was the only person in readiness at the time prescribed. i gave him my manuscript, which i had copied by a laquais, belonging to m. de francueil of the name of dupont, who wrote very well. i paid him ten crowns out of my own pocket, and these have never been reimbursed me. diderot had promised me a retribution on the part of the booksellers, of which he has never since spoken to me nor i to him. this undertaking of the 'encyclopedie' was interrupted by his imprisonment. the 'pensees philosophiquiest' drew upon him some temporary inconvenience which had no disagreeable consequences. he did not come off so easily on account of the 'lettre sur les aveugles', --[letter concerning blind persons.]--in which there was nothing reprehensible, but some personal attacks with which madam du pre st. maur, and m. de raumur were displeased: for this he was confined in the dungeon of vincennes. nothing can describe the anguish i felt on account of the misfortunes of my friend. my wretched imagination, which always sees everything in the worst light, was terrified. i imagined him to be confined for the remainder of his life. i was almost distracted with the thought. i wrote to madam de pompadour, beseeching her to release him or obtain an order to shut me up in the same dungeon. i received no answer to my letter: this was too reasonable to be efficacious, and i do not flatter myself that it contributed to the alleviation which, some time afterwards, was granted to the severities of the confinement of poor diderot. had this continued for any length of time with the same rigor, i verily believe i should have died in despair at the foot of the hated dungeon. however, if my letter produced but little effect, i did not on account of it attribute to myself much merit, for i mentioned it but to very few people, and never to diderot himself. the confessions of jean jacques rousseau (in books) privately printed for the members of the aldus society london, book ix. my impatience to inhabit the hermitage not permitting me to wait until the return of fine weather, the moment my lodging was prepared i hastened to take possession of it, to the great amusement of the 'coterie holbachaque', which publicly predicted i should not be able to support solitude for three months, and that i should unsuccessfully return to paris, and live there as they did. for my part, having for fifteen years been out of my element, finding myself upon the eve of returning to it, i paid no attention to their pleasantries. since contrary to my inclinations, i have again entered the world, i have incessantly regretted my dear charmettes, and the agreeable life i led there. i felt a natural inclination to retirement and the country: it was impossible for me to live happily elsewhere. at venice, in the train of public affairs, in the dignity of a kind of representation, in the pride of projects of advancement; at paris, in the vortex of the great world, in the luxury of suppers, in the brilliancy of spectacles, in the rays of splendor; my groves, rivulets, and solitary walks, constantly presented themselves to my recollection, interrupted my thought, rendered me melancholy, and made me sigh with desire. all the labor to which i had subjected myself, every project of ambition which by fits had animated my ardor, all had for object this happy country retirement, which i now thought near at hand. without having acquired a genteel independence, which i had judged to be the only means of accomplishing my views, i imagined myself, in my particular situation, to be able to do without it, and that i could obtain the same end by a means quite opposite. i had no regular income; but i possessed some talents, and had acquired a name. my wants were few, and i had freed myself from all those which were most expensive, and which merely depended on prejudice and opinion. besides this, although naturally indolent, i was laborious when i chose to be so. and my idleness was less that of an indolent man, than that of an independent one who applies to business when it pleases him. my profession of a copyist of music was neither splendid nor lucrative, but it was certain. the world gave me credit for the courage i had shown in making choice of it. i might depend upon having sufficient employment to enable me to live. two thousand livres which remained of the produce of the 'devin du village', and my other writings, were a sum which kept me from being straitened, and several works i had upon the stocks promised me, without extorting money from the booksellers, supplies sufficient to enable me to work at my ease without exhausting myself, even by turning to advantage the leisure of my walks. my little family, consisting of three persons, all of whom were usefully employed, was not expensive to support. finally, from my resources, proportioned to my wants and desires, i might reasonably expect a happy and permanent existence, in that manner of life which my inclination had induced me to adopt. i might have taken the interested side of the question, and, instead of subjecting my pen to copying, entirely devoted it to works which, from the elevation to which i had soared, and at which i found myself capable of continuing, might have enabled me to live in the midst of abundance, nay, even of opulence, had i been the least disposed to join the manoeuvres of an author to the care of publishing a good book. but i felt that writing for bread would soon have extinguished my genius, and destroyed my talents, which were less in my pen than in my heart, and solely proceeded from an elevated and noble manner of thinking, by which alone they could be cherished and preserved. nothing vigorous or great can come from a pen totally venal. necessity, nay, even avarice, perhaps, would have made me write rather rapidly than well. if the desire of success had not led me into cabals, it might have made me endeavor to publish fewer true and useful works than those which might be pleasing to the multitude; and instead of a distinguished author, which i might possibly become, i should have been nothing more than a scribbler. no: i have always felt that the profession of letters was illustrious in proportion as it was less a trade. it is too difficult to think nobly when we think for a livelihood. to be able to dare even to speak great truths, an author must be independent of success. i gave my books to the public with a certainty of having written for the general good of mankind, without giving myself the least concern about what was to follow. if the work was thrown aside, so much the worse for such as did not choose to profit by it. their approbation was not necessary to enable me to live, my profession was sufficient to maintain me had not my works had a sale, for which reason alone they all sold. it was on the ninth of august, , that i left cities, never to reside in them again: for i do not call a residence the few days i afterwards remained in paris, london, or other cities, always on the wing, or contrary to my inclinations. madam d'epinay came and took us all three in her coach; her farmer carted away my little baggage, and i was put into possession the same day. i found my little retreat simply furnished, but neatly, and with some taste. the hand which had lent its aid in this furnishing rendered it inestimable in my eyes, and i thought it charming to be the guest of my female friend in a house i had made choice of, and which she had caused to be built purposely for me. although the weather was cold, and the ground lightly covered with snow, the earth began to vegetate: violets and primroses already made their appearance, the trees began to bud, and the evening of my arrival was distinguished by the song of the nightingale, which was heard almost under my window, in a wood adjoining the house. after a light sleep, forgetting when i awoke my change of abode, i still thought myself in the rue grenelle, when suddenly this warbling made me give a start, and i exclaimed in my transport: "at length, all my wishes are accomplished!" the first thing i did was to abandon myself to the impression of the rural objects with which i was surrounded. instead of beginning to set things in order in my new habitation, i began by doing it for my walks, and there was not a path, a copse, a grove, nor a corner in the environs of my place of residence that i did not visit the next day. the more i examined this charming retreat, the more i found it to my wishes. this solitary, rather than savage, spot transported me in idea to the end of the world. it had striking beauties which are but seldom found near cities, and never, if suddenly transported thither, could any person have imagined himself within four leagues of paris. after abandoning myself for a few days to this rural delirium, i began to arrange my papers, and regulate my occupations. i set apart, as i had always done, my mornings to copying, and my afternoons to walking, provided with my little paper book and a pencil, for never having been able to write and think at my ease except 'sub dio', i had no inclination to depart from this method, and i was persuaded the forest of montmorency, which was almost at my door, would in future be my closet and study. i had several works begun; these i cast my eye over. my mind was indeed fertile in great projects, but in the noise of the city the execution of them had gone on but slowly. i proposed to myself to use more diligence when i should be less interrupted. i am of opinion i have sufficiently fulfilled this intention; and for a man frequently ill, often at la chevrette, at epinay, at raubonne, at the castle of montmorency, at other times interrupted by the indolent and curious, and always employed half the day in copying, if what i produced during the six years i passed at the hermitage and at montmorency be considered, i am persuaded it will appear that if, in this interval, i lost my time, it was not in idleness. of the different works i had upon the stocks, that i had longest resolved in my mind which was most to my taste; to which i destined a certain portion of my life, and which, in my opinion, was to confirm the reputation i had acquired, was my 'institutions politiques. i had, fourteen years before, when at venice, where i had an opportunity of remarking the defects of that government so much boasted of, conceived the first idea of them. since that time my views had become much more extended by the historical study of morality. i had perceived everything to be radically connected with politics, and that, upon whatever principles these were founded, a people would never be more than that which the nature of the government made them; therefore the great question of the best government possible appeared to me to be reduced to this: what is the nature of a government the most proper to form the most virtuous and enlightened, the wisest and best people, taking the last epithet in its most extensive meaning? i thought this question was much if not quite of the same nature with that which follows: what government is that which, by its nature, always maintains itself nearest to the laws, or least deviates from the laws. hence, what is the law? and a series of questions of similar importance. i perceived these led to great truths, useful to the happiness of mankind, but more especially to that of my country, wherein, in the journey i had just made to it, i had not found notions of laws and liberty either sufficiently just or clear. i had thought this indirect manner of communicating these to my fellow-citizens would be least mortifying to their pride, and might obtain me forgiveness for having seen a little further than themselves. although i had already labored five or six years at the work, the progress i had made in it was not considerable. writings of this kind require meditation, leisure and tranquillity. i had besides written the 'institutions politiques', as the expression is, 'en bonne fortune', and had not communicated my project to any person; not even to diderot. i was afraid it would be thought too daring for the age and country in which i wrote, and that the fears of my friends would restrain me from carrying it into execution. [it was more especially the wise severity of duclos which inspired me with this fear; as for diderot, i know not by what means all my conferences with him tended to make me more satirical than my natural disposition inclined me to be. this prevented me from consulting him upon an undertaking, in which i wished to introduce nothing but the force of reasoning without the least appearance of ill humor or partiality. the manner of this work may be judged of by that of the 'contrat social', which is taken from it.] i did not yet know that it would be finished in time, and in such a manner as to appear before my decease. i wished fearlessly to give to my subject everything it required; fully persuaded that not being of a satirical turn, and never wishing to be personal, i should in equity always be judged irreprehensible. i undoubtedly wished fully to enjoy the right of thinking which i had by birth; but still respecting the government under which i lived, without ever disobeying its laws, and very attentive not to violate the rights of persons, i would not from fear renounce its advantages. i confess, even that, as a stranger, and living in france, i found my situation very favorable in daring to speak the truth; well knowing that continuing, as i was determined to do, not to print anything in the kingdom without permission, i was not obliged to give to any person in it an account of my maxims nor of their publication elsewhere. i should have been less independent even at geneva, where, in whatever place my books might have been printed, the magistrate had a right to criticise their contents. this consideration had greatly contributed to make me yield to the solicitations of madam d'epinay, and abandon the project of fixing my residence at geneva. i felt, as i have remarked in my emilius, that unless an author be a man of intrigue, when he wishes to render his works really useful to any country whatsoever, he must compose them in some other. what made me find my situation still more happy, was my being persuaded that the government of france would, perhaps, without looking upon me with a very favorable eye, make it a point to protect me, or at least not to disturb my tranquillity. it appeared to me a stroke of simple, yet dexterous policy, to make a merit of tolerating that which there was no means of preventing; since, had i been driven from france, which was all government had the right to do, my work would still have been written, and perhaps with less reserve; whereas if i were left undisturbed, the author remained to answer for what he wrote, and a prejudice, general throughout all europe, would be destroyed by acquiring the reputation of observing a proper respect for the rights of persons. they who, by the event, shall judge i was deceived, may perhaps be deceived in their turn. in the storm which has since broken over my head, my books served as a pretence, but it was against my person that every shaft was directed. my persecutors gave themselves but little concern about the author, but they wished to ruin jean jacques; and the greatest evil they found in my writings was the honor they might possibly do me. let us not encroach upon the future. i do not know that this mystery, which is still one to me, will hereafter be cleared up to my readers; but had my avowed principles been of a nature to bring upon me the treatment i received, i should sooner have become their victim, since the work in which these principles are manifested with most courage, not to call it audacity, seemed to have had its effect previous to my retreat to the hermitage, without i will not only say my having received the least censure, but without any steps having been taken to prevent the publication of it in france, where it was sold as publicly as in holland. the new eloisa afterwards appeared with the same facility, i dare add; with the same applause: and, what seems incredible, the profession of faith of this eloisa at the point of death is exactly similar to that of the savoyard vicar. every strong idea in the social contract had been before published in the discourse on inequality; and every bold opinion in emilius previously found in eloisa. this unrestrained freedom did not excite the least murmur against the first two works; therefore it was not that which gave cause to it against the latter. another undertaking much of the same kind, but of which the project was more recent, then engaged my attention: this was the extract of the works of the abbe de saint pierre, of which, having been led away by the thread of my narrative, i have not hitherto been able to speak. the idea was suggested to me, after my return from geneva, by the abbe malby, not immediately from himself, but by the interposition of madam dupin, who had some interest in engaging me to adopt it. she was one of the three or four-pretty women of paris, of whom the abbe de saint pierre had been the spoiled child, and although she had not decidedly had the preference, she had at least partaken of it with madam d'aiguillon. she preserved for the memory of the good man a respect and an affection which did honor to them both; and her self-love would have been flattered by seeing the still-born works of her friend brought to life by her secretary. these works contained excellent things, but so badly told that the reading of them was almost insupportable; and it is astonishing the abbe de saint pierre, who looked upon his readers as schoolboys, should nevertheless have spoken to them as men, by the little care he took to induce them to give him a hearing. it was for this purpose that the work was proposed to me as useful in itself, and very proper for a man laborious in manoeuvre, but idle as an author, who finding the trouble of thinking very fatiguing, preferred, in things which pleased him, throwing a light upon and extending the ideas of others, to producing any himself. besides, not being confined to the functions of a translator, i was at liberty sometimes to think for myself; and i had it in my power to give such a form to my work, that many important truths would pass in it under the name of the abbe de saint pierre, much more safely than under mine. the undertaking also was not trifling; the business was nothing less than to read and meditate twenty-three volumes, diffuse, confused, full of long narrations and periods, repetitions, and false or little views, from amongst which it was necessary to select some few that were good and useful, and sufficiently encouraging to enable me to support the painful labor. i frequently wished to have given it up, and should have done so, could i have got it off my hands with a great grace; but when i received the manuscripts of the abbe, which were given to me by his nephew, the comte de saint pierre, i had, by the solicitation of st. lambert, in some measure engaged to make use of them, which i must either have done, or have given them back. it was with the former intention i had taken the manuscripts to the hermitage, and this was the first work to which i proposed to dedicate my leisure hours. i had likewise in my own mind projected a third, the idea of which i owed to the observations i had made upon myself and i felt the more disposed to undertake this work, as i had reason to hope i could make it a truly useful one, and perhaps, the most so of any that could be offered to the world, were the execution equal to the plan i had laid down. it has been remarked that most men are in the course of their lives frequently unlike themselves, and seem to be transformed into others very different from what they were. it was not to establish a thing so generally known that i wished to write a book; i had a newer and more important object. this was to search for the causes of these variations, and, by confining my observations to those which depend on ourselves, to demonstrate in what manner it might be possible to direct them, in order to render us better and more certain of our dispositions. for it is undoubtedly more painful to an honest man to resist desires already formed, and which it is his duty to subdue, than to prevent, change, or modify the same desires in their source, were he capable of tracing them to it. a man under temptation resists once because he has strength of mind, he yields another time because this is overcome; had it been the same as before he would again have triumphed. by examining within myself, and searching in others what could be the cause of these different manners of being, i discovered that, in a great measure they depended on the anterior impressions of external objects; and that, continually modified by our senses and organs, we, without knowing it, bore in our ideas, sentiments, and even actions, the effect of these modifications. the striking and numerous observations i had collected were beyond all manner of dispute, and by their natural principle seemed proper to furnish an exterior regimen, which varied according to circumstances, might place and support the mind in the state most favorable to virtue. from how many mistakes would reason be preserved, how many vices would be stifled in their birth, were it possible to force animal economy to favor moral order, which it so frequently disturbs! climate, seasons, sounds, colors, light, darkness, the elements, ailments, noise, silence, motion, rest, all act on the animal machine, and consequently on the mind: all offer a thousand means, almost certain of directing in their origin the sentiments by which we suffer ourselves to be governed. such was the fundamental idea of which i had already made a sketch upon paper, and whence i hoped for an effect the more certain, in favor of persons well disposed, who, sincerely loving virtue, were afraid of their own weakness, as it appeared to me easy to make of it a book as agreeable to read as it was to compose. i have, however, applied myself but very little to this work, the title of which was to have been 'morale sensitive' ou le materialisme du sage. --[sensitive morality, or the materialism of the sage.]--interruptions, the cause of which will soon appear, prevented me from continuing it, and the fate of the sketch, which is more connected with my own than it may appear to be, will hereafter be seen. besides this, i had for some time meditated a system of education, of which madam de chenonceaux, alarmed for her son by that of her husband, had desired me to consider. the authority of friendship placed this object, although less in itself to my taste, nearer to my heart than any other. on which account this subject, of all those of which i have just spoken, is the only one i carried to its utmost extent. the end i proposed to myself in treating of it should, i think, have procured the author a better fate. but i will not here anticipate this melancholy subject. i shall have too much reason to speak of it in the course of my work. these different objects offered me subjects of meditation for my walks; for, as i believed i had already observed, i am unable to reflect when i am not walking: the moment i stop, i think no more, and as soon as i am again in motion my head resumes its workings. i had, however, provided myself with a work for the closet upon rainy days. this was my dictionary of music, which my scattered, mutilated, and unshapen materials made it necessary to rewrite almost entirely. i had with me some books necessary to this purpose; i had spent two months in making extracts from others, i had borrowed from the king's library, whence i was permitted to take several to the hermitage. i was thus provided with materials for composing in my apartment when the weather did not permit me to go out, and my copying fatigued me. this arrangement was so convenient that it made it turn to advantage as well at the hermitage as at montmorency, and afterwards even at motiers, where i completed the work whilst i was engaged in others, and constantly found a change of occupation to be a real relaxation. during a considerable time i exactly followed the distribution i had prescribed myself, and found it very agreeable; but as soon as the fine weather brought madam d'epinay more frequently to epinay, or to the chervette, i found that attentions, in the first instance natural to me, but which i had not considered in my scheme, considerably deranged my projects. i have already observed that madam d'epinay had many amiable qualities; she sincerely loved her friends; served them with zeal; and, not sparing for them either time or pains, certainly deserved on their part every attention in return. i had hitherto discharged this duty without considering it as one, but at length i found that i had given myself a chain of which nothing but friendship prevented me from feeling the weight, and this was still aggravated by my dislike to numerous societies. madam d' epinay took advantage of these circumstances to make me a proposition seemingly agreeable to me, but which was more so to herself; this was to let me know when she was alone, or had but little company. i consented, without perceiving to what a degree i engaged myself. the consequence was that i no longer visited her at my own hour --but at hers, and that i never was certain of being master of myself for a day together. this constraint considerably diminished the pleasure i had in going to see her. i found the liberty she had so frequently promised was given me upon no other condition than that of my never enjoying it; and once or twice when i wished to do this there were so many messages, notes, and alarms relative to my health, that i perceived that i could have no excuse but being confined to my bed, for not immediately running to her upon the first intimation. it was necessary i should submit to this yoke, and i did it, even more voluntarily than could be expected from so great an enemy to dependence: the sincere attachment i had to madam d'epinay preventing me, in a great measure, from feeling the inconvenience with which it was accompanied. she, on her part, filled up, well or ill, the void which the absence of her usual circle left in her amusements. this for her was but a very slender supplement, although preferable to absolute solitude, which she could not support. she had the means of doing it much more at her ease after she began with literature, and at all events to write novels, letters, comedies, tales, and other trash of the same kind. but she was not so much amused in writing these as in reading them; and she never scribbled over two or three pages--at one sitting--without being previously assured of having, at least, two or three benevolent auditors at the end of so much labor. i seldom had the honor of being one of the chosen few except by means of another. when alone, i was, for the most part, considered as a cipher in everything; and this not only in the company of madam d'epinay, but in that of m. d'holbach, and in every place where grimm gave the 'ton'. this nullity was very convenient to me, except in a tete-a-tete, when i knew not what countenance to put on, not daring to speak of literature, of which it was not for me to say a word; nor of gallantry, being too timid, and fearing, more than death, the ridiculousness of an old gallant; besides that, i never had such an idea when in the company of madam d'epinay, and that it perhaps would never have occurred to me, had i passed my whole life with her; not that her person was in the least disagreeable to me; on the contrary, i loved her perhaps too much as a friend to do it as a lover. i felt a pleasure in seeing and speaking to her. her conversation, although agreeable enough in a mixed company, was uninteresting in private; mine, not more elegant or entertaining than her own, was no great amusement to her. ashamed of being long silent, i endeavored to enliven our tete-a-tete and, although this frequently fatigued me, i was never disgusted with it. i was happy to show her little attentions, and gave her little fraternal kisses, which seemed not to be more sensual to herself; these were all. she was very thin, very pale, and had a bosom which resembled the back of her hand. this defect alone would have been sufficient to moderate my most ardent desires; my heart never could distinguish a woman in a person who had it; and besides other causes useless to mention, always made me forget the sex of this lady. having resolved to conform to an assiduity which was necessary, i immediately and voluntarily entered upon it, and for the first year at least, found it less burthensome than i could have expected. madam d'epinay, who commonly passed the summer in the country, continued there but a part of this; whether she was more detained by her affairs in paris, or that the absence of grimm rendered the residence of the chevrette less agreeable to her, i know not. i took the advantage of the intervals of her absence, or when the company with her was numerous, to enjoy my solitude with my good theresa and her mother, in such a manner as to taste all its charms. although i had for several years passed been frequently in the country, i seldom had enjoyed much of its pleasures; and these excursions, always made in company with people who considered themselves as persons of consequence, and rendered insipid by constraint, served to increase in me the natural desire i had for rustic pleasures. the want of these was the more sensible to me as i had the image of them immediately before my eyes. i was so tired of saloons, jets d'eau, groves, parterres, and of more fatiguing persons by whom they were shown; so exhausted with pamphlets, harpsichords, trios, unravellings of plots, stupid bon mots, insipid affections, pitiful storytellers, and great suppers; that when i gave a side glance at a poor simple hawthorn bush, a hedge, a barn, or a meadow; when, in passing through a hamlet, i scented a good chervil omelette, and heard at a distance the burden of a rustic song of the bisquieres; i wished all rouge, furbelows and amber at the d---l, and envying the dinner of the good housewife, and the wine of her own vineyard, i heartily wished to give a slap on the chaps to monsieur le chef and monsieur le maitre, who made me dine at the hour of supper, and sup when i should have been asleep, but especially to messieurs the lackeys, who devoured with their eyes the morsel i put into my mouth, and upon pain of my dying with thirst, sold me the adulterated wine of their master, ten times dearer than that of a better quality would have cost me at a public house. at length i was settled in an agreeable and solitary asylum, at liberty to pass there the remainder of my days, in that peaceful, equal, and independent life for which i felt myself born. before i relate the effects this situation, so new to me, had upon my heart, it is proper i should recapitulate its secret affections, that the reader may better follow in their causes the progress of these new modifications. i have always considered the day on which i was united to theresa as that which fixed my moral existence. an attachment was necessary for me, since that which should have been sufficient to my heart had been so cruelly broken. the thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man. mamma was advancing into years, and dishonored herself! i had proofs that she could never more be happy here below; it therefore remained to me to seek my own happiness, having lost all hopes of partaking of hers. i was sometimes irresolute, and fluctuated from one idea to another, and from project to project. my journey to venice would have thrown me into public life, had the man with whom, almost against my inclination, i was connected there had common sense. i was easily discouraged, especially in undertakings of length and difficulty. the ill success of this disgusted me with every other; and, according to my old maxims, considering distant objects as deceitful allurements, i resolved in future to provide for immediate wants, seeing nothing in life which could tempt me to make extraordinary efforts. it was precisely at this time we became acquainted. the mild character of the good theresa seemed so fitted to my own, that i united myself to her with an attachment which neither time nor injuries have been able to impair, and which has constantly been increased by everything by which it might have been expected to be diminished. the force of this sentiment will hereafter appear when i come to speak of the wounds she has given my heart in the height of my misery, without my ever having, until this moment, once uttered a word of complaint to any person whatever. when it shall be known, that after having done everything, braved everything, not to separate from her; that after passing with her twenty years in despite of fate and men; i have in my old age made her my wife, without the least expectation or solicitation on her part, or promise or engagement on mine, the world will think that love bordering upon madness, having from the first moment turned my head, led me by degrees to the last act of extravagance; and this will no longer appear doubtful when the strong and particular reasons which should forever have prevented me from taking such a step are made known. what, therefore, will the reader think when i shall have told him, with all the truth he has ever found in me, that, from the first moment in which i saw her, until that wherein i write, i have never felt the least love for her, that i never desired to possess her more than i did to possess madam de warrens, and that the physical wants which were satisfied with her person were, to me, solely those of the sex, and by no means proceeding from the individual? he will think that, being of a constitution different from that of other men, i was incapable of love, since this was not one of the sentiments which attached me to women the most dear to my heart. patience, o my dear reader! the fatal moment approaches in which you will be but too much undeceived. i fall into repetitions; i know it; and these are necessary. the first of my wants, the greatest, strongest and most insatiable, was wholly in my heart; the want of an intimate connection, and as intimate as it could possibly be: for this reason especially, a woman was more necessary to me than a man, a female rather than a male friend. this singular want was such that the closest corporal union was not sufficient: two souls would have been necessary to me in the same body, without which i always felt a void. i thought i was upon the point of filling it up forever. this young person, amiable by a thousand excellent qualities, and at that time by her form, without the shadow of art or coquetry, would have confined within herself my whole existence, could hers, as i had hoped it would, have been totally confined to me. i had nothing to fear from men; i am certain of being the only man she ever really loved and her moderate passions seldom wanted another not even after i ceased in this respect to be one to her. i had no family; she had one; and this family was composed of individuals whose dispositions were so different from mine, that i could never make it my own. this was the first cause of my unhappiness. what would i not have given to be the child of her mother? i did everything in my power to become so, but could never succeed. i in vain attempted to unite all our interests: this was impossible. she always created herself one different from mine, contrary to it, and to that even of her daughter, which already was no longer separated from it. she, her other children, and grand-children, became so many leeches, and the least evil these did to theresa was robbing her. the poor girl, accustomed to submit, even to her nieces, suffered herself to be pilfered and governed without saying a word; and i perceived with grief that by exhausting my purse, and giving her advice, i did nothing that could be of any real advantage to her. i endeavored to detach her from her mother; but she constantly resisted such a proposal. i could not but respect her resistance, and esteemed her the more for it; but her refusal was not on this account less to the prejudice of us both. abandoned to her mother and the rest of her family, she was more their companion than mine, and rather at their command than mistress of herself. their avarice was less ruinous than their advice was pernicious to her; in fact, if, on account of the love she had for me, added to her good natural disposition, she was not quite their slave, she was enough so to prevent in a great measure the effect of the good maxims i endeavored to instil into her, and, notwithstanding all my efforts, to prevent our being united. thus was it, that notwithstanding a sincere and reciprocal attachment, in which i had lavished all the tenderness of my heart, the void in that heart was never completely filled. children, by whom this effect should have been produced, were brought into the world, but these only made things worse. i trembled at the thought of intrusting them to a family ill brought up, to be still worse educated. the risk of the education of the foundling hospital was much less. this reason for the resolution i took, much stronger than all those i stated in my letter to madam de francueil, was, however, the only one with which i dared not make her acquainted; i chose rather to appear less excusable than to expose to reproach the family of a person i loved. but by the conduct of her wretched brother, notwithstanding all that can be said in his defence, it will be judged whether or not i ought to have exposed my children to an education similar to his. not having it in my power to taste in all its plentitude the charms of that intimate connection of which i felt the want, i sought for substitutes which did not fill up the void, yet they made it less sensible. not having a friend entirely devoted to me, i wanted others, whose impulse should overcome my indolence; for this reason i cultivated and strengthened my connection with diderot and the abbe de condillac, formed with grimm a new one still more intimate, till at length by the unfortunate discourse, of which i have related some particulars, i unexpectedly found myself thrown back into a literary circle which i thought i had quitted forever. my first steps conducted me by a new path to another intellectual world, the simple and noble economy of which i cannot contemplate without enthusiasm. i reflected so much on the subject that i soon saw nothing but error and folly in the doctrine of our sages, and oppression and misery in our social order. in the illusion of my foolish pride, i thought myself capable of destroying all imposture; and thinking that, to make myself listened to, it was necessary my conduct should agree with my principles, i adopted the singular manner of life which i have not been permitted to continue, the example of which my pretended friends have never forgiven me, which at first made me ridiculous, and would at length have rendered me respectable, had it been possible for me to persevere. until then i had been good; from that moment i became virtuous, or at least infatuated with virtue. this infatuation had begun in my head, but afterwards passed into my heart. the most noble pride there took root amongst the ruins of extirpated vanity. i affected nothing; i became what i appeared to be, and during four years at least, whilst this effervescence continued at its greatest height, there is nothing great and good that can enter the heart of man, of which i was not capable between heaven and myself. hence flowed my sudden eloquence; hence, in my first writings, that fire really celestial, which consumed me, and whence during forty years not a single spark had escaped, because it was not yet lighted up. i was really transformed; my friends and acquaintance scarcely knew me. i was no longer that timid, and rather bashful than modest man, who neither dared to present himself, nor utter a word; whom a single pleasantry disconcerted, and whose face was covered with a blush the moment his eyes met those of a woman. i became bold, haughty, intrepid, with a confidence the more firm, as it was simple, and resided in my soul rather than in my manner. the contempt with which my profound meditations had inspired me for the manners, maxims and prejudices of the age in which i lived, rendered me proof against the raillery of those by whom they were possessed, and i crushed their little pleasantries with a sentence, as i would have crushed an insect with my fingers. what a change! all paris repeated the severe and acute sarcasms of the same man who, two years before, and ten years afterwards, knew not how to find what he had to say, nor the word he ought to employ. let the situation in the world the most contrary to my natural disposition be sought after, and this will be found. let one of the short moments of my life in which i became another man, and ceased to be myself, be recollected, this also will be found in the time of which i speak; but, instead of continuing only six days, or six weeks, it lasted almost six years, and would perhaps still continue, but for the particular circumstances which caused it to cease, and restored me to nature, above which i had, wished to soar. the beginning of this change took place as soon as i had quitted paris, and the sight of the vices of that city no longer kept up the indignation with which it had inspired me. i no sooner had lost sight of men than i ceased to despise them, and once removed from those who designed me evil, my hatred against them no longer existed. my heart, little fitted for hatred, pitied their misery, and even their wickedness. this situation, more pleasing but less sublime, soon allayed the ardent enthusiasm by which i had so long been transported; and i insensibly, almost to myself even, again became fearful, complaisant and timid; in a word, the same jean jacques i before had been. had this resolution gone no further than restoring me to myself, all would have been well; but unfortunately it rapidly carried me away to the other extreme. from that moment my mind in agitation passed the line of repose, and its oscillations, continually renewed, have never permitted it to remain here. i must enter into some detail of this second revolution; terrible and fatal era, of a fate unparalleled amongst mortals. we were but three persons in our retirement; it was therefore natural our intimacy should be increased by leisure and solitude. this was the case between theresa and myself. we passed in conversations in the shade the most charming and delightful hours, more so than any i had hitherto enjoyed. she seemed to taste of this sweet intercourse more than i had until then observed her to do; she opened her heart, and communicated to me, relative to her mother and family, things she had had resolution enough to conceal for a great length of time. both had received from madam dupin numerous presents, made them on my account, and mostly for me, but which the cunning old woman, to prevent my being angry, had appropriated to her own use and that of her other children, without suffering theresa to have the least share, strongly forbidding her to say a word to me of the matter: an order the poor girl had obeyed with an incredible exactness. but another thing which surprised me more than this had done, was the discovery that besides the private conversations diderot and grimm had frequently had with both to endeavor to detach them from me, in which, by means of the resistance of theresa, they had not been able to succeed, they had afterwards had frequent conferences with the mother, the subject of which was a secret to the daughter. however, she knew little presents had been made, and that there were mysterious goings backward and forward, the motive of which was entirely unknown to her. when we left paris, madam le vasseur had long been in the habit of going to see grimm twice or thrice a month, and continuing with him for hours together, in conversation so secret that the servant was always sent out of the room. i judged this motive to be of the same nature with the project into which they had attempted to make the daughter enter, by promising to procure her and her mother, by means of madam d'epinay, a salt huckster's license, or snuff-shop; in a word, by tempting her with the allurements of gain. they had been told that, as i was not in a situation to do anything for them, i could not, on their account, do anything for myself. as in all this i saw nothing but good intentions, i was not absolutely displeased with them for it. the mystery was the only thing which gave me pain, especially on the part of the old woman, who moreover daily became more parasitical and flattering towards me. this, however, did not prevent her from reproaching her daughter in private with telling me everything, and loving me too much, observing to her she was a fool and would at length be made a dupe. this woman possessed, to a supreme degree, the art of multiplying the presents made her, by concealing from one what she received from another, and from me what she received from all. i could have pardoned her avarice, but it was impossible i should forgive her dissimulation. what could she have to conceal from me whose happiness she knew principally consisted in that of herself and her daughter? what i had done for the daughter i had done for myself, but the services i rendered the mother merited on her part some acknowledgment. she ought, at least, to have thought herself obliged for them to her daughter, and to have loved me for the sake of her by whom i was already beloved. i had raised her from the lowest state of wretchedness; she received from my hands the means of subsistence, and was indebted to me for her acquaintance with the persons from whom she found means to reap considerable benefit. theresa had long supported her by her industry, and now maintained her with my bread. she owed everything to this daughter, for whom she had done nothing, and her other children, to whom she had given marriage portions, and on whose account she had ruined herself, far from giving her the least aid, devoured her substance and mine. i thought that in such a situation she ought to consider me as her only friend and most sure protector, and that, far from making of my own affairs a secret to me, and conspiring against me in my house, it was her duty faithfully to acquaint me with everything in which i was interested, when this came to her knowledge before it did to mine. in what light, therefore, could i consider her false and mysterious conduct? what could i think of the sentiments with which she endeavored to inspire her daughter? what monstrous ingratitude was hers, to endeavor to instil it into her from whom i expected my greatest consolation? these reflections at length alienated my affections from this woman, and to such a degree that i could no longer look upon her but with contempt. i nevertheless continued to treat with respect the mother of the friend of my bosom, and in everything to show her almost the reverence of a son; but i must confess i could not remain long with her without pain, and that i never knew how to bear restraint. this is another short moment of my life, in which i approached near to happiness without being able to attain it, and this by no fault of my own. had the mother been of a good disposition we all three should have been happy to the end of our days; the longest liver only would have been to be pitied. instead of which, the reader will see the course things took, and judge whether or not it was in my power to change it. madam le vasseur, who perceived i had got more full possession of the heart of theresa, and that she had lost ground with her, endeavored to regain it; and instead of striving to restore herself to my good opinion by the mediation of her daughter attempted to alienate her affections from me. one of the means she employed was to call her family to her aid. i had begged theresa not to invite any of her relations to the hermitage, and she had promised me she would not. these were sent for in my absence, without consulting her, and she was afterwards prevailed upon to promise not to say anything of the matter. after the first step was taken all the rest were easy. when once we make a secret of anything to the person we love, we soon make little scruple of doing it in everything; the moment i was at the chevrette the hermitage was full of people who sufficiently amused themselves. a mother has always great power over a daughter of a mild disposition; yet notwithstanding all the old woman could do, she was never able to prevail upon theresa to enter into her views, nor to persuade her to join in the league against me. for her part, she resolved upon doing it forever, and seeing on one side her daughter and myself, who were in a situation to live, and that was all; on the other, diderot, grimm, d' holbach and madam d'epinay, who promised great things, and gave some little ones, she could not conceive it was possible to be in the wrong with the wife of a farmer-general and baron. had i been more clear sighted, i should from this moment have perceived i nourished a serpent in my bosom. but my blind confidence, which nothing had yet diminished, was such that i could not imagine she wished to injure the person she ought to love. though i saw numerous conspiracies formed on every side, all i complain of was the tyranny of persons who called themselves my friends, and who, as it seemed, would force me to be happy in the manner they should point out, and not in that i had chosen for myself. although theresa refused to join in the confederacy with her mother, she afterwards kept her secret. for this her motive was commendable, although i will not determine whether she did it well or ill. two women, who have secrets between them, love to prattle together; this attracted them towards each other, and theresa, by dividing herself, sometimes let me feel i was alone; for i could no longer consider as a society that which we all three formed. i now felt the neglect i had been guilty of during the first years of our connection, in not taking advantage of the docility with which her love inspired her, to improve her talents and give her knowledge, which, by more closely connecting us in our retirement would agreeably have filled up her time and my own, without once suffering us to perceive the length of a private conversation. not that this was ever exhausted between us, or that she seemed disgusted with our walks; but we had not a sufficient number of ideas common to both to make ourselves a great store, and we could not incessantly talk of our future projects which were confined to those of enjoying the pleasures of life. the objects around us inspired me with reflections beyond the reach of her comprehension. an attachment of twelve years' standing had no longer need of words: we were too well acquainted with each other to have any new knowledge to acquire in that respect. the resource of puns, jests, gossiping and scandal, was all that remained. in solitude especially is it, that the advantage of living with a person who knows how to think is particularly felt. i wanted not this resource to amuse myself with her; but she would have stood in need of it to have always found amusement with me. the worst of all was our being obliged to hold our conversations when we could; her mother, who become importunate, obliged me to watch for opportunities to do it. i was under constraint in my own house: this is saying everything; the air of love was prejudicial to good friendship. we had an intimate intercourse without living in intimacy. the moment i thought i perceived that theresa sometimes sought for a pretext to elude the walks i proposed to her, i ceased to invite her to accompany me, without being displeased with her for not finding in them so much amusement as i did. pleasure is not a thing which depends upon the will. i was sure of her heart, and the possession of this was all i desired. as long as my pleasures were hers, i tasted of them with her; when this ceased to be the case i preferred her contentment to my own. in this manner it was that, half deceived in my expectation, leading a life after my own heart, in a residence i had chosen with a person who was dear to me, i at length found myself almost alone. what i still wanted prevented me from enjoying what i had. with respect to happiness and enjoyment, everything or nothing, was what was necessary to me. the reason of these observations will hereafter appear. at present i return to the thread of my narrative. i imagined that i possessed treasures in the manuscripts given me by the comte de st. pierre. on examination i found they were a little more than the collection of the printed works of his uncle, with notes and corrections by his own hand, and a few other trifling fragments which had not yet been published. i confirmed myself by these moral writings in the idea i had conceived from some of his letters, shown me by madam de crequi, that he had more sense and ingenuity than at first i had imagined; but after a careful examination of his political works, i discerned nothing but superficial notions, and projects that were useful but impracticable, in consequence of the idea from which the author never could depart, that men conducted themselves by their sagacity rather than by their passions. the high opinion he had of the knowledge of the moderns had made him adopt this false principle of improved reason, the basis of all the institutions he proposed, and the source of his political sophisms. this extraordinary man, an honor to the age in which he lived, and to the human species, and perhaps the only person, since the creation of mankind, whose sole passion was that of reason, wandered in all his systems from error to error, by attempting to make men like himself, instead of taking them as they were, are, and will continue to be. he labored for imaginary beings, while he thought himself employed for the benefit of his contemporaries. all these things considered, i was rather embarrassed as to the form i should give to my work. to suffer the author's visions to pass was doing nothing useful; fully to refute them would have been unpolite, as the care of revising and publishing his manuscripts, which i had accepted, and even requested, had been intrusted to me; this trust had imposed on me the obligation of treating the author honorably. i at length concluded upon that which to me appeared the most decent, judicious, and useful. this was to give separately my own ideas and those of the author, and, for this purpose, to enter into his views, to set them in a new light, to amplify, extend them, and spare nothing which might contribute to present them in all their excellence. my work therefore was to be composed of two parts absolutely distinct: one, to explain, in the manner i have just mentioned, the different projects of the author; in the other, which was not to appear until the first had had its effect, i should have given my opinion upon these projects, which i confess might sometimes have exposed them to the fate of the sonnet of the misanthrope. at the head of the whole was to have been the life of the author. for this i had collected some good materials, and which i flattered myself i should not spoil in making use of them. i had been a little acquainted with the abbe de st. pierre, in his old age, and the veneration i had for his memory warranted to me, upon the whole, that the comte would not be dissatisfied with the manner in which i should have treated his relation. i made my first essay on the 'perpetual peace', the greatest and most elaborate of all the works which composed the collection; and before i abandoned myself to my reflections i had the courage to read everything the abbe had written upon this fine subject, without once suffering myself to be disgusted either by his slowness or his repetitions. the public has seen the extract, on which account i have nothing to say upon the subject. my opinion of it has not been printed, nor do i know that it ever will be; however, it was written at the same time the extract was made. from this i passed to the 'polysynodie', or plurality of councils, a work written under the regent to favor the administration he had chosen, and which caused the abbe de saint pierre to be expelled from the academy, on account of some remarks unfavorable to the preceding administration, and with which the duchess of maine and the cardinal de polignac were displeased. i completed this work as i did the former, with an extract and remarks; but i stopped here without intending to continue the undertaking which i ought never to have begun. the reflection which induced me to give it up naturally presents itself, and it was astonishing i had not made it sooner. most of the writings of the abbe de saint pierre were either observations, or contained observations, on some parts of the government of france, and several of these were of so free a nature, that it was happy for him he had made them with impunity. but in the offices of all the ministers of state the abbe de st. pierre had ever been considered as a kind of preacher rather than a real politician, and he was suffered to say what he pleased, because it appeared that nobody listened to him. had i procured him readers the case would have been different. he was a frenchman, and i was not one; and by repeating his censures, although in his own name, i exposed myself to be asked, rather rudely, but without injustice, what it was with which i meddled. happily before i proceeded any further, i perceived the hold i was about to give the government against me, and i immediately withdrew. i knew that, living alone in the midst of men more powerful than myself, i never could by any means whatever be sheltered from the injury they chose to do me. there was but one thing which depended upon my own efforts: this was, to observe such a line of conduct that whenever they chose to make me feel the weight of authority they could not do it without being unjust. the maxim which induced me to decline proceeding with the works of the abbe de saint pierre, has frequently made me give up projects i had much more at heart. people who are always ready to construe adversity into a crime, would be much surprised were they to know the pains i have taken, that during my misfortunes it might never with truth be said of me, thou hast deserved them. after having given up the manuscript, i remained some time without determining upon the work which should succeed it, and this interval of inactivity was destructive; by permitting me to turn my reflections on myself, for want of another object to engage my attention. i had no project for the future which could amuse my imagination. it was not even possible to form any, as my situation was precisely that in which all my desires were united. i had not another to conceive, and yet there was a void in my heart. this state was the more cruel, as i saw no other that was to be preferred to it. i had fixed my most tender affections upon a person who made me a return of her own. i lived with her without constraint, and, so to speak, at discretion. notwithstanding this, a secret grief of mind never quitted me for a moment, either when she was present or absent. in possessing theresa, i still perceived she wanted something to her happiness; and the sole idea of my not being everything to her had such an effect upon my mind that she was next to nothing to me. i had friends of both sexes, to whom i was attached by the purest friendship and most perfect esteem; i depended upon a real return on their part, and a doubt of their sincerity never entered my mind; yet this friendship was more tormenting than agreeable to me, by their obstinate perseverance and even by their affectation, in opposing my taste, inclinations and manner of living; and this to such a degree, that the moment i seemed to desire a thing which interested myself only, and depended not upon them, they immediately joined their efforts to oblige me to renounce it. this continued desire to control me in all my wishes, the more unjust, as i did not so much as make myself acquainted with theirs, became so cruelly oppressive, that i never received one of their letters without feeling a certain terror as i opened it, and which was but too well justified by the contents. i thought being treated like a child by persons younger than myself, and who, of themselves, stood in great need of the advice they so prodigally bestowed on me, was too much: "love me," said i to them, "as i love you, but, in every other respect, let my affairs be as indifferent to you, as yours are to me: this is all i ask." if they granted me one of these two requests, it was not the latter. i had a retired residence in a charming solitude, was master of my own house, and could live in it in the manner i thought proper, without being controlled by any person. this habitation imposed on me duties agreeable to discharge, but which were indispensable. my liberty was precarious. in a greater state of subjection than a person at the command of another, it was my duty to be so by inclination. when i arose in the morning, i never could say to myself, i will employ this day as i think proper. and, moreover, besides my being subject to obey the call of madam d'epinay, i was exposed to the still more disagreeable importunities of the public and chance comers. the distance i was at from paris did not prevent crowds of idlers, not knowing how to spend their time, from daily breaking in upon me, and, without the least scruple, freely disposing of mine. when i least expected visitors i was unmercifully assailed by them, and i seldom made a plan for the agreeable employment of the day that was not counteracted by the arrival of some stranger. in short, finding no real enjoyment in the midst of the pleasures i had been most desirous to obtain, i, by sudden mental transitions, returned in imagination to the serene days of my youth, and sometimes exclaimed with a sigh: "ah! this is not les charmettes!" the recollection of the different periods of my life led me to reflect upon that at which i was arrived, and i found i was already on the decline, a prey to painful disorders, and imagined i was approaching the end of my days without having, tasted, in all its plentitude, scarcely anyone of the pleasures after which my heart had so much thirsted, or having given scope to the lively sentiments i felt it had in reserve. i had not favored even that intoxicating voluptuousness with which my mind was richly stored, and which, for want of an object, was always compressed, an never exhaled but by signs. how was it possible that, with a mind naturally expansive, i, with whom to live was to love, should not hitherto have found a friend entirely devoted to me; a real friend: i who felt myself so capable of being such a friend to another? how can it be accounted for that with such warm affections, such combustible senses, and a heart wholly made up of love, i had not once, at least, felt its flame for a determinate object? tormented by the want of loving, without ever having been able to satisfy it, i perceived myself approaching the eve of old age, and hastening on to death without having lived. these melancholy but affecting recollections led me to others, which, although accompanied with regret, were not wholly unsatisfactory. i thought something i had not yet received was still due to me from destiny. to what end was i born with exquisite faculties? to suffer them to remain unemployed? the sentiment of conscious merit, which made me consider myself as suffering injustice, was some kind of reparation, and caused me to shed tears which with pleasure i suffered to flow. these were my mediations during the finest season of the year, in the month of june, in cool shades, to the songs of the nightingale, and the warbling of brooks. everything concurred in plunging me into that too seducing state of indolence for which i was born, and from which my austere manner, proceeding from a long effervescence, should forever have delivered me. i unfortunately remembered the dinner of the chateau de toune, and my meeting with the two charming girls in the same season, in places much resembling that in which i then was. the remembrance of these circumstances, which the innocence that accompanied them rendered to me still more dear, brought several others of the nature to my recollection. i presently saw myself surrounded by all the objects which, in my youth, had given me emotion. mademoiselle galley, mademoiselle de graffenried, mademoiselle de breil, madam basile, madam de larnage, my pretty scholars, and even the bewitching zulietta, whom my heart could not forget. i found myself in the midst of a seraglio of houris of my old acquaintance, for whom the most lively inclination was not new to me. my blood became inflamed, my head turned, notwithstanding my hair was almost gray, and the grave citizen of geneva, the austere jean jacques, at forty-five years of age, again became the fond shepherd. the intoxication, with which my mind was seized, although sudden and extravagant, was so strong and lasting, that, to enable me to recover from it, nothing less than the unforeseen and terrible crisis it brought on was necessary. this intoxication, to whatever degree it was carried, went not so far as to make me forget my age and situation, to flatter me that i could still inspire love, nor to make me attempt to communicate the devouring flame by which ever since my youth i had felt my heart in vain consumed. for this i did not hope; i did not even desire it. i knew the season of love was past; i knew too well in what contempt the ridiculous pretensions of superannuated gallants were held, ever to add one to the number, and i was not a man to become an impudent coxcomb in the decline of life, after having been so little such during the flower of my age. besides, as a friend to peace, i should have been apprehensive of domestic dissensions; and i too sincerely loved theresa to expose her to the mortification of seeing me entertain for others more lively sentiments than those with which she inspired me for herself. what step did i take upon this occasion? my reader will already have guessed it, if he has taken the trouble to pay the least attention to my narrative. the impossibility of attaining real beings threw me into the regions of chimera, and seeing nothing in existence worthy of my delirium, i sought food for it in the ideal world, which my imagination quickly peopled with beings after my own heart. this resource never came more apropos, nor was it ever so fertile. in my continual ecstasy i intoxicated my mind with the most delicious sentiments that ever entered the heart of man. entirely forgetting the human species, i formed to myself societies of perfect beings, whose virtues were as celestial as their beauty, tender and faithful friends, such as i never found here below. i became so fond of soaring in the empyrean, in the midst of the charming objects with which i was surrounded, that i thus passed hours and days without perceiving it; and, losing the remembrance of all other things, i scarcely had eaten a morsel in haste before i was impatient to make my escape and run to regain my groves. when ready to depart for the enchanted world, i saw arrive wretched mortals who came to detain me upon earth, i could neither conceal nor moderate my vexation; and no longer master of myself, i gave them so uncivil a reception, that it might justly be termed brutal. this tended to confirm my reputation as a misanthrope, from the very cause which, could the world have read my heart, should have acquired me one of a nature directly opposite. in the midst of my exultation i was pulled down like a paper kite, and restored to my proper place by means of a smart attack of my disorder. i recurred to the only means that had before given me relief, and thus made a truce with my angelic amours; for besides that it seldom happens that a man is amorous when he suffers, my imagination, which is animated in the country and beneath the shade of trees, languishes and becomes extinguished in a chamber, and under the joists of a ceiling. i frequently regretted that there existed no dryads; it would certainly have been amongst these that i should have fixed my attachment. other domestic broils came at the same time to increase my chagrin. madam le vasseur, while making me the finest compliments in the world, alienated from me her daughter as much as she possibly could. i received letters from my late neighborhood, informing me that the good old lady had secretly contracted several debts in the name of theresa, to whom these became known, but of which she had never mentioned to me a word. the debts to be paid hurt me much less than the secret that had been made of them. how could she, for whom i had never had a secret, have one from me? is it possible to dissimulate with persons whom we love? the 'coterie holbachique', who found i never made a journey to paris, began seriously to be afraid i was happy and satisfied in the country, and madman enough to reside there. hence the cabals by which attempts were made to recall me indirectly to the city. diderot, who did not immediately wish to show himself, began by detaching from me de leyre, whom i had brought acquainted with him, and who received and transmitted to me the impressions diderot chose to give without suspecting to what end they were directed. everything seemed to concur in withdrawing me from my charming and mad reverie. i was not recovered from the late attack i had when i received the copy of the poem on the destruction of lisbon, which i imagined to be sent by the author. this made it necessary i should write to him and speak of his composition. i did so, and my letter was a long time afterwards printed without my consent, as i shall hereafter have occasion to remark. struck by seeing this poor man overwhelmed, if i may so speak, with prosperity and honor, bitterly exclaiming against the miseries of this life, and finding everything to be wrong, i formed the mad project of making him turn his attention to himself, and of proving to him that everything was right. voltaire, while he appeared to believe in god, never really believed in anything but the devil; since his pretended deity is a malicious being, who, according to him, had no pleasure but in evil. the glaring absurdity of this doctrine is particularly disgusting from a man enjoying the greatest prosperity; who, from the bosom of happiness, endeavors, by the frightful and cruel image of all the calamities from which he is exempt, to reduce his fellow creatures to despair. i, who had a better right than he to calculate and weigh all the evils of human life, impartially examine them, and proved to him that of all possible evils there was not one to be attributed to providence, and which had not its source rather in the abusive use man made of his faculties than in nature. i treated him, in this letter, with the greatest respect and delicacy possible. yet, knowing his self-love to be extremely irritable, i did not send the letter immediately to himself, but to doctor tronchin, his physician and friend, with full power either to give it him or destroy it. voltaire informed me in a few lines that being ill, having likewise the care of a sick person, he postponed his answer until some future day, and said not a word on the subject. tronchin, when he sent me the letter, inclosed in it another, in which he expressed but very little esteem for the person from whom he received it. i have never published, nor even shown, either of these two letters, not liking to make a parade of such little triumphs; but the originals are in my collections. since that time voltaire has published the answer he promised me, but which i never received. this is the novel of 'candide', of which i cannot speak because i have not read it. all these interruptions ought to have cured me of my fantastic amours, and they were perhaps the means offered me by heaven to prevent their destructive consequences; but my evil genius prevailed, and i had scarcely begun to go out before my heart, my head, and my feet returned to the same paths. i say the same in certain respects; for my ideas, rather less exalted, remained this time upon earth, but yet were busied in making so exquisite a choice of all that was to be found there amiable of every kind, that it was not much less chimerical than the imaginary world i had abandoned. i figured to myself love and friendship, the two idols of my heart, under the most ravishing images. i amused myself in adorning them with all the charms of the sex i had always adored. i imagined two female friends rather than two of my own sex, because, although the example be more rare, it is also more amiable. i endowed them with different characters, but analogous to their connection, with two faces, not perfectly beautiful, but according to my taste, and animated with benevolence and sensibility. i made one brown and the other fair, one lively and the other languishing, one wise and the other weak, but of so amiable a weakness that it seemed to add a charm to virtue. i gave to one of the two a lover, of whom the other was the tender friend, and even something more, but i did not admit either rivalry, quarrels, or jealousy: because every painful sentiment is painful for me to imagine, and i was unwilling to tarnish this delightful picture by anything which was degrading to nature. smitten with my two charming models, i drew my own portrait in the lover and the friend, as much as it was possible to do it; but i made him young and amiable, giving him, at the same time, the virtues and the defects which i felt in myself. that i might place my characters in a residence proper for them, i successively passed in review the most beautiful places i had seen in my travels. but i found no grove sufficiently delightful, no landscape that pleased me. the valleys of thessaly would have satisfied me had i but once had a sight of them; but my imagination, fatigued with invention, wished for some real place which might serve it as a point to rest upon, and create in me an illusion with respect to the real existence of the inhabitants i intended to place there. i thought a good while upon the boromean islands, the delightful prospect of which had transported me, but i found in them too much art and ornament for my lovers. i however wanted a lake, and i concluded by making choice of that about which my heart has never ceased to wander. i fixed myself upon that part of the banks of this lake where my wishes have long since placed my residence in the imaginary happiness to which fate has confined me. the native place of my poor mamma had still for me a charm. the contrast of the situations, the richness and variety of the sites, the magnificence, the majesty of the whole, which ravishes the senses, affects, the heart, and elevates the mind, determined me to give it the preference, and i placed my young pupils at vervey. this is what i imagined at the first sketch; the rest was not added until afterwards. i for a long time confined myself to this vague plan, because it was sufficient to fill my imagination with agreeable objects, and my heart with sentiments in which it delighted. these fictions, by frequently presenting themselves, at length gained a consistence, and took in my mind a determined form. i then had an inclination to express upon paper some of the situations fancy presented to me, and, recollecting everything i had felt during my youth, thus, in some measure, gave an object to that desire of loving, which i had never been able to satisfy, and by which i felt myself consumed. i first wrote a few incoherent letters, and when i afterwards wished to give them connection, i frequently found a difficulty in doing it. what is scarcely credible, although most strictly true, is my having written the first two parts almost wholly in this manner, without having any plan formed, and not foreseeing i should one day be tempted to make it a regular work. for this reason the two parts afterwards formed of materials not prepared for the place in which they are disposed, are full of unmeaning expressions not found in the others. in the midst of my reveries i had a visit from madam d'houdetot, the first she had ever made me, but which unfortunately was not the last, as will hereafter appear. the comtesse d'houdetot was the daughter of the late m. de bellegarde, a farmer-general, sister to m. d'epinay, and messieurs de lalive and de la briche, both of whom have since been introductors to ambassadors. i have spoken of the acquaintance i made with her before she was married: since that event i had not seen her, except at the fetes at la chevrette, with madam d'epinay, her sister-in-law. having frequently passed several days with her, both at la chevrette and epinay, i always thought her amiable, and that she seemed to be my well-wisher. she was fond of walking with me; we were both good walkers, and the conversation between us was inexhaustible. however, i never went to see her in paris, although she had several times requested and solicited me to do it. her connections with m. de st. lambert, with whom i began to be intimate, rendered her more interesting to me, and it was to bring me some account of that friend who was, i believe, then at mahon, that she came to see me at the hermitage. this visit had something of the appearance of the beginning of a romance. she lost her way. her coachman, quitting the road, which turned to the right, attempted to cross straight over from the mill of clairvaux to the hermitage: her carriage stuck in a quagmire in the bottom of the valley, and she got out and walked the rest of the road. her delicate shoes were soon worn through; she sunk into the dirt, her servants had the greatest difficulty in extricating her, and she at length arrived at the hermitage in boots, making the place resound with her laughter, in which i most heartily joined. she had to change everything. theresa provided her with what was necessary, and i prevailed upon her to forget her dignity and partake of a rustic collation, with which she seemed highly satisfied. it was late, and her stay was short; but the interview was so mirthful that it pleased her, and she seemed disposed to return. she did not however put this project into execution until the next year: but, alas! the delay was not favorable to me in anything. i passed the autumn in an employment no person would suspect me of undertaking: this was guarding the fruit of m. d'epinay. the hermitage was the reservoir of the waters of the park of the chevrette; there was a garden walled round and planted with espaliers and other trees, which produced m. d'epinay more fruit than his kitchen-garden at the chevrette, although three-fourths of it were stolen from him. that i might not be a guest entirely useless, i took upon myself the direction of the garden and the inspection of the conduct of the gardener. everything went on well until the fruit season, but as this became ripe, i observed that it disappeared without knowing in what manner it was disposed of. the gardener assured me it was the dormice which eat it all. i destroyed a great number of these animals, notwithstanding which the fruit still diminished. i watched the gardener's motions so narrowly, that i found he was the great dormouse. he lodged at montmorency, whence he came in the night with his wife and children to take away the fruit he had concealed in the daytime, and which he sold in the market at paris as publicly as if he had brought it from a garden of his own. the wretch whom i loaded with kindness, whose children were clothed by theresa, and whose father, who was a beggar, i almost supported, robbed us with as much ease as effrontery, not one of the three being sufficiently vigilant to prevent him: and one night he emptied my cellar. whilst he seemed to address himself to me only, i suffered everything, but being desirous of giving an account of the fruit, i was obliged to declare by whom a great part of it had been stolen. madam d'epinay desired me to pay and discharge him, and look out for another; i did so. as this rascal rambled about the hermitage in the night, armed with a thick club staff with an iron ferrule, and accompanied by other villains like himself, to relieve the governesses from their fears, i made his successor sleep in the house with us; and this not being sufficient to remove their apprehensions, i sent to ask m. d'epinay for a musket, which i kept in the chamber of the gardener, with a charge not to make use of it except an attempt was made to break open the door or scale the walls of the garden, and to fire nothing but powder, meaning only to frighten the thieves. this was certainly the least precaution a man indisposed could take for the common safety of himself and family, having to pass the winter in the midst of a wood, with two timid women. i also procured a little dog to serve as a sentinel. de leyre coming to see me about this time, i related to him my situation, and we laughed together at my military apparatus. at his return to paris he wished to amuse diderot with the story, and by this means the 'coterie d'holbachique' learned that i was seriously resolved to pass the winter at the hermitage. this perseverance, of which they had not imagined me to be capable, disconcerted them, and, until they could think of some other means of making my residence disagreeable to me, they sent back, by means of diderot, the same de leyre, who, though at first he had thought my precautions quite natural, now pretended to discover that they were inconsistent with my principles, and styled them more than ridiculous in his letters, in which he overwhelmed me with pleasantries sufficiently bitter and satirical to offend me had i been the least disposed to take offence. but at that time being full of tender and affectionate sentiments, and not susceptible of any other, i perceived in his biting sarcasms nothing more than a jest, and believed him only jocose when others would have thought him mad. by my care and vigilance i guarded the garden so well, that, although there had been but little fruit that year the produce was triple that of the preceding years; it is true, i spared no pains to preserve it, and i went so far as to escort what i sent to the chevrette and to epinay, and to carry baskets of it myself. the aunt and i carried one of these, which was so heavy that we were obliged to rest at every dozen steps, and which we arrived with it we were quite wet with perspiration. as soon as the bad season began to confine me to the house, i wished to return to my indolent amusements, but this i found impossible. i had everywhere two charming female friends before my eyes, their friend, everything by which they were surrounded, the country they inhabited, and the objects created or embellished for them by my imagination. i was no longer myself for a moment, my delirium never left me. after many useless efforts to banish all fictions from my mind, they at length seduced me, and my future endeavors were confined to giving them order and coherence, for the purpose of converting them into a species of novel. what embarrassed me most was, that i had contradicted myself so openly and fully. after the severe principles i had just so publicly asserted, after the austere maxims i had so loudly preached, and my violent invectives against books, which breathed nothing but effeminacy and love, could anything be less expected or more extraordinary, than to see me, with my own hand, write my name in the list of authors of those books i had so severely censured? i felt this incoherence in all its extent. i reproached myself with it, i blushed at it and was vexed; but all this could not bring me back to reason. completely overcome, i was at all risks obliged to submit, and to resolve to brave the what will the world say of it? except only deliberating afterwards whether or not i should show my work, for i did not yet suppose i should ever determine to publish it. this resolution taken, i entirely abandoned myself to my reveries, and, by frequently resolving these in my mind, formed with them the kind of plan of which the execution has been seen. this was certainly the greatest advantage that could be drawn from my follies; the love of good which has never once been effaced from my heart, turned them towards useful objects, the moral of which might have produced its good effects. my voluptuous descriptions would have lost all their graces, had they been devoid of the coloring of innocence. a weak girl is an object of pity, whom love may render interesting, and who frequently is not therefore the less amiable; but who can see without indignation the manners of the age; and what is more disgusting than the pride of an unchaste wife, who, openly treading under foot every duty, pretends that her husband ought to be grateful for her unwillingness to suffer herself to be taken in the fact? perfect beings are not in nature, and their examples are not near enough to us. but whoever says that the description of a young person born with good dispositions, and a heart equally tender and virtuous, who suffers herself, when a girl, to be overcome by love, and when a woman, has resolution enough to conquer in her turn, is upon the whole scandalous and useless, is a liar and a hypocrite; hearken not to him. besides this object of morality and conjugal chastity which is radically connected with all social order, i had in view one more secret in behalf of concord and public peace, a greater, and perhaps more important object in itself, at least for the moment for which it was created. the storm brought on by the 'encyclopedie', far from being appeased, was at the time at its height. two parties exasperated against each other to the last degree of fury soon resembled enraged wolves, set on for their mutual destruction, rather than christians and philosophers, who had a reciprocal wish to enlighten and convince each other, and lead their brethren to the way of truth. perhaps nothing more was wanting to each party than a few turbulent chiefs, who possessed a little power, to make this quarrel terminate in a civil war; and god only knows what a civil war of religion founded on each side upon the most cruel intolerance would have produced. naturally an enemy to all spirit of party, i had freely spoken severe truths to each, of which they had not listened. i thought of another expedient, which, in my simplicity, appeared to me admirable: this was to abate their reciprocal hatred by destroying their prejudices, and showing to each party the virtue and merit which in the other was worthy of public esteem and respect. this project, little remarkable for its wisdom, which supported sincerity in mankind, and whereby i fell into the error with which i reproached the abbe de saint pierre, had the success that was to be expected from it: it drew together and united the parties for no other purpose than that of crushing the author. until experience made me discover my folly, i gave my attention to it with a zeal worthy of the motive by which i was inspired; and i imagined the two characters of wolmar and julia in an ecstasy, which made me hope to render them both amiable, and, what is still more, by means of each other. satisfied with having made a rough sketch of my plan, i returned to the situations in detail, which i had marked out; and from the arrangement i gave them resulted the first two parts of the eloisa, which i finished during the winter with inexpressible pleasure, procuring gilt-paper to receive a fair copy of them, azure and silver powder to dry the writing, and blue narrow ribbon to tack my sheets together; in a word, i thought nothing sufficiently elegant and delicate for my two charming girls, of whom, like another pygmalion, i became madly enamoured. every evening, by the fireside, i read the two parts to the governesses. the daughter, without saying a word, was like myself moved to tenderness, and we mingled our sighs; her mother, finding there were no compliments, understood nothing of the matter, remained unmoved, and at the intervals when i was silent always repeated: "sir, that is very fine." madam d'epinay, uneasy at my being alone, in winter, in a solitary house, in the midst of woods, often sent to inquire after my health. i never had such real proofs of her friendship for me, to which mine never more fully answered. it would be wrong in me were not i, among these proofs, to make special mention of her portrait, which she sent me, at the same time requesting instructions from me in what manner she might have mine, painted by la tour, and which had been shown at the exhibition. i ought equally to speak of another proof of her attention to me, which, although it be laughable, is a feature in the history of my character, on account of the impression received from it. one day when it froze to an extreme degree, in opening a packet she had sent me of several things i had desired her to purchase for me, i found a little under-petticoat of english flannel, which she told me she had worn, and desired i would make of it an under-waistcoat. this care, more than friendly, appeared to me so tender, and as if she had stripped herself to clothe me, that in my emotion i repeatedly kissed, shedding tears at the same time, both the note and the petticoat. theresa thought me mad. it is singular that of all the marks of friendship madam d'epinay ever showed me this touched me the most, and that ever since our rupture i have never recollected it without being very sensibly affected. i for a long time preserved her little note, and it would still have been in my possession had not it shared the fate of my other notes received at the same period. although my disorder then gave me but little respite in winter, and a part of the interval was employed in seeking relief from pain, this was still upon the whole the season which since my residence in france i had passed with most pleasure and tranquillity. during four or five months, whilst the bad weather sheltered me from the interruptions of importunate visits, i tasted to a greater degree than i had ever yet or have since done, of that equal simple and independent life, the enjoyment of which still made it more desirable to me; without any other company than the two governesses in reality, and the two female cousins in idea. it was then especially that i daily congratulated myself upon the resolution i had had the good sense to take, unmindful of the clamors of my friends, who were vexed at seeing me delivered from their tyranny; and when i heard of the attempt of a madman, when de leyre and madam d'epinay spoke to me in letters of the trouble and agitation which reigned in paris, how thankful was i to heaven for having placed me at a distance from all such spectacles of horror and guilt. these would have been continued and increased the bilious humor which the sight of public disorders had given me; whilst seeing nothing around me in my retirement but gay and pleasing objects, my heart was wholly abandoned to sentiments which were amiable. i remark here with pleasure the course of the last peaceful moments that were left me. the spring succeeding to this winter, which had been so calm, developed the germ of the misfortunes i have yet to describe; in the tissue of which, alike interval, wherein i had leisure to respite, will not be found. i think however, i recollect, that during this interval of peace, and in the bosom of my solitude, i was not quite undisturbed by the holbachiens. diderot stirred me up some strife, and i am much deceived if it was not in the course of this winter that the 'fils naturel'--[natural son]--of which i shall soon have occasion to speak, made its appearance. independently of the causes which left me but few papers relative to that period, those even which i have been able to preserve are not very exact with respect to dates. diderot never dated his letters--madam d'epinay and madam d' houdetot seldom dated theirs except the day of the week, and de leyre mostly confined himself to the same rules. when i was desirous of putting these letters in order i was obliged to supply what was wanting by guessing at dates, so uncertain that i cannot depend upon them. unable therefore to fix with certainty the beginning of these quarrels, i prefer relating in one subsequent article everything i can recollect concerning them. the return of spring had increased my amorous delirium, and in my melancholy, occasioned by the excess of my transports, i had composed for the last parts of eloisa several letters, wherein evident marks of the rapture in which i wrote them are found. amongst others i may quote those from the elysium, and the excursion upon the lake, which, if my memory does not deceive me, are at the end of the fourth part. whoever, in reading these letters, does not feel his heart soften and melt into the tenderness by which they were dictated, ought to lay down the book: nature has refused him the means of judging of sentiment. precisely at the same time i received a second unforeseen visit from madam d'houdetot, in the absence of her husband, who was captain of the gendarmarie, and of her lover, who was also in the service. she had come to eaubonne, in the middle of the valley of montmorency, where she had taken a pretty house, from thence she made a new excursion to the hermitage. she came on horseback, and dressed in men's clothes. although i am not very fond of this kind of masquerade, i was struck with the romantic appearance she made, and, for once, it was with love. as this was the first and only time in all my life, the consequence of which will forever render it terrible to my remembrance, i must take the permission to enter into some particulars on the subject. the countess d'houdetot was nearly thirty years of age, and not handsome; her face was marked with the smallpox, her complexion coarse, she was short-sighted, and her eyes were rather round; but she had fine long black hair, which hung down in natural curls below her waist; her figure was agreeable, and she was at once both awkward and graceful in her motions; her wit was natural and pleasing; to this gayety, heedlessness and ingenuousness were perfectly suited: she abounded in charming sallies, after which she so little sought, that they sometimes escaped her lips in spite of herself. she possessed several agreeable talents, played the harpsichord, danced well, and wrote pleasing poetry. her character was angelic--this was founded upon a sweetness of mind, and except prudence and fortitude, contained in it every virtue. she was besides so much to be depended upon in all intercourse, so faithful in society, even her enemies were not under the necessity of concealing from her their secrets. i mean by her enemies the men, or rather the women, by whom she was not beloved; for as to herself she had not a heart capable of hatred, and i am of opinion this conformity with mine greatly contributed towards inspiring me with a passion for her. in confidence of the most intimate friendship, i never heard her speak ill of persons who were absent, nor even of her sister-in-law. she could neither conceal her thoughts from anyone, nor disguise any of her sentiments, and i am persuaded she spoke of her lover to her husband, as she spoke of him to her friends and acquaintances, and to everybody without distinction of persons. what proved, beyond all manner of doubt, the purity and sincerity of her nature was, that subject to very extraordinary absences of mind, and the most laughable inconsiderateness, she was often guilty of some very imprudent ones with respect to herself, but never in the least offensive to any person whatsoever. she had been married very young and against her inclinations to the comte d'houdetot, a man of fashion, and a good officer; but a man who loved play and chicane, who was not very amiable, and whom she never loved. she found in m. de saint lambert all the merit of her husband, with more ageeeable qualities of mind, joined with virtue and talents. if anything in the manners of the age can be pardoned, it is an attachment which duration renders more pure, to which its effects do honor, and which becomes cemented by reciprocal esteem. it was a little from inclination, as i am disposed to think, but much more to please saint lambert, that she came to see me. he had requested her to do it, and there was reason to believe the friendship which began to be established between us would render this society agreeable to all three. she knew i was acquainted with their connection, and as she could speak to me without restraint, it was natural she should find my conversation agreeable. she came; i saw her; i was intoxicated with love without an object; this intoxication fascinated my eyes; the object fixed itself upon her. i saw my julia in madam d'houdetot, and i soon saw nothing but madam d'houdetot, but with all the perfections with which i had just adorned the idol of my heart. to complete my delirium she spoke to me of saint lambert with a fondness of a passionate lover. contagious force of love! while listening to her, and finding myself near her, i was seized with a delicious trembling, which i had never before experienced when near to any person whatsoever. she spoke, and i felt myself affected; i thought i was nothing more than interested in her sentiments, when i perceived i possessed those which were similar; i drank freely of the poisoned cup, of which i yet tasted nothing more than the sweetness. finally, imperceptibly to us both, she inspired me for herself with all she expressed for her lover. alas! it was very late in life, and cruel was it to consume with a passion not less violent than unfortunate for a woman whose heart was already in the possession of another. notwithstanding the extraordinary emotions i had felt when near to her, i did not at first perceive what had happened to me; it was not until after her departure that, wishing to think of julia, i was struck with surprise at being unable to think of anything but madam d' houdetot. then was it my eyes were opened: i felt my misfortune, and lamented what had happened, but i did not foresee the consequences. i hesitated a long time on the manner in which i should conduct myself towards her, as if real love left behind it sufficient reason to deliberate and act accordingly. i had not yet determined upon this when she unexpectedly returned and found me unprovided. it was this time, perfectly acquainted with my situation, shame, the companion of evil, rendered me dumb, and made me tremble in her presence; i neither dared to open my mouth or raise my eyes; i was in an inexpressible confusion which it was impossible she should not perceive. i resolved to confess to her my troubled state of mind, and left her to guess the cause whence it proceeded: this was telling her in terms sufficiently clear. had i been young and amiable, and madam d' houdetot, afterwards weak, i should here blame her conduct; but this was not the case, and i am obliged to applaud and admire it. the resolution she took was equally prudent and generous. she could not suddenly break with me without giving her reasons for it to saint lambert, who himself had desired her to come and see me; this would have exposed two friends to a rupture, and perhaps a public one, which she wished to avoid. she had for me esteem and good wishes; she pitied my folly without encouraging it, and endeavored to restore me to reason. she was glad to preserve to her lover and herself a friend for whom she had some respect; and she spoke of nothing with more pleasure than the intimate and agreeable society we might form between us three the moment i should become reasonable. she did not always confine herself to these friendly exhortations, and, in case of need, did not spare me more severe reproaches, which i had richly deserved. i spared myself still less: the moment i was alone i began to recover; i was more calm after my declaration--love, known to the person by whom it is inspired, becomes more supportable. the forcible manner in which i approached myself with mine, ought to have cured me of it had the thing been possible. what powerful motives did i not call to my mind to stifle it? my morals, sentiments and principles; the shame, the treachery and crime, of abusing what was confided to friendship, and the ridiculousness of burning, at my age, with the most extravagant passion for an object whose heart was preengaged, and who could neither make me a return, nor least hope; moreover with a passion which, far from having anything to gain by constancy, daily became less sufferable. we would imagine that the last consideration which ought to have added weight to all the others, was that whereby i eluded them! what scruple, thought i, ought i to make of a folly prejudicial to nobody but myself? am i then a young man of whom madam d'houdetot ought to be afraid? would not it be said by my presumptive remorse that, by my gallantry, manner and dress, i was going to seduce her? poor jean jacques, love on at thy ease, in all safety of conscience, and be not afraid that thy sighs will be prejudicial to saint lambert. it has been seen that i never was a coxcomb, not even in my youth. the manner of thinking, of which i have spoken, was according to my turn of mind, it flattered my passions; this, was sufficient to induce me to abandon myself to it without reserve, and to laugh even at the impertinent scruple i thought i had made from vanity, rather than from reason. this is a great lesson for virtuous minds, which vice never attacks openly; it finds means to surprise them by masking itself with sophisms, and not unfrequently with a virtue. guilty without remorse, i soon became so without measure; and i entreat it may be observed in what manner my passion followed my nature, at length to plunge me into an abyss. in the first place, it assumed the air of humility to encourage me; and to render me intrepid it carried this humility even to mistrust. madam d'houdetot incessantly putting in mind of my duty, without once for a single moment flattering my folly, treated me with the greatest mildness, and remained with me upon the footing of the most tender friendship. this friendship would, i protest, have satisfied my wishes, had i thought it sincere; but finding it too strong to be real, i took it into my head that love, so ill-suited to my age and appearance, had rendered me contemptible in the eyes of madam d'houdetot; that this young mad creature only wished to divert herself with me and my superannuated passion; that she had communicated this to saint lambert; and that the indignation caused by my breach of friendship, having made her lover enter into her views, they were agreed to turn my head and then to laugh at me. this folly, which at twenty-six years of age, had made me guilty of some extravagant behavior to madam de larnage, whom i did not know, would have been pardonable in me at forty-five with madam d' houdetot had not i known that she and her lover were persons of too much uprightness to indulge themselves in such a barbarous amusement. madam d' houdetot continued her visits, which i delayed not to return. she, as well as myself, was fond of walking, and we took long walks in an enchanting country. satisfied with loving and daring to say i loved, i should have been in the most agreeable situation had not my extravagance spoiled all the charm of it. she, at first, could not comprehend the foolish pettishness with which i received her attentions; but my heart, incapable of concealing what passed in it, did not long leave her ignorant of my suspicions; she endeavored to laugh at them, but this expedient did not succeed; transports of rage would have been the consequence, and she changed her tone. her compassionate gentleness was invincible; she made me reproaches, which penetrated my heart; she expressed an inquietude at my unjust fears, of which i took advantage. i required proofs of her being in earnest. she perceived there was no other means of relieving me from my apprehensions. i became pressing: the step was delicate. it is astonishing, and perhaps without example, that a woman having suffered herself to be brought to hesitate should have got herself off so well. she refused me nothing the most tender friendship could grant; yet she granted me nothing that rendered her unfaithful, and i had the mortification to see that the disorder into which the most trifling favors had thrown all my senses had not the least effect upon hers. i have somewhere said, that nothing should be granted to the senses, when we wished to refuse them anything. to prove how false this maxim was relative to madam d' houdetot, and how far she was right to depend upon her own strength of mind, it would be necessary to enter into the detail of our long and frequent conversations, and follow them, in all their liveliness during the four months we passed together in an intimacy almost without example between two friends of different sexes who contain themselves within the bounds which we never exceeded. ah! if i had lived so long without feeling the power of real love, my heart and senses abundantly paid the arrears. what, therefore, are the transports we feel with the object of our affections by whom we are beloved, since the passions of which my idol did not partake inspired such as i felt? but i am wrong in saying madam houdetot did not partake of the passion of love; that which i felt was in some measure confined to myself; yet love was equal on both sides, but not reciprocal. we were both intoxicated with the passion, she for her lover, and i for herself; our sighs and delicious tears were mingled together. tender confidants of the secrets of each other, there was so great a similarity in our sentiments that it was impossible they should not find some common point of union. in the midst of this delicious intoxication, she never forgot herself for a moment, and i solemnly protest that, if ever, led away by my senses, i have attempted to render her unfaithful, i was never really desirous of succeeding. the vehemence itself of my passion restrained it within bounds. the duty of self-denial had elevated my mind. the lustre of every virture adorned in my eyes the idol of my heart; to have soiled their divine image would have been to destroy it. i might have committed the crime; it has been a hundred times committed in my heart; but to dishonor my sophia! ah! was this ever possible? no! i have told her a hundred times it was not. had i had it in my power to satisfy my desires, had she consented to commit herself to my discretion, i should, except in a few moments of delirium, have refused to be happy at the price of her honor. i loved her too well to wish to possess her. the distance from the hermitage to raubonne is almost a league; in my frequent excursions to it i have sometimes slept there. one evening after having supped tete-a-tete we went to walk in the garden by a fine moonlight. at the bottom of the garden a considerable copse, through which we passed on our way to a pretty grove ornamented with a cascade, of which i had given her the idea, and she had procured it to be executed accordingly. eternal remembrance of innocence and enjoyment! it was in this grove that, seated by her side upon a seat of turf under an acacia in full bloom, i found for the emotions of my heart a language worthy of them. it was the first and only time of my life; but i was sublime: if everything amiable and seducing with which the most tender and ardent love can inspire the heart of man can be so called. what intoxicating tears did i shed upon her knees! how many did i make her to shed involuntarily! at length in an involuntary transport she exclaimed: "no, never was a man so amiable, nor ever was there one who loved like you! but your friend saint lambert hears us, and my heart is incapable of loving twice." i exhausted myself with sighs; i embraced her--what an embrace! but this was all. she had lived alone for the last six months, that is absent from her husband and lover; i had seen her almost every day during three months, and love seldom failed to make a third. we had supped tete-a-tete, we were alone, in the grove by moonlight, and after two hours of the most lively and tender conversation, she left this grove at midnight, and the arms of her lover, as morally and physically pure as she had entered it. reader, weigh all these circumstances; i will add nothing more. do not, however, imagine that in this situation my passions left me as undisturbed as i was with theresa and mamma. i have already observed i was this time inspired not only with love, but with love and all its energy and fury. i will not describe either the agitations, tremblings, palpitations, convulsionary emotions, nor faintings of the heart, i continually experienced; these may be judged of by the effect her image alone made upon me. i have observed the distance from the hermitage to eaubonne was considerable; i went by the hills of andilly, which are delightful; i mused, as i walked, on her whom i was going to see, the charming reception she would give me, and upon the kiss which awaited me at my arrival. this single kiss, this pernicious embrace, even before i received it, inflamed my blood to such a degree as to affect my head, my eyes were dazzled, my knees trembled, and were unable to support me; i was obliged to stop and sit down; my whole frame was in inconceivable disorder, and i was upon the point of fainting. knowing the danger, i endeavored at setting out to divert my attention from the object, and think of something else. i had not proceeded twenty steps before the same recollection, and all that was the consequence of it, assailed me in such a manner that it was impossible to avoid them, and in spite of all my efforts i do not believe i ever made this little excursion alone with impunity. i arrived at eaubonne, weak, exhausted, and scarcely able to support myself. the moment i saw her everything was repaired; all i felt in her presence was the importunity of an inexhaustible and useless ardor. upon the road to raubonne there was a pleasant terrace called mont olympe, at which we sometimes met. i arrived first, it was proper i should wait for her; but how dear this waiting cost me! to divert my attention, i endeavored to write with my pencil billets, which i could have written with the purest drops of my blood; i never could finish one which was eligible. when she found a note in the niche upon which we had agreed, all she learned from the contents was the deplorable state in which i was when i wrote it. this state and its continuation, during three months of irritation and self-denial, so exhausted me, that i was several years before i recovered from it, and at the end of these it left me an ailment which i shall carry with me, or which will carry me to the grave. such was the sole enjoyment of a man of the most combustible constitution, but who was, at the same time, perhaps, one of the most timid mortals nature ever produced. such were the last happy days i can reckon upon earth; at the end of these began the long train of evils, in which there will be found but little interruption. it has been seen that, during the whole course of my life, my heart, as transparent as crystal, has never been capable of concealing for the space of a moment any sentiment in the least lively which had taken refuge in it. it will therefore be judged whether or not it was possible for me long to conceal my affection for madam d'houdetot. our intimacy struck the eyes of everybody, we did not make of it either a secret or a mystery. it was not of a nature to require any such precaution, and as madam d'houdetot had for me the most tender friendship with which she did not reproach herself, and i for her an esteem with the justice of which nobody was better acquainted than myself; she frank, absent, heedless; i true, awkward, haughty, impatient and choleric; we exposed ourselves more in deceitful security than we should have done had we been culpable. we both went to the chevrette; we sometimes met there by appointment. we lived there according to our accustomed manner; walking together every day talking of our amours, our duties, our friend, and our innocent projects; all this in the park opposite the apartment of madam d'epinay, under her windows, whence incessantly examining us, and thinking herself braved, she by her eyes filled her heart with rage and indignation. women have the art of concealing their anger, especially when it is great. madam d'epinay, violent but deliberate, possessed this art to an eminent degree. she feigned not to see or suspect anything, and at the same time that she doubled towards me her cares, attention, and allurements, she affected to load her sister-in-law with incivilities and marks of disdain, which she seemingly wished to communicate to me. it will easily be imagined she did not succeed; but i was on the rack. torn by opposite passions, at the same time that i was sensible of her caresses, i could scarcely contain my anger when i saw her wanting in good manners to madam d'houdetot. the angelic sweetness of this lady made her endure everything without complaint, or even without being offended. she was, in fact, so absent, and always so little attentive to these things, that half the time she did not perceive them. i was so taken up with my passion, that, seeing nothing but sophia (one of the names of madam d'houdetot),i did not perceive that i was become the laughing-stock of the whole house, and all those who came to it. the baron d'holbach, who never, as i heard of, had been at the chevrette, was one of the latter. had i at that time been as mistrustful as i am since become, i should strongly have suspected madam d'epinay to have contrived this journey to give the baron the amusing spectacle of an amorous citizen. but i was then so stupid that i saw not that even which was glaring to everybody. my stupidity did not, however, prevent me from finding in the baron a more jovial and satisfied appearance than ordinary. instead of looking upon me with his usual moroseness, he said to me a hundred jocose things without my knowing what he meant. surprise was painted in my countenance, but i answered not a word: madam d'epinay shook her sides with laughing; i knew not what possessed them. as nothing yet passed the bounds of pleasantry, the best thing i could had done, had i been in the secret, would have been to have humored the joke. it is true i perceived amid the rallying gayety of the baron, that his eyes sparkled with a malicious joy, which could have given me pain had i then remarked it to the degree it has since occurred to my recollection. one day when i went to see madam d'houdetot, at eaubonne, after her return from one of her journeys to paris, i found her melancholy, and observed that she had been weeping. i was obliged to put a restraint on myself, because madam de blainville, sister to her husband, was present; but the moment i found an opportunity, i expressed to her my uneasiness. "ah," said she, with a sigh, "i am much afraid your follies will cost me the repose of the rest of my days. st. lambert has been informed of what has passed, and ill informed of it. he does me justice, but he is vexed; and what is still worse, he conceals from me a part of his vexation. fortunately i have not concealed from him anything relative to our connection which was formed under his auspices. my letters, like my heart, were full of yourself; i made him acquainted with everything, except your extravagant passion, of which i hoped to cure you; and which he imputes to me as a crime. somebody has done us ill offices. i have been injured, but what does this signify? either let us entirely break with each other, or do you be what you ought to be. i will not in future have anything to conceal from my lover." this was the first moment in which i was sensible of the shame of feeling myself humbled by the sentiment of my fault, in presence of a young woman of whose just reproaches i approved, and to whom i ought to have been a mentor. the indignation i felt against myself would, perhaps, have been sufficient to overcome my weakness, had not the tender passion inspired me by the victim of it, again softened my heart. alas! was this a moment to harden it when it was overflowed by the tears which penetrated it in every part? this tenderness was soon changed into rage against the vile informers, who had seen nothing but the evil of a criminal but involuntary sentiment, without believing or even imagining the sincere uprightness of heart by which it was counteracted. we did not remain long in doubt about the hand by which the blow was directed. we both knew that madam d'epinay corresponded with st. lambert. this was not the first storm she had raised up against madam d'houdetot, from whom she had made a thousand efforts to detach her lover, the success of some of which made the consequences to be dreaded. besides, grimm, who, i think, had accompanied m. de castries to the army, was in westphalia, as well as saint lambert; they sometimes visited. grimm had made some attempts on madam d'houdetot, which had not succeeded, and being extremely piqued, suddenly discontinued his visits to her. let it be judged with what calmness, modest as he is known to be, he supposed she preferred to him a man older than himself, and of whom, since he had frequented the great, he had never spoken but as a person whom he patronized. my suspicions of madam d'epinay were changed into a certainty the moment i heard what had passed in my own house. when i was at the chevrette, theresa frequently came there, either to bring me letters or to pay me that attention which my ill state of health rendered necessary. madam d'epinay had asked her if madam d'houdetot and i did not write to each other. upon her answering in the affirmative, madam d'epinay pressed her to give her the letters of madam d'houdetot, assuring her that she would reseal them in such a manner as it should never be known. theresa, without showing how much she was shocked at the proposition, and without even putting me upon my guard, did nothing more than seal the letters she brought me more carefully; a lucky precaution, for madam d'epinay had her watched when she arrived, and, waiting for her in the passage, several times carried her audaciousness as far as to examine her tucker. she did more even than this: having one day invited herself with m. de margency to dinner at the hermitage, for the first time since i resided there, she seized the moment i was walking with margency to go into my closet with the mother and daughter, and to press them to show her the letters of madam d'houdetot. had the mother known where the letters were, they would have been given to her; fortunately, the daughter was the only person who was in the secret, and denied my having preserved any one of them. a virtuous, faithful and generous falsehood; whilst truth would have been a perfidy. madam d' epinay, perceiving theresa was not to be seduced, endeavored to irritate her by jealousy, reproaching her with her easy temper and blindness. "how is it possible," said she to her, "you cannot perceive there is a criminal intercourse between them? if besides what strikes your eyes you stand in need of other proofs, lend your assistance to obtain that which may furnish them; you say he tears the letters from madam d'houdetot as soon as he has read them. well, carefully gather up the pieces and give them to me; i will take upon myself to put them together." such were the lessons my friend gave to the partner of my bed. theresa had the discretion to conceal from me, for a considerable time, all these attempts; but perceiving how much i was perplexed, she thought herself obliged to inform me of everything, to the end that knowing with whom i had to do, i might take my measures accordingly. my rage and indignation are not to be described. instead of dissembling with madam d'epinay, according to her own example, and making use of counterplots, i abandoned myself without reserve to the natural impetuosity of my temper; and with my accustomed inconsiderateness came to an open rupture. my imprudence will be judged of by the following letters, which sufficiently show the manner of proceeding of both parties on this occasion: note from madam d'epinay. "why, my dear friend, do i not see you? you make me uneasy. you have so often promised me to do nothing but go and come between this place and the hermitage! in this i have left you at liberty; and you have suffered a week to pass without coming. had not i been told you were well i should have imagined the contrary. i expected you either the day before yesterday, or yesterday, but found myself disappointed. my god, what is the matter with you? you have no business, nor can you have any uneasiness; for had this been the case, i flatter myself you would have come and communicated it to me. you are, therefore, ill! relieve me, i beseech you, speedily from my fears. adieu, my dear friend: let this adieu produce me a good-morning from you." answer. "i cannot yet say anything to you. i wait to be better informed, and this i shall be sooner or later. in the meantime be persuaded that innocence will find a defender sufficiently powerful to cause some repentance in the slanderers, be they who they may." second note from the same. "do you know that your letter frightens me? what does it mean? i have read it twenty times. in truth i do not understand what it means. all i can perceive is, that you are uneasy and tormented, and that you wait until you are no longer so before you speak to me upon the subject. is this, my dear friend, what we agreed upon? what then is become of that friendship and confidence, and by what means have i lost them? is it with me or for me that you are angry? however this may be, come to me this evening i conjure you; remember you promised me no longer than a week ago to let nothing remain upon your mind, but immediately to communicate to me whatever might make it uneasy. my dear friend, i live in that confidence--there--i have just read your letter again; i do not understand the contents better, but they make me tremble. you seem to be cruelly agitated. i could wish to calm your mind, but as i am ignorant of the cause whence your uneasiness arises, i know not what to say, except that i am as wretched as yourself, and shall remain so until we meet. if you are not here this evening at six o'clock, i set off to morrow for the hermitage, let the weather be how it will, and in whatever state of health i may be; for i can no longer support the inquietude i now feel. good day, my dear friend, at all risks i take the liberty to tell you, without knowing whether or not you are in need of such advice, to endeavor to stop the progress uneasiness makes in solitude. a fly be comes a monster. i have frequently experienced it." answer. "i can neither come to see you nor receive your visit so long as my present inquietude continues. the confidence of which you speak no longer exists, and it will be easy for you to recover it. i see nothing more in your present anxiety than the desire of drawing from the confessions of others some advantage agreeable to your views; and my heart, so ready to pour its overflowings into another which opens itself to receive them, is shut against trick and cunning. i distinguish your ordinary address in the difficulty you find in understanding my note. do you think me dupe enough to believe you have not comprehended what it meant? no: but i shall know how to overcome your subtleties by my frankness. i will explain myself more clearly, that you may understand me still less. "two lovers closely united and worthy of each other's love are dear to me; i expect you will not know who i mean unless i name them. i presume attempts have been made to disunite them, and that i have been made use of to inspire one of the two with jealousy. the choice was not judicious, but it appeared convenient to the purposes of malice, and of this malice it is you whom i suspect to be guilty. i hope this becomes more clear. "thus the woman whom i most esteem would, with my knowledge, have been loaded with the infamy of dividing her heart and person between two lovers, and i with that of being one of these wretches. if i knew that, for a single moment in your life, you ever had thought this, either of her or myself, i should hate you until my last hour. but it is with having said, and not with having thought it, that i charge you. in this case, i cannot comprehend which of the three you wished to injure; but, if you love peace of mind, tremble lest you should have succeeded. i have not concealed either from you or her all the ill i think of certain connections, but i wish these to end by a means as virtuous as their cause, and that an illegitimate love may be changed into an eternal friendship. should i, who never do ill to any person, be the innocent means of doing it to my friends? no, i should never forgive you; i should become your irreconcilable enemy. your secrets are all i should respect; for i will never be a man without honor. "i do not apprehend my present perplexity will continue a long time. i shall soon know whether or not i am deceived; i shall then perhaps have great injuries to repair, which i will do with as much cheerfulness as that with which the most agreeable act of my life has been accompanied. but do you know in what manner i will make amends for my faults during the short space of time i have to remain near to you? by doing what nobody but myself would do; by telling you freely what the world thinks of you, and the breaches you have to repair in your reputation. notwithstanding all the pretended friends by whom you are surrounded, the moment you see me depart you may bid adieu to truth, you will no longer find any person who will tell it to you." third letter from the same. "i did not understand your letter of this morning; this i told you because it was the case. i understand that of this evening; do not imagine i shall ever return an answer to it; i am too anxious to forget what it contains; and although you excite my pity, i am not proof against the bitterness with which it has filled my mind. i! descend to trick and cunning with you! i! accused of the blackest of all infamies! adieu, i regret your having the adieu. i know not what i say adieu: i shall be very anxious to forgive you. you will come when you please; you will be better received than your suspicions deserve. all i have to desire of you is not to trouble yourself about my reputation. the opinion of the world concerning me is of but little importance in my esteem. my conduct is good, and this is sufficient for me. besides, i am ignorant of what has happened to the two persons who are dear to me as they are to you." this last letter extricated me from a terrible embarrassment, and threw me into another of almost the same magnitude. although these letters and answers were sent and returned the same day with an extreme rapidity, the interval had been sufficient to place another between my rage and transport, and to give me time to reflect on the enormity of my imprudence. madam d'houdetot had not recommended to me anything so much as to remain quiet, to leave her the care of extricating herself, and to avoid, especially at that moment, all noise and rupture; and i, by the most open and atrocious insults, took the properest means of carrying rage to its greatest height in the heart of a woman who was already but too well disposed to it. i now could naturally expect nothing from her but an answer so haughty, disdainful, and expressive of contempt, that i could not, without the utmost meanness, do otherwise than immediately quit her house. happily she, more adroit than i was furious, avoided, by the manner of her answer, reducing me to that extremity. but it was necessary either to quit or immediately go and see her; the alternative was inevitable; i resolved on the latter, though i foresaw how much i must be embarrassed in the explanation. for how was i to get through it without exposing either madam d'houdetot or theresa? and woe to her whom i should have named! there was nothing that the vengeance of an implacable and an intriguing woman did not make me fear for the person who should be the object of it. it was to prevent this misfortune that in my letter i had spoken of nothing but suspicions, that i might not be under the necessity of producing my proofs. this, it is true, rendered my transports less excusable; no simple suspicions being sufficient to authorize me to treat a woman, and especially a friend, in the manner i had treated madam d'epinay. but here begins the noble task i worthily fulfilled of expiating my faults and secret weaknesses by charging myself with such of the former as i was incapable of committing, and which i never did commit. i had not to bear the attack i had expected, and fear was the greatest evil i received from it. at my approach, madam d' epinay threw her arms about my neck, bursting into tears. this unexpected reception, and by an old friend, extremely affected me; i also shed many tears. i said to her a few words which had not much meaning; she uttered others with still less, and everything ended here. supper was served; we sat down to table, where, in expectation of the explanation i imagined to be deferred until supper was over, i made a very poor figure; for i am so overpowered by the most trifling inquietude of mind that i cannot conceal it from persons the least clear-sighted. my embarrassed appearance must have given her courage, yet she did not risk anything upon that foundation. there was no more explanation after than before supper: none took place on the next day, and our little tete-a-tete conversations consisted of indifferent things, or some complimentary words on my part, by which, while i informed her i could not say more relative to my suspicions, i asserted, with the greatest truth, that, if they were ill-founded, my whole life should be employed in repairing the injustice. she did not show the least curiosity to know precisely what they were, nor for what reason i had formed them, and all our peacemaking consisted, on her part as well as on mine, in the embrace at our first meeting. since madam d'epinay was the only person offended, at least in form, i thought it was not for me to strive to bring about an eclaircissement for which she herself did not seem anxious, and i returned as i had come; continuing, besides, to live with her upon the same footing as before, i soon almost entirely forgot the quarrel, and foolishly believed she had done the same, because she seemed not to remember what had passed. this, it will soon appear, was not the only vexation caused me by weakness; but i had others not less disagreeable which i had not brought upon myself. the only cause of these was a desire of forcing me from my solitude, [that is to take from it the old woman who was wanted in the conspiracy. it is astonishing that, during this long quarrel, my stupid confidence presented me from comprehending that it was not me but her whom they wanted in paris.] by means of tormenting me. these originated from diderot and the d'holbachiens. since i had resided at the hermitage, diderot incessantly harrassed me, either himself or by means of de leyre, and i soon perceived from the pleasantries of the latter upon my ramblings in the groves, with what pleasure he had travestied the hermit into the gallant shepherd. but this was not the question in my quarrels with diderot; the cause of these were more serious. after the publication of fils naturel he had sent me a copy of it, which i had read with the interest and attention i ever bestowed on the works of a friend. in reading the kind of poem annexed to it, i was surprised and rather grieved to find in it, amongst several things, disobliging but supportable against men in solitude, this bitter and severe sentence without the least softening: 'il n'y a que le mechant qui fail feul.'--[the wicked only is alone.] --this sentence is equivocal, and seems to present a double meaning; the one true, the other false, since it is impossible that a man who is determined to remain alone can do the least harm to anybody, and consequently he cannot be wicked. the sentence in itself therefore required an interpretation; the more so from an author who, when he sent it to the press, had a friend retired from the world. it appeared to me shocking and uncivil, either to have forgotten that solitary friend, or, in remembering him, not to have made from the general maxim the honorable and just exception which he owed, not only to his friend, but to so many respectable sages, who, in all ages, have sought for peace and tranquillity in retirement, and of whom, for the first time since the creation of the world, a writer took it into his head indiscriminately to make so many villains. i had a great affection and the most sincere esteem for diderot, and fully depended upon his having the same sentiments for me. but tired with his indefatigable obstinacy in continually opposing my inclinations, taste, and manner of living, and everything which related to no person but myself; shocked at seeing a man younger than i was wish, at all events, to govern me like a child; disgusted with his facility in promising, and his negligence in performing; weary of so many appointments given by himself, and capriciously broken, while new ones were again given only to be again broken; displeased at uselessly waiting for him three or four times a month on the days he had assigned, and in dining alone at night after having gone to saint denis to meet him, and waited the whole day for his coming; my heart was already full of these multiplied injuries. this last appeared to me still more serious, and gave me infinite pain. i wrote to complain of it, but in so mild and tender a manner that i moistened my paper with my tears, and my letter was sufficiently affecting to have drawn others from himself. it would be impossible to guess his answer on this subject: it was literally as follows: "i am glad my work has pleased and affected you. you are not of my opinion relative to hermits. say as much good of them as you please, you will be the only one in the world of whom i shall think well: even on this there would be much to say were it possible to speak to you without giving you offence. a woman eighty years of age! etc. a phrase of a letter from the son of madam d'epinay which, if i know you well, must have given you much pain, has been mentioned to me." the last two expressions of this letter want explanation. soon after i went to reside at the hermitage, madam le vasseur seemed dissatisfied with her situation, and to think the habitation too retired. having heard she had expressed her dislike to the place, i offered to send her back to paris, if that were more agreeable to her; to pay her lodging, and to have the same care taken of her as if she remained with me. she rejected my offer, assured me she was very well satisfied with the hermitage, and that the country air was of service to her. this was evident, for, if i may so speak, she seemed to become young again, and enjoyed better health than at paris. her daughter told me her mother would, on the whole, had been very sorry to quit the hermitage, which was really a very delightful abode, being fond of the little amusements of the garden and the care of the fruit of which she had the handling, but that she had said, what she had been desired to say, to induce me to return to paris. failing in this attempt they endeavored to obtain by a scruple the effect which complaisance had not produced, and construed into a crime my keeping the old woman at a distance from the succors of which, at her age, she might be in need. they did not recollect that she, and many other old people, whose lives were prolonged by the air of the country, might obtain these succors at montmorency, near to which i lived; as if there were no old people, except in paris, and that it was impossible for them to live in any other place. madam le vasseur who eat a great deal, and with extreme voracity, was subject to overflowings of bile and to strong diarrhoeas, which lasted several days, and served her instead of clysters. at paris she neither did nor took anything for them, but left nature to itself. she observed the same rule at the hermitage, knowing it was the best thing she could do. no matter, since there were not in the country either physicians or apothecaries, keeping her there must, no doubt, be with the desire of putting an end to her existence, although she was in perfect health. diderot should have determined at what age, under pain of being punished for homicide, it is no longer permitted to let old people remain out of paris. this was one of the atrocious accusations from which he did not except me in his remark; that none but the wicked were alone: and the meaning of his pathetic exclamation with the et cetera, which he had benignantly added: a woman of eighty years of age, etc. i thought the best answer that could be given to this reproach would be from madam le vasseur herself. i desired her to write freely and naturally her sentiments to madam d'epinay. to relieve her from all constraint i would not see her letter. i showed her that which i am going to transcribe. i wrote it to madam d'epinay upon the subject of an answer i wish to return to a letter still more severe from diderot, and which she had prevented me from sending. thursday. "my good friend. madam le vasseur is to write to you: i have desired her to tell you sincerely what she thinks. to remove from her all constraint, i have intimated to her that i will not see what she writes, and i beg of you not to communicate to me any part of the contents of her letter. "i will not send my letter because you do not choose i should; but, feeling myself grievously offended, it would be baseness and falsehood, of either of which it is impossible for me to be guilty, to acknowledge myself in the wrong. holy writ commands him to whom a blow is given, to turn the other cheek, but not to ask pardon. do you remember the man in comedy who exclaims, while he is giving another blows with his staff, 'this is the part of a philosopher!' "do not flatter yourself that he will be prevented from coming by the bad weather we now have. his rage will give him the time and strength which friendship refuses him, and it will be the first time in his life he ever came upon the day he had appointed. "he will neglect nothing to come and repeat to me verbally the injuries with which he loads me in his letters; i will endure them all with patience--he will return to paris to be ill again; and, according to custom, i shall be a very hateful man. what is to be done? endure it all. "but do not you admire the wisdom of the man who would absolutely come to saint denis in a hackney-coach to dine there, bring me home in a hackney-coach, and whose finances, eight days afterwards, obliges him to come to the hermitage on foot? it is not possible, to speak his own language, that this should be the style of sincerity. but were this the case, strange changes of fortune must have happened in the course of a week. "i join in your affliction for the illness of madam, your mother, but you will perceive your grief is not equal to mine. we suffer less by seeing the persons we love ill than when they are unjust and cruel. "adieu, my good friend, i shall never again mention to you this unhappy affair. you speak of going to paris with an unconcern, which, at any other time, would give me pleasure." i wrote to diderot, telling him what i had done, relative to madam le vasseur, upon the proposal of madam d'epinay herself; and madam le vasseur having, as it may be imagined, chosen to remain at the hermitage, where she enjoyed a good state of health, always had company, and lived very agreeably, diderot, not knowing what else to attribute to me as a crime, construed my precaution into one, and discovered another in madam le vasseur continuing to reside at the hermitage, although this was by her own choice; and though her going to paris had depended, and still depended upon herself, where she would continue to receive the same succors from me as i gave her in my house. this is the explanation of the first reproach in the letter of diderot. that of the second is in the letter which follows: "the learned man (a name given in a joke by grimm to the son of madam d'epinay) must have informed you there were upon the rampart twenty poor persons who were dying with cold and hunger, and waiting for the farthing you customarily gave them. this is a specimen of our little babbling.....and if you understand the rest it will amuse you perhap." my answer to this terrible argument, of which diderot seemed so proud, was in the following words: "i think i answered the learned man; that is, the farmer-general, that i did not pity the poor whom he had seen upon the rampart, waiting for my farthing; that he had probably amply made it up to them; that i appointed him my substitute, that the poor of paris would have no reason to complain of the change; and that i should not easily find so good a one for the poor of montmorency, who were in much greater need of assistance. here is a good and respectable old man, who, after having worked hard all his lifetime, no longer being able to continue his labors, is in his old days dying with hunger. my conscience is more satisfied with the two sous i give him every monday, than with the hundred farthings i should have distributed amongst all the beggars on the rampart. you are pleasant men, you philosophers, while you consider the inhabitants of the cities as the only persons whom you ought to befriend. it is in the country men learn how to love and serve humanity; all they learn in cities is to despise it." such were the singular scruples on which a man of sense had the folly to attribute to me as a crime my retiring from paris, and pretended to prove to me by my own example, that it was not possible to live out of the capital without becoming a bad man. i cannot at present conceive how i could be guilty of the folly of answering him, and of suffering myself to be angry instead of laughing in his fare. however, the decisions of madam d'epinay and the clamors of the 'cote in holbachique' had so far operated in her favor, that i was generally thought to be in the wrong; and the d'houdetot herself, very partial to diderot, insisted upon my going to see him at paris, and making all the advances towards an accommodation which, full and sincere as it was on my part, was not of long duration. the victorious argument by which she subdued my heart was, that at that moment diderot was in distress. besides the storm excited against the 'encyclopedie', he had then another violent one to make head against, relative to his piece, which, notwithstanding the short history he had printed at the head of it, he was accused of having entirely taken from goldoni. diderot, more wounded by criticisms than voltaire, was overwhelmed by them. madam de grasigny had been malicious enough to spread a report that i had broken with him on this account. i thought it would be just and generous publicly to prove the contrary, and i went to pass two days, not only with him, but at his lodgings. this, since i had taken up my abode at the hermitage, was my second journey to paris. i had made the first to run to poor gauffecourt, who had had a stroke of apoplexy, from which he has never perfectly recovered: i did not quit the side of his pillow until he was so far restored as to have no further need of my assistance. diderot received me well. how many wrongs are effaced by the embraces of a friend! after these, what resentment can remain in the heart? we came to but little explanation. this is needless for reciprocal invectives. the only thing necessary is to know how to forget them. there had been no underhand proceedings, none at least that had come to my knowledge: the case was not the same with madam d' epinay. he showed me the plan of the 'pere de famille'. "this," said i to him, "is the best defence to the 'fils naturel'. be silent, give your attention to this piece, and then throw it at the head of your enemies as the only answer you think proper to make them." he did so, and was satisfied with what he had done. i had six months before sent him the first two parts of my 'eloisa' to have his opinion upon them. he had not yet read the work over. we read a part of it together. he found this 'feuillet', that was his term, by which he meant loaded with words and redundancies. i myself had already perceived it; but it was the babbling of the fever: i have never been able to correct it. the last parts are not the same. the fourth especially, and the sixth, are master-pieces of diction. the day after my arrival, he would absolutely take me to sup with m. d'holbach. we were far from agreeing on this point; for i wished even to get rid of the bargain for the manuscript on chemistry, for which i was enraged to be obliged to that man. diderot carried all before him. he swore d'holbach loved me with all his heart, said i must forgive him his manner, which was the same to everybody, and more disagreeable to his friends than to others. he observed to me that, refusing the produce of this manuscript, after having accepted it two years before, was an affront to the donor which he had not deserved, and that my refusal might be interpreted into a secret reproach, for having waited so long to conclude the bargain. "i see," added he, "d'holbach every day, and know better than you do the nature of his disposition. had you reason to be dissatisfied with him, do you think your friend capable of advising you to do a mean thing?" in short, with my accustomed weakness, i suffered myself to be prevailed upon, and we went to sup with the baron, who received me as he usually had done. but his wife received me coldly and almost uncivilly. i saw nothing in her which resembled the amiable caroline, who, when a maid, expressed for me so many good wishes. i thought i had already perceived that since grimm had frequented the house of d'aine, i had not met there so friendly a reception. whilst i was at paris, saint lambert arrived there from the army. as i was not acquainted with his arrival, i did not see him until after my return to the country, first at the chevrette, and afterwards at the hermitage; to which he came with madam d'houdetot, and invited himself to dinner with me. it may be judged whether or not i received him with pleasure! but i felt one still greater at seeing the good understanding between my guests. satisfied with not having disturbed their happiness, i myself was happy in being a witness to it, and i can safely assert that, during the whole of my mad passion, and especially at the moment of which i speak, had it been in my power to take from him madam d'houdetot i would not have done it, nor should i have so much as been tempted to undertake it. i found her so amiable in her passion for saint lambert, that i could scarcely imagine she would have been as much so had she loved me instead of him; and without wishing to disturb their union, all i really desired of her was to permit herself to be loved. finally, however violent my passion may have been for this lady, i found it as agreeable to be the confidant, as the object of her amours, and i never for a moment considered her lover as a rival, but always as my friend. it will be said this was not love: be it so, but it was something more. as for saint lambert, he behaved like an honest and judicious man: as i was the only person culpable, so was i the only one who was punished; this, however, was with the greatest indulgence. he treated me severely, but in a friendly manner, and i perceived i had lost something in his esteem, but not the least part of his friendship. for this i consoled myself, knowing it would be much more easy to me to recover the one than the other, and that he had too much sense to confound an involuntary weakness and a passion with a vice of character. if even i were in fault in all that had passed, i was but very little so. had i first sought after his mistress? had not he himself sent her to me? did not she come in search of me? could i avoid receiving her? what could i do? they themselves had done the evil, and i was the person on whom it fell. in my situation they would have done as much as i did, and perhaps more; for, however estimable and faithful madam d'houdetot might be, she was still a woman; her lover was absent; opportunities were frequent; temptations strong; and it would have been very difficult for her always to have defended herself with the same success against a more enterprising man. we certainly had done a great deal in our situation, in placing boundaries beyond which we never permitted ourselves to pass. although at the bottom of my heart i found evidence sufficiently honorable in my favor, so many appearances were against me, that the invincible shame always predominant in me, gave me in his presence the appearance of guilt, and of this he took advantage for the purpose of humbling me: a single circumstance will describe this reciprocal situation. i read to him, after dinner, the letter i had written the preceding year to voltaire, and of which saint lambert had heard speak. whilst i was reading he fell asleep, and i, lately so haughty, at present so foolish, dared not stop, and continued to read whilst he continued to snore. such were my indignities and such his revenge; but his generosity never permitted him to exercise them; except between ourselves. after his return to the army, i found madam d'houdetot greatly changed in her manner with me. at this i was as much surprised as if it had not been what i ought to have expected; it affected me more than it ought to have done, and did me considerable harm. it seemed that everything from which i expected a cure, still plunged deeper into my heart the dart, which i at length broke in rather than draw out. i was quite determined to conquer myself, and leave no means untried to change my foolish passion into a pure and lasting friendship. for this purpose i had formed the finest projects in the world; for the execution of which the concurrence of madam d' houdetot was necessary. when i wished to speak to her i found her absent and embarrassed; i perceived i was no longer agreeable to her, and that something had passed which she would not communicate to me, and which i have never yet known. this change, and the impossibility of knowing the reason of it, grieved me to the heart. she asked me for her letters; these i returned her with a fidelity of which she did me the insult to doubt for a moment. this doubt was another wound given to my heart, with which she must have been so well acquainted. she did me justice, but not immediately: i understood that an examination of the packet i had sent her, made her perceive her error; i saw she reproached herself with it, by which i was a gainer of something. she could not take back her letters without returning me mine. she told me she had burnt them: of this i dared to doubt in my turn, and i confess i doubt of it at this moment. no, such letters as mine to her were, are never thrown into the fire. those of eloisa have been found ardent. heavens! what would have been said of these! no, no, she who can inspire a like passion, will never have the courage to burn the proofs of it. but i am not afraid of her having made a bad use of them: of this i do not think her capable; and besides i had taken proper measures to prevent it. the foolish, but strong apprehension of raillery, had made me begin this correspondence in a manner to secure my letters from all communication. i carried the familiarity i permitted myself with her in my intoxication so far as to speak to her in the singular number: but what theeing and thouing! she certainly could not be offended with it. yet she several times complained, but this was always useless: her complaints had no other effect than that of awakening my fears, and i besides could not suffer myself to lose ground. if these letters be not yet destroyed, and should they ever be made public, the world will see in what manner i have loved. the grief caused me by the coldness of madam d'houdetot, and the certainty of not having merited it, made me take the singular resolution to complain of it to saint lambert himself. while waiting the effect of the letter i wrote to him, i sought dissipations to which i ought sooner to have had recourse. fetes were given at the chevrette for which i composed music. the pleasure of honoring myself in the eyes of madam d'houdetot by a talent she loved, warmed my imagination, and another object still contributed to give it animation, this was the desire the author of the 'devin du villaqe' had of showing he understood music; for i had perceived some persons had, for a considerable time past, endeavored to render this doubtful, at least with respect to composition. my beginning at paris, the ordeal through which i had several times passed there, both at the house of m. dupin and that of m. de la popliniere; the quantity of music i had composed during fourteen years in the midst of the most celebrated masters and before their eyes:--finally, the opera of the 'muses gallantes', and that even of the 'devin'; a motet i had composed for mademoiselle fel, and which she had sung at the spiritual concert; the frequent conferences i had had upon this fine art with the first composers, all seemed to prevent or dissipate a doubt of such a nature. this however existed even at the chevrette, and in the mind of m. d'epinay himself. without appearing to observe it, i undertook to compose him a motet for the dedication of the chapel of the chevrette, and i begged him to make choice of the words. he directed de linant, the tutor to his son, to furnish me with these. de linant gave me words proper to the subject, and in a week after i had received them the motet was finished. this time, spite was my apollo, and never did better music come from my hand. the words began with: 'ecce sedes hic tonantis'. (i have since learned these were by santeuil, and that m. de linant had without scruple appropriated them to himself.) the grandeur of the opening is suitable to the words, and the rest of the motet is so elegantly harmonious that everyone was struck with it. i had composed it for a great orchestra. d'epinay procured the best performers. madam bruna, an italian singer, sung the motet, and was well accompanied. the composition succeeded so well that it was afterwards performed at the spiritual concert, where, in spite of secret cabals, and notwithstanding it was badly executed, it was twice generally applauded. i gave for the birthday of m. d'epinay the idea of a kind of piece half dramatic and half pantomimical, of which i also composed the music. grimm, on his arrival, heard speak of my musical success. an hour afterwards not a word more was said on the subject; but there no longer remained a doubt, not at least that i know of, of my knowledge of composition. grimm was scarcely arrived at the chevrette, where i already did not much amuse myself, before he made it insupportable to me by airs i never before saw in any person, and of which i had no idea. the evening before he came, i was dislodged from the chamber of favor, contiguous to that of madam d'epinay; it was prepared for grimm, and instead of it, i was put into another further off. "in this manner," said i, laughingly, to madam d'epinay, "new-comers displace those which are established." she seemed embarrassed. i was better acquainted the same evening with the reason for the change, in learning that between her chamber and that i had quitted there was a private door which she had thought needless to show me. her intercourse with grimm was not a secret either in her own house or to the public, not even to her husband; yet, far from confessing it to me, the confidant of secrets more important to her, and which was sure would be faithfully kept, she constantly denied it in the strongest manner. i comprehended this reserve proceeded from grimm, who, though intrusted with all my secrets, did not choose i should be with any of his. however prejudiced i was in favor of this man by former sentiments, which were not extinguished, and by the real merit he had, all was not proof against the cares he took to destroy it. he received me like the comte de tuffiere; he scarcely deigned to return my salute; he never once spoke to me, and prevented my speaking to him by not making me any answer; he everywhere passed first, and took the first place without ever paying me the least attention. all this would have been supportable had he not accompanied it with a shocking affectation, which may be judged of by one example taken from a hundred. one evening madam d'epinay, finding herself a little indisposed, ordered something for her supper to be carried into her chamber, and went up stairs to sup by the side of the fire. she asked me to go with her, which i did. grimm came afterwards. the little table was already placed, and there were but two covers. supper was served; madam d' epinay took her place on one side of the fire, grimm took an armed chair, seated himself at the other, drew the little table between them, opened his napkin, and prepared himself for eating without speaking to me a single word. madam d' epinay blushed at his behavior, and, to induce him to repair his rudeness, offered me her place. he said nothing, nor did he ever look at me. not being able to approach the fire, i walked about the chamber until a cover was brought. indisposed as i was, older than himself, longer acquainted in the house than he had been, the person who had introduced him there, and to whom as a favorite of the lady he ought to have done the honors of it, he suffered me to sup at the end of the table, at a distance from the fire, without showing me the least civility. his whole behavior to me corresponded with this example of it. he did not treat me precisely as his inferior, but he looked upon me as a cipher. i could scarcely recognize the same grimm, who, to the house of the prince de saxe-gotha, thought himself honored when i cast my eyes upon him. i had still more difficulty in reconciling this profound silence and insulting haughtiness with the tender friendship he possessed for me to those whom he knew to be real friends. it is true the only proofs he gave of it was pitying my wretched fortune, of which i did not complain; compassionating my sad fate, with which i was satisfied; and lamenting to see me obstinately refuse the benevolent services he said, he wished to render me. thus was it he artfully made the world admire his affectionate generosity, blame my ungrateful misanthropy, and insensibly accustomed people to imagine there was nothing more between a protector like him and a wretch like myself, than a connection founded upon benefactions on one part and obligations on the other, without once thinking of a friendship between equals. for my part, i have vainly sought to discover in what i was under an obligation to this new protector. i had lent him money, he had never lent me any; i had attended him in his illness, he scarcely came to see me in mine; i had given him all my friends, he never had given me any of his; i had said everything i could in his favor, and if ever he has spoken of me it has been less publicly and in another manner. he has never either rendered or offered me the least service of any kind. how, therefore, was he my mecaenas? in what manner was i protected by him? this was incomprehensible to me, and still remains so. it is true, he was more or less arrogant with everybody, but i was the only person with whom he was brutally so. i remember saint lambert once ready to throw a plate at his head, upon his, in some measure, giving him the lie at table by vulgarly saying, "that is not true." with his naturally imperious manner he had the self-sufficiency of an upstart, and became ridiculous by being extravagantly impertinent. an intercourse with the great had so far intoxicated him that he gave himself airs which none but the contemptible part of them ever assume. he never called his lackey but by "eh!" as if amongst the number of his servants my lord had not known which was in waiting. when he sent him to buy anything, he threw the money upon the ground instead of putting it into his hand. in short, entirely forgetting he was a man, he treated him with such shocking contempt, and so cruel a disdain in everything, that the poor lad, a very good creature, whom madam d'epinay had recommended, quitted his service without any other complaint than that of the impossibility of enduring such treatment. this was the la fleur of this new presuming upstart. as these things were nothing more than ridiculous, but quite opposite to my character, they contributed to render him suspicious to me. i could easily imagine that a man whose head was so much deranged could not have a heart well placed. he piqued himself upon nothing so much as upon sentiments. how could this agree with defects which are peculiar to little minds? how can the continued overflowings of a susceptible heart suffer it to be incessantly employed in so many little cares relative to the person? he who feels his heart inflamed with this celestial fire strives to diffuse it, and wishes to show what he internally is. he would wish to place his heart in his countenance, and thinks not of other paint for his cheeks. i remember the summary of his morality which madam d'epinay had mentioned to me and adopted. this consisted in one single article; that the sole duty of man is to follow all the inclinations of his heart. this morality, when i heard it mentioned, gave me great matter of reflection, although i at first considered it solely as a play of wit. but i soon perceived it was a principle really the rule of his conduct, and of which i afterwards had, at my own expense, but too many convincing proofs. it is the interior doctrine diderot has so frequently intimated to me, but which i never heard him explain. i remember having several years before been frequently told that grimm was false, that he had nothing more than the appearance of sentiment, and particularly that he did not love me. i recollected several little anecdotes which i had heard of him by m. de francueil and madam de chenonceaux, neither of whom esteemed him, and to whom he must have been known, as madam de chenonceaux was daughter to madam de rochechouart, the intimate friend of the late comte de friese, and that m. de francueil, at that time very intimate with the viscount de polignac, had lived a good deal at the palais royal precisely when grimm began to introduce himself there. all paris heard of his despair after the death of the comte de friese. it was necessary to support the reputation he had acquired after the rigors of mademoiselle fel, and of which i, more than any other person, should have seen the imposture, had i been less blind. he was obliged to be dragged to the hotel de castries where he worthily played his part, abandoned to the most mortal affliction. there, he every morning went into the garden to weep at his ease, holding before his eyes his handkerchief moistened with tears, as long as he was in sight of the hotel, but at the turning of a certain alley, people, of whom he little thought, saw him instantly put his handkerchief in his pocket and take out of it a book. this observation, which was repeatedly made, soon became public in paris, and was almost as soon forgotten. i myself had forgotten it; a circumstance in which i was concerned brought it to my recollection. i was at the point of death in my bed, in the rue de grenelle, grimm was in the country; he came one morning, quite out of breath, to see me, saying, he had arrived in town that very instant; and a moment afterwards i learned he had arrived the evening before, and had been seen at the theatre. i heard many things of the same kind; but an observation, which i was surprised not to have made sooner, struck me more than anything else. i had given to grimm all my friends without exception, they were become his. i was so inseparable from him, that i should have had some difficulty in continuing to visit at a house where he was not received. madam de crequi was the only person who refused to admit him into her company, and whom for that reason i have seldom since seen. grimm on his part made himself other friends, as well by his own means, as by those of the comte de friese. of all these not one of them ever became my friend: he never said a word to induce me even to become acquainted with them, and not one of those i sometimes met at his apartments ever showed me the least good will; the comte de friese, in whose house he lived, and with whom it consequently would have been agreeable to me to form some connection, not excepted, nor the comte de schomberg, his relation, with whom grimm was still more intimate. add to this, my own friends, whom i made his, and who were all tenderly attached to me before this acquaintance, were no longer so the moment it was made. he never gave me one of his. i gave him all mine, and these he has taken from me. if these be the effects of friendship, what are those of enmity? diderot himself told me several times at the beginning that grimm in whom i had so much confidence, was not my friend. he changed his language the moment he was no longer so himself. the manner in which i had disposed of my children wanted not the concurrence of any person. yet i informed some of my friends of it, solely to make it known to them, and that i might not in their eyes appear better than i was. these friends were three in number: diderot, grimm, and madam d'epinay. duclos, the most worthy of my confidence, was the only real friend whom i did not inform of it. he nevertheless knew what i had done. by whom? this i know not. it is not very probable the perfidy came from madam d'epinay, who knew that by following her example, had i been capable of doing it, i had in my power the means of a cruel revenge. it remains therefore between grimm and diderot, then so much united, especially against me, and it is probable this crime was common to them both. i would lay a wager that duclos, to whom i never told my secret, and who consequently was at liberty to make what use he pleased of his information, is the only person who has not spoken of it again. grimm and diderot, in their project to take from me the governesses, had used the greatest efforts to make duclos enter into their views; but this he refused to do with disdain. it was not until sometime afterwards that i learned from him what had passed between them on the subject; but i learned at the time from theresa enough to perceive there was some secret design, and that they wished to dispose of me, if not against my own consent, at least without my knowledge, or had an intention of making these two persons serve as instruments of some project they had in view. this was far from upright conduct. the opposition of duclos is a convincing proof of it. they who think proper may believe it to be friendship. this pretended friendship was as fatal to me at home as it was abroad. the long and frequent conversations with madam le vasseur, for, several years past, had made a sensible change in this woman's behavior to me, and the change was far from being in my favor. what was the subject of these singular conversations? why such a profound mystery? was the conversation of that old woman agreeable enough to take her into favor, and of sufficient importance to make of it so great a secret? during the two or three years these colloquies had, from time to time, been continued, they had appeared to me ridiculous; but when i thought of them again, they began to astonish me. this astonishment would have been carried to inquietude had i then known what the old creature was preparing for me. notwithstanding the pretended zeal for my welfare of which grimm made such a public boast, difficult to reconcile with the airs he gave himself when we were together, i heard nothing of him from any quarter the least to my advantage, and his feigned commiseration tended less to do me service than to render me contemptible. he deprived me as much as he possibly could of the resource i found in the employment i had chosen, by decrying me as a bad copyist. i confess he spoke the truth; but in this case it was not for him to do it. he proved himself in earnest by employing another copyist, and prevailing upon everybody he could, by whom i was engaged, to do the same. his intention might have been supposed to be that of reducing me to a dependence upon him and his credit for a subsistence, and to cut off the latter until i was brought to that degree of distress. all things considered, my reason imposed silence upon my former prejudice, which still pleaded in his favor. i judged his character to be at least suspicious, and with respect to his friendship i positively decided it to be false. i then resolved to see him no more, and informed madam d'epinay of the resolution i had taken, supporting, it with several unanswerable facts, but which i have now forgotten. she strongly combated my resolution without knowing how to reply to the reasons on which it was founded. she had not concerted with him; but the next day, instead of explaining herself verbally, she, with great address, gave me a letter they had drawn up together, and by which, without entering into a detail of facts, she justified him by his concentrated character, attributed to me as a crime my having suspected him of perfidy towards his friend, and exhorted me to come to an accommodation with him. this letter staggered me. in a conversation we afterwards had together, and in which i found her better prepared than she had been the first time, i suffered myself to be quite prevailed upon, and was inclined to believe i might have judged erroneously. in this case i thought i really had done a friend a very serious injury, which it was my duty to repair. in short, as i had already done several times with diderot, and the baron d'holbach, half from inclination, and half from weakness, i made all the advances i had a right to require; i went to m. grimm, like another george dandin, to make him my apologies for the offence he had given me; still in the false persuasion, which, in the course of my life has made me guilty of a thousand meannesses to my pretended friends, that there is no hatred which may not be disarmed by mildness and proper behavior; whereas, on the contrary, the hatred of the wicked becomes still more envenomed by the impossibility of finding anything to found it upon, and the sentiment of their own injustice is another cause of offence against the person who is the object of it. i have, without going further than my own history, a strong proof of this maxim in grimm, and in tronchin; both became my implacable enemies from inclination, pleasure and fancy, without having been able to charge me with having done either of them the most trifling injury, [i did not give the surname of jongleur only to the latter until a long time after his enmity had been declared, and the persecutions he brought upon me at geneva and elsewhere. i soon suppressed the name the moment i perceived i was entirely his victim. mean vengeance is unworthy of my heart, and hatred never takes the least root in it.] and whose rage, like that of tigers, becomes daily more fierce by the facility of satiating it. i expected that grimm, confused by my condescension and advances, would receive me with open arms, and the most tender friendship. he received me as a roman emperor would have done, and with a haughtiness i never saw in any person but himself. i was by no means prepared for such a reception. when, in the embarrassment of the part i had to act, and which was so unworthy of me, i had, in a few words and with a timid air, fulfilled the object which had brought me to him; before he received me into favor, he pronounced, with a deal of majesty, an harangue he had prepared, and which contained a long enumeration of his rare virtues, and especially those connected with friendship. he laid great stress upon a thing which at first struck me a great deal: this was his having always preserved the same friends. whilst he was yet speaking, i said to myself, it would be cruel for me to be the only exception to this rule. he returned to the subject so frequently, and with such emphasis, that i thought, if in this he followed nothing but the sentiments of his heart, he would be less struck with the maxim, and that he made of it an art useful to his views by procuring the means of accomplishing them. until then i had been in the same situation; i had preserved all my first friends, those even from my tenderest infancy, without having lost one of them except by death, and yet i had never before made the reflection: it was not a maxim i had prescribed myself. since, therefore, the advantage was common to both, why did he boast of it in preference, if he had not previously intended to deprive me of the merit? he afterwards endeavored to humble me by proofs of the preference our common friends gave to me. with this i was as well acquainted as himself; the question was, by what means he had obtained it? whether it was by merit or address? by exalting himself, or endeavoring to abase me? at last, when he had placed between us all the distance that he could add to the value of the favor he was about to confer, he granted me the kiss of peace, in a slight embrace which resembled the accolade which the king gives to newmade knights. i was stupefied with surprise: i knew not what to say; not a word could i utter. the whole scene had the appearance of the reprimand a preceptor gives to his pupil while he graciously spares inflicting the rod. i never think of it without perceiving to what degree judgments, founded upon appearances to which the vulgar give so much weight, are deceitful, and how frequently audaciousness and pride are found in the guilty, and shame and embarrassment in the innocent. we were reconciled: this was a relief to my heart, which every kind of quarrel fills with anguish. it will naturally be supposed that a like reconciliation changed nothing in his manners; all it effected was to deprive me of the right of complaining of them. for this reason i took a resolution to endure everything, and for the future to say not a word. so many successive vexations overwhelmed me to such a degree as to leave me but little power over my mind. receiving no answer from saint lambert, neglected by madam d'houdetot, and no longer daring to open my heart to any person, i began to be afraid that by making friendship my idol, i should sacrifice my whole life to chimeras. after putting all those with whom i had been acquainted to the test, there remained but two who had preserved my esteem, and in whom my heart could confide: duclos, of whom since my retreat to the hermitage i had lost sight, and saint lambert. i thought the only means of repairing the wrongs i had done the latter, was to open myself to him without reserve, and i resolved to confess to him everything by which his mistress should not be exposed. i have no doubt but this was another snare of my passions to keep me nearer to her person; but i should certainly have had no reserve with her lover, entirely submitting to his direction, and carrying sincerity as far as it was possible to do it. i was upon the point of writing to him a second letter, to which i was certain he would have returned an answer, when i learned the melancholy cause of his silence relative to the first. he had been unable to support until the end the fatigues of the campaign. madam d'epinay informed me he had had an attack of the palsy, and madam d'houdetot, ill from affliction, wrote me two or three days after from paris, that he was going to aix-la-chapelle to take the benefit of the waters. i will not say this melancholy circumstance afflicted me as it did her; but i am of opinion my grief of heart was as painful as her tears. the pain of knowing him to be in such a state, increased by the fear least inquietude should have contributed to occasion it, affected me more than anything that had yet happened, and i felt most cruelly a want of fortitude, which in my estimation was necessary to enable me to support so many misfortunes. happily this generous friend did not long leave me so overwhelmed with affliction; he did not forget me, notwithstanding his attack; and i soon learned from himself that i had ill judged his sentiments, and been too much alarmed for his situation. it is now time i should come to the grand revolution of my destiny, to the catastrophe which has divided my life in two parts so different from each other, and, from a very trifling cause, produced such terrible effects. one day, little thinking of what was to happen, madam d'epinay sent for me to the chevrette. the moment i saw her i perceived in her eyes and whole countenance an appearance of uneasiness, which struck me the more, as this was not customary, nobody knowing better than she did how to govern her features and her movements. "my friend," said she to me, "i am immediately going to set off for geneva; my breast is in a bad state, and my health so deranged that i must go and consult tronchin." i was the more astonished at this resolution so suddenly taken, and at the beginning of the bad season of the year, as thirty-six hours before she had not, when i left her, so much as thought of it. i asked her who she would take with her. she said her son and m. de linant; and afterwards carelessly added, "and you, dear, will not you go also?" as i did not think she spoke seriously, knowing that at the season of the year i was scarcely in a situation to go to my chamber, i joked upon the utility of the company, of one sick person to another. she herself had not seemed to make the proposition seriously, and here the matter dropped. the rest of our conversation ran upon the necessary preparations for her journey, about which she immediately gave orders, being determined to set off within a fortnight. she lost nothing by my refusal, having prevailed upon her husband to accompany her. a few days afterwards i received from diderot the note i am going to transcribe. this note, simply doubled up, so that the contents were easily read, was addressed to me at madam d'epinay's, and sent to m. de linant, tutor to the son, and confidant to the mother. note from diderot. "i am naturally disposed to love you, and am born to give you trouble. i am informed madam d'epinay is going to geneva, and do not hear you are to accompany her. my friend, you are satisfied with madam d'epinay, you must go, with her; if dissatisfied you ought still less to hesitate. do you find the weight of the obligations you are under to her uneasy to you? this is an opportunity of discharging a part of them, and relieving your mind. do you ever expect another opportunity like the present one, of giving her proofs of your gratitude? she is going to a country where she will be quite a stranger. she is ill, and will stand in need of amusement and dissipation. the winter season too! consider, my friend. your ill state of health may be a much greater objection than i think it is; but are you now more indisposed than you were a month ago, or than you will be at the beginning of spring? will you three months hence be in a situation to perform the journey more at your ease than at present? for my part i cannot but observe to you that were i unable to bear the shaking of the carriage i would take my staff and follow her. have you no fears lest your conduct should be misinterpreted? you will be suspected of ingratitude or of a secret motive. i well know, that let you do as you will you will have in your favor the testimony of your conscience, but will this alone be sufficient, and is it permitted to neglect to a certain degree that which is necessary to acquire the approbation of others? what i now write, my good friend, is to acquit myself of what i think i owe to us both. should my letter displease you, throw it into the fire and let it be forgotten. i salute, love and embrace you." although trembling and almost blind with rage whilst i read this epistle, i remarked the address with which diderot affected a milder and more polite language than he had done in his former ones, wherein he never went further than "my dear," without ever deigning to add the name of friend. i easily discovered the secondhand means by which the letter was conveyed to me; the subscription, manner and form awkwardly betrayed the manoeuvre; for we commonly wrote to each other by post, or the messenger of montmorency, and this was the first and only time he sent me his letter by any other conveyance. as soon as the first transports of my indignation permitted me to write, i, with great precipitation, wrote him the following answer, which i immediately carried from the hermitage, where i then was, to chevrette, to show it to madam d' epinay; to whom, in my blind rage, i read the contents, as well as the letter from diderot. "you cannot, my dear friend, either know the magnitude of the obligations i am under to madam d'epinay, to what a degree i am bound by them, whether or not she is desirous of my accompanying her, that this is possible, or the reasons i may have for my noncompliance. i have no objection to discuss all these points with you; but you will in the meantime confess that prescribing to me so positively what i ought to do, without first enabling yourself to judge of the matter, is, my dear philosopher, acting very inconsiderately. what is still worse, i perceive the opinion you give comes not from yourself. besides my being but little disposed to suffer myself to be led by the nose under your name by any third or fourth person, i observe in this secondary advice certain underhand dealing, which ill agrees with your candor, and from which you will on your account, as well as mine, do well in future to abstain. "you are afraid my conduct should be misinterpreted; but i defy a heart like yours to think ill of mine. others would perhaps speak better of me if i resembled them more. god preserve me from gaining their approbation! let the vile and wicked watch over my conduct and misinterpret my actions, rousseau is not a man to be afraid of them, nor is diderot to be prevailed upon to hearken to what they say. "if i am displeased with your letter, you wish me to throw it into the fire, and pay no attention to the contents. do you imagine that anything coming from you can be forgotten in such a manner? you hold, my dear friend, my tears as cheap in the pain you give me, as you do my life and health, in the cares you exhort me to take. could you but break yourself of this, your friendship would be more pleasing to me, and i should be less to be pitied." on entering the chamber of madam d'epinay i found grimm with her, with which i was highly delighted. i read to them, in a loud and clear voice, the two letters, with an intrepidity of which i should not have thought myself capable, and concluded with a few observations not in the least derogatory to it. at this unexpected audacity in a man generally timid, they were struck dumb with surprise; i perceived that arrogant man look down upon the ground, not daring to meet my eyes, which sparkled with indignation; but in the bottom of his heart he from that instant resolved upon my destruction, and, with madam d' epinay, i am certain concerted measures to that effect before they separated. it was much about this time that i at length received, by madam d'houdetot, the answer from saint lambert, dated from wolfenbuttle, a few days after the accident had happened to him, to my letter which had been long delayed upon the road. this answer gave me the consolation of which i then stood so much in need; it was full of assurance of esteem and friendship, and these gave me strength and courage to deserve them. from that moment i did my duty, but had saint lambert been less reasonable, generous and honest, i was inevitably lost. the season became bad, and people began to quit the country. madam d'houdetot informed me of the day on which she intended to come and bid adieu to the valley, and gave me a rendezvous at laubonne. this happened to be the same day on which madam d'epinay left the chevrette to go to paris for the purpose of completing preparations for her journey. fortunately she set off in the morning, and i had still time to go and dine with her sister-in-law. i had the letter from saint lambert in my pocket, and read it over several times as i walked along, this letter served me as a shield against my weakness. i made and kept to the resolution of seeing nothing in madam d'houdetot but my friend and the mistress of saint lambert; and i passed with her a tete-a-fete of four hours in a most delicious calm, infinitely preferable, even with respect to enjoyment, to the paroxysms of a burning fever, which, always, until that moment, i had had when in her presence. as she too well knew my heart not to be changed, she was sensible of the efforts i made to conquer myself, and esteemed me the more for them, and i had the pleasure of perceiving that her friendship for me was not extinguished. she announced to me the approaching return of saint lambert, who, although well enough recovered from his attack, was unable to bear the fatigues of war, and was quitting the service to come and live in peace with her. we formed the charming project of an intimate connection between us three, and had reason to hope it would be lasting, since it was founded on every sentiment by which honest and susceptible hearts could be united; and we had moreover amongst us all the knowledge and talents necessary to be sufficient to ourselves without the aid of any foreign supplement. alas! in abandoning myself to the hope of so agreeable a life i little suspected that which awaited me. we afterwards spoke of my situation with madam d'epinay. i showed her the letter from diderot, with my answer to it; i related to her everything that had passed upon the subject, and declared to her my resolution of quitting the hermitage. this she vehemently opposed, and by reasons all powerful over my heart. she expressed to me how much she could have wished i had been of the party to geneva, foreseeing she should inevitably be considered as having caused the refusal, which the letter of diderot seemed previously to announce. however, as she was acquainted with my reasons, she did not insist upon this point, but conjured me to avoid coming to an open rupture let it cost me what mortification it would, and to palliate my refusal by reasons sufficiently plausible to put away all unjust suspicions of her having been the cause of it. i told her the task she imposed on me was not easy; but that, resolved to expiate my faults at the expense of my reputation, i would give the preference to hers in everything that honor permitted me to suffer. it will soon be seen whether or not i fulfilled this engagement. my passion was so far from having lost any part of its force that i never in my life loved my sophia so ardently and tenderly as on that day, but such was the impression made upon me by the letter of saint lambert, the sentiment of my duty and the horror in which i held perfidy, that during the whole time of the interview my senses left me in peace, and i was not so much as tempted to kiss her hand. at parting she embraced me before her servants. this embrace, so different from those i had sometimes stolen from her under the foliage, proved i was become master of myself; and i am certain that had my mind, undisturbed, had time to acquire more firmness, three months would have cured me radically. here ends my personal connections with madam d'houdetot; connections of which each has been able to judge by appearance according to the disposition of his own heart, but in which the passion inspired me by that amiable woman, the most lively passion, perhaps, man ever felt, will be honorable in our own eyes by the rare and painful sacrifice we both made to duty, honor, love, and friendship. we each had too high an opinion of the other easily to suffer ourselves to do anything derogatory to our dignity. we must have been unworthy of all esteem had we not set a proper value upon one like this, and the energy of my sentiments which have rendered us culpable, was that which prevented us from becoming so. thus after a long friendship for one of these women, and the strongest affection for the other, i bade them both adieu the same day, to one never to see her more, to the other to see her again twice, upon occasions of which i shall hereafter speak. after their departure, i found myself much embarrassed to fulfill so many pressing and contradictory duties, the consequences of my imprudence; had i been in my natural situation, after the proposition and refusal of the journey to geneva, i had only to remain quiet, and everything was as it should be. but i had foolishly made of it an affair which could not remain in the state it was, and an explanation was absolutely necessary, unless i quitted the hermitage, which i had just promised madam d'houdetot not to do, at least for the present. moreover she had required me to make known the reasons for my refusal to my pretended friends, that it might not be imputed to her. yet i could not state the true reason without doing an outrage to madam d'epinay, who certainly had a right to my gratitude for what she had done for me. everything well considered, i found myself reduced to the severe but indispensable necessity of failing in respect, either to madam d'upinay, madam d'houdetot or to myself; and it was the last i resolved to make my victim. this i did without hesitation, openly and fully, and with so much generosity as to make the act worthy of expiating the faults which had reduced me to such an extremity. this sacrifice, taken advantage of by my enemies, and which they, perhaps, did not expect, has ruined my reputation, and by their assiduity, deprived me of the esteem of the public; but it has restored to me my own, and given me consolation in my misfortune. this, as it will hereafter appear, is not the last time i made such a sacrifice, nor that advantages were taken of it to do me an injury. grimm was the only person who appeared to have taken no part in the affair, and it was to him i determined to address myself. i wrote him a long letter, in which i set forth the ridiculousness of considering it as my duty to accompany madam d' epinay to geneva, the inutility of the measure, and the embarrassment even it would have caused her, besides the inconvenience to myself. i could not resist the temptation of letting him perceive in this letter how fully i was informed in what manner things were arranged, and that to me it appeared singular i should be expected to undertake the journey whilst he himself dispensed with it, and that his name was never mentioned. this letter, wherein, on account of my not being able clearly to state my reasons, i was often obliged to wander from the text, would have rendered me culpable in the eyes of the public, but it was a model of reservedness and discretion for the people who, like grimm, were fully acquainted with the things i forbore to mention, and which justified my conduct. i did not even hesitate to raise another prejudice against myself in attributing the advice of diderot, to my other friends. this i did to insinuate that madam d'houdetot had been in the same opinion as she really was, and in not mentioning that, upon the reasons i gave her, she thought differently, i could not better remove the suspicion of her having connived at my proceedings than appearing dissatisfied with her behavior. this letter was concluded by an act of confidence which would have had an effect upon any other man; for, in desiring grimm to weigh my reasons and afterwards to give me his opinion, i informed him that, let this be what it would, i should act accordingly, and such was my intention had he even thought i ought to set off; for m. d'epinay having appointed himself the conductor of his wife, my going with them would then have had a different appearance; whereas it was i who, in the first place, was asked to take upon me that employment, and he was out of the question until after my refusal. the answer from grimm was slow incoming; it was singular enough, on which account i will here transcribe it. "the departure of madam d'epinay is postponed; her son is ill, and it is necessary to wait until his health is re-established. i will consider the contents of your letter. remain quiet at your hermitage. i will send you my opinion as soon as this shall be necessary. as she will certainly not set off for some days, there is no immediate occasion for it. in the meantime you may, if you think proper, make her your offers, although this to me seems a matter of indifference. for, knowing your situation as well as you do yourself, i doubt not of her returning to your offer such an answer as she ought to do; and all the advantage which, in my opinion, can result from this, will be your having it in your power to say to those by whom you may be importuned, that your not being of the travelling party was not for want of having made your offers to that effect. moreover, i do not see why you will absolutely have it that the philosopher is the speaking-trumpet of all the world, nor because he is of opinion you ought to go, why you should imagine all your friends think as he does? if you write to madam d'epinay, her answer will be yours to all your friends, since you have it so much at heart to give them all an answer. adieu. i embrace madam le vasseur and the criminal." [m. le vasseur, whose wife governed him rather rudely, called her the lieutenant criminal. grimm in a joke gave the same name to the daughter, and by way of abridgment was pleased to retrench the first word.] struck with astonishment at reading this letter i vainly endeavored to find out what it meant. how! instead of answering me with simplicity, he took time to consider of what i had written, as if the time he had already taken was not sufficient! he intimates even the state of suspense in which he wishes to keep me, as if a profound problem was to be resolved, or that it was of importance to his views to deprive me of every means of comprehending his intentions until the moment he should think proper to make them known. what therefore did he mean by these precautions, delays, and mysteries? was this manner of acting consistent with honor and uprightness? i vainly sought for some favorable interpretation of his conduct; it was impossible to find one. whatever his design might be, were this inimical to me, his situation facilitated the execution of it without its being possible for me in mine to oppose the least obstacle. in favor in the house of a great prince, having an extensive acquaintance, and giving the tone to common circles of which he was the oracle, he had it in his power, with his usual address, to dispose everything in his favor; and i, alone in my hermitage, far removed from all society, without the benefit of advice, and having no communication with the world, had nothing to do but to remain in peace. all i did was to write to madam d'epinay upon the illness of her son, as polite a letter as could be written, but in which i did not fall into the snare of offering to accompany her to geneva. after waiting for a long time in the most cruel uncertainty, into which that barbarous man had plunged me, i learned, at the expiration of eight or ten days, that madam d'epinay was setoff, and received from him a second letter. it contained not more than seven or eight lines which i did not entirely read. it was a rupture, but in such terms as the most infernal hatred only can dictate, and these became unmeaning by the excessive degree of acrimony with which he wished to charge them. he forbade me his presence as he would have forbidden me his states. all that was wanting to his letter to make it laughable, was to be read over with coolness. without taking a copy of it, or reading the whole of the contents, i returned it him immediately, accompanied by the following note: "i refused to admit the force of the just reasons i had of suspicion: i now, when it is too late, am become sufficiently acquainted with your character. "this then is the letter upon which you took time to meditate: i return it to you, it is not for me. you may show mine to the whole world and hate me openly; this on your part will be a falsehood the less." my telling he might show my preceding letter related to an article in his by which his profound address throughout the whole affair will be judged of. i have observed that my letter might inculpate me in the eyes of persons unacquainted with the particulars of what had passed. this he was delighted to discover; but how was he to take advantage of it without exposing himself? by showing the letter he ran the risk of being reproached with abusing the confidence of his friend. to relieve himself from this embarrassment he resolved to break with me in the most violent manner possible, and to set forth in his letter the favor he did me in not showing mine. he was certain that in my indignation and anger i should refuse his feigned discretion, and permit him to show my letter to everybody; this was what he wished for, and everything turned out as he expected it would. he sent my letter all over paris, with his own commentaries upon it, which, however, were not so successful as he had expected them to be. it was not judged that the permission he had extorted to make my letter public exempted him from the blame of having so lightly taken me at my word to do me an injury. people continually asked what personal complaints he had against me to authorize so violent a hatred. finally, it was thought that if even my behavior had been such as to authorize him to break with me, friendship, although extinguished, had rights which he ought to have respected. but unfortunately the inhabitants of paris are frivolous; remarks of the moment are soon forgotten; the absent and unfortunate are neglected; the man who prospers secures favor by his presence; the intriguing and malicious support each other, renew their vile efforts, and the effects of these, incessantly succeeding each other, efface everything by which they were preceded. thus, after having so long deceived me, this man threw aside his mask; convinced that, in the state to which he had brought things, he no longer stood in need of it. relieved from the fear of being unjust towards the wretch, i left him to his reflections, and thought no more of him. a week afterwards i received an answer from madam d'epinay, dated from geneva. i understood from the manner of her letter, in which for the first time in her life, she put on airs of state with me, that both depending but little upon the success of their measures, and considering me a man inevitably lost, their intentions were to give themselves the pleasure of completing my destruction. in fact, my situation was deplorable. i perceived all my friends withdrew themselves from me without knowing how or for why. diderot, who boasted of the continuation of his attachment, and who, for three months past, had promised me a visit, did not come. the winter began to make its appearance, and brought with it my habitual disorders. my constitution, although vigorous, had been unequal to the combat of so many opposite passions. i was so exhausted that i had neither strength nor courage sufficient to resist the most trifling indisposition. had my engagements; and the continued remonstrances of diderot and madam de houdetot then permitted me to quit the hermitage, i knew not where to go, nor in what manner to drag myself along. i remained stupid and immovable. the idea alone of a step to take, a letter to write, or a word to say, made me tremble. i could not however do otherwise than reply to the letter of madam d'epinay without acknowledging myself to be worthy of the treatment with which she and her friend overwhelmed me. i determined upon notifying to her my sentiments and resolutions, not doubting a moment that from humanity, generosity, propriety, and the good manner of thinking, i imagined i had observed in her, notwithstanding her bad one, she would immediately subscribe to them. my letter was as follows: hermitage d nov., . "were it possible to die of grief i should not now be alive. "but i have at length determined to triumph over everything. friendship, madam, is extinguished between us, but that which no longer exists still has its rights, and i respect them. "i have not forgotten your goodness to me, and you may, on my part, expect as much gratitude as it is possible to have towards a person i no longer can love. all further explanation would be useless. i have in my favor my own conscience, and i return you your letter. "i wished to quit the hermitage, and i ought to have done it. my friends pretend i must stay there until spring; and since my friends desire it i will remain there until that season if you will consent to my stay." after writing and despatching this letter all i thought of was remaining quiet at the hermitage and taking care of my health; of endeavoring to recover my strength, and taking measures to remove in the spring without noise or making the rupture public. but these were not the intentions either of grimm or madam d'epinay, as it will presently appear. a few days afterwards, i had the pleasure of receiving from diderot the visit he had so frequently promised, and in which he had as constantly failed. he could not have come more opportunely; he was my oldest friend: almost the only one who remained to me; the pleasure i felt in seeing him, as things were circumstanced, may easily be imagined. my heart was full, and i disclosed it to him. i explained to him several facts which either had not come to his knowledge, or had been disguised or suppressed. i informed him, as far as i could do it with propriety, of all that had passed. i did not affect to conceal from him that with which he was but too well acquainted, that a passion equally unreasonable and unfortunate, had been the cause of my destruction; but i never acknowledged that madam d'houdetot had been made acquainted with it, or at least that i had declared it to her. i mentioned to him the unworthy manoeuvres of madam d' epinay to intercept the innocent letters her sister-in-law wrote to me. i was determined he should hear the particulars from the mouth of the persons whom she had attempted to seduce. theresa related them with great precision; but what was my astonishment when the mother came to speak, and i heard her declare and maintain that nothing of this had come to her knowledge? these were her words from which she would never depart. not four days before she herself had recited to me all the particulars theresa had just stated, and in presence of my friend she contradicted me to my face. this, to me, was decisive, and i then clearly saw my imprudence in having so long a time kept such a woman near me. i made no use of invective; i scarcely deigned to speak to her a few words of contempt. i felt what i owed to the daughter, whose steadfast uprightness was a perfect contrast to the base monoeuvres of the mother. but from the instant my resolution was taken relative to the old woman, and i waited for nothing but the moment to put it into execution. this presented itself sooner than i expected. on the th of december i received from madam d'epinay the following answer to my preceding letter: geneva, st december, . "after having for several years given you every possible mark of friendship all i can now do is to pity you. you are very unhappy. i wish your conscience may be as calm as mine. this may be necessary to the repose of your whole life. "since you are determined to quit the hermitage, and are persuaded that you ought to do it, i am astonished your friends have prevailed upon you to stay there. for my part i never consult mine upon my duty, and i have nothing further to say to you upon your own." such an unforeseen dismission, and so fully pronounced, left me not a moment to hesitate. it was necessary to quit immediately, let the weather and my health be in what state they might, although i were to sleep in the woods and upon the snow, with which the ground was then covered, and in defiance of everything madam d'houdetot might say; for i was willing to do everything to please her except render myself infamous. i never had been so embarrassed in my whole life as i then was; but my resolution was taken. i swore, let what would happen, not to sleep at the hermitage on the night of that day week. i began to prepare for sending away my effects, resolving to leave them in the open field rather than not give up the key in the course of the week: for i was determined everything should be done before a letter could be written to geneva, and an answer to it received. i never felt myself so inspired with courage: i had recovered all my strength. honor and indignation, upon which madam d'epinay had not calculated, contributed to restore me to vigor. fortune aided my audacity. m. mathas, fiscal procurer, heard of my embarrasament. he sent to offer me a little house he had in his garden of mont louis, at montmorency. i accepted it with eagerness and gratitude. the bargain was soon concluded: i immediately sent to purchase a little furniture to add to that we already had. my effects i had carted away with a deal of trouble, and a great expense: notwithstanding the ice and snow my removal was completed in a couple of days, and on the fifteenth of december i gave up the keys of the hermitage, after having paid the wages of the gardener, not being able to pay my rent. with respect to madam le vasseur, i told her we must part; her daughter attempted to make me renounce my resolution, but i was inflexible. i sent her off, to paris in a carriage of the messenger with all the furniture and effects she and her daughter had in common. i gave her some money, and engaged to pay her lodging with her children, or elsewhere to provide for her subsistence as much as it should be possible for me to do it, and never to let her want bread as long as i should have it myself. finally the day after my arrival at mont louis, i wrote to madam d'epinay the following letter: montmorency, th december . "nothing, madam, is so natural and necessary as to leave your house the moment you no longer approve of my remaining there. upon you refusing your consent to my passing the rest of the winter at the hermitage i quitted it on the fifteenth of december. my destiny was to enter it in spite of myself and to leave it the same. i thank you for the residence you prevailed upon me to make there, and i would thank you still more had i paid for it less dear. you are right in believing me unhappy; nobody upon earth knows better than yourself to what a degree i must be so. if being deceived in the choice of our friends be a misfortune, it is another not less cruel to recover from so pleasing an error." such is the faithful narrative of my residence at the hermitage, and of the reasons which obliged me to leave it. i could not break off the recital, it was necessary to continue it with the greatest exactness; this epoch of my life having had upon the rest of it an influence which will extend to my latest remembrance. the confessions of jean jacques rousseau (in books) privately printed for the members of the aldus society london, book x. the extraordinary degree of strength a momentary effervescence had given me to quit the hermitage, left me the moment i was out of it. i was scarcely established in my new habitation before i frequently suffered from retentions, which were accompanied by a new complaint; that of a rupture, from which i had for some time, without knowing what it was, felt great inconvenience. i soon was reduced to the most cruel state. the physician thieiry, my old friend, came to see me, and made me acquainted with my situation. the sight of all the apparatus of the infirmities of years, made me severely feel that when the body is no longer young, the heart is not so with impunity. the fine season did not restore me, and i passed the whole year, , in a state of languor, which made me think i was almost at the end of my career. i saw, with impatience, the closing scene approach. recovered from the chimeras of friendship, and detached from everything which had rendered life desirable to me, i saw nothing more in it that could make it agreeable; all i perceived was wretchedness and misery, which prevented me from enjoying myself. i sighed after the moment when i was to be free and escape from my enemies. but i must follow the order of events. my retreat to montmorency seemed to disconcert madam d'epinay; probably she did not expect it. my melancholy situation, the severity of the season, the general dereliction of me by my friends, all made her and grimm believe, that by driving me to the last extremity, they should oblige me to implore mercy, and thus, by vile meanness, render myself contemptible, to be suffered to remain in an asylum which honor commanded me to leave. i left it so suddenly that they had not time to prevent the step from being taken, and they were reduced to the alternative of double or quit, to endeavor to ruin me entirely, or to prevail upon me to return. grimm chose the former; but i am of opinion madam d'epinay would have preferred the latter, and this from her answer to my last letter, in which she seemed to have laid aside the airs she had given herself in the preceding ones, and to give an opening to an accommodation. the long delay of this answer, for which she made me wait a whole month, sufficiently indicates the difficulty she found in giving it a proper turn, and the deliberations by which it was preceded. she could not make any further advances without exposing herself; but after her former letters, and my sudden retreat from her house, it is impossible not to be struck with the care she takes in this letter not to suffer an offensive expression to escape her. i will copy it at length to enable my reader to judge of what she wrote: geneva, january , . "sir: i did not receive your letter of the th of december until yesterday. it was sent me in a box filled with different things, and which has been all this time upon the road. i shall answer only the postscript. you may recollect, sir, that we agreed the wages of the gardener of the hermitage should pass through your hands, the better to make him feel that he depended upon you, and to avoid the ridiculous and indecent scenes which happened in the time of his predecessor. as a proof of this, the first quarter of his wages were given to you, and a few days before my departure we agreed i should reimburse you what you had advanced. i know that of this you, at first, made some difficulty; but i had desired you to make these advances; it was natural i should acquit myself towards you, and this we concluded upon. cahouet informs me that you refused to receive the money. there is certainly some mistake in the matter. i have given orders that it may again be offered to you, and i see no reason for your wishing to pay my gardener, notwithstanding our conventions, and beyond the term even of your inhabiting the hermitage. i therefore expect, sir, that recollecting everything i have the honor to state, you will not refuse to be reimbursed for the sums you have been pleased to advance for me." after what had passed, not having the least confidence in madam d' epinay, i was unwilling to renew my connection with her; i returned no answer to this letter, and there our correspondence ended. perceiving i had taken my resolution, she took hers; and, entering into all the views of grimm and the coterie holbachique, she united her efforts with theirs to accomplish my destruction. whilst they manoevured at paris, she did the same at geneva. grimm, who afterwards went to her there, completed what she had begun. tronchin, whom they had no difficulty in gaining over, seconded them powerfully, and became the most violent of my persecutors, without having against me, any more than grimm had, the least subject of complaint. they all three spread in silence that of which the effects were seen there four years afterwards. they had more trouble at paris, where i was better known to the citizens, whose hearts, less disposed to hatred, less easily received its impressions. the better to direct their blow, they began by giving out that it was i who had left them. thence, still feigning to be my friends, they dexterously spread their malignant accusations by complaining of the injustice of their friend. their auditors, thus thrown off their guard, listened more attentively to what was said of me, and were inclined to blame my conduct. the secret accusations of perfidy and ingratitude were made with greater precaution, and by that means with greater effect. i knew they imputed to me the most atrocious crimes without being able to learn in what these consisted. all i could infer from public rumor was that this was founded upon the four following capital offences: my retiring to the country; my passion for madam d'houdetot; my refusing to accompany madam d'epinay to geneva, and my leaving the hermitage. if to these they added other griefs, they took their measures so well that it has hitherto been impossible for me to learn the subject of them. it is therefore at this period that i think i may fix the establishment of a system, since adopted by those by whom my fate has been determined, and which has made such a progress as will seem miraculous to persons who know not with what facility everything which favors the malignity of man is established. i will endeavor to explain in a few words what to me appeared visible in this profound and obscure system. with a name already distinguished and known throughout all europe, i had still preserved my primitive simplicity. my mortal aversion to all party faction and cabal had kept me free and independent, without any other chain than the attachments of my heart. alone, a stranger, without family or fortune, and unconnected with everything except my principles and duties, i intrepidly followed the paths of uprightness, never flattering or favoring any person at the expense of truth and justice. besides, having lived for two years past in solitude, without observing the course of events, i was unconnected with the affairs of the world, and not informed of what passed, nor desirous of being acquainted with it. i lived four leagues from paris as much separated from that. capital by my negligence as i should have been in the island of tinian by the sea. grimm, diderot and d'holbach were, on the contrary, in the centre of the vortex, lived in the great world, and divided amongst them almost all the spheres of it. the great wits, men of letters, men of long robe, and women, all listened to them when they chose to act in concert. the advantage three men in this situation united must have over a fourth in mine, cannot but already appear. it is true diderot and d'holbach were incapable, at least i think so, of forming black conspiracies; one of them was not base enough, nor the other sufficiently able; but it was for this reason that the party was more united. grimm alone formed his plan in his own mind, and discovered more of it than was necessary to induce his associates to concur in the execution. the ascendency he had gained over them made this quite easy, and the effect of the whole answered to the superiority of his talents. it was with these, which were of a superior kind, that, perceiving the advantage he might acquire from our respective situations, he conceived the project of overturning my reputation, and, without exposing himself, of giving me one of a nature quite opposite, by raising up about me an edifice of obscurity which it was impossible for me to penetrate, and by that means throw a light upon his manoevures and unmask him. this enterprise was difficult, because it was necessary to palliate the iniquity in the eyes of those of whose assistance he stood in need. he had honest men to deceive, to alienate from me the good opinion of everybody, and to deprive me of all my friends. what say i? he had to cut off all communication with me, that not a single word of truth might reach my ears. had a single man of generosity come and said to me, "you assume the appearance of virtue, yet this is the manner in which you are treated, and these the circumstances by which you are judged: what have you to say?" truth would have triumphed and grimm have been undone. of this he was fully convinced; but he had examined his own heart and estimated men according to their merit. i am sorry, for the honor of humanity, that he judged with so much truth. in these dark and crooked paths his steps to be the more sure were necessarily slow. he has for twelve years pursued his plan and the most difficult part of the execution of it is still to come; this is to deceive the public entirely. he is afraid of this public, and dares not lay his conspiracy open. [since this was written he has made the dangerous step with the fullest and most inconceivable success. i am of opinion it was tronchin who inspired him with courage, and supplied him with the means.] but he has found the easy means of accompanying it with power, and this power has the disposal of me. thus supported he advances with less danger. the agents of power piquing themselves but little on uprightness, and still less on candor, he has no longer the indiscretion of an honest man to fear. his safety is in my being enveloped in an impenetrable obscurity, and in concealing from me his conspiracy, well knowing that with whatever art he may have formed it, i could by a single glance of the eye discover the whole. his great address consists in appearing to favor whilst he defames me, and in giving to his perfidy an air of generosity. i felt the first effects of this system by the secret accusations of the coterie holbachiens without its being possible for me to know in what the accusations consisted, or to form a probable conjecture as to the nature of them. de leyre informed me in his letters that heinous things were attributed to me. diderot more mysteriously told me the same thing, and when i came to an explanation with both, the whole was reduced to the heads of accusation of which i have already spoken. i perceived a gradual increase of coolness in the letters from madam d'houdetot. this i could not attribute to saint lambert; he continued to write to me with the same friendship, and came to see me after his return. it was also impossible to think myself the cause of it, as we had separated well satisfied with each other, and nothing since that time had happened on my part, except my departure from the hermitage, of which she felt the necessity. therefore, not knowing whence this coolness, which she refused to acknowledge, although my heart was not to be deceived, could proceed, i was uneasy upon every account. i knew she greatly favored her sister-in-law and grimm, in consequence of their connections with saint lambert; and i was afraid of their machinations. this agitation opened my wounds, and rendered my correspondence so disagreeable as quite to disgust her with it. i saw, as at a distance, a thousand cruel circumstances, without discovering anything distinctly. i was in a situation the most insupportable to a man whose imagination is easily heated. had i been quite retired from the world, and known nothing of the matter i should have become more calm; but my heart still clung to attachments, by means of which my enemies had great advantages over me; and the feeble rays which penetrated my asylum conveyed to me nothing more than a knowledge of the blackness of the mysteries which were concealed from my eyes. i should have sunk, i have not a doubt of it, under these torments, too cruel and insupportable to my open disposition, which, by the impossibility of concealing my sentiments, makes me fear everything from those concealed from me, if fortunately objects sufficiently interesting to my heart to divert it from others with which, in spite of myself, my imagination was filled, had not presented themselves. in the last visit diderot paid me, at the hermitage, he had spoken of the article 'geneva', which d'alembert had inserted in the 'encyclopedie'; he had informed me that this article, concerted with people of the first consideration, had for object the establishment of a theatre at geneva, that measures had been taken accordingly, and that the establishment would soon take place. as diderot seemed to think all this very proper, and did not doubt of the success of the measure, and as i had besides to speak to him upon too many other subjects to touch upon that article, i made him no answer: but scandalized at these preparatives to corruption and licentiousness in my country, i waited with impatience for the volume of the 'encyclopedie', in which the article was inserted; to see whether or not it would be possible to give an answer which might ward off the blow. i received the volume soon after my establishment at mont louis, and found the articles to be written with much art and address, and worthy of the pen whence it proceeded. this, however, did not abate my desire to answer it, and notwithstanding the dejection of spirits i then labored under, my griefs and pains, the severity of the season, and the inconvenience of my new abode, in which i had not yet had time to arrange myself, i set to work with a zeal which surmounted every obstacle. in a severe winter, in the month of february, and in the situation i have described, i went every day, morning and evening, to pass a couple of hours in an open alcove which was at the bottom of the garden in which my habitation stood. this alcove, which terminated an alley of a terrace, looked upon the valley and the pond of montmorency, and presented to me, as the closing point of a prospect, the plain but respectable castle of st. gratien, the retreat of the virtuous catinat. it was in this place, then, exposed to freezing cold, that without being sheltered from the wind and snow, and having no other fire than that in my heart; i composed, in the space of three weeks, my letter to d'alembert on theatres. it was in this, for my 'eloisa' was not then half written, that i found charms in philosophical labor. until then virtuous indignation had been a substitute to apollo, tenderness and a gentleness of mind now became so. the injustice i had been witness to had irritated me, that of which i became the object rendered me melancholy; and this melancholy without bitterness was that of a heart too tender and affectionate, and which, deceived by those in whom it had confided, was obliged to remain concentred. full of that which had befallen me, and still affected by so many violent emotions, my heart added the sentiment of its sufferings to the ideas with which a meditation on my subject had inspired me; what i wrote bore evident marks of this mixture. without perceiving it i described the situation i was then in, gave portraits of grimm, madam d'epinay, madam d' houdetot, saint lambert and myself. what delicious tears did i shed as i wrote! alas! in these descriptions there are proofs but too evident that love, the fatal love of which i made such efforts to cure myself, still remained in my heart. with all this there was a certain sentiment of tenderness relative to myself; i thought i was dying, and imagined i bid the public my last adieu. far from fearing death, i joyfully saw it approach; but i felt some regret at leaving my fellow creatures without their having perceived my real merit, and being convinced how much i should have deserved their esteem had they known me better. these are the secret causes of the singular manner in which this work, opposite to that of the work by which it was preceded, is written.--[discours sur l'inegalite. discourse on the inequality of mankind.] i corrected and copied the letter, and was preparing to print it when, after a long silence, i received one from madam d'houdetot, which brought upon me a new affliction more painful than any i had yet suffered. she informed me that my passion for her was known to all paris, that i had spoken of it to persons who had made it public, that this rumor, having reached the ears of her lover, had nearly cost him his life; yet he did her justice, and peace was restored between them; but on his account, as well as on hers, and for the sake of her reputation, she thought it her duty to break off all correspondence with me, at the same time assuring me that she and her friend were both interested in my welfare, that they would defend me to the public, and that she herself would, from time to time, send to inquire after my health. "and thou also, diderot," exclaimed i, "unworthy friend!" i could not, however, yet resolve to condemn him. my weakness was known to others who might have spoken of it. i wished to doubt, but this was soon out of my power. saint lambert shortly after performed an action worthy of himself. knowing my manner of thinking, he judged of the state in which i must be; betrayed by one part of my friends and forsaken by the other. he came to see me. the first time he had not many moments to spare. he came again. unfortunately, not expecting him, i was not at home. theresa had with him a conversation of upwards of two hours, in which they informed each other of facts of great importance to us all. the surprise with which i learned that nobody doubted of my having lived with madam d'epinay, as grimm then did, cannot be equalled, except by that of saint lambert, when he was convinced that the rumor was false. he, to the great dissatisfaction of the lady, was in the same situation with myself, and the eclaircissements resulting from the conversation removed from me all regret, on account of my having broken with her forever. relative to madam d'houdetot, he mentioned several circumstances with which neither theresa nor madam d'houdetot herself were acquainted; these were known to me only in the first instance, and i had never mentioned them except to diderot, under the seal of friendship; and it was to saint lambert himself to whom he had chosen to communicate them. this last step was sufficient to determine me. i resolved to break with diderot forever, and this without further deliberation, except on the manner of doing it; for i had perceived secret ruptures turned to my prejudice, because they left the mask of friendship in possession of my most cruel enemies. the rules of good breeding, established in the world on this head, seem to have been dictated by a spirit of treachery and falsehood. to appear the friend of a man when in reality we are no longer so, is to reserve to ourselves the means of doing him an injury by surprising honest men into an error. i recollected that when the illustrious montesquieu broke with father de tournemine, he immediately said to everybody: "listen neither to father tournemine nor myself, when we speak of each other, for we are no longer friends." this open and generous proceeding was universally applauded. i resolved to follow the example with diderot; but what method was i to take to publish the rupture authentically from my retreat, and yet without scandal? i concluded on inserting in the form of a note, in my work, a passage from the book of ecclesiasticus, which declared the rupture and even the subject of it, in terms sufficiently clear to such as were acquainted with the previous circumstances, but could signify nothing to the rest of the world. i determined not to speak in my work of the friend whom i renounced, except with the honor always due to extinguished friendship. the whole may be seen in the work itself. there is nothing in this world but time and misfortune, and every act of courage seems to be a crime in adversity. for that which has been admired in montesquieu, i received only blame and reproach. as soon as my work was printed, and i had copies of it, i sent one to saint lambert, who, the evening before, had written to me in his own name and that of madam d' houdetot, a note expressive of the most tender friendship. the following is the letter he wrote to me when he returned the copy i had sent him. eaubonne, th october, . "indeed, sir, i cannot accept the present you have just made me. in that part of your preface where, relative to diderot, you quote a passage from ecclesiastes (he mistakes, it is from ecclesiasticus) the book dropped from my hand. in the conversations we had together in the summer, you seemed to be persuaded diderot was not guilty of the pretended indiscretions you had imputed to him. you may, for aught i know to the contrary, have reason to complain of him, but this does not give you a right to insult him publicly. you are not unacquainted with the nature of the persecutions he suffers, and you join the voice of an old friend to that of envy. i cannot refrain from telling you, sir, how much this heinous act of yours has shocked me. i am not acquainted with diderot, but i honor him, and i have a lively sense of the pain you give to a man, whom, at least not in my hearing, you have never reproached with anything more than a trifling weakness. you and i, sir, differ too much in our principles ever to be agreeable to each other. forget that i exist; this you will easily do. i have never done to men either good or evil of a nature to be long remembered. i promise you, sir, to forget your person and to remember nothing relative to you but your talents." this letter filled me with indignation and affliction; and, in the excess of my pangs, feeling my pride wounded, i answered him by the following note: montmoruncy, th october, . "sir: while reading your letter, i did you the honor to be surprised at it, and had the weakness to suffer it to affect me; but i find it unworthy of an answer. "i will no longer continue the copies of madam d'houdetot. if it be not agreeable to her to keep that she has, she may sent it me back and i will return her money. if she keeps it, she must still send for the rest of her paper and the money; and at the same time i beg she will return me the prospectus which she has in her possession. adieu, sir." courage under misfortune irritates the hearts of cowards, but it is pleasing to generous minds. this note seemed to make saint lambert reflect with himself and to regret his having been so violent; but too haughty in his turn to make open advances, he seized and perhaps prepared, the opportunity of palliating what he had done. a fortnight afterwards i received from madam d'epinay the following letter: thursday, th. "sir: i received the book you had the goodness to send me, and which i have read with much pleasure. i have always experienced the same sentiment in reading all the works which have come from your pen. receive my thanks for the whole. i should have returned you these in person had my affairs permitted me to remain any time in your neighborhood; but i was not this year long at the chevrette. m. and madam dupin come there on sunday to dinner. i expect m. de saint lambert, m. de francueil, and madam d'houdetot will be of the party; you will do me much pleasure by making one also. all the persons who are to dine with me, desire, and will, as well as myself, be delighted to pass with you a part of the day. i have the honor to be with the most perfect consideration," etc. this letter made my heart beat violently; after having for a year past been the subject of conversation of all paris, the idea of presenting myself as a spectacle before madam d'houdetot, made me tremble, and i had much difficulty to find sufficient courage to support that ceremony. yet as she and saint lambert were desirous of it, and madam d'epinay spoke in the name of her guests without naming one whom i should not be glad to see, i did not think i should expose myself accepting a dinner to which i was in some degree invited by all the persons who with myself were to partake of it. i therefore promised to go: on sunday the weather was bad, and madam d'epinay sent me her carriage. my arrival caused a sensation. i never met a better reception. an observer would have thought the whole company felt how much i stood in need of encouragement. none but french hearts are susceptible of this kind of delicacy. however, i found more people than i expected to see. amongst others the comte d' houdetot, whom i did not know, and his sister madam de blainville, without whose company i should have been as well pleased. she had the year before came several times to eaubonne, and her sister-in-law had left her in our solitary walks to wait until she thought proper to suffer her to join us. she had harbored a resentment against me, which during this dinner she gratified at her ease. the presence of the comte d' houdetot and saint lambert did not give me the laugh on my side, and it may be judged that a man embarrassed in the most common conversations was not very brilliant in that which then took place. i never suffered so much, appeared so awkward, or received more unexpected mortifications. as soon as we had risen from table, i withdrew from that wicked woman; i had the pleasure of seeing saint lambert and madam de'houdetot approach me, and we conversed together a part of the afternoon, upon things very indifferent it is true, but with the same familiarity as before my involuntary error. this friendly attention was not lost upon my heart, and could saint lambert have read what passed there, he certainly would have been satisfied with it. i can safely assert that although on my arrival the presence of madam d'houdetot gave me the most violent palpitations, on returning from the house i scarcely thought of her; my mind was entirely taken up with saint lambert. notwithstanding the malignant sarcasms of madam de blainville, the dinner was of great service to me, and i congratulated myself upon not having refused the invitation. i not only discovered that the intrigues of grimm and the holbachiens had not deprived me of my old acquaintance, [such is the simplicity of my heart was my opinion when i wrote these confessions.] but, what flattered me still more, that madam d'houdetot and saint lambert were less changed than i had imagined, and i at length understood that his keeping her at a distance from me proceeded more from jealousy than from disesteem. this was a consolation to me, and calmed my mind. certain of not being an object of contempt in the eyes of persons whom i esteemed, i worked upon my own heart with greater courage and success. if i did not quite extinguish in it a guilty and an unhappy passion, i at least so well regulated the remains of it that they have never since that moment led me into the most trifling error. the copies of madam d' houdetot, which she prevailed upon me to take again, and my works, which i continued to send her as soon as they appeared, produced me from her a few notes and messages, indifferent but obliging. she did still more, as will hereafter appear, and the reciprocal conduct of her lover and myself, after our intercourse had ceased, may serve as an example of the manner in which persons of honor separate when it is no longer agreeable to them to associate with each other. another advantage this dinner procured me was its being spoken of in paris, where it served as a refutation of the rumor spread by my enemies, that i had quarrelled with every person who partook of it, and especially with m. d'epinay. when i left the hermitage i had written him a very polite letter of thanks, to which he answered not less politely, and mutual civilities had continued, as well between us as between me and m. de la lalive, his brother-in-law, who even came to see me at montmorency, and sent me some of his engravings. excepting the two sisters-in-law of madam d'houdetot, i have never been on bad terms with any person of the family. my letter to d'alembert had great success. all my works had been very well received, but this was more favorable to me. it taught the public to guard against the insinuations of the coterie holbachique. when i went to the hermitage, this coterie predicted with its usual sufficiency, that i should not remain there three months. when i had stayed there twenty months, and was obliged to leave it, i still fixed my residence in the country. the coterie insisted this was from a motive of pure obstinacy, and that i was weary even to death of my retirement; but that, eaten up with pride, i chose rather to become a victim of my stubbornness than to recover from it and return to paris. the letter to d'alembert breathed a gentleness of mind which every one perceived not to be affected. had i been dissatisfied with my retreat, my style and manner would have borne evident marks of my ill-humor. this reigned in all the works i had written in paris; but in the first i wrote in the country not the least appearance of it was to be found. to persons who knew how to distinguish, this remark was decisive. they perceived i was returned to my element. yet the same work, notwithstanding all the mildness it breathed, made me by a mistake of my own and my usual ill-luck, another enemy amongst men of letters. i had become acquainted with marmontel at the house of m. de la popliniere, and his acquaintance had been continued at that of the baron. marmontel at that time wrote the 'mercure de france'. as i had too much pride to send my works to the authors of periodical publications, and wishing to send him this without his imagining it was in consequence of that title, or being desirous he should speak of it in the mercure, i wrote upon the book that it was not for the author of the mercure, but for m. marmontel. i thought i paid him a fine compliment; he mistook it for a cruel offence, and became my irreconcilable enemy. he wrote against the letter with politeness, it is true, but with a bitterness easily perceptible, and since that time has never lost an opportunity of injuring me in society, and of indirectly ill-treating me in his works. such difficulty is there in managing the irritable self-love of men of letters, and so careful ought every person to be not to leave anything equivocal in the compliments they pay them. having nothing more to disturb me, i took advantage of my leisure and independence to continue my literary pursuits with more coherence. i this winter finished my eloisa, and sent it to rey, who had it printed the year following. i was, however, interrupted in my projects by a circumstance sufficiently disagreeable. i heard new preparations were making at the opera-house to give the 'devin du village'. enraged at seeing these people arrogantly dispose of my property, i again took up the memoir i had sent to m. d'argenson, to which no answer had been returned, and having made some trifling alterations in it, i sent the manuscript by m. sellon, resident from geneva, and a letter with which he was pleased to charge himself, to the comte de st. florentin, who had succeeded m. d'argenson in the opera department. duclos, to whom i communicated what i had done, mentioned it to the 'petits violons', who offered to restore me, not my opera, but my freedom of the theatre, which i was no longer in a situation to enjoy. perceiving i had not from any quarter the least justice to expect, i gave up the affair; and the directors of the opera, without either answering or listening to my reasons, have continued to dispose as of their own property, and to turn to their profit, the devin du village, which incontestably belong to nobody but myself. since i had shaken off the yoke of my tyrants, i led a life sufficiently agreeable and peaceful; deprived of the charm of too strong attachments i was delivered from the weight of their chains. disgusted with the friends who pretended to be my protectors, and wished absolutely to dispose of me at will, and in spite of myself, to subject me to their pretended good services, i resolved in future to have no other connections than those of simple benevolence. these, without the least constraint upon liberty, constitute the pleasure of society, of which equality is the basis. i had of them as many as were necessary to enable me to taste of the charm of liberty without being subject to the dependence of it; and as soon as i had made an experiment of this manner of life, i felt it was the most proper to my age, to end my days in peace, far removed from the agitations, quarrels and cavillings in which i had just been half submerged. during my residence at the hermitage, and after my settlement at montmorency, i had made in the neighborhood some agreeable acquaintance, and which did not subject me to any inconvenience. the principal of these was young loiseau de mauleon, who, then beginning to plead at the bar, did not yet know what rank he would one day hold there. i for my part was not in the least doubt about the matter. i soon pointed out to him the illustrious career in the midst of which he is now seen, and predicted that, if he laid down to himself rigid rules for the choice of causes, and never became the defender of anything but virtue and justice, his genius, elevated by this sublime sentiment, would be equal to that of the greatest orators. he followed my advice, and now feels the good effects of it. his defence of m. de portes is worthy of demosthenes. he came every year within a quarter of a league of the hermitage to pass the vacation at st. brice, in the fife of mauleon, belonging to his mother, and where the great bossuet had formerly lodged. this is a fief, of which a like succession of proprietors would render nobility difficult to support. i had also for a neighbor in the same village of st. brice, the bookseller guerin, a man of wit, learning, of an amiable disposition, and one of the first in his profession. he brought me acquainted with jean neaulme, bookseller of amsterdam, his friend and correspondent, who afterwards printed emilius. i had another acquaintance still nearer than st. brice, this was m. maltor, vicar of groslay, a man better adapted for the functions of a statesman and a minister, than for those of the vicar of a village, and to whom a diocese at least would have been given to govern if talents decided the disposal of places. he had been secretary to the comte de luc, and was formerly intimately acquainted with jean bapiste rousseau. holding in as much esteem the memory of that illustrious exile, as he held the villain who ruined him in horror; he possessed curious anecdotes of both, which segur had not inserted in the life, still in manuscript, of the former, and he assured me that the comte de luc, far from ever having had reason to complain of his conduct, had until his last moment preserved for him the warmest friendship. m. maltor, to whom m. de vintimille gave this retreat after the death of his patron, had formerly been employed in many affairs of which, although far advanced in years, he still preserved a distinct remembrance, and reasoned upon them tolerably well. his conversation, equally amusing and instructive, had nothing in it resembling that of a village pastor: he joined the manners of a man of the world to the knowledge of one who passes his life in study. he, of all my permanent neighbors, was the person whose society was the most agreeable to me. i was also acquainted at montmorency with several fathers of the oratory, and amongst others father berthier, professor of natural philosophy; to whom, notwithstanding some little tincture of pedantry, i become attached on account of a certain air of cordial good nature which i observed in him. i had, however, some difficulty to reconcile this great simplicity with the desire and the art he had of everywhere thrusting himself into the company of the great, as well as that of the women, devotees, and philosophers. he knew how to accommodate himself to every one. i was greatly pleased with the man, and spoke of my satisfaction to all my other acquaintances. apparently what i said of him came to his ear. he one day thanked me for having thought him a good-natured man. i observed something in his forced smile which, in my eyes, totally changed his physiognomy, and which has since frequently occurred to my mind. i cannot better compare this smile than to that of panurge purchasing the sheep of dindenaut. our acquaintance had begun a little time after my arrival at the hermitage, to which place he frequently came to see me. i was already settled at montmorency when he left it to go and reside at paris. he often saw madam le vasseur there. one day, when i least expected anything of the kind, he wrote to me in behalf of that woman, informing me that grimm offered to maintain her, and to ask my permission to accept the offer. this i understood consisted in a pension of three hundred livres, and that madam le vasseur was to come and live at deuil, between the chevrette and montmorency. i will not say what impression the application made on me. it would have been less surprising had grimm had ten thousand livres a year, or any relation more easy to comprehend with that woman, and had not such a crime been made of my taking her to the country, where, as if she had become younger, he was now pleased to think of placing her. i perceived the good old lady had no other reason for asking my permission, which she might easily have done without, but the fear of losing what i already gave her, should i think ill of the step she took. although this charity appeared to be very extraordinary, it did not strike me so much then as afterwards. but had i known even everything i have since discovered, i should still as readily have given my consent as i did and was obliged to do, unless i had exceeded the offer of m. grimm. father berthier afterwards cured me a little of my opinion of his good nature and cordiality, with which i had so unthinkingly charged him. this same father berthier was acquainted with two men, who, for what reason i know not, were to become so with me; there was but little similarity between their taste and mine. they were the children of melchisedec, of whom neither the country nor the family was known, no more than, in all probability, the real name. they were jansenists, and passed for priests in disguise, perhaps on account of their ridiculous manner of wearing long swords, to which they appeared to have been fastened. the prodigious mystery in all their proceedings gave them the appearance of the heads of a party, and i never had the least doubt of their being the authors of the 'gazette ecclesiastique'. the one, tall, smooth-tongued, and sharping, was named ferrand; the other, short, squat, a sneerer, and punctilious, was a m. minard. they called each other cousin. they lodged at paris with d'alembert, in the house of his nurse named madam rousseau, and had taken at montmorency a little apartment to pass the summers there. they did everything for themselves, and had neither a servant nor runner; each had his turn weekly to purchase provisions, do the business of the kitchen, and sweep the house. they managed tolerably well, and we sometimes ate with each other. i know not for what reason they gave themselves any concern about me: for my part, my only motive for beginning an acquaintance with them was their playing at chess, and to make a poor little party i suffered four hours' fatigue. as they thrust themselves into all companies, and wished to intermeddle in everything, theresa called them the gossips, and by this name they were long known at montmorency. such, with my host m. mathas, who was a good man, were my principal country acquaintance. i still had a sufficient number at paris to live there agreeably whenever i chose it, out of the sphere of men of letters, amongst whom duclos, was the only friend i reckoned: for de levre was still too young, and although, after having been a witness to the manoeuvres of the philosophical tribe against me, he had withdrawn from it, at least i thought so, i could not yet forget the facility with which he made himself the mouthpiece of all the people of that description. in the first place i had my old and respectable friend roguin. this was a good old-fashioned friend for whom i was not indebted to my writings but to myself, and whom for that reason i have always preserved. i had the good lenieps, my countryman, and his daughter, then alive, madam lambert. i had a young genevese, named coindet, a good creature, careful, officious, zealous, who came to see me soon after i had gone to reside at the hermitage, and, without any other introducer than himself, had made his way into my good graces. he had a taste for drawing, and was acquainted with artists. he was of service to me relative to the engravings of the new eloisa; he undertook the direction of the drawings and the plates, and acquitted himself well of the commission. i had free access to the house of m. dupin, which, less brilliant than in the young days of madam dupin, was still, by the merit of the heads of the family, and the choice of company which assembled there, one of the best houses in paris. as i had not preferred anybody to them, and had separated myself from their society to live free and independent, they had always received me in a friendly manner, and i was always certain of being well received by madam dupin. i might even have counted her amongst my country neighbors after her establishment at clichy, to which place i sometimes went to pass a day or two, and where i should have been more frequently had madam dupin and madam de chenonceaux been upon better terms. but the difficulty of dividing my time in the same house between two women whose manner of thinking was unfavorable to each other, made this disagreeable: however i had the pleasure of seeing her more at my ease at deuil, where, at a trifling distance from me, she had taken a small house, and even at my own habitation, where she often came to see me. i had likewise for a friend madam de crequi, who, having become devout, no longer received d'alembert, marmontel, nor a single man of letters, except, i believe the abbe trublet, half a hypocrite, of whom she was weary. i, whose acquaintance she had sought lost neither her good wishes nor intercourse. she sent me young fat pullets from mons, and her intention was to come and see me the year following had not a journey, upon which madam de luxembourg determined, prevented her. i here owe her a place apart; she will always hold a distinguished one in my remembrance. in this list i should also place a man whom, except roguin, i ought to have mentioned as the first upon it; my old friend and brother politician, de carrio, formerly titulary secretary to the embassy from spain to venice, afterwards in sweden, where he was charge des affaires, and at length really secretary to the embassy from spain at paris. he came and surprised me at montmorency when i least expected him. he was decorated with the insignia of a spanish order, the name of which i have forgotten, with a fine cross in jewelry. he had been obliged, in his proofs of nobility, to add a letter to his name, and to bear that of the chevalier de carrion. i found him still the same man, possessing the same excellent heart, and his mind daily improving, and becoming more and more amiable. we would have renewed our former intimacy had not coindet interposed according to custom, taken advantage of the distance i was at from town to insinuate himself into my place, and, in my name, into his confidence, and supplant me by the excess of his zeal to render me services. the remembrance of carrion makes me recollect one of my country neighbors, of whom i should be inexcusable not to speak, as i have to make confession of an unpardonable neglect of which i was guilty towards him: this was the honest m. le blond, who had done me a service at venice, and, having made an excursion to france with his family, had taken a house in the country, at birche, not far from montmorency. [when i wrote this, full of my blind confidence, i was far from suspecting the real motive and the effect of his journey to paris.] as soon as i heard he was my neighbor, i, in the joy of my heart, and making it more a pleasure than a duty, went to pay him a visit. i set off upon this errand the next day. i was met by people who were coming to see me, and with whom i was obliged to return. two days afterwards i set off again for the same purpose: he had dined at paris with all his family. a third time he was at home: i heard the voice of women, and saw, at the door, a coach which alarmed me. i wished to see him, at least for the first time, quite at my ease, that we might talk over what had passed during our former connection. in fine, i so often postponed my visit from day to day, that the shame of discharging a like duty so late prevented me from doing it at all; after having dared to wait so long, i no longer dared to present myself. this negligence, at which m. le blond could not but be justly offended, gave, relative to him, the appearance of ingratitude to my indolence, and yet i felt my heart so little culpable that, had it been in my power to do m. le blond the least service, even unknown to himself, i am certain he would not have found me idle. but indolence, negligence and delay in little duties to be fulfilled have been more prejudicial to me than great vices. my greatest faults have been omissions: i have seldom done what i ought not to have done, and unfortunately it has still more rarely happened that i have done what i ought. since i am now upon the subject of my venetian acquaintance, i must not forget one which i still preserved for a considerable time after my intercourse with the rest had ceased. this was m. de joinville, who continued after his return from genoa to show me much friendship. he was fond of seeing me and of conversing with me upon the affairs of italy, and the follies of m. de montaigu, of whom he of himself knew many anecdotes, by means of his acquaintance in the office for foreign affairs in which he was much connected. i had also the pleasure of seeing at my house my old comrade dupont who had purchased a place in the province of which he was, and whose affairs had brought him to paris. m. de joinville became by degrees so desirous of seeing me, that he in some measure laid me under constraint; and, although our places of residence were at a great distance from each other, we had a friendly quarrel when i let a week pass without going to dine with him. when he went to joinville he was always desirous of my accompanying him; but having once been there to pass a week i had not the least desire to return. m. de joinville was certainly an honest man, and even amiable in certain respects but his understanding was beneath mediocrity; he was handsome, rather fond of his person and tolerably fatiguing. he had one of the most singular collections perhaps in the world, to which he gave much of his attention and endeavored to acquire it that of his friends, to whom it sometimes afforded less amusement than it did to himself. this was a complete collection of songs of the court and paris for upwards of fifty years past, in which many anecdotes were to be found that would have been sought for in vain elsewhere. these are memoirs for the history of france, which would scarcely be thought of in any other country. one day, whilst we were still upon the very best terms, he received me so coldly and in a manner so different from that which was customary to him, that after having given him an opportunity to explain, and even having begged him to do it, i left his house with a resolution, in which i have persevered, never to return to it again; for i am seldom seen where i have been once ill received, and in this case there was no diderot who pleaded for m. de joinville. i vainly endeavored to discover what i had done to offend him; i could not recollect a circumstance at which he could possibly have taken offence. i was certain of never having spoken of him or his in any other than in the most honorable manner; for he had acquired my friendship, and besides my having nothing but favorable things to say of him, my most inviolable maxim has been that of never speaking but in an honorable manner of the houses i frequented. at length, by continually ruminating. i formed the following conjecture: the last time we had seen each other, i had supped with him at the apartment of some girls of his acquaintance, in company with two or three clerks in the office of foreign affairs, very amiable men, and who had neither the manner nor appearance of libertines; and on my part, i can assert that the whole evening passed in making melancholy reflections on the wretched fate of the creatures with whom we were. i did not pay anything, as m. de joinville gave the supper, nor did i make the girls the least present, because i gave them not the opportunity i had done to the padoana of establishing a claim to the trifle i might have offered, we all came away together, cheerfully and upon very good terms. without having made a second visit to the girls, i went three or four days afterwards to dine with m. de joinville, whom i had not seen during that interval, and who gave me the reception of which i have spoken. unable to suppose any other cause for it than some misunderstanding relative to the supper, and perceiving he had no inclination to explain, i resolved to visit him no longer, but i still continued to send him my works: he frequently sent me his compliments, and one evening, meeting him in the green-room of the french theatre, he obligingly reproached me with not having called to see him, which, however, did not induce me to depart from my resolution. therefore this affair had rather the appearance of a coolness than a rupture. however, not having heard of nor seen him since that time, it would have been too late after an absence of several years, to renew my acquaintance with him. it is for this reason m. de joinville is not named in my list, although i had for a considerable time frequented his house. i will not swell my catalogue with the names of many other persons with whom i was or had become less intimate, although i sometimes saw them in the country, either at my own house or that of some neighbor, such for instance as the abbes de condillac and de malby, m. de mairan, de la lalive, de boisgelou, vatelet, ancelet, and others. i will also pass lightly over that of m. de margency, gentleman in ordinary of the king, an ancient member of the 'coterie holbachique', which he had quitted as well as myself, and the old friend of madam d'epinay from whom he had separated as i had done; i likewise consider that of m. desmahis, his friend, the celebrated but short-lived author of the comedy of the impertinent, of much the same importance. the first was my neighbor in the country, his estate at margency being near to montmorency. we were old acquaintances, but the neighborhood and a certain conformity of experience connected us still more. the last died soon afterwards. he had merit and even wit, but he was in some degree the original of his comedy, and a little of a coxcomb with women, by whom he was not much regretted. i cannot, however, omit taking notice of a new correspondence i entered into at this period, which has had too much influence over the rest of my life not to make it necessary for me to mark its origin. the person in question is de lamoignon de malesherbes of the 'cour des aides', then censor of books, which office he exercised with equal intelligence and mildness, to the great satisfaction of men of letters. i had not once been to see him at paris; yet i had never received from him any other than the most obliging condescensions relative to the censorship, and i knew that he had more than once very severely reprimanded persons who had written against me. i had new proofs of his goodness upon the subject of the edition of eloisa. the proofs of so great a work being very expensive from amsterdam by post, he, to whom all letters were free, permitted these to be addressed to him, and sent them to me under the countersign of the chancellor his father. when the work was printed he did not permit the sale of it in the kingdom until, contrary to my wishes an edition had been sold for my benefit. as the profit of this would on my part have been a theft committed upon rey, to whom i had sold the manuscript, i not only refused to accept the present intended me, without his consent, which he very generously gave, but persisted upon dividing with him the hundred pistoles (a thousand livres--forty pounds), the amount of it but of which he would not receive anything. for these hundred pistoles i had the mortification, against which m. de malesherbes had not guarded me, of seeing my work horribly mutilated, and the sale of the good edition stopped until the bad one was entirely disposed of. i have always considered m. de malesherbes as a man whose uprightness was proof against every temptation. nothing that has happened has even made me doubt for a moment of his probity; but, as weak as he is polite, he sometimes injures those he wishes to serve by the excess of his zeal to preserve them from evil. he not only retrenched a hundred pages in the edition of paris, but he made another retrenchment, which no person but the author could permit himself to do, in the copy of the good edition he sent to madam de pompadour. it is somewhere said in that work that the wife of a coal-heaver is more respectable than the mistress of a prince. this phrase had occurred to me in the warmth of composition without any application. in reading over the work i perceived it would be applied, yet in consequence of the very imprudent maxim i had adopted of not suppressing anything, on account of the application which might be made, when my conscience bore witness to me that i had not made them at the time i wrote, i determined not to expunge the phrase, and contented myself with substituting the word prince to king, which i had first written. this softening did not seem sufficient to m. de malesherbes: he retrenched the whole expression in a new sheet which he had printed on purpose and stuck in between the other with as much exactness as possible in the copy of madam de pompadour. she was not ignorant of this manoeuvre. some good-natured people took the trouble to inform her of it. for my part, it was not until a long time afterwards, and when i began to feel the consequences of it, that the matter came to my knowledge. is not this the origin of the concealed but implacable hatred of another lady who was in a like situation, without my knowing it, or even being acquainted with her person when i wrote the passage? when the book was published the acquaintance was made, and i was very uneasy. i mentioned this to the chevalier de lorenzy, who laughed at me, and said the lady was so little offended that she had not even taken notice of the matter. i believed him, perhaps rather too lightly, and made myself easy when there was much reason for my being otherwise. at the beginning of the winter i received an additional mark of the goodness of m. de malesherbes of which i was very sensible, although i did not think proper to take advantage of it. a place was vacant in the 'journal des savans'. margency wrote to me, proposing to me the place, as from himself. but i easily perceived from the manner of the letter that he was dictated to and authorized; he afterwards told me he had been desired to make me the offer. the occupations of this place were but trifling. all i should have had to do would have been to make two abstracts a month, from the books brought to me for that purpose, without being under the necessity of going once to paris, not even to pay the magistrate a visit of thanks. by this employment i should have entered a society of men of letters of the first merit; m. de mairan, clairaut, de guignes and the abbe barthelemi, with the first two of whom i had already made an acquaintance, and that of the two others was very desirable. in fine, for this trifling employment, the duties of which i might so commodiously have discharged, there was a salary of eight hundred livres (thirty-three pounds); i was for a few hours undecided, and this from a fear of making margency angry and displeasing m. de malesherbes. but at length the insupportable constraint of not having it in my power to work when i thought proper, and to be commanded by time; and moreover the certainty of badly performing the functions with which i was to charge myself, prevailed over everything, and determined me to refuse a place for which i was unfit. i knew that my whole talent consisted in a certain warmth of mind with respect to the subjects of what i had to treat, and that nothing but the love of that which was great, beautiful and sublime, could animate my genius. what would the subjects of the extracts i should have had to make from books, or even the books themselves, have signified to me? my indifference about them would have frozen my pen, and stupefied my mind. people thought i could make a trade of writing, as most of the other men of letters did, instead of which i never could write but from the warmth of imagination. this certainly was not necessary for the 'journal des savans'. i therefore wrote to margency a letter of thanks, in the politest terms possible, and so well explained to him my reasons, that it was not possible that either he or m. de malesherbes could imagine there was pride or ill-humor in my refusal. they both approved of it without receiving me less politely, and the secret was so well kept that it was never known to the public. the proposition did not come in a favorable moment. i had some time before this formed the project of quitting literature, and especially the trade of an author. i had been disgusted with men of letters by everything that had lately befallen me, and had learned from experience that it was impossible to proceed in the same track without having some connections with them. i was not much less dissatisfied with men of the world, and in general with the mixed life i had lately led, half to myself and half devoted to societies for which i was unfit. i felt more than ever, and by constant experience, that every unequal association is disadvantageous to the weaker person. living with opulent people, and in a situation different from that i had chosen, without keeping a house as they did, i was obliged to imitate them in many things; and little expenses, which were nothing to their fortunes, were for me not less ruinous than indispensable. another man in the country-house of a friend, is served by his own servant, as well at table as in his chamber; he sends him to seek for everything he wants; having nothing directly to do with the servants of the house, not even seeing them, he gives them what he pleases, and when he thinks proper; but i, alone, and without a servant, was at the mercy of the servants of the house, of whom it was necessary to gain the good graces, that i might not have much to suffer; and being treated as the equal of their master, i was obliged to treat them accordingly, and better than another would have done, because, in fact, i stood in greater need of their services. this, where there are but few domestics, may be complied with; but in the houses i frequented there were a great number, and the knaves so well understood their interests that they knew how to make me want the services of them all successively. the women of paris, who have so much wit, have no just idea of this inconvenience, and in their zeal to economize my purse they ruined me. if i supped in town, at any considerable distance from my lodgings, instead of permitting me to send for a hackney coach, the mistress of the house ordered her horses to be put to and sent me home in her carriage. she was very glad to save me the twenty-four sous (shilling) for the fiacre, but never thought of the half-crown i gave to her coachman and footman. if a lady wrote to me from paris to the hermit age or to montmorency, she regretted the four sous (two pence) the postage of the letter would have cost me, and sent it by one of her servants, who came sweating on foot, and to whom i gave a dinner and half a crown, which he certainly had well earned. if she proposed to me to pass with her a week or a fortnight at her country-house, she still said to herself, "it will be a saving to the poor man; during that time his eating will cost him nothing." she never recollected that i was the whole time idle, that the expenses of my family, my rent, linen and clothes were still going on, that i paid my barber double that it cost me more being in her house than in my own, and although i confined my little largesses to the house in which i customarily lived, that these were still ruinous to me. i am certain i have paid upwards of twenty-five crowns in the house of madam d'houdetot, at raubonne, where i never slept more than four or five times, and upwards of a thousand livres (forty pounds) as well at epinay as at the chevrette, during the five or six years i was most assiduous there. these expenses are inevitable to a man like me, who knows not how to provide anything for himself, and cannot support the sight of a lackey who grumbles and serves him with a sour look. with madam dupin, even where i was one of the family, and in whose house i rendered many services to the servants, i never received theirs but for my money. in course of time it was necessary to renounce these little liberalities, which my situation no longer permitted me to bestow, and i felt still more severely the inconvenience of associating with people in a situation different from my own. had this manner of life been to my taste, i should have been consoled for a heavy expense, which i dedicated to my pleasures; but to ruin myself at the same time that i fatigued my mind, was insupportable, and i had so felt the weight of this, that, profiting by the interval of liberty i then had, i was determined to perpetuate it, and entirely to renounce great companies, the composition of books, and all literary concerns, and for the remainder of my days to confine myself to the narrow and peaceful sphere in which i felt i was born to move. the produce of this letter to d'alembert, and of the new elosia, had a little improved the state of my finances, which had been considerably exhausted at the hermitage. emilius, to which, after i had finished eloisa, i had given great application, was in forwardness, and the produce of this could not be less than the sum of which i was already in possession. i intended to place this money in such a manner as to produce me a little annual income, which, with my copying, might be sufficient to my wants without writing any more. i had two other works upon the stocks. the first of these was my 'institutions politiques'. i examined the state of this work, and found it required several years' labor. i had not courage enough to continue it, and to wait until it was finished before i carried my intentions into execution. therefore, laying the book aside, i determined to take from it all i could, and to burn the rest; and continuing this with zeal without interrupting emilius, i finished the 'contrat social'. the dictionary of music now remained. this was mechanical, and might be taken up at any time; the object of it was entirely pecuniary. i reserved to myself the liberty of laying it aside, or of finishing it at my ease, according as my other resources collected should render this necessary or superfluous. with respect to the 'morale sensitive', of which i had made nothing more than a sketch, i entirely gave it up. as my last project, if i found i could not entirely do without copying, was that of removing from paris, where the affluence of my visitors rendered my housekeeping expensive, and deprived me of the time i should have turned to advantage to provide for it; to prevent in my retirement the state of lassitude into which an author is said to fall when he has laid down his pen, i reserved to myself an occupation which might fill up the void in my solitude without tempting me to print anything more. i know not for what reason they had long tormented me to write the memoirs of my life. although these were not until that time interesting as to the facts, i felt they might become so by the candor with which i was capable of giving them, and i determined to make of these the only work of the kind, by an unexampled veracity, that, for once at least, the world might see a man such as he internally was. i had always laughed at the false ingenuousness of montaigne, who, feigning to confess his faults, takes great care not to give himself any, except such as are amiable; whilst i, who have ever thought, and still think myself, considering everything, the best of men, felt there is no human being, however pure he maybe, who does not internally conceal some odious vice. i knew i was described to the public very different from what i really was, and so opposite, that notwithstanding my faults, all of which i was determined to relate, i could not but be a gainer by showing myself in my proper colors. this, besides, not being to be done without setting forth others also in theirs and the work for the same reason not being of a nature to appear during my lifetime, and that of several other persons, i was the more encouraged to make my confession, at which i should never have to blush before any person. i therefore resolved to dedicate my leisure to the execution of this undertaking, and immediately began to collect such letters and papers as might guide or assist my memory, greatly regretting the loss of all i had burned, mislaid and destroyed. the project of absolute retirement, one of the most reasonable i had ever formed, was strongly impressed upon my mind, and for the execution of it i was already taking measures, when heaven, which prepared me a different destiny, plunged me into a another vortex. montmorency, the ancient and fine patrimony of the illustrious family of that name, was taken from it by confiscation. it passed by the sister of duke henry, to the house of conde, which has changed the name of montmorency to that of enguien, and the duchy has no other castle than an old tower, where the archives are kept, and to which the vassals come to do homage. but at montmorency, or enguien, there is a private house, built by crosat, called 'le pauvre', which having the magnificence of the most superb chateaux, deserves and bears the name of a castle. the majestic appearance of this noble edifice, the view from it, not equalled perhaps in any country; the spacious saloon, painted by the hand of a master; the garden, planted by the celebrated le notre; all combined to form a whole strikingly majestic, in which there is still a simplicity that enforces admiration. the marechal duke de luxembourg who then inhabited this house, came every year into the neighborhood where formerly his ancestors were the masters, to pass, at least, five or six weeks as a private inhabitant, but with a splendor which did not degenerate from the ancient lustre of his family. on the first journey he made to it after my residing at montmorency, he and his lady sent to me a valet de chambre, with their compliments, inviting me to sup with them as often as it should be agreeable to me; and at each time of their coming they never failed to reiterate the same compliments and invitation. this called to my recollection madam beuzenval sending me to dine in the servants' hall. times were changed; but i was still the same man. i did not choose to be sent to dine in the servants' hall, and was but little desirous of appearing at the table of the great i should have been much better pleased had they left me as i was, without caressing me and rendering me ridiculous. i answered politely and respectfully to monsieur and madam de luxembourg, but i did not accept their offers, and my indisposition and timidity, with my embarrassment in speaking; making me tremble at the idea alone of appearing in an assembly of people of the court. i did not even go to the castle to pay a visit of thanks, although i sufficiently comprehended this was all they desired, and that their eager politeness was rather a matter of curiosity than benevolence. however, advances still were made, and even became more pressing. the countess de boufflers, who was very intimate with the lady of the marechal, sent to inquire after my health, and to beg i would go and see her. i returned her a proper answer, but did not stir from my house. at the journey of easter, the year following, , the chevalier de lorenzy, who belonged to the court of the prince of conti, and was intimate with madam de luxembourg, came several times to see me, and we became acquainted; he pressed me to go to the castle, but i refused to comply. at length, one afternoon, when i least expected anything of the kind, i saw coming up to the house the marechal de luxembourg, followed by five or six persons. there was now no longer any means of defence; and i could not, without being arrogant and unmannerly, do otherwise than return this visit, and make my court to madam la marechale, from whom the marechal had been the bearer of the most obliging compliments to me. thus, under unfortunate auspices, began the connections from which i could no longer preserve myself, although a too well-founded foresight made me afraid of them until they were made. i was excessively afraid of madam de luxembourg. i knew, she was amiable as to manner. i had seen her several times at the theatre, and with the duchess of boufflers, and in the bloom of her beauty; but she was said to be malignant; and this in a woman of her rank made me tremble. i had scarcely seen her before i was subjugated. i thought her charming, with that charm proof against time and which had the most powerful action upon my heart. i expected to find her conversation satirical and full of pleasantries and points. it was not so; it was much better. the conversation of madam de luxembourg is not remarkably full of wit; it has no sallies, nor even finesse; it is exquisitely delicate, never striking, but always pleasing. her flattery is the more intoxicating as it is natural; it seems to escape her involuntarily, and her heart to overflow because it is too full. i thought i perceived, on my first visit, that notwithstanding my awkward manner and embarrassed expression, i was not displeasing to her. all the women of the court know how to persuade us of this when they please, whether it be true or not, but they do not all, like madam de luxembourg, possess the art of rendering that persuasion so agreeable that we are no longer disposed ever to have a doubt remaining. from the first day my confidence in her would have been as full as it soon afterwards became, had not the duchess of montmorency, her daughter-in-law, young, giddy, and malicious also, taken it into her head to attack me, and in the midst of the eulogiums of her mamma, and feigned allurements on her own account, made me suspect i was only considered by them as a subject of ridicule. it would perhaps have been difficult to relieve me from this fear with these two ladies had not the extreme goodness of the marechal confirmed me in the belief that theirs was not real. nothing is more surprising, considering my timidity, than the promptitude with which i took him at his word on the footing of equality to which he would absolutely reduce himself with me, except it be that with which he took me at mine with respect to the absolute independence in which i was determined to live. both persuaded i had reason to be content with my situation, and that i was unwilling to change it, neither he nor madam de luxembourg seemed to think a moment of my purse or fortune; although i can have no doubt of the tender concern they had for me, they never proposed to me a place nor offered me their interest, except it were once, when madam de luxembourg seemed to wish me to become a member of the french academy. i alleged my religion; this she told me was no obstacle, or if it was one she engaged to remove it. i answered, that however great the honor of becoming a member of so illustrious a body might be, having refused m. de tressan, and, in some measure, the king of poland, to become a member of the academy at nancy, i could not with propriety enter into any other. madam de luxembourg did not insist, and nothing more was said upon the subject. this simplicity of intercourse with persons of such rank, and who had the power of doing anything in my favor, m. de luxembourg being, and highly deserving to be, the particular friend of the king, affords a singular contrast with the continual cares, equally importunate and officious, of the friends and protectors from whom i had just separated, and who endeavored less to serve me than to render me contemptible. when the marechal came to see me at mont louis, i was uneasy at receiving him and his retinue in my only chamber; not because i was obliged to make them all sit down in the midst of my dirty plates and broken pots, but on account of the state of the floor, which was rotten and falling to ruin, and i was afraid the weight of his attendants would entirely sink it. less concerned on account of my own danger than for that to which the affability of the marechal exposed him, i hastened to remove him from it by conducting him, notwithstanding the coldness of the weather, to my alcove, which was quite open to the air, and had no chimney. when he was there i told him my reason for having brought him to it; he told it to his lady, and they both pressed me to accept, until the floor was repaired, a lodging of the castle; or, if i preferred it, in a separate edifice called the little castle which was in the middle of the park. this delightful abode deserves to be spoken of. the park or garden of montmorency is not a plain, like that of the chevrette. it is uneven, mountainous, raised by little hills and valleys, of which the able artist has taken advantage; and thereby varied his groves, ornaments, waters, and points of view, and, if i may so speak, multiplied by art and genius a space in itself rather narrow. this park is terminated at the top by a terrace and the castle; at bottom it forms a narrow passage which opens and becomes wider towards the valley, the angle of which is filled up with a large piece of water. between the orangery, which is in this widening, and the piece of water, the banks of which are agreeably decorated, stands the little castle of which i have spoken. this edifice, and the ground about it, formerly belonged to the celebrated le brun, who amused himself in building and decorating it in the exquisite taste of architectual ornaments which that great painter had formed to himself. the castle has since been rebuilt, but still, according to the plan and design of its first master. it is little and simple, but elegant. as it stands in a hollow between the orangery and the large piece of water, and consequently is liable to be damp, it is open in the middle by a peristyle between two rows of columns, by which means the air circulating throughout the whole edifice keeps it dry, notwithstanding its unfavorable situation. when the building is seen from the opposite elevation, which is a point of view, it appears absolutely surrounded with water, and we imagine we have before our eyes an enchanted island, or the most beautiful of the three boromeans, called isola bella, in the greater lake. in this solitary edifice i was offered the choice of four complete apartments it contains, besides the ground floor, consisting of a dancing room, billiard room and a kitchen. i chose the smallest over the kitchen, which also i had with it. it was charmingly neat, with blue and white furniture. in this profound and delicious solitude, in the midst of the woods, the singing of birds of every kind, and the perfume of orange flowers, i composed, in a continual ecstasy, the fifth book of emilius, the coloring of which i owe in a great measure to the lively impression i received from the place i inhabited. with what eagerness did i run every morning at sunrise to respire the perfumed air in the peristyle! what excellent coffee i took there tete-a-tete with my theresa. my cat and dog were our company. this retinue alone would have been sufficient for me during my whole life, in which i should not have had one weary moment. i was there in a terrestrial paradise; i lived in innocence and tasted of happiness. at the journey of july, m. and madam de luxembourg showed me so much attention, and were so extremely kind, that, lodged in their house, and overwhelmed with their goodness, i could not do less than make them a proper return in assiduous respect near their persons; i scarcely quitted them; i went in the morning to pay my court to madam la marechale; after dinner i walked with the marechal; but did not sup at the castle on account of the numerous guests, and because they supped too late for me. thus far everything was as it should be, and no harm would have been done could i have remained at this point. but i have never known how to preserve a medium in my attachments, and simply fulfil the duties of society. i have ever been everything or nothing. i was soon everything; and receiving the most polite attention from persons of the highest rank, i passed the proper bounds, and conceived for them a friendship not permitted except among equals. of these i had all the familiarity in my manners, whilst they still preserved in theirs the same politeness to which they had accustomed me. yet i was never quite at my ease with madam de luxembourg. although i was not quite relieved from my fears relative to her character, i apprehended less danger from it than from her wit. it was by this especially that she impressed me with awe. i knew she was difficult as to conversation, and she had a right to be so. i knew women, especially those of her rank, would absolutely be amused, that it was better to offend than to weary them, and i judged by her commentaries upon what the people who went away had said what she must think of my blunders. i thought of an expedient to spare me with her the embarrassment of speaking; this was reading. she had heard of my eloisa, and knew it was in the press; she expressed a desire to see the work; i offered to read it to her, and she accepted my offer. i went to her every morning at ten o'clock; m. de luxembourg was present, and the door was shut. i read by the side of her bed, and so well proportioned my readings that there would have been sufficient for the whole time she had to stay, had they even not been interrupted. [the loss of a great battle, which much afflicted the king, obliged m. de luxembourg precipitately to return to court.] the success of this expedient surpassed my expectation. madam de luxembourg took a great liking to julia and the author; she spoke of nothing but me, thought of nothing else, said civil things to me from morning till night, and embraced me ten times a day. she insisted on me always having my place by her side at table, and when any great lords wished it she told them it was mine, and made them sit down somewhere else. the impression these charming manners made upon me, who was subjugated by the least mark of affection, may easily be judged of. i became really attached to her in proportion to the attachment she showed me. all my fear in perceiving this infatuation, and feeling the want of agreeableness in myself to support it, was that it would be changed into disgust; and unfortunately this fear was but too well founded. there must have been a natural opposition between her turn of mind and mine, since, independently of the numerous stupid things which at every instant escaped me in conversation, and even in my letters, and when i was upon the best terms with her, there were certain other things with which she was displeased without my being able to imagine the reason. i will quote one instance from among twenty. she knew i was writing for madam d'houdetot a copy of the new eloisa. she was desirous to have one on the same footing. this i promised her, and thereby making her one of my customers, i wrote her a polite letter upon the subject, at least such was my intention. her answer, which was as follows, stupefied me with surprise. versailles, tuesday. "i am ravished, i am satisfied: your letter has given me infinite pleasure, and i take the earliest moment to acquaint you with, and thank you for it. "these are the exact words of your letter: 'although you are certainly a very good customer, i have some pain in receiving your money: according to regular order i ought to pay for the pleasure i should have in working for you.' i will say nothing more on the subject. i have to complain of your not speaking of your state of health: nothing interests me more. i love you with all my heart: and be assured that i write this to you in a very melancholy mood, for i should have much pleasure in telling it to you myself. m. de luxembourg loves and embraces you with all his heart. "on receiving the letter i hastened to answer it, reserving to myself more fully to examine the matter, protesting against all disobliging interpretation, and after having given several days to this examination with an inquietude which may easily be conceived, and still without being able to discover in what i could have erred, what follows was my final answer on the subject. "montmorency, th december, . "since my last letter i have examined a hundred times the passage in question. i have considered it in its proper and natural meaning, as well as in every other which may be given to it, and i confess to you, madam, that i know not whether it be i who owe to you excuses, or you from whom they are due to me." it is now ten years since these letters were written. i have since that time frequently thought of the subject of them; and such is still my stupidity that i have hitherto been unable to discover what in the passages, quoted from my letter, she could find offensive, or even displeasing. i must here mention, relative to the manuscript copy of eloisa madam de luxembourg wished to have, in what manner i thought to give it some marked advantage which should distinguish it from all others. i had written separately the adventures of lord edward, and had long been undetermined whether i should insert them wholly, or in extracts, in the work in which they seemed to be wanting. i at length determined to retrench them entirely, because, not being in the manner of the rest, they would have spoiled the interesting simplicity, which was its principal merit. i had still a stronger reason when i came to know madam de luxembourg: there was in these adventures a roman marchioness, of a bad character, some parts of which, without being applicable, might have been applied to her by those to whom she was not particularly known. i was therefore, highly pleased with the determination to which i had come, and resolved to abide by it. but in the ardent desire to enrich her copy with something which was not in the other, what should i fall upon but these unfortunate adventures, and i concluded on making an extract from them to add to the work; a project dictated by madness, of which the extravagance is inexplicable, except by the blind fatality which led me on to destruction. 'quos vult perdere jupiter dementet.' i was stupid enough to make this extract with the greatest care and pains, and to send it her as the finest thing in the world; it is true, i at the same time informed her the original was burned, which was really the case, that the extract was for her alone, and would never be seen, except by herself, unless she chose to show it; which, far from proving, to her my prudence and discretion, as it was my intention to do, clearly intimated what i thought of the application by which she might be offended. my stupidity was such, that i had no doubt of her being delighted with what i had done. she did not make me the compliment upon it which i expected, and, to my great surprise, never once mentioned the paper i had sent her. i was so satisfied with myself, that it was not until a long time afterwards, i judged, from other indications, of the effect it had produced. i had still, in favor of her manuscript, another idea more reasonable, but which, by more distant effects, has not been much less prejudicial to me; so much does everything concur with the work of destiny, when that hurries on a man to misfortune. i thought of ornamenting the manuscript with the engravings of the new eloisa, which were of the same size. i asked coindet for these engravings, which belonged to me by every kind of title, and the more so as i had given him the produce of the plates, which had a considerable sale. coindet is as cunning as i am the contrary. by frequently asking him for the engravings he came to the knowledge of the use i intended to make of them. he then, under pretence of adding some new ornament, still kept them from me; and at length presented them himself. 'ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores.' this gave him an introduction upon a certain footing to the hotel de luxembourg. after my establishment at the little castle he came rather frequently to see me, and always in the morning, especially when m. and madam de luxembourg were at montmorency. therefore that i might pass the day with him, i did not go the castle. reproaches were made me on account of my absence; i told the reason of them. i was desired to bring with me m. coindet; i did so. this was, what he had sought after. therefore, thanks to the excessive goodness m. and madam de luxembourg had for me, a clerk to m. thelusson, who was sometimes pleased to give him his table when he had nobody else to dine with him, was suddenly placed at that of a marechal of france, with princes, duchesses, and persons of the highest rank at court. i shall never forget, that one day being obliged to return early to paris, the marechal said, after dinner, to the company, "let us take a walk upon the road to st. denis, and we will accompany m. coindet." this was too much for the poor man; his head was quite turned. for my part, my heart was so affected that i could not say a word. i followed the company, weeping like a child, and having the strongest desire to kiss the foot of the good marechal; but the continuation of the history of the manuscript has made me anticipate. i will go a little back, and, as far as my memory will permit, mark each event in its proper order. as soon as the little house of mont louis was ready, i had it neatly furnished and again established myself there. i could not break through the resolution i had made on quitting the hermitage of always having my apartment to myself; but i found a difficulty in resolving to quit the little castle. i kept the key of it, and being delighted with the charming breakfasts of the peristyle, frequently went to the castle to sleep, and stayed three or four days as at a country-house. i was at that time perhaps better and more agreeably lodged than any private individual in europe. my host, m. mathas, one of the best men in the world, had left me the absolute direction of the repairs at mont louis, and insisted upon my disposing of his workmen without his interference. i therefore found the means of making of a single chamber upon the first story, a complete set of apartments consisting of a chamber, antechamber, and a water closet. upon the ground-floor was the kitchen and the chamber of theresa. the alcove served me for a closet by means of a glazed partition and a chimney i had made there. after my return to this habitation, i amused myself in decorating the terrace, which was already shaded by two rows of linden trees; i added two others to make a cabinet of verdure, and placed in it a table and stone benches: i surrounded it with lilies, syringa and woodbines, and had a beautiful border of flowers parallel with the two rows of trees. this terrace, more elevated than that of the castle, from which the view was at least as fine, and where i had tamed a great number of birds, was my drawing-room, in which i received m. and madam de luxembourg, the duke of villeroy, the prince of tingry, the marquis of armentieres, the duchess of montmorency, the duchess of bouffiers, the countess of valentinois, the countess of boufflers, and other persons of the first rank; who, from the castle disdained not to make, over a very fatiguing mountain, the pilgrimage of mont louis. i owed all these visits to the favor of m. and madam de luxembourg; this i felt, and my heart on that account did them all due homage. it was with the same sentiment that i once said to m. de luxembourg, embracing him: "ah! monsieur le marechal, i hated the great before i knew you, and i have hated them still more since you have shown me with what ease they might acquire universal respect." further than this i defy any person with whom i was then acquainted, to say i was ever dazzled for an instant with splendor, or that the vapor of the incense i received ever affected my head; that i was less uniform in my manner, less plain in my dress, less easy of access to people of the lowest rank, less familiar with neighbors, or less ready to render service to every person when i had it in my power so to do, without ever once being discouraged by the numerous and frequently unreasonable importunities with which i was incessantly assailed. although my heart led me to the castle of montmorency, by my sincere attachment to those by whom it was inhabited, it by the same means drew me back to the neighborhood of it, there to taste the sweets of the equal and simple life, in which my only happiness consisted. theresa had contracted a friendship with the daughter of one of my neighbors, a mason of the name of pilleu; i did the same with the father, and after having dined at the castle, not without some constraint, to please madam de luxembourg, with what eagerness did i return in the evening to sup with the good man pilleu and his family, sometimes at his own house and at others, at mine. besides my two lodgings in the country, i soon had a third at the hotel de luxembourg, the proprietors of which pressed me so much to go and see them there, that i consented, notwithstanding my aversion to paris, where, since my retiring to the hermitage, i had been but twice, upon the two occasions of which i have spoken. i did not now go there except on the days agreed upon, solely to supper, and the next morning i returned to the country. i entered and came out by the garden which faces the boulevard, so that i could with the greatest truth, say i had not set my foot upon the stones of paris. in the midst of this transient prosperity, a catastrophe, which was to be the conclusion of it, was preparing at a distance. a short time after my return to mont louis, i made there, and as it was customary, against my inclination, a new acquaintance, which makes another era in my private history. whether this be favorable or unfavorable, the reader will hereafter be able to judge. the person with whom i became acquainted was the marchioness of verdelin, my neighbor, whose husband had just bought a country-house at soisy, near montmorency. mademoiselle d'ars, daughter to the comte d'ars, a man of fashion, but poor, had married m. de verdelin, old, ugly, deaf, uncouth, brutal, jealous, with gashes in his face, and blind of one eye, but, upon the whole, a good man when properly managed, and in possession of a fortune of from fifteen to twenty thousand a year. this charming object, swearing, roaring, scolding, storming, and making his wife cry all day long, ended by doing whatever she thought proper, and this to set her in a rage, because she knew how to persuade him that it was he who would, and she would not have it so. m. de margency, of whom i have spoken, was the friend of madam, and became that of monsieur. he had a few years before let them his castle of margency, near eaubonne and andilly, and they resided there precisely at the time of my passion for madam d'houdetot. madam d'houdetot and madam de verdelin became acquainted with each other, by means of madam d'aubeterre their common friend; and as the garden of margency was in the road by which madam d'houdetot went to mont olympe, her favorite walk, madam de verdelin gave her a key that she might pass through it. by means of this key i crossed it several times with her; but i did not like unexpected meetings, and when madam de verdelin was by chance upon our way i left them together without speaking to her, and went on before. this want of gallantry must have made on her an impression unfavorable to me. yet when she was at soisy she was anxious to have my company. she came several times to see me at mont louis, without finding me at home, and perceiving i did not return her visit, took it into her head, as a means of forcing me to do it, to send me pots of flowers for my terrace. i was under the necessity of going to thank her; this was all she wanted, and we thus became acquainted. this connection, like every other i formed; or was led into contrary to my inclination, began rather boisterously. there never reigned in it a real calm. the turn of mind of madam de verdelinwas too opposite to mine. malignant expressions and pointed sarcasms came from her with so much simplicity, that a continual attention too fatiguing for me was necessary to perceive she was turning into ridicule the person to whom she spoke. one trivial circumstance which occurs to my recollection will be sufficient to give an idea of her manner. her brother had just obtained the command of a frigate cruising against the english. i spoke of the manner of fitting out this frigate without diminishing its swiftness of sailing. "yes," replied she, in the most natural tone of voice, "no more cannon are taken than are necessary for fighting." i seldom have heard her speak well of any of her absent friends without letting slip something to their prejudice. what she did not see with an evil eye she looked upon with one of ridicule, and her friend margency was not excepted. what i found most insupportable in her was the perpetual constraint proceeding from her little messages, presents and billets, to which it was a labor for me to answer, and i had continual embarrassments either in thanking or refusing. however, by frequently seeing this lady i became attached to her. she had her troubles as well as i had mine. reciprocal confidence rendered our conversations interesting. nothing so cordially attaches two persons as the satisfaction of weeping together. we sought the company of each other for our reciprocal consolation, and the want of this has frequently made me pass over many things. i had been so severe in my frankness with her, that after having sometimes shown so little esteem for her character, a great deal was necessary to be able to believe she could sincerely forgive me. the following letter is a specimen of the epistles i sometimes wrote to her, and it is to be remarked that she never once in any of her answers to them seemed to be in the least degree piqued. montmorency, th november, . "you tell me, madam, you have not well explained yourself, in order to make me understand i have explained myself ill. you speak of your pretended stupidity for the purpose of making me feel my own. you boast of being nothing more than a good kind of woman, as if you were afraid to being taken at your word, and you make me apologies to tell me i owe them to you. yes, madam, i know it; it is i who am a fool, a good kind of man; and, if it be possible, worse than all this; it is i who make a bad choice of my expressions in the opinion of a fine french lady, who pays as much attention to words, and speak as well as you do. but consider that i take them in the common meaning of the language without knowing or troubling my head about the polite acceptations in which they are taken in the virtuous societies of paris. if my expressions are sometimes equivocal, i endeavored by my conduct to determine their meaning," etc. the rest of the letter is much the same. coindet, enterprising, bold, even to effrontery, and who was upon the watch after all my friends, soon introduced himself in my name to the house of madam de verdelin, and, unknown to me, shortly became there more familiar than myself. this coindet was an extraordinary man. he presented himself in my name in the houses of all my acquaintance, gained a footing in them, and eat there without ceremony. transported with zeal to do me service, he never mentioned my name without his eyes being suffused with tears; but, when he came to see me, he kept the most profound silence on the subject of all these connections, and especially on that in which he knew i must be interested. instead of telling me what he had heard, said, or seen, relative to my affairs, he waited for my speaking to him, and even interrogated me. he never knew anything of what passed in paris, except that which i told him: finally, although everybody spoke to me of him, he never once spoke to me of any person; he was secret and mysterious with his friend only; but i will for the present leave coindet and madam de verdelin, and return to them at a proper time. sometime after my return to mont louis, la tour, the painter, came to see me, and brought with him my portrait in crayons, which a few years before he had exhibited at the salon. he wished to give me this portrait, which i did not choose to accept. but madam d'epinay, who had given me hers, and would have had this, prevailed upon me to ask him for it. he had taken some time to retouch the features. in the interval happened my rupture with madam d'epinay; i returned her her portrait; and giving her mine being no longer in question, i put it into my chamber, in the castle. m. de luxembourg saw it there, and found it a good one; i offered it him, he accepted it, and i sent it to the castle. he and his lady comprehended i should be very glad to have theirs. they had them taken in miniature by a very skilful hand, set in a box of rock crystal, mounted with gold, and in a very handsome manner, with which i was delighted, made me a present of both. madam de luxenbourg would never consent that her portrait should be on the upper part of the box. she had reproached me several times with loving m. de luxembourg better than i did her; i had not denied it because it was true. by this manner of placing her portrait she showed very politely, but very clearly, she had not forgotten the preference. much about this time i was guilty of a folly which did not contribute to preserve me to her good graces. although i had no knowledge of m. de silhoutte, and was not much disposed to like him, i had a great opinion of his administration. when he began to let his hand fall rather heavily upon financiers, i perceived he did not begin his operation in a favorable moment, but he had my warmest wishes for his success; and as soon as i heard he was displaced i wrote to him, in my intrepid, heedless manner, the following letter, which i certainly do not undertake to justify. montmorency, d december, . "vouchsafe, sir, to receive the homage of a solitary man, who is not known to you, but who esteems you for your talents, respects you for your administration, and who did you the honor to believe you would not long remain in it. unable to save the state, except at the expense of the capital by which it has been ruined, you have braved the clamors of the gainers of money. when i saw you crush these wretches, i envied you your place; and at seeing you quit it without departing from your system, i admire you. be satisfied with yourself, sir; the step you have taken will leave you an honor you will long enjoy without a competitor. the malediction of knaves is the glory of an honest man." madam de luxembourg, who knew i had written this letter, spoke to me of it when she came into the country at easter. i showed it to her and she was desirous of a copy; this i gave her, but when i did it i did not know she was interested in under-farms, and the displacing of m. de silhoutte. by my numerous follies any person would have imagined i wilfully endeavored to bring on myself the hatred of an amiable woman who had power, and to whom, in truth, i daily became more attached, and was far from wishing to occasion her displeasure, although by my awkward manner of proceeding, i did everything proper for that purpose. i think it superfluous to remark here, that it is to her the history of the opiate of m. tronchin, of which i have spoken in the first part of my memoirs, relates; the other lady was madam de mirepoix. they have never mentioned to me the circumstance, nor has either of them, in the least, seemed to have preserved a remembrance of it; but to presume that madam de luxembourg can possibly have forgotten it appears to me very difficult, and would still remain so, even were the subsequent events entirely unknown. for my part, i fell into a deceitful security relative to the effects of my stupid mistakes, by an internal evidence of my not having taken any step with an intention to offend; as if a woman could ever forgive what i had done, although she might be certain the will had not the least part in the matter. although she seemed not to see or feel anything, and that i did not immediately find either her warmth of friendship diminished or the least change in her manner, the continuation and even increase of a too well founded foreboding made me incessantly tremble, lest disgust should succeed to infatuation. was it possible for me to expect in a lady of such high rank, a constancy proof against my want of address to support it? i was unable to conceal from her this secret foreboding, which made me uneasy, and rendered me still more disagreeable. this will be judged of by the following letter, which contains a very singular prediction. n. b. this letter, without date in my rough copy, was written in october, , at latest. "how cruel is your goodness? why disturb the peace of a solitary mortal who had renounced the pleasures of life, that he might no longer suffer the fatigues of them. i have passed my days in vainly searching for solid attachments. i have not been able to form any in the ranks to which i was equal; is it in yours that i ought to seek for them? neither ambition nor interest can tempt me: i am not vain, but little fearful; i can resist everything except caresses. why do you both attack me by a weakness which i must overcome, because in the distance by which we are separated, the over-flowings of susceptible hearts cannot bring mine near to you? will gratitude be sufficient for a heart which knows not two manners of bestowing its affections, and feels itself incapable of everything except friendship? of friendship, madam la marechale! ah! there is my misfortune! it is good in you and the marechal to make use of this expression; but i am mad when i take you at your word. you amuse yourselves, and i become attached; and the end of this prepares for me new regrets. how i do hate all your titles, and pity you on account of your being obliged to bear them? you seem to me to be so worthy of tasting the charms of private life! why do not you reside at clarens? i would go there in search of happiness; but the castle of montmorency, and the hotel de luxembourg! is it in these places jean jacques ought to be seen? is it there a friend to equality ought to carry the affections of a sensible heart, and who thus paying the esteem in which he is held, thinks he returns as much as he receives? you are good and susceptible also: this i know and have seen; i am sorry i was not sooner convinced of it; but in the rank you hold, in the manner of living, nothing can make a lasting impression; a succession of new objects efface each other so that not one of them remains. you will forget me, madam, after having made it impossible for me to imitate, you. you have done a great deal to make me unhappy, to be inexcusable." i joined with her the marechal, to render the compliment less severe; for i was moreover so sure of him, that i never had a doubt in my mind of the continuation of his friendship. nothing that intimidated me in madam la marechale, ever for a moment extended to him. i never have had the least mistrust relative to his character, which i knew to be feeble, but constant. i no more feared a coldness on his part than i expected from him an heroic attachment. the simplicity and familiarity of our manners with each other proved how far dependence was reciprocal. we were both always right: i shall ever honor and hold dear the memory of this worthy man, and, notwithstanding everything that was done to detach him from me, i am as certain of his having died my friend as if i had been present in his last moments. at the second journey to montmorency, in the year , the reading of eloisa being finished, i had recourse to that of emilius, to support myself in the good graces of madam de luxembourg; but this, whether the subject was less to her taste; or that so much reading at length fatigued her, did not succeed so well. however, as she reproached me with suffering myself to be the dupe of booksellers, she wished me to leave to her care the printing the work, that i might reap from it a greater advantage. i consented to her doing it, on the express condition of its not being printed in france, on which we had along dispute; i affirming that it was impossible to obtain, and even imprudent to solicit, a tacit permission; and being unwilling to permit the impression upon any other terms in the kingdom; she, that the censor could not make the least difficulty, according to the system government had adopted. she found means to make m. de malesherbes enter into her views. he wrote to me on the subject a long letter with his own hand, to prove the profession of faith of the savoyard vicar to be a composition which must everywhere gain the approbation of its readers and that of the court, as things were then circumstanced. i was surprised to see this magistrate, always so prudent, become so smooth in the business, as the printing of a book was by that alone legal, i had no longer any objection to make to that of the work. yet, by an extraordinary scruple, i still required it should be printed in holland, and by the bookseller neaulme, whom, not satisfied with indicating him, i informed of my wishes, consenting the edition should be brought out for the profit of a french bookseller, and that as soon as it was ready it should be sold at paris, or wherever else it might be thought proper, as with this i had no manner of concern. this is exactly what was agreed upon between madam de luxembourg and myself, after which i gave her my manuscript. madam de luxembourg was this time accompanied by her granddaughter mademoiselle de boufflers, now duchess of lauzun. her name was amelia. she was a charming girl. she really had a maiden beauty, mildness and timidity. nothing could be more lovely than her person, nothing more chaste and tender than the sentiments she inspired. she was, besides, still a child under eleven years of age. madam de luxembourg, who thought her too timid, used every endeavor to animate her. she permitted me several times to give her a kiss, which i did with my usual awkwardness. instead of saying flattering things to her, as any other person would have done, i remained silent and disconcerted, and i know not which of the two, the little girl or myself, was most ashamed. i met her one day alone in the staircase of the little castle. she had been to see theresa, with whom her governess still was. not knowing what else to say, i proposed to her a kiss, which, in the innocence of her heart, she did not refuse; having in the morning received one from me by order of her grandmother, and in her presence. the next day, while reading emilius by the side of the bed of madam de luxembourg, i came to a passage in which i justly censure that which i had done the preceding evening. she thought the reflection extremely just, and said some very sensible things upon the subject which made me blush. how was i enraged at my incredible stupidity, which has frequently given me the appearance of guilt when i was nothing more than a fool and embarrassed! a stupidity, which in a man known to be endowed with some wit, is considered as a false excuse. i can safely swear that in this kiss, as well as in the others, the heart and thoughts of mademoiselle amelia were not more pure than my own, and that if i could have avoided meeting her i should have done it; not that i had not great pleasure in seeing her, but from the embarrassment of not finding a word proper to say. whence comes it that even a child can intimidate a man, whom the power of kings has never inspired with fear? what is to be done? how, without presence of mind, am i to act? if i strive to speak to the persons i meet, i certainly say some stupid thing to them; if i remain silent, i am a misanthrope, an unsociable animal, a bear. total imbecility would have been more favorable to me; but the talents which i have failed to improve in the world have become the instruments of my destruction, and of that of the talents i possessed. at the latter end of this journey, madam de luxembourg did a good action in which i had some share. diderot having very imprudently offended the princess of robeck, daughter of m. de luxembourg, palissot, whom she protected, took up the quarrel, and revenged her by the comedy of 'the philosophers', in which i was ridiculed, and diderot very roughly handled. the author treated me with more gentleness, less, i am of opinion, on account of the obligation he was under to me, than from the fear of displeasing the father of his protectress, by whom he knew i was beloved. the bookseller duchesne, with whom i was not at that time acquainted, sent me the comedy when it was printed, and this i suspect was by the order of palissot, who, perhaps, thought i should have a pleasure in seeing a man with whom i was no longer connected defamed. he was greatly deceived. when i broke with diderot, whom i thought less ill-natured than weak and indiscreet, i still always preserved for his person an attachment, an esteem even, and a respect for our ancient friendship, which i know was for a long time as sincere on his part as on mine. the case was quite different with grimm; a man false by nature, who never loved me, who is not even capable of friendship, and a person who, without the least subject of complaint, and solely to satisfy his gloomy jealousy, became, under the mask of friendship, my most cruel calumniator. this man is to me a cipher; the other will always be my old friend. my very bowels yearned at the sight of this odious piece: the reading of it was insupportable to me, and, without going through the whole, i returned the copy to duchesne with the following letter: montmorency, st, may, . "in casting my eyes over the piece you sent me, i trembled at seeing myself well spoken of in it. i do not accept the horrid present. i am persuaded that in sending it me, you did not intend an insult; but you do not know, or have forgotten, that i have the honor to be the friend of a respectable man, who is shamefully defamed and calumniated in this libel." duchense showed the letter. diderot, upon whom it ought to have had an effect quite contrary, was vexed at it. his pride could not forgive me the superiority of a generous action, and i was informed his wife everywhere inveighed against me with a bitterness with which i was not in the least affected, as i knew she was known to everybody to be a noisy babbler. diderot in his turn found an avenger in the abbe morrellet, who wrote against palissot a little work, imitated from the 'petit prophete', and entitled the vision. in this production he very imprudently offended madam de robeck, whose friends got him sent to the bastile; though she, not naturally vindictive, and at that time in a dying state, i am certain had nothing to do with the affair. d'alembert, who was very intimately connected with morrellet, wrote me a letter, desiring i would beg of madam de luxembourg to solicit his liberty, promising her in return encomiums in the 'encyclopedie'; my answer to this letter was as follows: "i did not wait the receipt of your letter before i expressed to madam de luxembourg the pain the confinement of the abbe morrellet gave me. she knows my concern, and shall be made acquainted with yours, and her knowing that the abbe is a man of merit will be sufficient to make her interest herself in his behalf. however, although she and the marechal honor me with a benevolence which is my greatest consolation, and that the name of your friend be to them a recommendation in favor of the abbe morrellet, i know not how far, on this occasion, it may be proper for them to employ the credit attached to the rank they hold, and the consideration due to their persons. i am not even convinced that the vengeance in question relates to the princess robeck so much as you seem to imagine; and were this even the case, we must not suppose that the pleasure of vengeance belongs to philosophers exclusively, and that when they choose to become women, women will become philosophers. "i will communicate to you whatever madam de luxembourg may say to me after having shown her your letter. in the meantime, i think i know her well enough to assure you that, should she have the pleasure of contributing to the enlargement of the abbe morrellet, she will not accept the tribute of acknowledgment you promise her in the encyclopedie, although she might think herself honored by it, because she does not do good in the expectation of praise, but from the dictates of her heart." i made every effort to excite the zeal and commiseration of madam de luxembourg in favor of the poor captive, and succeeded to my wishes. she went to versailles on purpose to speak to m. de st. florentin, and this journey shortened the residence at montmorency, which the marechal was obliged to quit at the same time to go to rouen, whither the king sent him as governor of normandy, on account of the motions of the parliament, which government wished to keep within bounds. madam de luxembourg wrote me the following letter the day after her departure: versailles, wednesday. "m. de luxembourg set off yesterday morning at six o'clock. i do not yet know that i shall follow him. i wait until he writes to me, as he is not yet certain of the stay it will be necessary for him to make. i have seen m. de st. florentin, who is as favorably disposed as possible towards the abbe morrellet; but he finds some obstacles to his wishes which however, he is in hopes of removing the first time he has to do business with the king, which will be next week. i have also desired as a favor that he might not be exiled, because this was intended; he was to be sent to nancy. this, sir, is what i have been able to obtain; but i promise you i will not let m. de st. florentin rest until the affair is terminated in the manner you desire. let me now express to you how sorry i am on account of my being obliged to leave you so soon, of which i flatter myself you have not the least doubt. i love you with all my heart, and shall do so for my whole life." a few days afterwards i received the following note from d'alembert, which gave me real joy. august st. "thanks to your cares, my dear philosopher, the abbe has left the bastile, and his imprisonment will have no other consequence. he is setting off for the country, and, as well as myself, returns you a thousand thanks and compliments. 'vale et me ama'." the abbe also wrote to me a few days afterwards a letter of thanks, which did not, in my opinion, seem to breathe a certain effusion of the heart, and in which he seemed in some measure to extenuate the service i had rendered him. some time afterwards, i found that he and d'alembert had, to a certain degree, i will not say supplanted, but succeeded me in the good graces of madam de luxembourg, and that i had lost in them all they had gained. however, i am far from suspecting the abbe morrellet of having contributed to my disgrace; i have too much esteem for him to harbor any such suspicion. with respect to d'alembert, i shall at present leave him out of the question, and hereafter say of him what may seem necessary. i had, at the same time, another affair which occasioned the last letter i wrote to voltaire; a letter against which he vehemently exclaimed, as an abominable insult, although he never showed it to any person. i will here supply the want of that which he refused to do. the abbe trublet, with whom i had a slight acquaintance, but whom i had but seldom seen, wrote to me on the th of june, , informing me that m. formey, his friend and correspondent, had printed in his journal my letter to voltaire upon the disaster at lisbon. the abbe wished to know how the letter came to be printed, and in his jesuitical manner, asked me my opinion, without giving me his own on the necessity of reprinting it. as i most sovereignly hate this kind of artifice and strategem, i returned such thanks as were proper, but in a manner so reserved as to make him feel it, although this did not prevent him from wheedling me in two or three other letters until he had gathered all he wished to know. i clearly understood that, not withstanding all trublet could say, formey had not found the letter printed, and that the first impression of it came from himself. i knew him to be an impudent pilferer, who, without ceremony, made himself a revenue by the works of others. although he had not yet had the incredible effrontery to take from a book already published the name of the author, to put his own in the place of it, and to sell the book for his own profit. [in this manner he afterwards appropriated to himself emilius.] but by what means had this manuscript fallen into his hands? that was a question not easy to resolve, but by which i had the weakness to be embarrassed. although voltaire was excessively honored by the letter, as in fact, notwithstanding his rude proceedings, he would have had a right to complain had i had it printed without his consent, i resolved to write to him upon the subject. the second letter was as follows, to which he returned no answer, and giving greater scope to his brutality, he feigned to be irritated to fury. montmorency, th june, . "i did not think, sir, i should ever have occasion to correspond with you. but learning the letter i wrote to you in had been printed at berlin, i owe you an account of my conduct in that respect, and will fulfil this duty with truth and simplicity. "the letter having really been addressed to you was not intended to be printed. i communicated the contents of it, on certain conditions, to three persons, to whom the right of friendship did not permit me to refuse anything of the kind, and whom the same rights still less permitted to abuse my confidence by betraying their promise. these persons are madam de chenonceaux, daughter-in-law to madam dupin, the comtesse d'houdetot, and a german of the name of grimm. madam de chenonceaux was desirous the letter should be printed, and asked my consent. i told her that depended upon yours. this was asked of you which you refused, and the matter dropped. "however, the abbe trublet, with whom i have not the least connection, has just written to me from a motive of the most polite attention that having received the papers of the journal of m. formey, he found in them this same letter with an advertisement, dated on the d of october, , in which the editor states that he had a few weeks before found it in the shops of the booksellers of berlin, and, as it is one of those loose sheets which shortly disappear, he thought proper to give it a place in his journal. "this, sir, is all i know of the matter. it is certain the letter had not until lately been heard of at paris. it is also as certain that the copy, either in manuscript or print, fallen into the hands of m. de formey, could never have reached them except by your means (which is not probable) or of those of one of the three persons i have mentioned. finally, it is well known the two ladies are incapable of such a perfidy. i cannot, in my retirement learn more relative to the affair. you have a correspondence by means of which you may, if you think it worth the trouble, go back to the source and verify the fact. "in the same letter the abbe' trublet informs me that he keeps the paper in reserve, and will not lend it without my consent, which most assuredly i will not give. but it is possible this copy may not be the only one in paris. i wish, sir, the letter may not be printed there, and i will do all in my power to prevent this from happening; but if i cannot succeed, and that, timely perceiving it, i can have the preference, i will not then hesitate to have it immediately printed. this to me appears just and natural. "with respect to your answer to the same letter, it has not been communicated to anyone, and you may be assured it shall not be printed without your consent, which i certainly shall not be indiscreet enough to ask of you, well knowing that what one man writes to another is not written to the public. but should you choose to write one you wish to have published, and address it to me, i promise you faithfully to add to it my letter and not to make to it a single word of reply. "i love you not, sir; you have done me, your disciple and enthusiastic admirer; injuries which might have caused me the most exquisite pain. you have ruined geneva, in return for the asylum it has afforded you; you have alienated from me my fellow-citizens, in return for eulogiums i made of you amongst them; it is you who render to me the residence of my own country insupportable; it is you who will oblige me to die in a foreign land, deprived of all the consolations usually administered to a dying person; and cause me, instead of receiving funeral rites, to be thrown to the dogs, whilst all the honors a man can expect will accompany you in my country. finally i hate you because you have been desirous i should but i hate you as a man more worthy of loving you had you chosen it. of all the sentiments with which my heart was penetrated for you, admiration, which cannot be refused your fine genius, and a partiality to your writings, are those you have not effaced. if i can honor nothing in you except your talents, the fault is not mine. i shall never be wanting in the respect due to them, nor in that which this respect requires." in the midst of these little literary cavillings, which still fortified my resolution, i received the greatest honor letters ever acquired me, and of which i was the most sensible, in the two visits the prince of conti deigned to make to me, one at the little castle and the other at mont louis. he chose the time for both of these when m. de luxembourg was not at montmorency, in order to render it more manifest that he came there solely on my account. i have never had a doubt of my owing the first condescensions of this prince to madam de luxembourg and madam de boufflers; but i am of opinion i owe to his own sentiments and to myself those with which he has since that time continually honored me. [remark the perseverance of this blind and stupid confidence in the midst of all the treatment which should soonest have undeceived me. it continued until my return to paris in .] my apartments at mont louis being small, and the situation of the alcove charming, i conducted the prince to it, where, to complete the condescension he was pleased to show me, he chose i should have the honor of playing with him a game of chess. i knew he beat the chevalier de lorenzy, who played better than i did. however, notwithstanding the signs and grimace of the chevalier and the spectators, which i feigned not to see, i won the two games we played: when they were ended, i said to him in a respectful but very grave manner: "my lord, i honor your serene highness too much not to beat you always at chess." this great prince, who had real wit, sense, and knowledge, and so was worthy not to be treated with mean adulation, felt in fact, at least i think so, that i was the only person present who treated him like a man, and i have every reason to believe he was not displeased with me for it. had this even been the case, i should not have reproached myself with having been unwilling to deceive him in anything, and i certainly cannot do it with having in my heart made an ill return for his goodness, but solely with having sometimes done it with an ill grace, whilst he himself accompanied with infinite gracefulness the manner in which he showed me the marks of it. a few days afterwards he ordered a hamper of game to be sent me, which i received as i ought. this in a little time was succeeded by another, and one of his gamekeepers wrote me, by order of his highness, that the game it contained had been shot by the prince himself. i received this second hamper, but i wrote to madam de boufflers that i would not receive a third. this letter was generally blamed, and deservedly so. refusing to accept presents of game from a prince of the blood, who moreover sends it in so polite a manner, is less the delicacy of a haughty man, who wishes to preserve his independence, than the rusticity of a clown, who does not know himself. i have never read this letter in my collection without blushing and reproaching myself for having written it. but i have not undertaken my confession with an intention of concealing my faults, and that of which i have just spoken is too shocking in my own eyes to suffer me to pass it over in silence. if i were not guilty of the offence of becoming his rival i was very near doing it; for madam de boufflers was still his mistress, and i knew nothing of the matter. she came rather frequently to see me with the chevalier de lorenzy. she was yet young and beautiful, affected to be whimsical, and my mind was always romantic, which was much of the same nature. i was near being laid hold of; i believe she perceived it; the chevalier saw it also, at least he spoke to me upon the subject, and in a manner not discouraging. but i was this time reasonable, and at the age of fifty it was time i should be so. full of the doctrine i had just preached to graybeards in my letter to d'alembert, i should have been ashamed of not profiting by it myself; besides, coming to the knowledge of that of which i had been ignorant, i must have been mad to have carried my pretensions so far as to expose myself to such an illustrious rivalry. finally, ill cured perhaps of my passion for madam de houdetot, i felt nothing could replace it in my heart, and i bade adieu to love for the rest of my life. i have this moment just withstood the dangerous allurements of a young woman who had her views; and if she feigned to forget my twelve lustres i remember them. after having thus withdrawn myself from danger, i am no longer afraid of a fall, and i answer for myself for the rest of my days. madam de boufflers, perceiving the emotion she caused in me, might also observe i had triumphed over it. i am neither mad nor vain enough to believe i was at my age capable of inspiring her with the same feelings; but, from certain words which she let drop to theresa, i thought i had inspired her with a curiosity; if this be the case, and that she has not forgiven me the disappointment she met with, it must be confessed i was born to be the victim of my weaknesses, since triumphant love was so prejudicial to me, and love triumphed over not less so. here finishes the collection of letters which has served me as a guide in the last two books. my steps will in future be directed by memory only; but this is of such a nature, relative to the period to which i am now come, and the strong impression of objects has remained so perfectly upon my mind, that lost in the immense sea of my misfortunes, i cannot forget the detail of my first shipwreck, although the consequences present to me but a confused remembrance. i therefore shall be able to proceed in the succeeding book with sufficient confidence. if i go further it will be groping in the dark. the confessions of jean jacques rousseau (in books) privately printed for the members of the aldus society london, book viii. at the end of the preceding book a pause was necessary. with this begins the long chain of my misfortunes deduced from their origin. having lived in the two most splendid houses in paris, i had, notwithstanding my candor and modesty, made some acquaintance. among others at dupin's, that of the young hereditary prince of saxe-gotha, and of the baron de thun, his governor; at the house of m. de la popliniere, that of m. seguy, friend to the baron de thun, and known in the literary world by his beautiful edition of rousseau. the baron invited m. seguy and myself to go and pass a day or two at fontenai sous bois, where the prince had a house. as i passed vincennes, at the sight of the dungeon, my feelings were acute; the effect of which the baron perceived on my countenance. at supper the prince mentioned the confinement of diderot. the baron, to hear what i had to say, accused the prisoner of imprudence; and i showed not a little of the same in the impetuous manner in which i defended him. this excess of zeal, inspired by the misfortune which had befallen my friend, was pardoned, and the conversation immediately changed. there were present two germans in the service of the prince. m. klupssel, a man of great wit, his chaplain, and who afterwards, having supplanted the baron, became his governor. the other was a young man named m. grimm, who served him as a reader until he could obtain some place, and whose indifferent appearance sufficiently proved the pressing necessity he was under of immediately finding one. from this very evening klupssel and i began an acquaintance which soon led to friendship. that with the sieur grimm did not make quite so rapid a progress; he made but few advances, and was far from having that haughty presumption which prosperity afterwards gave him. the next day at dinner, the conversation turned upon music; he spoke well on the subject. i was transported with joy when i learned from him he could play an accompaniment on the harpsichord. after dinner was over music was introduced, and we amused ourselves the rest of the afternoon on the harpischord of the prince. thus began that friendship which, at first, was so agreeable to me, afterwards so fatal, and of which i shall hereafter have so much to say. at my return to paris, i learned the agreeable news that diderot was released from the dungeon, and that he had on his parole the castle and park of vincennes for a prison, with permission to see his friends. how painful was it to me not to be able instantly to fly to him! but i was detained two or three days at madam dupin's by indispensable business. after ages of impatience, i flew to the arms of my friend. he was not alone: d' alembert and the treasurer of the sainte chapelle were with him. as i entered i saw nobody but himself, i made but one step, one cry; i riveted my face to his: i pressed him in my arms, without speaking to him, except by tears and sighs: i stifled him with my affection and joy. the first thing he did, after quitting my arms, was to turn himself towards the ecclesiastic, and say: "you see, sir, how much i am beloved by my friends." my emotion was so great, that it was then impossible for me to reflect upon this manner of turning it to advantage; but i have since thought that, had i been in the place of diderot, the idea he manifested would not have been the first that would have occurred to me. i found him much affected by his imprisonment. the dungeon had made a terrible impression upon his mind, and, although he was very agreeably situated in the castle, and at liberty to, walk where he pleased in the park, which was not inclosed even by a wall, he wanted the society of his friends to prevent him from yielding to melancholy. as i was the person most concerned for his sufferings, i imagined i should also be the friend, the sight of whom would give him consolation; on which account, notwithstanding very pressing occupations, i went every two days at farthest, either alone, or accompanied by his wife, to pass the afternoon with him. the heat of the summer was this year ( ) excessive. vincennes is two leagues from paris. the state of my finances not permitting me to pay for hackney coaches, at two o'clock in the afternoon, i went on foot, when alone, and walked as fast as possible, that i might arrive the sooner. the trees by the side of the road, always lopped, according to the custom of the country, afforded but little shade, and exhausted by fatigue, i frequently threw myself on the ground, being unable to proceed any further. i thought a book in my hand might make me moderate my pace. one day i took the mercure de france, and as i walked and read, i came to the following question proposed by the academy of dijon, for the premium of the ensuing year, 'has the progress of sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or purify morals?' the moment i had read this, i seemed to behold another world, and became a different man. although i have a lively remembrance of the impression it made upon me, the detail has escaped my mind, since i communicated it to m. de malesherbes in one of my four letters to him. this is one of the singularities of my memory which merits to be remarked. it serves me in proportion to my dependence upon it; the moment i have committed to paper that with which it was charged, it forsakes me, and i have no sooner written a thing than i had forgotten it entirely. this singularity is the same with respect to music. before i learned the use of notes i knew a great number of songs; the moment i had made a sufficient progress to sing an air set to music, i could not recollect any one of them; and, at present, i much doubt whether i should be able entirely to go through one of those of which i was the most fond. all i distinctly recollect upon this occasion is, that on my arrival at vincennes, i was in an agitation which approached a delirium. diderot perceived it; i told him the cause, and read to him the prosopopoeia of fabricius, written with a pencil under a tree. he encouraged me to pursue my ideas, and to become a competitor for the premium. i did so, and from that moment i was ruined. all the rest of my misfortunes during my life were the inevitable effect of this moment of error. my sentiments became elevated with the most inconceivable rapidity to the level of my ideas. all my little passions were stifled by the enthusiasm of truth, liberty, and virtue; and, what is most astonishing, this effervescence continued in my mind upwards of five years, to as great a degree perhaps as it has ever done in that of any other man. i composed the discourse in a very singular manner, and in that style which i have always followed in my other works. i dedicated to it the hours of the night in which sleep deserted me, i meditated in my bed with my eyes closed, and in my mind turned over and over again my periods with incredible labor and care; the moment they were finished to my satisfaction, i deposited them in my memory, until i had an opportunity of committing them to paper; but the time of rising and putting on my clothes made me lose everything, and when i took up my pen i recollected but little of what i had composed. i made madam le vasseur my secretary; i had lodged her with her daughter, and husband, nearer to myself; and she, to save me the expense of a servant, came every morning to make my fire, and to do such other little things as were necessary. as soon as she arrived i dictated to her while in bed what i had composed in the night, and this method, which for a long time i observed, preserved me many things i should otherwise have forgotten. as soon as the discourse was finished, i showed it to diderot. he was satisfied with the production, and pointed out some corrections he thought necessary to be made. however, this composition, full of force and fire, absolutely wants logic and order; of all the works i ever wrote, this is the weakest in reasoning, and the most devoid of number and harmony. with whatever talent a man may be born, the art of writing is not easily learned. i sent off this piece without mentioning it to anybody, except, i think, to grimm, with whom, after his going to live with the comte de vriese, i began to be upon the most intimate footing. his harpsichord served as a rendezvous, and i passed with him at it all the moments i had to spare, in singing italian airs, and barcaroles; sometimes without intermission, from morning till night, or rather from night until morning; and when i was not to be found at madam dupin's, everybody concluded i was with grimm at his apartment, the public walk, or theatre. i left off going to the comedie italienne, of which i was free, to go with him, and pay, to the comedie francoise, of which he was passionately fond. in short, so powerful an attraction connected me with this young man, and i became so inseparable from him, that the poor aunt herself was rather neglected, that is, i saw her less frequently; for in no moment of my life has my attachment to her been diminished. this impossibility of dividing, in favor of my inclinations, the little time i had to myself, renewed more strongly than ever the desire i had long entertained of having but one home for theresa and myself; but the embarrassment of her numerous family, and especially the want of money to purchase furniture, had hitherto withheld me from accomplishing it. an opportunity to endeavor at it presented itself, and of this i took advantage. m. de francueil and madam dupin, clearly perceiving that eight or nine hundred livres a year were unequal to my wants, increased of their own accord, my salary to fifty guineas; and madam dupin, having heard i wished to furnish myself lodgings, assisted me with some articles for that purpose. with this furniture and that theresa already had, we made one common stock, and, having an apartment in the hotel de languedoc, rue de grevelle st, honor, kept by very honest people, we arranged ourselves in the best manner we could, and lived there peaceably and agreeably during seven years, at the end of which i removed to go and live at the hermitage. theresa's father was a good old man, very mild in his disposition, and much afraid of his wife; for this reason he had given her the surname of lieutenant criminal, which grimm, jocosely, afterwards transferred to the daughter. madam le vasseur did not want sense, that is address; and pretended to the politeness and airs of the first circles; but she had a mysterious wheedling, which to me was insupportable, gave bad advice to her daughter, endeavored to make her dissemble with me, and separately, cajoled my friends at my expense, and that of each other; excepting these circumstances; she was a tolerably good mother, because she found her account in being so, and concealed the faults of her daughter to turn them to her own advantage. this woman, who had so much of my care and attention, to whom i made so many little presents, and by whom i had it extremely at heart to make myself beloved, was, from the impossibility of my succeeding in this wish, the only cause of the uneasiness i suffered in my little establishment. except the effects of this cause i enjoyed, during these six or seven, years, the most perfect domestic happiness of which human weakness is capable. the heart of my theresa was that of an angel; our attachment increased with our intimacy, and we were more and more daily convinced how much we were made for each other. could our pleasures be described, their simplicity would cause laughter. our walks, tete-a-tete, on the outside of the city, where i magnificently spent eight or ten sous in each guinguette.--[ale-house]--our little suppers at my window, seated opposite to each other upon two little chairs, placed upon a trunk, which filled up the spare of the embrasure. in this situation the window served us as a table, we respired the fresh air, enjoyed the prospect of the environs and the people who passed; and, although upon the fourth story, looked down into the street as we ate. who can describe, and how few can feel, the charms of these repasts, consisting of a quartern loaf, a few cherries, a morsel of cheese, and half-a-pint of wine which we drank between us? friendship, confidence, intimacy, sweetness of disposition, how delicious are your reasonings! we sometimes remained in this situation until midnight, and never thought of the hour, unless informed of it by the old lady. but let us quit these details, which are either insipid or laughable; i have always said and felt that real enjoyment was not to be described. much about the same time i indulged in one not so delicate, and the last of the kind with which i have to reproach myself. i have observed that the minister klupssel was an amiable man; my connections with him were almost as intimate as those i had with grimm, and in the end became as familiar; grimm and he sometimes eat at my apartment. these repasts, a little more than simple, were enlivened by the witty and extravagant wantonness of expression of klupssel, and the diverting germanicisms of grimm, who was not yet become a purist. sensuality did not preside at our little orgies, but joy, which was preferable, reigned in them all, and we enjoyed ourselves so well together that we knew not how to separate. klupssel had furnished a lodging for a little girl, who, notwithstanding this, was at the service of anybody, because he could not support her entirely himself. one evening as we were going into the coffee-house, we met him coming out to go and sup with her. we rallied him; he revenged himself gallantly, by inviting us to the same supper, and there rallying us in our turn. the poor young creature appeared to be of a good disposition, mild and little fitted to the way of life to which an old hag she had with her, prepared her in the best manner she could. wine and conversation enlivened us to such a degree that we forgot ourselves. the amiable klupssel was unwilling to do the honors of his table by halves, and we all three successively took a view of the next chamber, in company with his little friend, who knew not whether she should laugh or cry. grimm has always maintained that he never touched her; it was therefore to amuse himself with our impatience, that he remained so long in the other chamber, and if he abstained, there is not much probability of his having done so from scruple, because previous to his going to live with the comte de friese, he lodged with girls of the town in the same quarter of st. roch. i left the rue des moineaux, where this girl lodged, as much ashamed as saint preux left the house in which he had become intoxicated, and when i wrote his story i well remembered my own. theresa perceived by some sign, and especially by my confusion, i had something with which i reproached myself; i relieved my mind by my free and immediate confession. i did well, for the next day grimm came in triumph to relate to her my crime with aggravation, and since that time he has never failed maliciously to recall it to her recollection; in this he was the more culpable, since i had freely and voluntarily given him my confidence, and had a right to expect he would not make me repent of it. i never had a more convincing proof than on this occasion, of the goodness of my theresa's heart; she was more shocked at the behavior of grimm than at my infidelity, and i received nothing from her but tender reproaches, in which there was not the least appearance of anger. the simplicity of mind of this excellent girl was equal to her goodness of heart; and this is saying everything: but one instance of it, which is present to my recollection, is worthy of being related. i had told her klupssel was a minister, and chaplain to the prince of saxe-gotha. a minister was to her so singular a man, that oddly confounding the most dissimilar ideas, she took it into her head to take klupssel for the pope; i thought her mad the first time she told me when i came in, that the pope had called to see me. i made her explain herself and lost not a moment in going to relate the story to grimm and klupssel, who amongst ourselves never lost the name of pope. we gave to the girl in the rue des moineaux the name of pope joan. our laughter was incessant; it almost stifled us. they, who in a letter which it hath pleased them to attribute to me, have made me say i never laughed but twice in my life, did not know me at this period, nor in my younger days; for if they had, the idea could never have entered into their heads. the year following ( ), not thinking more of my discourse; i learned it had gained the premium at dijon. this news awakened all the ideas which had dictated it to me, gave them new animation, and completed the fermentation of my heart of that first leaven of heroism and virtue which my father, my country, and plutarch had inspired in my infancy. nothing now appeared great in my eyes but to be free and virtuous, superior to fortune and opinion, and independent of all exterior circumstances; although a false shame, and the fear of disapprobation at first prevented me from conducting myself according to these principles, and from suddenly quarreling with the maxims of the age in which i lived, i from that moment took a decided resolution to do it.--[and of this i purposely delayed the execution, that irritated by contradiction f it might be rendered triumphant.] while i was philosophizing upon the duties of man, an event happened which made me better reflect upon my own. theresa became pregnant for the third time. too sincere with myself, too haughty in my mind to contradict my principles by my actions, i began to examine the destination of my children, and my connections with the mother, according to the laws of nature, justice, and reason, and those of that religion, pure, holy, and eternal, like its author, which men have polluted while they pretended to purify it, and which by their formularies they have reduced to a religion of words, since the difficulty of prescribing impossibilities is but trifling to those by whom they are not practised. if i deceived myself in my conclusions, nothing can be more astonishing than the security with which i depended upon them. were i one of those men unfortunately born deaf to the voice of nature, in whom no sentiment of justice or humanity ever took the least root, this obduracy would be natural. but that warmth of heart, strong sensibility, and facility of forming attachments; the force with which they subdue me; my cruel sufferings when obliged to break them; the innate benevolence i cherished towards my fellow-creatures; the ardent love i bear to great virtues, to truth and justice, the horror in which i hold evil of every kind; the impossibility of hating, of injuring or wishing to injure anyone; the soft and lively emotion i feel at the sight of whatever is virtuous, generous and amiable; can these meet in the same mind with the depravity which without scruple treads under foot the most pleasing of all our duties? no, i feel, and openly declare this to be impossible. never in his whole life could j. j. be a man without sentiment or an unnatural father. i may have been deceived, but it is impossible i should have lost the least of my feelings. were i to give my reasons, i should say too much; since they have seduced me, they would seduce many others. i will not therefore expose those young persons by whom i may be read to the same danger. i will satisfy myself by observing that my error was such, that in abandoning my children to public education for want of the means of bringing them up myself; in destining them to become workmen and peasants, rather than adventurers and fortune-hunters, i thought i acted like an honest citizen, and a good father, and considered myself as a member of the republic of plato. since that time the regrets of my heart have more than once told me i was deceived; but my reason was so far from giving me the same intimation, that i have frequently returned thanks to heaven for having by this means preserved them from the fate of their father, and that by which they were threatened the moment i should have been under the necessity of leaving them. had i left them to madam d'upinay, or madam de luxembourg, who, from friendship, generosity, or some other motive, offered to take care of them in due time, would they have been more happy, better brought up, or honester men? to this i cannot answer; but i am certain they would have been taught to hate and perhaps betray their parents: it is much better that they have never known them. my third child was therefore carried to the foundling hospital as well as the two former, and the next two were disposed of in the same manner; for i have had five children in all. this arrangement seemed to me to be so good, reasonable and lawful, that if i did not publicly boast of it, the motive by which i was withheld was merely my regard for their mother: but i mentioned it to all those to whom i had declared our connection, to diderot, to grimm, afterwards to m. d'epinay, and after another interval to madam de luxembourg; and this freely and voluntarily, without being under the least necessity of doing it, having it in my power to conceal the step from all the world; for la gouin was an honest woman, very discreet, and a person on whom i had the greatest reliance. the only one of my friends to whom it was in some measure my interest to open myself, was thierry the physician, who had the care of my poor aunt in one of her lyings in, in which she was very ill. in a word, there was no mystery in my conduct, not only on account of my never having concealed anything from my friends, but because i never found any harm in it. everything considered, i chose the best destination for my children, or that which i thought to be such. i could have wished, and still should be glad, had i been brought up as they have been. whilst i was thus communicating what i had done, madam. le vasseur did the same thing amongst her acquaintance, but with less disinterested views. i introduced her and her daughter to madam dupin, who, from friendship to me, showed them the greatest kindness. the mother confided to her the secret of the daughter. madam dupin, who is generous and kind, and to whom she never told how attentive i was to her, notwithstanding my moderate resources, in providing for everything, provided on her part for what was necessary, with a liberality which, by order of her mother, the daughter concealed from me during my residence in paris, nor ever mentioned it until we were at the hermitage, when she informed me of it, after having disclosed to me several other secrets of her heart. i did not know madam dupin, who never took the least notice to me of the matter, was so well informed: i know not yet whether madam de chenonceaux, her daughter-in-law, was as much in the secret: but madam de brancueil knew the whole and could not refrain from prattling. she spoke of it to me the following year, after i had left her house. this induced me to write her a letter upon the subject, which will be found in my collections, and wherein i gave such of my reasons as i could make public, without exposing madam le vasseur and her family; the most determinative of them came from that quarter, and these i kept profoundly secret. i can rely upon the discretion of madam dupin, and the friendship of madam de chenonceaux; i had the same dependence upon that of madam de francuiel, who, however, was long dead before my secret made its way into the world. this it could never have done except by means of the persons to whom i intrusted it, nor did it until after my rupture with them. by this single fact they are judged; without exculpating myself from the blame i deserve, i prefer it to that resulting from their malignity. my fault is great, but it was an error. i have neglected my duty, but the desire of doing an injury never entered my heart; and the feelings of a father were never more eloquent in favor of children whom he never saw. but: betraying the confidence of friendship, violating the most sacred of all engagements, publishing secrets confided to us, and wantonly dishonoring the friend we have deceived, and who in detaching himself from our society still respects us, are not faults, but baseness of mind, and the last degree of heinousness. i have promised my confession and not my justification; on which account i shall stop here. it is my duty faithfully to relate the truth, that of the reader to be just; more than this i never shall require of him. the marriage of m. de chenonceaux rendered his mother's house still more agreeable to me, by the wit and merit of the new bride, a very amiable young person, who seemed to distinguish me amongst the scribes of m. dupin. she was the only daughter of the viscountess de rochechouart, a great friend of the comte de friese, and consequently of grimm's who was very attentive to her. however, it was i who introduced him to her daughter; but their characters not suiting each other, this connection was not of long duration; and grimm, who from that time aimed at what was solid, preferred the mother, a woman of the world, to the daughter who wished for steady friends, such as were agreeable to her, without troubling her head about the least intrigue, or making any interest amongst the great. madam dupin no longer finding in madam de chenonceaux all the docility she expected, made her house very disagreeable to her, and madam de chenonceaux, having a great opinion of her own merit, and, perhaps, of her birth, chose rather to give up the pleasures of society, and remain almost alone in her apartment, than to submit to a yoke she was not disposed to bear. this species of exile increased my attachment to her, by that natural inclination which excites me to approach the wretched, i found her mind metaphysical and reflective, although at times a little sophistical; her conversation, which was by no means that of a young woman coming from a convent, had for me the greatest attractions; yet she was not twenty years of age. her complexion was seducingly fair; her figure would have been majestic had she held herself more upright. her hair, which was fair, bordering upon ash color, and uncommonly beautiful, called to my recollection that of my poor mamma in the flower of her age, and strongly agitated my heart. but the severe principles i had just laid down for myself, by which at all events i was determined to be guided, secured me from the danger of her and her charms. during the whole summer i passed three or four hours a day in a tete-a-tete conversation with her, teaching her arithmetic, and fatiguing her with my innumerable ciphers, without uttering a single word of gallantry, or even once glancing my eyes upon her. five or six years later i should not have had so much wisdom or folly; but it was decreed i was never to love but once in my life, and that another person was to have the first and last sighs of my heart. since i had lived in the house of madam dupin, i had always been satisfied with my situation, without showing the least sign of a desire to improve it. the addition which, in conjunction with m. de francueil, she had made to my salary, was entirely of their own accord. this year m. de francueil, whose friendship for me daily increased, had it in his thoughts to place me more at ease, and in a less precarious situation. he was receiver-general of finance. m. dudoyer, his cash-keeper, was old and rich, and wished to retire. m. de francueil offered me his place, and to prepare myself for it, i went during a few weeks, to dudoyer, to take the necessary instructions. but whether my talents were ill-suited to the employment, or that m. dudoyer, who i thought wished to procure his place for another, was not in earnest in the instructions he gave me, i acquired by slow degrees, and very imperfectly, the knowledge i was in want of, and could never understand the nature of accounts, rendered intricate, perhaps designedly. however, without having possessed myself of the whole scope of the business, i learned enough of the method to pursue it without the least difficulty; i even entered on my new office; i kept the cashbook and the cash; i paid and received money, took and gave receipts; and although this business was so ill suited to my inclinations as to my abilities, maturity of years beginning to render me sedate, i was determined to conquer my disgust, and entirely devote myself to my new employment. unfortunately for me, i had no sooner begun to proceed without difficulty, than m. de francueil took a little journey, during which i remained intrusted with the cash, which, at that time, did not amount to more than twenty-five to thirty thousand livres. the anxiety of mind this sum of money occasioned me, made me perceive i was very unfit to be a cash-keeper, and i have no doubt but my uneasy situation, during his absence, contributed to the illness with which i was seized after his return. i have observed in my first part that i was born in a dying state. a defect in the bladder caused me, during my early years, to suffer an almost continual retention of urine, and my aunt susan, to whose care i was intrusted, had inconceivable difficulty in preserving me. however, she succeeded, and my robust constitution at length got the better of all my weakness, and my health became so well established that except the illness from languor, of which i have given an account, and frequent heats in the bladder which the least heating of the blood rendered troublesome, i arrived at the age of thirty almost without feeling my original infirmity. the first time this happened was upon my arrival at venice. the fatigue of the voyage, and the extreme heat i had suffered, renewed the burnings, and gave me a pain in the loins, which continued until the beginning of winter. after having seen padoana, i thought myself near the end of my career, but i suffered not the least inconvenience. after exhausting my imagination more than my body for my zulietta, i enjoyed better health than ever. it was not until after the imprisonment of diderot that the heat of blood, brought on by my journeys to vincennes during the terrible heat of that summer, gave me a violent nephritic colic, since which i have never recovered my primitive good state of health. at the time of which i speak, having perhaps fatigued myself too much in the filthy work of the cursed receiver-general's office, i fell into a worse state than ever, and remained five or six weeks in my bed in the most melancholy state imaginable. madam dupin sent me the celebrated morand who, notwithstanding his address and the delicacy of his touch, made me suffer the greatest torments. he advised me to have recourse to daran, who, in fact gave me some relief: but morand, when he gave madam dupin an account of the state i was in, declared to her i should not be alive in six months. this afterwards came to my ear, and made me reflect seriously on my situation and the folly of sacrificing the repose of the few days i had to live to the slavery of an employment for which i felt nothing but disgust. besides, how was it possible to reconcile the severe principles i had just adopted to a situation with which they had so little relation? should not i, the cash-keeper of a receiver-general of finances, have preached poverty and disinterestedness with a very ill grace? these ideas fermented so powerfully in my mind with the fever, and were so strongly impressed, that from that time nothing could remove them; and, during my convalescence, i confirmed myself with the greatest coolness in the resolutions i had taken during my delirium. i forever abandoned all projects of fortune and advancement, resolved to pass in independence and poverty the little time i had to exist. i made every effort of which my mind was capable to break the fetters of prejudice, and courageously to do everything that was right without giving myself the least concern about the judgment of others. the obstacles i had to combat, and the efforts i made to triumph over them, are inconceivable. i succeeded as much as it was possible i should, and to a greater degree than i myself had hoped for. had i at the same time shaken off the yoke of friendship as well as that of prejudice, my design would have been accomplished, perhaps the greatest, at least the most useful one to virtue, that mortal ever conceived; but whilst i despised the foolish judgments of the vulgar tribe called great and wise, i suffered myself to be influenced and led by persons who called themselves my friends. these, hurt at seeing me walk alone in a new path, while i seemed to take measures for my happiness, used all their endeavors to render me ridiculous, and that they might afterwards defame me, first strove to make me contemptible. it was less my literary fame than my personal reformation, of which i here state the period, that drew upon me their jealousy; they perhaps might have pardoned me for having distinguished myself in the art of writing; but they could never forgive my setting them, by my conduct, an example, which, in their eyes, seemed to reflect on themselves. i was born for friendship; my mind and easy disposition nourished it without difficulty. as long as i lived unknown to the public i was beloved by all my private acquaintance, and i had not a single enemy. but the moment i acquired literary fame, i had no longer a friend. this, was a great misfortune; but a still greater was that of being surrounded by people who called themselves my friends, and used the rights attached to that sacred name to lead me on to destruction. the succeeding part of these memoirs will explain this odious conspiracy. i here speak of its origin, and the manner of the first intrigue will shortly appear. in the independence in which i lived, it was, however, necessary to subsist. to this effect i thought of very simple means: which were copying music at so much a page. if any employment more solid would have fulfilled the same end i would have taken it up; but this occupation being to my taste, and the only one which, without personal attendance, could procure me daily bread, i adopted it. thinking i had no longer need of foresight, and, stifling the vanity of cash-keeper to a financier, i made myself a copyist of music. i thought i had made an advantageous choice, and of this i so little repented, that i never quitted my new profession until i was forced to do it, after taking a fixed resolution to return to it as soon as possible. the success of my first discourse rendered the execution of this resolution more easy. as soon as it had gained the premium, diderot undertook to get it printed. whilst i was in my bed, he wrote me a note informing me of the publication and effect: "it takes," said he, "beyond all imagination; never was there an instance of alike success." this favor of the public, by no means solicited, and to an unknown author, gave me the first real assurance of my talents, of which, notwithstanding an internal sentiment, i had always had my doubts. i conceived the great advantage to be drawn from it in favor of the way of life i had determined to pursue; and was of opinion, that a copyist of some celebrity in the republic of letters was not likely to want employment. the moment my resolution was confirmed, i wrote a note to m, de francueil, communicating to him my intentions, thanking him and madam dupin for all goodness, and offering them my services in the way of my new profession. francueil did not understand my note, and, thinking i was still in the delirium of fever, hastened to my apartment; but he found me so determined, that all he could say to me was without the least effect. he went to madam dupin, and told her and everybody he met, that i had become insane. i let him say what he pleased, and pursued the plan i had conceived. i began the change in my dress; i quitted laced clothes and white stockings; i put on a round wig, laid aside my sword, and sold my watch; saying to myself, with inexpressible pleasure: "thank heaven! i shall no longer want to know the hour!" m. de francueil had the goodness to wait a considerable time before he disposed of my place. at length perceiving me inflexibly resolved, he gave it to m. d'alibard, formerly tutor to the young chenonceaux, and known as a botanist by his flora parisiensis. [i doubt not but these circumstances are now differently related by m. francueil and his consorts: but i appeal to what he said of them at the time and long afterwards, to everybody he knew, until the forming of the conspiracy, and of which men of common sense and honor, must have preserved a remembrance.] however austere my sumptuary reform might be, i did not at first extend it to my linen, which was fine and in great quantity, the remainder of my stock when at venice, and to which i was particularly attached. i had made it so much an object of cleanliness, that it became one of luxury, which was rather expensive. some persons, however, did me the favor to deliver me from this servitude. on christmas eve, whilst the governesses were at vespers, and i was at the spiritual concert, the door of a garret, in which all our linen was hung up after being washed, was broken open. everything was stolen; and amongst other things, forty-two of my shirts, of very fine linen, and which were the principal part of my stock. by the manner in which the neighbors described a man whom they had seen come out of the hotel with several parcels whilst we were all absent, theresa and myself suspected her brother, whom we knew to be a worthless man. the mother strongly endeavored to remove this suspicion, but so many circumstances concurred to prove it to be well founded, that, notwithstanding all she could say, our opinions remained still the same: i dared not make a strict search for fear of finding more than i wished to do. the brother never returned to the place where i lived, and, at length, was no more heard of by any of us. i was much grieved theresa and myself should be connected with such a family, and i exhorted her more than ever to shake off so dangerous a yoke. this adventure cured me of my inclination for fine linen, and since that time all i have had has been very common, and more suitable to the rest of my dress. having thus completed the change of that which related to my person, all my cares tendered to render it solid and lasting, by striving to root out from my heart everything susceptible of receiving an impression from the judgment of men, or which, from the fear of blame, might turn me aside from anything good and reasonable in itself. in consequence of the success of my work, my resolution made some noise in the world also, and procured me employment; so that i began my new profession with great appearance of success. however, several causes prevented me from succeeding in it to the same degree i should under any other circumstances have done. in the first place my ill state of health. the attack i had just had, brought on consequences which prevented my ever being so well as i was before; and i am of opinion, the physicians, to whose care i intrusted myself, did me as much harm as my illness. i was successively under the hands of morand, daran, helvetius, malouin, and thyerri: men able in their profession, and all of them my friends, who treated me each according to his own manner, without giving me the least relief, and weakened me considerably. the more i submitted to their direction, the yellower, thinner, and weaker i became. my imagination, which they terrified, judging of my situation by the effect of their drugs, presented to me, on this side of the tomb, nothing but continued sufferings from the gravel, stone, and retention of urine. everything which gave relief to others, ptisans, baths, and bleeding, increased my tortures. perceiving the bougees of daran, the only ones that had any favorable effect, and without which i thought i could no longer exist, to give me a momentary relief, i procured a prodigious number of them, that, in case of daran's death, i might never be at a loss. during the eight or ten years in which i made such frequent use of these, they must, with what i had left, have cost me fifty louis. it will easily be judged, that such expensive and painful means did not permit me to work without interruption; and that a dying man is not ardently industrious in the business by which he gains his daily bread. literary occupations caused another interruption not less prejudicial to my daily employment. my discourse had no sooner appeared than the defenders of letters fell upon me as if they had agreed with each to do it. my indignation was so raised at seeing so many blockheads, who did not understand the question, attempt to decide upon it imperiously, that in my answer i gave some of them the worst of it. one m. gautier, of nancy, the first who fell under the lash of my pen, was very roughly treated in a letter to m. grimm. the second was king stanislaus, himself, who did not disdain to enter the lists with me. the honor he did me, obliged me to change my manner in combating his opinions; i made use of a graver style, but not less nervous; and without failing in respect to the author, i completely refuted his work. i knew a jesuit, father de menou, had been concerned in it. i depended on my judgment to distinguish what was written by the prince, from the production of the monk, and falling without mercy upon all the jesuitical phrases, i remarked, as i went along, an anachronism which i thought could come from nobody but the priest. this composition, which, for what reason i knew not, has been less spoken of than any of my other writings, is the only one of its kind. i seized the opportunity which offered of showing to the public in what manner an individual may defend the cause of truth even against a sovereign. it is difficult to adopt a more dignified and respectful manner than that in which i answered him. i had the happiness to have to do with an adversary to whom, without adulation, i could show every mark of the esteem of which my heart was full; and this i did with success and a proper dignity. my friends, concerned for my safety, imagined they already saw me in the bastile. this apprehension never once entered my head, and i was right in not being afraid. the good prince, after reading my answer, said: "i have enough of at; i will not return to the charge." i have, since that time received from him different marks of esteem and benevolence, some of which i shall have occasion to speak of; and what i had written was read in france, and throughout europe, without meeting the least censure. in a little time i had another adversary whom i had not expected; this was the same m. bordes, of lyons, who ten years before had shown me much friendship, and from whom i had received several services. i had not forgotten him, but had neglected him from idleness, and had not sent him my writings for want of an opportunity, without seeking for it, to get them conveyed to his hands. i was therefore in the wrong, and he attacked me; this, however, he did politely, and i answered in the same manner. he replied more decidedly. this produced my last answer; after which i heard no more from him upon the subject; but he became my most violent enemy, took the advantage of the time of my misfortunes, to publish against me the most indecent libels, and made a journey to london on purpose to do me an injury. all this controversy employed me a good deal, and caused me a great loss of my time in my copying, without much contributing to the progress of truth, or the good of my purse. pissot, at that time my bookseller, gave me but little for my pamphlets, frequently nothing at all, and i never received a farthing for my first discourse. diderot gave it him. i was obliged to wait a long time for the little he gave me, and to take it from him in the most trifling sums. notwithstanding this, my copying went on but slowly. i had two things together upon my hands, which was the most likely means of doing them both ill. they were very opposite to each other in their effects by the different manners of living to which they rendered me subject. the success of my first writings had given me celebrity. my new situation excited curiosity. everybody wished to know that whimsical man who sought not the acquaintance of any one, and whose only desire was to live free and happy in the manner he had chosen; this was sufficient to make the thing impossible to me. my apartment was continually full of people, who, under different pretences, came to take up my time. the women employed a thousand artifices to engage me to dinner. the more unpolite i was with people, the more obstinate they became. i could not refuse everybody. while i made myself a thousand enemies by my refusals, i was incessantly a slave to my complaisance, and, in whatever manner i made my engagements, i had not an hour in a day to myself. i then perceived it was not so easy to be poor and independent, as i had imagined. i wished to live by my profession: the public would not suffer me to do it. a thousand means were thought of to indemnify me for the time i lost. the next thing would have been showing myself like punch, at so much each person. i knew no dependence more cruel and degrading than this. i saw no other method of putting an end to it than refusing all kinds of presents, great and small, let them come from whom they would. this had no other effect than to increase the number of givers, who wished to have the honor of overcoming my resistance, and to force me, in spite of myself, to be under an obligation to them. many, who would not have given me half-a-crown had i asked it from them, incessantly importuned me with their offers, and, in revenge for my refusal, taxed me with arrogance and ostentation. it will naturally be conceived that the resolutions i had taken, and the system i wished to follow, were not agreeable to madam le vasseur. all the disinterestedness of the daughter did not prevent her from following the directions of her mother; and the governesses, as gauffecourt called them, were not always so steady in their refusals as i was. although many things were concealed from me, i perceived so many as were necessary to enable me to judge that i did not see all, and this tormented me less by the accusation of connivance, which it was so easy for me to foresee, than by the cruel idea of never being master in my own apartments, nor even of my own person. i prayed, conjured, and became angry, all to no purpose; the mother made me pass for an eternal grumbler, and a man who was peevish and ungovernable. she held perpetual whisperings with my friends; everything in my little family was mysterious and a secret to me; and, that i might not incessantly expose myself to noisy quarrelling, i no longer dared to take notice of what passed in it. a firmness of which i was not capable, would have been necessary to withdraw me from this domestic strife. i knew how to complain, but not how to act: they suffered me to say what i pleased, and continued to act as they thought proper. this constant teasing, and the daily importunities to which i was subject, rendered the house, and my residence at paris, disagreeable to me. when my indisposition permitted me to go out, and i did not suffer myself to be led by my acquaintance first to one place and then to another, i took a walk, alone, and reflected on my grand system, something of which i committed to paper, bound up between two covers, which, with a pencil, i always had in my pocket. in this manner, the unforeseen disagreeableness of a situation i had chosen entirely led me back to literature, to which unsuspectedly i had recourse as a means of releaving my mind, and thus, in the first works i wrote, i introduced the peevishness and ill-humor which were the cause of my undertaking them. there was another circumstance which contributed not a little to this; thrown into the world despite of myself, without having the manners of it, or being in a situation to adopt and conform myself to them, i took it into my head to adopt others of my own, to enable me to dispense with those of society. my foolish timidity, which i could not conquer, having for principle the fear of being wanting in the common forms, i took, by way of encouraging myself, a resolution to tread them under foot. i became sour and cynic from shame, and affected to despise the politeness which i knew not how to practice. this austerity, conformable to my new principles, i must confess, seemed to ennoble itself in my mind; it assumed in my eyes the form of the intrepidity of virtue, and i dare assert it to be upon this noble basis, that it supported itself longer and better than could have been expected from anything so contrary to my nature. yet, not withstanding, i had the name of a misanthrope, which my exterior appearance and some happy expressions had given me in the world: it is certain i did not support the character well in private, that my friends and acquaintance led this untractable bear about like a lamb, and that, confining my sarcasms to severe but general truths, i was never capable of saying an uncivil thing to any person whatsoever. the 'devin du village' brought me completely into vogue, and presently after there was not a man in paris whose company was more sought after than mine. the history of this piece, which is a kind of era in my life, is joined with that of the connections i had at that time. i must enter a little into particulars to make what is to follow the better understood. i had a numerous acquaintance, yet no more than two friends: diderot and grimm. by an effect of the desire i have ever felt to unite everything that is dear to me, i was too much a friend to both not to make them shortly become so to each other. i connected them: they agreed well together, and shortly become more intimate with each other than with me. diderot had a numerous acquaintance, but grimm, a stranger and a new-comer, had his to procure, and with the greatest pleasure i procured him all i could. i had already given him diderot. i afterwards brought him acquainted with gauffecourt. i introduced him to madam chenonceaux, madam d'epinay, and the baron d'holbach; with whom i had become connected almost in spite of myself. all my friends became his: this was natural: but not one of his ever became mine; which was inclining to the contrary. whilst he yet lodged at the house of the comte de friese, he frequently gave us dinners in his apartment, but i never received the least mark of friendship from the comte de friese, comte de schomberg, his relation, very familiar with grimm, nor from any other person, man or woman, with whom grimm, by their means, had any connection. i except the abbe raynal, who, although his friend, gave proofs of his being mine; and in cases of need, offered me his purse with a generosity not very common. but i knew the abbe raynal long before grimm had any acquaintance with him, and had entertained a great regard for him on account of his delicate and honorable behavior to me upon a slight occasion, which i shall never forget. the abbe raynal is certainly a warm friend; of this i saw a proof, much about the time of which i speak, with respect to grimm himself, with whom he was very intimate. grimm, after having been sometime on a footing of friendship with mademoiselle fel, fell violently in love with her, and wished to supplant cahusac. the young lady, piquing herself on her constancy, refused her new admirer. he took this so much to heart, that the appearance of his affliction became tragical. he suddenly fell into the strangest state imaginable. he passed days and nights in a continued lethargy. he lay with his eyes open; and although his pulse continued to beat regularly, without speaking eating, or stirring, yet sometimes seeming to hear what was said to him, but never answering, not even by a sign, and remaining almost as immovable as if he had been dead, yet without agitation, pain, or fever. the abbe raynal and myself watched over him; the abbe, more robust, and in better health than i was, by night, and i by day, without ever both being absent at one time. the comte de friese was alarmed, and brought to him senac, who, after having examined the state in which he was, said there was nothing to apprehend, and took his leave without giving a prescription. my fears for my friend made me carefully observe the countenance of the physician, and i perceived him smile as he went away. however, the patient remained several days almost motionless, without taking anything except a few preserved cherries, which from time to time i put upon his tongue, and which he swallowed without difficulty. at length he, one morning, rose, dressed himself, and returned to his usual way of life, without either at that time or afterwards speaking to me or the abbe raynal, at least that i know of, or to any other person, of this singular lethargy, or the care we had taken of him during the time it lasted. the affair made a noise, and it would really have been a wonderful circumstance had the cruelty of an opera girl made a man die of despair. this strong passion brought grimm into vogue; he was soon considered as a prodigy in love, friendship, and attachments of every kind. such an opinion made his company sought after, and procured him a good reception in the first circles; by which means he separated from me, with whom he was never inclined to associate when he could do it with anybody else. i perceived him to be on the point of breaking with me entirely; for the lively and ardent sentiments, of which he made a parade, were those which with less noise and pretensions, i had really conceived for him. i was glad he succeeded in the world; but i did not wish him to do this by forgetting his friend. i one day said to him: "grimm, you neglect me, and i forgive you for it. when the first intoxication of your success is over, and you begin to perceive a void in your enjoyments, i hope you will return to your friend, whom you will always find in the same sentiments; at present do not constrain yourself, i leave you at liberty to act as you please, and wait your leisure." he said i was right, made his arrangements in consequence, and shook off all restraint, so that i saw no more of him except in company with our common friends. our chief rendezvous, before he was connected with madam d'epinay as he afterwards became, was at the house of baron d'holbach. this said baron was the son of a man who had raised himself from obscurity. his fortune was considerable, and he used it nobly, receiving at his house men of letters and merit: and, by the knowledge he himself had acquired, was very worthy of holding a place amongst them. having been long attached to diderot, he endeavored to become acquainted with me by his means, even before my name was known to the world. a natural repugnancy prevented me a long time from answering his advances. one day, when he asked me the reason of my unwillingness, i told him he was too rich. he was, however, resolved to carry his point, and at length succeeded. my greatest misfortune proceeded from my being unable to resist the force of marked attention. i have ever had reason to repent of having yielded to it. another acquaintance which, as soon as i had any pretensions to it, was converted into friendship, was that of m. duclos. i had several years before seen him, for the first time, at the chevrette, at the house of madam d'epinay, with whom he was upon very good terms. on that day we only dined together, and he returned to town in the afternoon. but we had a conversation of a few moments after dinner. madam d'epinay had mentioned me to him, and my opera of the 'muses gallantes'. duclos, endowed with too great talents not to be a friend to those in whom the like were found, was prepossessed in my favor, and invited me to go and see him. notwithstanding my former wish, increased by an acquaintance, i was withheld by my timidity and indolence, as long as i had no other passport to him than his complaisance. but encouraged by my first success, and by his eulogiums, which reached my ears, i went to see him; he returned my visit, and thus began the connection between us, which will ever render him dear to me. by him, as well as from the testimony of my own heart, i learned that uprightness and probity may sometimes be connected with the cultivation of letters. many other connections less solid, and which i shall not here particularize, were the effects of my first success, and lasted until curiosity was satisfied. i was a man so easily known, that on the next day nothing new was to be discovered in me. however, a woman, who at that time was desirous of my acquaintance, became much more solidly attached to me than any of those whose curiosity i had excited: this was the marchioness of crequi, niece to m. le bailli de froulay, ambassador from malta, whose brother had preceded m. de montaigu in the embassy to venice, and whom i had gone to see on my return from that city. madam de crequi wrote to me: i visited her: she received me into her friendship. i sometimes dined with her. i met at her table several men of letters, amongst others m. saurin, the author of spartacus, barnevelt, etc., since become my implacable enemy; for no other reason, at least that i can imagine, than my bearing the name of a man whom his father has cruelly persecuted. it will appear that for a copyist, who ought to be employed in his business from morning till night, i had many interruptions, which rendered my days not very lucrative, and prevented me from being sufficiently attentive to what i did to do it well; for which reason, half the time i had to myself was lost in erasing errors or beginning my sheet anew. this daily importunity rendered paris more unsupportable, and made me ardently wish to be in the country. i several times went to pass a few days at mercoussis, the vicar of which was known to madam le vasseur, and with whom we all arranged ourselves in such a manner as not to make things disagreeable to him. grimm once went thither with us. [since i have neglected to relate here a trifling, but memorable adventure i had with the said grimm one day, on which we were to dine at the fountain of st. vandrille, i will let it pass: but when i thought of it afterwards, i concluded that he was brooding in his heart the conspiracy he has, with so much success, since carried into execution.] the vicar had a tolerable voice, sung well, and, although he did not read music, learned his part with great facility and precision. we passed our time in singing the trios i had composed at chenonceaux. to these i added two or three new ones, to the words grimm and the vicar wrote, well or ill. i cannot refrain from regretting these trios composed and sung in moments of pure joy, and which i left at wootton, with all my music. mademoiselle davenport has perhaps curled her hair with them; but they are worthy of being preserved, and are, for the most part, of very good counterpoint. it was after one of these little excursions in which i had the pleasure of seeing the aunt at her ease and very cheerful, and in which my spirits were much enlivened, that i wrote to the vicar very rapidly and very ill, an epistle in verse which will be found amongst my papers. i had nearer to paris another station much to my liking with m. mussard, my countryman, relation and friend, who at passy had made himself a charming retreat, where i have passed some very peaceful moments. m. mussard was a jeweller, a man of good sense, who, after having acquired a genteel fortune, had given his only daughter in marriage to m. de valmalette, the son of an exchange broker, and maitre d'hotel to the king, took the wise resolution to quit business in his declining years, and to place an interval of repose and enjoyment between the hurry and the end of life. the good man mussard, a real philosopher in practice, lived without care, in a very pleasant house which he himself had built in a very pretty garden, laid out with his own hands. in digging the terraces of this garden he found fossil shells, and in such great quantities that his lively imagination saw nothing but shells in nature. he really thought the universe was composed of shells and the remains of shells, and that the whole earth was only the sand of these in different stratae. his attention thus constantly engaged with his singular discoveries, his imagination became so heated with the ideas they gave him, that, in his head, they would soon have been converted into a system, that is into folly, if, happily for his reason, but unfortunately for his friends, to whom he was dear, and to whom his house was an agreeable asylum, a most cruel and extraordinary disease had not put an end to his existence. a constantly increasing tumor in his stomach prevented him from eating, long before the cause of it was discovered, and, after several years of suffering, absolutely occasioned him to die of hunger. i can never, without the greatest affliction of mind, call to my recollection the last moments of this worthy man, who still received with so much pleasure, leneips and myself, the only friends whom the sight of his sufferings did not separate from him until his last hour, when he was reduced to devouring with his eyes the repasts he had placed before us, scarcely having the power of swallowing a few drops of weak tea, which came up again a moment afterwards. but before these days of sorrow, how many have i passed at his house, with the chosen friends he had made himself! at the head of the list i place the abbe prevot, a very amiable man, and very sincere, whose heart vivified his writings, worthy of immortality, and who, neither in his disposition nor in society, had the least of the melancholy coloring he gave to his works. procope, the physician, a little esop, a favorite with the ladies; boulanger, the celebrated posthumous author of 'despotisme oriental', and who, i am of opinion extended the systems of mussard on the duration of the world. the female part of his friends consisted of madam denis, niece to voltaire, who, at that time, was nothing more than a good kind of woman, and pretended not to wit: madam vanloo, certainly not handsome, but charming, and who sang like an angel: madam de valmalette, herself, who sang also, and who, although very thin, would have been very amiable had she had fewer pretensions. such, or very nearly such, was the society of m. mussard, with which i should had been much pleased, had not his conchyliomania more engaged my attention; and i can say, with great truth, that, for upwards of six months, i worked with him in his cabinet with as much pleasure as he felt himself. he had long insisted upon the virtue of the waters of passy, that they were proper in my case, and recommended me to come to his house to drink them. to withdraw myself from the tumult of the city, i at length consented, and went to pass eight or ten days at passy, which, on account of my being in the country, were of more service to me than the waters i drank during my stay there. mussard played the violincello, and was passionately found of italian music. this was the subject of a long conversation we had one evening after supper, particularly the 'opera-buffe' we had both seen in italy, and with which we were highly delighted. my sleep having forsaken me in the night, i considered in what manner it would be possible to give in france an idea of this kind of drama. the 'amours de ragonde' did not in the least resemble it. in the morning, whilst i took my walk and drank the waters, i hastily threw together a few couplets to which i adapted such airs as occurred to me at the moments. i scribbled over what i had composed, in a kind of vaulted saloon at the end of the garden, and at tea. i could not refrain from showing the airs to mussard and to mademoiselle du vernois, his 'gouvernante', who was a very good and amiable girl. three pieces of composition i had sketched out were the first monologue: 'j'ai perdu mon serviteur;'--the air of the devin; 'l'amour croit s'il s'inquiete;' and the last duo: 'a jamais, colin, je t'engage, etc.' i was so far from thinking it worth while to continue what i had begun, that, had it not been for the applause and encouragement i received from both mussard and mademoiselle, i should have throw n my papers into the fire and thought no more of their contents, as i had frequently done by things of much the same merit; but i was so animated by the encomiums i received, that in six days, my drama, excepting a few couplets, was written. the music also was so far sketched out, that all i had further to do to it after my return from paris, was to compose a little of the recitative, and to add the middle parts, the whole of which i finished with so much rapidity, that in three weeks my work was ready for representation. the only thing now wanting, was the divertissement, which was not composed until a long time afterwards. my imagination was so warmed by the composition of this work that i had the strongest desire to hear it performed, and would have given anything to have seen and heard the whole in the manner i should have chosen, which would have been that of lully, who is said to have had 'armide' performed for himself only. as it was not possible i should hear the performance unaccompanied by the public, i could not see the effect of my piece without getting it received at the opera. unfortunately it was quite a new species of composition, to which the ears of the public were not accustomed; and besides the ill success of the 'muses gallantes' gave too much reason to fear for the devin, if i presented it in my own name. duclos relieved me from this difficulty, and engaged to get the piece rehearsed without mentioning the author. that i might not discover myself, i did not go to the rehearsal, and the 'petits violons', [rebel and frauneur, who, when they were very young, went together from house to house playing on the violin, were so called.] by whom it was directed, knew not who the author was until after a general plaudit had borne the testimony of the work. everybody present was so delighted with it, that, on the next day, nothing else was spoken of in the different companies. m. de cury, intendant des menus, who was present at the rehearsal, demanded the piece to have it performed at court. duclos, who knew my intentions, and thought i should be less master of my work at the court than at paris, refused to give it. cury claimed it authoratively. duclos persisted in his refusal, and the dispute between them was carried to such a length, that one day they would have gone out from the opera-house together had they not been separated. m. de cury applied to me, and i referred him to duclos. this made it necessary to return to the latter. the duke d'aumont interfered; and at length duclos thought proper to yield to authority, and the piece was given to be played at fontainebleau. the part to which i had been most attentive, and in which i had kept at the greatest distance from the common track, was the recitative. mine was accented in a manner entirely new, and accompanied the utterance of the word. the directors dared not suffer this horrid innovation to pass, lest it should shock the ears of persons who never judge for themselves. another recitative was proposed by francueil and jelyotte, to which i consented; but refused at the same time to have anything to do with it myself. when everything was ready and the day of performance fixed, a proposition was made me to go to fontainebleau, that i might at least be at the last rehearsal. i went with mademoiselle fel, grimm, and i think the abbe raynal, in one of the stages to the court. the rehearsal was tolerable: i was more satisfied with it than i expected to have been. the orchestra was numerous, composed of the orchestras of the opera and the king's band. jelyotte played colin, mademoiselle fel, colette, cuvillier the devin: the choruses were those of the opera. i said but little; jelyotte had prepared everything; i was unwilling either to approve of or censure what he had done; and notwithstanding i had assumed the air of an old roman, i was, in the midst of so many people, as bashful as a schoolboy. the next morning, the day of performance, i went to breakfast at the coffee-house 'du grand commun', where i found a great number of people. the rehearsal of the preceding evening, and the difficulty of getting into the theatre, were the subjects of conversation. an officer present said he entered with the greatest ease, gave a long account of what had passed, described the author, and related what he had said and done; but what astonished me most in this long narrative, given with as much assurance as simplicity, was that it did not contain a syllable of truth. it was clear to me that he who spoke so positively of the rehearsal had not been at it, because, without knowing him, he had before his eyes that author whom he said he had seen and examined so minutely. however, what was more singular still in this scene, was its effect upon me. the officer was a man rather in years, he had nothing of the appearance of a coxcomb; his features appeared to announce a man of merit; and his cross of saint louis, an officer of long standing. he interested me: notwithstanding his impudence. whilst he uttered his lies, i blushed, looked down, and was upon thorns; i, for some time, endeavored within myself to find the means of believing him to be in an involuntary error. at length, trembling lest some person should know me, and by this means confound him, i hastily drank my chocolate, without saying a word, and, holding down my head, i passed before him, got out of the coffee-house as soon as possible, whilst the company were making their remarks upon the relation that had been given. i was no sooner in the street than i was in a perspiration, and had anybody known and named me before i left the room, i am certain all the shame and embarrassment of a guilty person would have appeared in my countenance, proceeding from what i felt the poor man would have had to have suffered had his lie been discovered. i come to one of the critical moments of my life, in which it is difficult to do anything more than to relate, because it is almost impossible that even narrative should not carry with it the marks of censure or apology. i will, however, endeavor to relate how and upon what motives i acted, with out adding either approbation or censure. i was on that day in the same careless undress as usual, with a long beard and wig badly combed. considering this want of decency as an act of courage, i entered the theatre wherein the king, queen, the royal family, and the whole court were to enter immediately after. i was conducted to a box by m. de cury, and which belonged to him. it was very spacious, upon the stage and opposite to a lesser, but more elevated one, in which the king sat with madam de pompadour. as i was surrounded by women, and the only man in front of the box, i had no doubt of my having been placed there purposely to be exposed to view. as soon as the theatre was lighted up, finding i was in the midst of people all extremely well dressed, i began to be less at my ease, and asked myself if i was in my place? whether or not i was properly dressed? after a few minutes of inquietude: "yes," replied i, with an intrepidity which perhaps proceeded more from the impossibility of retracting than the force of all my reasoning, "i am in my place, because i am going to see my own piece performed, to which i have been invited, for which reason only i am come here; and after all, no person has a greater right than i have to reap the fruit of my labor and talents; i am dressed as usual, neither better nor worse; and if i once begin to subject myself to public opinion, i shall shortly become a slave to it in everything. to be always consistent with myself, i ought not to blush, in any place whatever, at being dressed in a manner suitable to the state i have chosen. my exterior appearance is simple, but neither dirty nor slovenly; nor is a beard either of these in itself, because it is given us by nature, and according to time, place and custom, is sometimes an ornament. people think i am ridiculous, nay, even absurd; but what signifies this to me? i ought to know how to bear censure and ridicule, provided i do not deserve them." after this little soliloquy i became so firm that, had it been necessary, i could have been intrepid. but whether it was the effect of the presence of his majesty, or the natural disposition of those about me, i perceived nothing but what was civil and obliging in the curiosity of which i was the object. this so much affected me that i began to be uneasy for myself, and the fate of my piece; fearing i should efface the favorable prejudices which seemed to lead to nothing but applause. i was armed against raillery; but, so far overcome, by the flattering and obliging treatment i had not expected, that i trembled like a child when the performance was begun. i had soon sufficient reason to be encouraged. the piece was very ill played with respect to the actors, but the musical part was well sung and executed. during the first scene, which was really of a delightful simplicity, i heard in the boxes a murmur of surprise and applause, which, relative to pieces of the same kind, had never yet happened. the fermentation was soon increased to such a degree as to be perceptible through the whole audience, and of which, to speak--after the manner of montesquieu--the effect was augmented by itself. in the scene between the two good little folks, this effect was complete. there is no clapping of hands before the king; therefore everything was heard, which was advantageous to the author and the piece. i heard about me a whispering of women, who appeared as beautiful as angels. they said to each other in a low voice: "this is charming: that is ravishing: there is not a sound which does not go to the heart." the pleasure of giving this emotion to so many amiable persons moved me to tears; and these i could not contain in the first duo, when i remarked that i was not the only person who wept. i collected myself for a moment, on recollecting the concert of m. de treitorens. this reminiscence had the effect of the slave who held the crown over the head of the general who triumphed, but my reflection was short, and i soon abandoned myself without interruption to the pleasure of enjoying my success. however, i am certain the voluptuousness of the sex was more predominant than the vanity of the author, and had none but men been present, i certainly should not have had the incessant desire i felt of catching on my lips the delicious tears i had caused to flow. i have known pieces excite more lively admiration, but i never saw so complete, delightful, and affecting an intoxication of the senses reign, during a whole representation, especially at court, and at a first performance. they who saw this must recollect it, for it has never yet been equalled. the same evening the duke d' aumont sent to desire me to be at the palace the next day at eleven o'clock, when he would present me to the king. m. de cury, who delivered me the message, added that he thought a pension was intended, and that his majesty wished to announce it to me himself. will it be believed that the night of so brilliant a day was for me a night of anguish and perplexity? my first idea, after that of being presented, was that of my frequently wanting to retire; this had made me suffer very considerably at the theatre, and might torment me the next day when i should be in the gallery, or in the king's apartment, amongst all the great, waiting for the passing of his majesty. my infirmity was the principal cause which prevented me from mixing in polite companies, and enjoying the conversation of the fair. the idea alone of the situation in which this want might place me, was sufficient to produce it to such a degree as to make me faint away, or to recur to means to which, in my opinion, death was much preferable. none but persons who are acquainted with this situation can judge of the horror which being exposed to the risk of it inspires. i then supposed myself before the king, presented to his majesty, who deigned to stop and speak to me. in this situation, justness of expression and presence of mind were peculiarly necessary in answering. would my timidity which disconcerts me in presence of any stranger whatever, have been shaken off in presence of the king of france; or would it have suffered me instantly to make choice of proper expressions? i wished, without laying aside the austere manner i had adopted, to show myself sensible of the honor done me by so great a monarch, and in a handsome and merited eulogium to convey some great and useful truth. i could not prepare a suitable answer without exactly knowing what his majesty was to say to me; and had this been the case, i was certain that, in his presence, i should not recollect a word of what i had previously meditated. "what," said i, "will become of me in this moment, and before the whole court, if, in my confusion, any of my stupid expressions should escape me?" this danger alarmed and terrified me. i trembled to such a degree that at all events i was determined not to expose myself to it. i lost, it is true, the pension which in some measure was offered me; but i at the same time exempted myself from the yoke it would have imposed. adieu, truth, liberty, and courage! how should i afterwards have dared to speak of disinterestedness and independence? had i received the pension i must either have become a flatterer or remained silent; and, moreover, who would have insured to me the payment of it! what steps should i have been under the necessity of taking! how many people must i have solicited! i should have had more trouble and anxious cares in preserving than in doing without it. therefore, i thought i acted according to my principles by refusing, and sacrificing appearances to reality. i communicated my resolution to grimm, who said nothing against it. to others i alleged my ill state of health, and left the court in the morning. my departure made some noise, and was generally condemned. my reasons could not be known to everybody, it was therefore easy to accuse me of foolish pride, and thus not irritate the jealousy of such as felt they would not have acted as i had done. the next day jelyotte wrote me a note, in which he stated the success of my piece, and the pleasure it had afforded the king. "all day long," said he, "his majesty sings, with the worst voice in his kingdom: 'j'ai perdu mon serviteur: j'ai perdu tout mon bonheur.'" he likewise added, that in a fortnight the devin was to be performed a second time; which confirmed in the eyes of the public the complete success of the first. two days afterwards, about nine o'clock in the evening, as i was going to sup with madam d'epinay, i perceived a hackney-coach pass by the door. somebody within made a sign to me to approach. i did so, and got into it, and found the person to be diderot. he spoke of the pension with more warmth than, upon such a subject, i should have expected from a philosopher. he did not blame me for having been unwilling to be presented to the king, but severely reproached me with my indifference about the pension. he observed that although on my own account i might be disinterested, i ought not to be so on that of madam vasseur and her daughter; that it was my duty to seize every means of providing for their subsistence; and that as, after all, it could not be said i had refused the pension, he maintained i ought, since the king seemed disposed to grant it to me, to solicit and obtain it by one means or another. although i was obliged to him for his good wishes, i could not relish his maxims, which produced a warm dispute, the first i ever had with him. all our disputes were of this kind, he prescribing to me what he pretended i ought to do, and i defending myself because i was of a different opinion. it was late when we parted. i would have taken him to supper at madam d' epinay's, but he refused to go; and, notwithstanding all the efforts which at different times the desire of uniting those i love induced me to make, to prevail upon him to see her, even that of conducting her to his door which he kept shut against us, he constantly refused to do it, and never spoke of her but with the utmost contempt. it was not until after i had quarrelled with both that they became acquainted and that he began to speak honorably of her. from this time diderot and grimm seemed to have undertaken to alienate from me the governesses, by giving them to understand that if they were not in easy circumstances the fault was my own, and that they never would be so with me. they endeavored to prevail on them to leave me, promising them the privilege for retailing salt, a snuff shop, and i know not what other advantages by means of the influence of madam d' epinay. they likewise wished to gain over duclos and d'holback, but the former constantly refused their proposals. i had at the time some intimation of what was going forward, but i was not fully acquainted with the whole until long afterwards; and i frequently had reason to lament the effects of the blind and indiscreet zeal of my friends, who, in my ill state of health, striving to reduce me to the most melancholy solitude, endeavored, as they imagined, to render me happy by the means which, of all others, were the most proper to make me miserable. in the carnival following the conclusion of the year , the devin was performed at paris, and in this interval i had sufficient time to compose the overture and divertissement. this divertissement, such as it stands engraved, was to be in action from the beginning to the end, and in a continued subject, which in my opinion, afforded very agreeable representations. but when i proposed this idea at the opera-house, nobody would so much as hearken to me, and i was obliged to tack together music and dances in the usual manner: on this account the divertissement, although full of charming ideas which do not diminish the beauty of scenes, succeeded but very middlingly. i suppressed the recitative of jelyotte, and substituted my own, such as i had first composed it, and as it is now engraved; and this recitative a little after the french manner, i confess, drawled out, instead of pronounced by the actors, far from shocking the ears of any person, equally succeeded with the airs, and seemed in the judgment of the public to possess as much musical merit. i dedicated my piece to duclos, who had given it his protection, and declared it should be my only dedication. i have, however, with his consent, written a second; but he must have thought himself more honored by the exception, than if i had not written a dedication to any person. i could relate many anecdotes concerning this piece, but things of greater importance prevent me from entering into a detail of them at present. i shall perhaps resume the subject in a supplement. there is however one which i cannot omit, as it relates to the greater part of what is to follow. i one day examined the music of d'holbach, in his closet. after having looked over many different kinds, he said, showing me a collection of pieces for the harpsichord: "these were composed for me; they are full of taste and harmony, and unknown to everybody but myself. you ought to make a selection from them for your divertissement." having in my head more subjects of airs and symphonies than i could make use of, i was not the least anxious to have any of his. however, he pressed me so much, that, from a motive of complaisance, i chose a pastoral, which i abridged and converted into a trio, for the entry of the companions of colette. some months afterwards, and whilst the devin still continued to be performed, going into grimms i found several people about his harpsichord, whence he hastily rose on my arrival. as i accidently looked toward his music stand, i there saw the same collection of the baron d'holback, opened precisely at the piece he had prevailed upon me to take, assuring me at the same time that it should never go out of his hands. some time afterwards, i again saw the collection open on the harpischord of m. d'papinay, one day when he gave a little concert. neither grimm, nor anybody else, ever spoke to me of the air, and my reason for mentioning it here is that some time afterwards, a rumor was spread that i was not the author of devin. as i never made a great progress in the practical part, i am persuaded that had it not been for my dictionary of music, it would in the end have been said i did not understand composition. sometime before the 'devin du village' was performed, a company of italian bouffons had arrived at paris, and were ordered to perform at the opera-house, without the effect they would produce there being foreseen. although they were detestable, and the orchestra, at that time very ignorant, mutilated at will the pieces they gave, they did the french opera an injury that will never be repaired. the comparison of these two kinds of music, heard the same evening in the same theatre, opened the ears of the french; nobody could endure their languid music after the marked and lively accents of italian composition; and the moment the bouffons had done, everybody went away. the managers were obliged to change the order of representation, and let the performance of the bouffons be the last. 'egle pigmalion' and 'le sylphe' were successively given: nothing could bear the comparison. the 'devin du village' was the only piece that did it, and this was still relished after 'la serva padroma'. when i composed my interlude, my head was filled with these pieces, and they gave me the first idea of it: i was, however, far from imagining they would one day be passed in review by the side of my composition. had i been a plagiarist, how many pilferings would have been manifest, and what care would have been taken to point them out to the public! but i had done nothing of the kind. all attempts to discover any such thing were fruitless: nothing was found in my music which led to the recollection of that of any other person; and my whole composition compared with the pretended original, was found to be as new as the musical characters i had invented. had mondonville or rameau undergone the same ordeal, they would have lost much of their substance. the bouffons acquired for italian music very warm partisans. all paris was divided into two parties, the violence of which was greater than if an affair of state or religion had been in question. one of them, the most powerful and numerous, composed of the great, of men of fortune, and the ladies, supported french music; the other, more lively and haughty, and fuller of enthusiasm, was composed of real connoisseurs, and men of talents, and genius. this little group assembled at the opera-house, under the box belonging to the queen. the other party filled up the rest of the pit and the theatre; but the heads were mostly assembled under the box of his majesty. hence the party names of coin du roi, coin de la reine,--[king's corner,--queen's corner.]--then in great celebrity. the dispute, as it became more animated, produced several pamphlets. the king's corner aimed at pleasantry; it was laughed at by the 'petit prophete'. it attempted to reason; the 'lettre sur la musique francoise' refuted its reasoning. these two little productions, the former of which was by grimm, the latter by myself, are the only ones which have outlived the quarrel; all the rest are long since forgotten. but the petit prophete, which, notwithstanding all i could say, was for a long time attributed to me, was considered as a pleasantry, and did not produce the least inconvenience to the author: whereas the letter on music was taken seriously, and incensed against me the whole nation, which thought itself offended by this attack on its music. the description of the incredible effect of this pamphlet would be worthy of the pen of tacitus. the great quarrel between the parliament and the clergy was then at its height. the parliament had just been exiled; the fermentation was general; everything announced an approaching insurrection. the pamphlet appeared: from that moment every other quarrel was forgotten; the perilous state of french music was the only thing by which the attention of the public was engaged, and the only insurrection was against myself. this was so general that it has never since been totally calmed. at court, the bastile or banishment was absolutely determined on, and a 'lettre de cachet' would have been issued had not m. de voyer set forth in the most forcible manner that such a step would be ridiculous. were i to say this pamphlet probably prevented a revolution, the reader would imagine i was in a dream. it is, however, a fact, the truth of which all paris can attest, it being no more than fifteen years since the date of this singular fact. although no attempts were made on my liberty, i suffered numerous insults; and even my life was in danger. the musicians of the opera orchestra humanely resolved to murder me as i went out of the theatre. of this i received information; but the only effect it produced on me was to make me more assiduously attend the opera; and i did not learn, until a considerable time afterwards, that m. ancelot, officer in the mousquetaires, and who had a friendship for me, had prevented the effect of this conspiracy by giving me an escort, which, unknown to myself, accompanied me until i was out of danger. the direction of the opera-house had just been given to the hotel de ville. the first exploit performed by the prevot des marchands, was to take from me my freedom of the theatre, and this in the most uncivil manner possible. admission was publicly refused me on my presenting myself, so that i was obliged to take a ticket that i might not that evening have the mortification to return as i had come. this injustice was the more shameful, as the only price i had set on my piece when i gave it to the managers was a perpetual freedom of the house; for although this was a right, common to every author, and which i enjoyed under a double title, i expressly stipulated for it in presence of m. duclos. it is true, the treasurer brought me fifty louis, for which i had not asked; but, besides the smallness of the sum, compared with that which, according to the rule, established in such cases, was due to me, this payment had nothing in common with the right of entry formerly granted, and which was entirely independent of it. there was in this behavior such a complication of iniquity and brutality, that the public, notwithstanding its animosity against me, which was then at its highest, was universally shocked at it, and many persons who insulted me the preceding evening, the next day exclaimed in the open theatre, that it was shameful thus to deprive an author of his right of entry; and particularly one who had so well deserved it, and was entitled to claim it for himself and another person. so true is the italian proverb: ogn' un ama la giustizia in cosa d altrui.--[every one loves justice in the affairs of another.] in this situation the only thing i had to do was to demand my work, since the price i had agreed to receive for it was refused me. for this purpose i wrote to m. d'argenson, who had the department of the opera. i likewise enclosed to him a memoir which was unanswerable; but this, as well as my letter, was ineffectual, and i received no answer to either. the silence of that unjust man hurt me extremely, and did not contribute to increase the very moderate good opinion i always had of his character and abilities. it was in this manner the managers kept my piece while they deprived me of that for which i had given it them. from the weak to the strong, such an act would be a theft: from the strong to the weak, it is nothing more than an appropriation of property, without a right. with respect to the pecuniary advantages of the work, although it did not produce me a fourth part of the sum it would have done to any other. person, they were considerable enough to enable me to subsist several years, and to make amends for the ill success of copying, which went on but very slowly. i received a hundred louis from the king; fifty from madam de pompadour, for the performance at bellevue, where she herself played the part of colin; fifty from the opera; and five hundred livres from pissot, for the engraving; so that this interlude, which cost me no more than five or six weeks' application, produced, notwithstanding the ill treatment i received from the managers and my stupidity at court, almost as much money as my 'emilius', which had cost me twenty years' meditation, and three years' labor. but i paid dearly for the pecuniary ease i received from the piece, by the infinite vexations it brought upon me. it was the germ of the secret jealousies which did not appear until a long time afterwards. after its success i did not remark, either in grimm, diderot, or any of the men of letters, with whom i was acquainted, the same cordiality and frankness, nor that pleasure in seeing me, i had previously experienced. the moment i appeared at the baron's, the conversation was no longer general; the company divided into small parties; whispered into each other's ears; and i remained alone, without knowing to whom to address myself. i endured for a long time this mortifying neglect; and, perceiving that madam d'holbach, who was mild and amiable, still received me well, i bore with the vulgarity of her husband as long as it was possible. but he one day attacked me without reason or pretence, and with such brutality, in presence of diderot, who said not a word, and margency, who since that time has often told me how much he admired the moderation and mildness of my answers, that, at length driven from his house, by this unworthy treatment, i took leave with a resolution never to enter it again. this did not, however, prevent me from speaking honorably of him and his house, whilst he continually expressed himself relative to me in the most insulting terms, calling me that 'petit cuistre': the little college pedant, or servitor in a college, without, however, being able to charge me with having done either to himself or any person to whom he was attached the most trifling injury. in this manner he verified my fears and predictions, i am of opinion my pretended friends would have pardoned me for having written books, and even excellent ones, because this merit was not foreign to themselves; but that they could not forgive my writing an opera, nor the brilliant success it had; because there was not one amongst them capable of the same, nor in a situation to aspire to like honors. duclos, the only person superior to jealousy, seemed to become more attached to me: he introduced me to mademoiselle quinault, in whose house i received polite attention, and civility to as great an extreme, as i had found a want of it in that of m. d'holbach. whilst the performance of the 'devin du village' was continued at the opera-house, the author of it had an advantageous negotiation with the managers of the french comedy. not having, during seven or eight years, been able to get my 'narcissis' performed at the italian theatre, i had, by the bad performance in french of the actors, become disgusted with it, and should rather have had my piece received at the french theatre than by them. i mentioned this to la none, the comedian, with whom i had become acquainted, and who, as everybody knows, was a man of merit and an author. he was pleased with the piece, and promised to get it performed without suffering the name of the author to be known; and in the meantime procured me the freedom of the theatre, which was extremely agreeable to me, for i always preferred it to the two others. the piece was favorably received, and without the author's name being mentioned; but i have reason to believe it was known to the actors and actresses, and many other persons. mademoiselles gauffin and grandval played the amorous parts; and although the whole performance was, in my opinion, injudicious, the piece could not be said to be absolutely ill played. the indulgence of the public, for which i felt gratitude, surprised me; the audience had the patience to listen to it from the beginning to the end, and to permit a second representation without showing the least sign of disapprobation. for my part, i was so wearied with the first, that i could not hold out to the end; and the moment i left the theatre, i went into the cafe de procope, where i found boissi, and others of my acquaintance, who had probably been as much fatigued as myself. i there humbly or haughtily avowed myself the author of the piece, judging it as everybody else had done. this public avowal of an author of a piece which had not succeeded, was much admired, and was by no means painful to myself. my self-love was flattered by the courage with which i made it: and i am of opinion, that, on this occasion, there was more pride in speaking, than there would have been foolish shame in being silent. however, as it was certain the piece, although insipid in the performance would bear to be read, i had it printed: and in the preface, which is one of the best things i ever wrote, i began to make my principles more public than i had before done. i soon had an opportunity to explain them entirely in a work of the greatest importance: for it was, i think, this year, , that the programma of the academy of dijon upon the 'origin of the inequality of mankind' made its appearance. struck with this great question, i was surprised the academy had dared to propose it: but since it had shown sufficient courage to do it, i thought i might venture to treat it, and immediately undertook the discussion. that i might consider this grand subject more at my ease, i went to st. germain for seven or eight days with theresa, our hostess, who was a good kind of woman, and one of her friends. i consider this walk as one of the most agreeable ones i ever took. the weather was very fine. these good women took upon themselves all the care and expense. theresa amused herself with them; and i, free from all domestic concerns, diverted myself, without restraint, at the hours of dinner and supper. all the rest of the day wandering in the forest, i sought for and found there the image of the primitive ages of which i boldly traced the history. i confounded the pitiful lies of men; i dared to unveil their nature; to follow the progress of time, and the things by which it has been disfigured; and comparing the man of art with the natural man, to show them, in their pretended improvement, the real source of all their misery. my mind, elevated by these contemplations, ascended to the divinity, and thence, seeing my fellow creatures follow in the blind track of their prejudices that of their errors and misfortunes, i cried out to them, in a feeble voice, which they could not hear: "madmen! know that all your evils proceed from yourselves!" from these meditations resulted the discourse on inequality, a work more to the taste of diderot than any of my other writings, and in which his advice was of the greatest service to me. [at the time i wrote this, i had not the least suspicion of the grand conspiracy of diderot and grimm. otherwise i should easily. have discovered how much the former abused my confidence, by giving to my writings that severity and melancholy which were not to be found in them from the moments he ceased to direct me. the passage of the philosopher, who argues with himself, and stops his ears against the complaints of a man in distress, is after his manner: and he gave me others still more extraordinary; which i could never resolve to make use of. but, attributing, this melancholy to that he had acquired in the dungeon of vincennes, and of which there is a very sufficient dose in his clairoal, i never once suspected the least unfriendly dealing. ] it was, however, understood but by few readers, and not one of these would ever speak of it. i had written it to become a competitor for the premium, and sent it away fully persuaded it would not obtain it; well convinced it was not for productions of this nature that academies were founded. this excursion and this occupation enlivened my spirits and was of service to my health. several years before, tormented by my disorder, i had entirely given myself up to the care of physicians, who, without alleviating my sufferings, exhausted my strength and destroyed my constitution. at my return from st. germain, i found myself stronger and perceived my health to be improved. i followed this indication, and determined to cure myself or die without the aid of physicians and medicine. i bade them forever adieu, and lived from day to day, keeping close when i found myself indisposed, and going abroad the moment i had sufficient strength to do it. the manner of living in paris amidst people of pretensions was so little to my liking; the cabals of men of letters, their little candor in their writings, and the air of importance they gave themselves in the world, were so odious to me; i found so little mildness, openness of heart and frankness in the intercourse even of my friends; that, disgusted with this life of tumult, i began ardently to wish to reside in the country, and not perceiving that my occupation permitted me to do it, i went to pass there all the time i had to spare. for several months i went after dinner to walk alone in the bois de boulogne, meditating on subjects for future works, and not returning until evening. gauffecourt, with whom i was at that time extremely intimate, being on account of his employment obliged to go to geneva, proposed to me the journey, to which i consented. the state of my health was such as to require the care of the governess; it was therefore decided she should accompany us, and that her mother should remain in the house. after thus having made our arrangements, we set off on the first of june, . this was the period when at the age of forty-two, i for the first time in my life felt a diminution of my natural confidence to which i had abandoned myself without reserve or inconvenience. we had a private carriage, in which with the same horses we travelled very slowly. i frequently got out and walked. we had scarcely performed half our journey when theresa showed the greatest uneasiness at being left in the carriage with gauffecourt, and when, notwithstanding her remonstrances, i would get out as usual, she insisted upon doing the same, and walking with me. i chid her for this caprice, and so strongly opposed it, that at length she found herself obliged to declare to me the cause whence it proceeded. i thought i was in a dream; my astonishment was beyond expression, when i learned that my friend m. de gauffecourt, upwards of sixty years of age, crippled by the gout, impotent and exhausted by pleasures, had, since our departure, incessantly endeavored to corrupt a person who belonged to his friend, and was no longer young nor handsome, by the most base and shameful means, such as presenting to her a purse, attempting to inflame her imagination by the reading of an abominable book, and by the sight of infamous figures, with which it was filled. theresa, full of indignation, once threw his scandalous book out of the carriage; and i learned that on the first evening of our journey, a violent headache having obliged me to retire to bed before supper, he had employed the whole time of this tete-a-tete in actions more worthy of a satyr than a man of worth and honor, to whom i thought i had intrusted my companion and myself. what astonishment and grief of heart for me! i, who until then had believed friendship to be inseparable from every amiable and noble sentiment which constitutes all its charm, for the first time in my life found myself under the necessity of connecting it with disdain, and of withdrawing my confidence from a man for whom i had an affection, and by whom i imagined myself beloved! the wretch concealed from me his turpitude; and that i might not expose theresa, i was obliged to conceal from him my contempt, and secretly to harbor in my heart such sentiments as were foreign to its nature. sweet and sacred illusion of friendship! gauffecourt first took the veil from before my eyes. what cruel hands have since that time prevented it from again being drawn over them! at lyons i quitted gauffecourt to take the road to savoy, being unable to be so near to mamma without seeing her. i saw her--good god, in what a situation! how contemptible! what remained to her of primitive virtue? was it the same madam de warrens, formerly so gay and lively, to whom the vicar of pontverre had given me recommendations? how my heart was wounded! the only resource i saw for her was to quit the country. i earnestly but vainly repeated the invitation i had several times given her in my letters to come and live peacefully with me, assuring her i would dedicate the rest of my life, and that of theresa, to render her happy. attached to her pension, from which, although it was regularly paid, she had not for a long time received the least advantage, my offers were lost upon her. i again gave her a trifling part of the contents of my purse, much less than i ought to have done, and considerably less than i should have offered her had not i been certain of its not being of the least service to herself. during my residence at geneva, she made a journey into chablais, and came to see me at grange-canal. she was in want of money to continue her journey: what i had in my pocket was insufficient to this purpose, but an hour afterwards i sent it her by theresa. poor mamma! i must relate this proof of the goodness of her heart. a little diamond ring was the last jewel she had left. she took it from her finger, to put it upon that of theresa, who instantly replaced it upon that whence it had been taken, kissing the generous hand which she bathed with her tears. ah! this was the proper moment to discharge my debt! i should have abandoned everything to follow her, and share her fate: let it be what it would. i did nothing of the kind. my attention was engaged by another attachment, and i perceived the attachment i had to her was abated by the slender hopes there were of rendering it useful to either of us. i sighed after her, my heart was grieved at her situation, but i did not follow her. of all the remorse i felt this was the strongest and most lasting. i merited the terrible chastisement with which i have since that time incessantly been overwhelmed: may this have expiated my ingratitude! of this i appear guilty in my conduct, but my heart has been too much distressed by what i did ever to have been that of an ungrateful man. before my departure from paris i had sketched out the dedication of my discourse on the 'inequality of mankind'. i finished it at chambery, and dated it from that place, thinking that, to avoid all chicane, it was better not to date it either from france or geneva. the moment i arrived in that city i abandoned myself to the republican enthusiasm which had brought me to it. this was augmented by the reception i there met with. kindly treated by persons of every description, i entirely gave myself up to a patriotic zeal, and mortified at being excluded from the rights of a citizen by the possession of a religion different from that of my forefathers, i resolved openly to return to the latter. i thought the gospel being the same for every christian, and the only difference in religious opinions the result of the explanations given by men to that which they did not understand, it was the exclusive right of the sovereign power in every country to fix the mode of worship, and these unintelligible opinions; and that consequently it was the duty of a citizen to admit the one, and conform to the other in the manner prescribed by the law. the conversation of the encyclopaedists, far from staggering my faith, gave it new strength by my natural aversion to disputes and party. the study of man and the universe had everywhere shown me the final causes and the wisdom by which they were directed. the reading of the bible, and especially that of the new testament, to which i had for several years past applied myself, had given me a sovereign contempt for the base and stupid interpretations given to the words of jesus christ by persons the least worthy of understanding his divine doctrine. in a word, philosophy, while it attached me to the essential part of religion, had detached me from the trash of the little formularies with which men had rendered it obscure. judging that for a reasonable man there were not two ways of being a christian, i was also of opinion that in each country everything relative to form and discipline was within the jurisdiction of the laws. from this principle, so social and pacific, and which has brought upon me such cruel persecutions, it followed that, if i wished to be a citizen of geneva, i must become a protestant, and conform to the mode of worship established in my country. this i resolved upon; i moreover put myself under the instructions of the pastor of the parish in which i lived, and which was without the city. all i desired was not to appear at the consistory. however, the ecclesiastical edict was expressly to that effect; but it was agreed upon to dispense with it in my favor, and a commission of five or six members was named to receive my profession of faith. unfortunately, the minister perdriau, a mild and an amiable man, took it into his head to tell me the members were rejoiced at the thoughts of hearing me speak in the little assembly. this expectation alarmed me to such a degree that having night and day during three weeks studied a little discourse i had prepared, i was so confused when i ought to have pronounced it that i could not utter a single word, and during the conference i had the appearance of the most stupid schoolboy. the persons deputed spoke for me, and i answered yes and no, like a blockhead; i was afterwards admitted to the communion, and reinstated in my rights as a citizen. i was enrolled as such in the lists of guards, paid by none but citizens and burgesses, and i attended at a council-general extraordinary to receive the oath from the syndic mussard. i was so impressed with the kindness shown me on this occasion by the council and the consistory, and by the great civility and obliging behavior of the magistrates, ministers and citizens, that, pressed by the worthy de luc, who was incessant in his persuasions, and still more so by my own inclination, i did not think of going back to paris for any other purpose than to break up housekeeping, find a situation for m. and madam le vassear, or provide for their subsistence, and then return with theresa to geneva, there to settle for the rest of my days. after taking this resolution i suspended all serious affairs the better to enjoy the company of my friends until the time of my departure. of all the amusements of which i partook, that with which i was most pleased, was sailing round the lake in a boat, with de luc, the father, his daughter-in-law, his two sons, and my theresa. we gave seven days to this excursion in the finest weather possible. i preserved a lively remembrance of the situation which struck me at the other extremity of the lake, and of which i, some years afterwards, gave a description in my new eloisa. the principal connections i made at geneva, besides the de lucs, of which i have spoken, were the young vernes, with whom i had already been acquainted at paris, and of whom i then formed a better opinion than i afterwards had of him. m. perdriau, then a country pastor, now professor of belles lettres, whose mild and agreeable society will ever make me regret the loss of it, although he has since thought proper to detach himself from me; m. jalabert, at that time professor of natural philosophy, since become counsellor and syndic, to whom i read my discourse upon inequality (but not the dedication), with which he seemed to be delighted; the professor lullin, with whom i maintained a correspondence until his death, and who gave me a commission to purchase books for the library; the professor vernet, who, like most other people, turned his back upon me after i had given him proofs of attachment and confidence of which he ought to, have been sensible, if a theologian can be affected by anything; chappins, clerk and successor to gauffecourt, whom he wished to supplant, and who, soon afterwards, was him self supplanted; marcet de mezieres, an old friend of my father's, and who had also shown himself to be mine: after having well deserved of his country, he became a dramatic author, and, pretending to be of the council of two hundred, changed his principles, and, before he died, became ridiculous. but he from whom i expected most was m. moultout, a very promising young man by his talents and his brilliant imagination, whom i have always loved, although his conduct with respect to me was frequently equivocal, and, not withstanding his being connected with my most cruel enemies, whom i cannot but look upon as destined to become the defender of my memory and the avenger of his friend. in the midst of these dissipations, i neither lost the taste for my solitary excursions, nor the habit of them; i frequently made long ones upon the banks of the lake, during which my mind, accustomed to reflection, did not remain idle; i digested the plan already formed of my political institutions, of which i shall shortly have to speak; i meditated a history of the valais; the plan of a tragedy in prose, the subject of which, nothing less than lucretia, did not deprive me of the hope of succeeding, although i had dared again to exhibit that unfortunate heroine, when she could no longer be suffered upon any french stage. i at that time tried my abilities with tacitus, and translated the first books of his history, which will be found amongst my papers. after a residence of four months at geneva, i returned in the month of october to paris; and avoided passing through lyons that i might not again have to travel with gauffecourt. as the arrangement i had made did not require my being at geneva until the spring following, i returned, during the winter, to my habits and occupations; the principal of the latter was examining the proof sheets of my discourse on the inequality of mankind, which i had procured to be printed in holland, by the bookseller rey, with whom i had just become acquainted at geneva. this work was dedicated to the republic; but as the publication might be unpleasing to the council, i wished to wait until it had taken its effect at geneva before i returned thither. this effect was not favorable to me; and the dedication, which the most pure patriotism had dictated, created me enemies in the council, and inspired even many of the burgesses with jealousy. m. chouet, at that time first syndic, wrote me a polite but very cold letter, which will be found amongst my papers. i received from private persons, amongst others from du luc and de jalabert, a few compliments, and these were all. i did not perceive that a single genevese was pleased with the hearty zeal found in the work. this indifference shocked all those by whom it was remarked. i remember that dining one day at clichy, at madam dupin's, with crommelin, resident from the republic, and m. de mairan, the latter openly declared the council owed me a present and public honors for the work, and that it would dishonor itself if it failed in either. crommelin, who was a black and mischievous little man, dared not reply in my presence, but he made a frightful grimace, which however forced a smile from madam dupin. the only advantage this work procured me, besides that resulting from the satisfaction of my own heart, was the title of citizen given me by my friends, afterwards by the public after their example, and which i afterwards lost by having too well merited. this ill success would not, however, have prevented my retiring to geneva, had not more powerful motives tended to the same effect. m. d'epinay, wishing to add a wing which was wanting to the chateau of the chevrette, was at an immense expense in completing it. going one day with madam d'epinay to see the building, we continued our walk a quarter of a league further to the reservoir of the waters of the park which joined the forest of montmorency, and where there was a handsome kitchen garden, with a little lodge, much out of repair, called the hermitage. this solitary and very agreeable place had struck me when i saw it for the first time before my journey to geneva. i had exclaimed in my transport: "ah, madam, what a delightful habitation! this asylum was purposely prepared for me." madam d'epinay did not pay much attention to what i said; but at this second journey i was quite surprised to find, instead of the old decayed building, a little house almost entirely new, well laid out, and very habitable for a little family of three persons. madam d'epinay had caused this to be done in silence, and at a very small expense, by detaching a few materials and some of the work men from the castle. she now said to me, on remarking my surprise: "my dear, here behold your asylum; it is you who have chosen it; friendship offers it to you. i hope this will remove from you the cruel idea of separating from me." i do not think i was ever in my life more strongly or more deliciously affected. i bathed with tears the beneficent hand of my friend; and if i were not conquered from that very instant even, i was extremely staggered. madam d'epinay, who would not be denied, became so pressing, employed so many means, so many people to circumvent me, proceeding even so far as to gain over madam le vasseur and her daughter, that at length she triumphed over all my resolutions. renouncing the idea of residing in my own country, i resolved, i promised, to inhabit the hermitage; and, whilst the building was drying, madam d'epinay took care to prepare furniture, so that everything was ready the following spring. one thing which greatly aided me in determining, was the residence voltaire had chosen near geneva; i easily comprehended this man would cause a revolution there, and that i should find in my country the manners, which drove me from paris; that i should be under the necessity of incessantly struggling hard, and have no other alternative than that of being an unsupportable pedant, a poltroon, or a bad citizen. the letter voltaire wrote me on my last work, induced me to insinuate my fears in my answer; and the effect this produced confirmed them. from that moment i considered geneva as lost, and i was not deceived. i perhaps ought to have met the storm, had i thought myself capable of resisting it. but what could i have done alone, timid, and speaking badly, against a man, arrogant, opulent, supported by the credit of the great, eloquent, and already the idol of the women and young men? i was afraid of uselessly exposing myself to danger to no purpose. i listened to nothing but my peaceful disposition, to my love of repose, which, if it then deceived me, still continues to deceive me on the same subject. by retiring to geneva, i should have avoided great misfortunes; but i have my doubts whether, with all my ardent and patriotic zeal, i should have been able to effect anything great and useful for my country. tronchin, who about the same time went to reside at geneva, came afterwards to paris and brought with him treasures. at his arrival he came to see me, with the chevalier jaucourt. madam d'epinay had a strong desire to consult him in private, but this it was not easy to do. she addressed herself to me, and i engaged tronchin to go and see her. thus under my auspices they began a connection, which was afterwards increased at my expense. such has ever been my destiny: the moment i had united two friends who were separately mine, they never failed to combine against me. although, in the conspiracy then formed by the tronchins, they must all have borne me a mortal hatred. he still continued friendly to me: he even wrote me a letter after his return to geneva, to propose to me the place of honorary librarian. but i had taken my resolution, and the offer did not tempt me to depart from it. about this time i again visited m. d'holbach. my visit was occasioned by the death of his wife, which, as well as that of madam francueil, happened whilst i was at geneva. diderot, when he communicated to me these melancholy events, spoke of the deep affliction of the husband. his grief affected my heart. i myself was grieved for the loss of that excellent woman, and wrote to m. d'holbach a letter of condolence. i forgot all the wrongs he had done me, and at my return from geneva, and after he had made the tour of france with grimm and other friends to alleviate his affliction, i went to see him, and continued my visits until my departure for the hermitage. as soon as it was known in his circle that madam d'epinay was preparing me a habitation there, innumerable sarcasms, founded upon the want i must feel of the flattery and amusement of the city, and the supposition of my not being able to support the solitude for a fortnight, were uttered against me. feeling within myself how i stood affected, i left him and his friends to say what they pleased, and pursued my intention. m. d'holbach rendered me some services-- [this is an instance of the treachery of my memory. a long time after i had written what i have stated above, i learned, in conversing with my wife, that it was not m. d'holbach, but m. de chenonceaux, then one of the administrators of the hotel dieu, who procured this place for her father. i had so totally forgotten the circumstance, and the idea of m. d'holbach's having done it was so strong in my mind that i would have sworn it had been him.] in finding a place for the old le vasseur, who was eighty years of age and a burden to his wife, from which she begged me to relieve her. he was put into a house of charity, where, almost as soon as he arrived there, age and the grief of finding himself removed from his family sent him to the grave. his wife and all his children, except theresa, did not much regret his loss. but she, who loved him tenderly, has ever since been inconsolable, and never forgiven herself for having suffered him, at so advanced an age, to end his days in any other house than her own. much about the same time i received a visit i little expected, although it was from a very old acquaintance. my friend venture, accompanied by another man, came upon me one morning by surprise. what a change did i discover in his person! instead of his former gracefulness, he appeared sottish and vulgar, which made me extremely reserved with him. my eyes deceived me, or either debauchery had stupefied his mind, or all his first splendor was the effect of his youth, which was past. i saw him almost with indifference, and we parted rather coolly. but when he was gone, the remembrance of our former connection so strongly called to my recollection that of my younger days, so charmingly, so prudently dedicated to that angelic woman (madam de warrens) who was not much less changed than himself; the little anecdotes of that happy time, the romantic day of toune passed with so much innocence and enjoyment between those two charming girls, from whom a kiss of the hand was the only favor, and which, notwithstanding its being so trifling, had left me such lively, affecting and lasting regrets; and the ravishing delirium of a young heart, which i had just felt in all its force, and of which i thought the season forever past for me. the tender remembrance of these delightful circumstances made me shed tears over my faded youth and its transports for ever lost to me. ah! how many tears should i have shed over their tardy and fatal return had i foreseen the evils i had yet to suffer from them. before i left paris, i enjoyed during the winter which preceded my retreat, a pleasure after my own heart, and of which i tasted in all its purity. palissot, academician of nancy, known by a few dramatic compositions, had just had one of them performed at luneville before the king of poland. he perhaps thought to make his court by representing in his piece a man who had dared to enter into a literary dispute with the king. stanislaus, who was generous, and did not like satire, was filled with indignation at the author's daring to be personal in his presence. the comte de tressan, by order of the prince, wrote to m. d'alembert, as well as to myself, to inform me that it was the intention of his majesty to have palissot expelled his academy. my answer was a strong solicitation in favor of palissot, begging m. de tressan to intercede with the king in his behalf. his pardon was granted, and m. de tressan, when he communicated to me the information in the name of the monarch, added that the whole of what had passed should be inserted in the register of the academy. i replied that this was less granting a pardon than perpetuating a punishment. at length, after repeated solicitations, i obtained a promise, that nothing relative to the affair should be inserted in the register, and that no public trace should remain of it. the promise was accompanied, as well on the part of the king as on that of m. de tressan, with assurance of esteem and respect, with which i was extremely flattered; and i felt on this occasion that the esteem of men who are themselves worthy of it, produced in the mind a sentiment infinitely more noble and pleasing than that of vanity. i have transcribed into my collection the letters of m. de tressan, with my answers to them: and the original of the former will be found amongst my other papers. i am perfectly aware that if ever these memoirs become public, i here perpetuate the remembrance of a fact which i would wish to efface every trace; but i transmit many others as much against my inclination. the grand object of my undertaking, constantly before my eyes, and the indispensable duty of fulfilling it to its utmost extent, will not permit me to be turned aside by trifling considerations, which would lead me from my purpose. in my strange and unparalleled situation, i owe too much to truth to be further than this indebted to any person whatever. they who wish to know me well must be acquainted with me in every point of view, in every relative situation, both good and bad. my confessions are necessarily connected with those of many other people: i write both with the same frankness in everything that relates to that which has befallen me; and am not obliged to spare any person more than myself, although it is my wish to do it. i am determined always to be just and true, to say of others all the good i can, never speaking of evil except when it relates to my own conduct, and there is a necessity for my so doing. who, in the situation in which the world has placed me, has a right to require more at my hands? my confessions are not intended to appear during my lifetime, nor that of those they may disagreeably affect. were i master of my own destiny, and that of the book i am now writing, it should never be made public until after my death and theirs. but the efforts which the dread of truth obliges my powerful enemies to make to destroy every trace of it, render it necessary for me to do everything, which the strictest right, and the most severe justice, will permit, to preserve what i have written. were the remembrance of me to be lost at my dissolution, rather than expose any person alive, i would without a murmur suffer an unjust and momentary reproach. but since my name is to live, it is my duty to endeavor to transmit with it to posterity the remembrance of the unfortunate man by whom it was borne, such as he really was, and not such as his unjust enemies incessantly endeavored to describe him. the confessions of jean jacques rousseau (in books) privately printed for the members of the aldus society london, book ii. the moment in which fear had instigated my flight, did not seem more terrible than that wherein i put my design in execution appeared delightful. to leave my relations, my resources, while yet a child, in the midst of my apprenticeship, before i had learned enough of my business to obtain a subsistence; to run on inevitable misery and danger: to expose myself in that age of weakness and innocence to all the temptations of vice and despair; to set out in search of errors, misfortunes, snares, slavery, and death; to endure more intolerable evils than those i meant to shun, was the picture i should have drawn, the natural consequence of my hazardous enterprise. how different was the idea i entertained of it!--the independence i seemed to possess was the sole object of my contemplation; having obtained my liberty, i thought everything attainable: i entered with confidence on the vast theatre of the world, which my merit was to captivate: at every step i expected to find amusements, treasures, and adventures; friends ready to serve, and mistresses eager to please me; i had but to show myself, and the whole universe would be interested in my concerns; not but i could have been content with something less; a charming society, with sufficient means, might have satisfied me. my moderation was such, that the sphere in which i proposed to shine was rather circumscribed, but then it was to possess the very quintessence of enjoyment, and myself the principal object. a single castle, for instance, might have bounded my ambition; could i have been the favorite of the lord and lady, the daughter's lover, the son's friend, and protector of the neighbors, i might have been tolerably content, and sought no further. in expectation of this modest fortune, i passed a few days in the environs of the city, with some country people of my acquaintance, who received me with more kindness than i should have met with in town; they welcomed, lodged, and fed me cheerfully; i could be said to live on charity, these favors were not conferred with a sufficient appearance of superiority to furnish out the idea. i rambled about in this manner till i got to confignon, in savoy, at about two leagues distance from geneva. the vicar was called m. de pontverre; this name, so famous in the history of the republic, caught my attention; i was curious to see what appearance the descendants of the gentlemen of the spoon exhibited; i went, therefore, to visit this m. de pontverre, and was received with great civility. he spoke of the heresy of geneva, declaimed on the authority of holy mother church, and then invited me to dinner. i had little to object to arguments which had so desirable a conclusion, and was inclined to believe that priests, who gave such excellent dinners, might be as good as our ministers. notwithstanding m. de pontverre's pedigree, i certainly possessed most learning; but i rather sought to be a good companion than an expert theologian; and his frangi wine, which i thought delicious, argued so powerfully on his side, that i should have blushed at silencing so kind a host; i, therefore, yielded him the victory, or rather declined the contest. any one who had observed my precaution, would certainly have pronounced me a dissembler, though, in fact, i was only courteous. flattery, or rather condescension, is not always a vice in young people; 'tis oftener a virtue. when treated with kindness, it is natural to feel an attachment for the person who confers the obligation; we do not acquiesce because we wish to deceive, but from dread of giving uneasiness, or because we wish to avoid the ingratitude of rendering evil for good. what interest had m. de pontverre in entertaining, treating with respect, and endeavoring to convince me? none but mine; my young heart told me this, and i was penetrated with gratitude and respect for the generous priest; i was sensible of my superiority, but scorned to repay his hospitality by taking advantage of it. i had no conception of hypocrisy in this forbearance, or thought of changing my religion, nay, so far was the idea from being familiar to me, that i looked on it with a degree of horror which seemed to exclude the possibility of such an event; i only wished to avoid giving offence to those i was sensible caressed me from that motive; i wished to cultivate their good opinion, and meantime leave them the hope of success by seeming less on my guard than i really was. my conduct in this particular resembled the coquetry of some very honest women, who, to obtain their wishes, without permitting or promising anything, sometimes encourage hopes they never mean to realize. reason, piety, and love of order, certainly demanded that instead of being encouraged in my folly, i should have been dissuaded from the ruin i was courting, and sent back to my family; and this conduct any one that was actuated by genuine virtue would have pursued; but it should be observed that though m. de pontverre was a religious man, he was not a virtuous one, but a bigot, who knew no virtue except worshipping images and telling his beads, in a word, a kind of missionary, who thought the height of merit consisted in writing libels against the ministers of geneva. far from wishing to send me back, he endeavored to favor my escape, and put it out of my power to return even had i been so disposed. it was a thousand to one but he was sending me to perish with hunger, or become a villain; but all this was foreign to his purpose; he saw a soul snatched from heresy, and restored to the bosom of the church: whether i was an honest man or a knave was very immaterial, provided i went to mass. this ridiculous mode of thinking is not peculiar to catholics; it is the voice of every dogmatical persuasion where merit consists in belief, and not in virtue. "you are called by the almighty," said m. de pontverre; "go to annecy, where you will find a good and charitable lady, whom the bounty of the king enables to turn souls from those errors she has happily renounced." he spoke of a madam de warrens, a new convert, to whom the priests contrived to send those wretches who were disposed to sell their faith, and with these she was in a manner constrained to share a pension of two thousand francs bestowed on her by the king of sardinia. i felt myself extremely humiliated at being supposed to want the assistance of a good and charitable lady. i had no objection to be accommodated with everything i stood in need of, but did not wish to receive it on the footing of charity and to owe this obligation to a devotee was still worse; notwithstanding my scruples the persuasions of m. de pontverre, the dread of perishing with hunger, the pleasures i promised myself from the journey, and hope of obtaining some desirable situation, determined me; and i set out though reluctantly, for annecy. i could easily have reached it in a day, but being in no great haste to arrive there, it took me three. my head was filled with the ideas of adventures, and i approached every country-seat i saw in my way, in expectation of having them realized. i had too much timidity to knock at the doors, or even enter if i saw them open, but i did what i dared--which was to sing under those windows that i thought had the most favorable appearance; and was very much disconcerted to find i wasted my breath to no purpose, and that neither old nor young ladies were attracted by the melody of my voice, or the wit of my poetry, though some songs my companions had taught me i thought excellent and that i sung them incomparably. at length i arrived at annecy, and saw madam de warrens. as this period of my life, in a great measure, determined my character, i could not resolve to pass it lightly over. i was in the middle of my sixteenth year, and though i could not be called handsome, was well made for my height; i had a good foot, a well turned leg, and animated countenance; a well proportioned mouth, black hair and eyebrows, and my eyes, though small and rather too far in my head, sparkling with vivacity, darted that innate fire which inflamed my blood; unfortunately for me, i knew nothing of all this, never having bestowed a single thought on my person till it was too late to be of any service to me. the timidity common to my age was heightened by a natural benevolence, which made me dread the idea of giving pain. though my mind had received some cultivation, having seen nothing of the world, i was an absolute stranger to polite address, and my mental acquisitions, so far from supplying this defect, only served to increase my embarrassment, by making me sensible of every deficiency. depending little, therefore, on external appearances, i had recourse to other expedients: i wrote a most elaborate letter, where, mingling all the flowers of rhetoric which i had borrowed from books with the phrases of an apprentice, i endeavored to strike the attention, and insure the good will of madam de warrens. i enclosed m. de pontverre's letter in my own and waited on the lady with a heart palpitating with fear and expectation. it was palm sunday, of the year ; i was informed she was that moment gone to church; i hasten after her, overtake, and speak to her.--the place is yet fresh in my memory--how can it be otherwise? often have i moistened it with my tears and covered it with kisses.--why cannot i enclose with gold the happy spot, and render it the object of universal veneration? whoever wishes to honor monuments of human salvation would only approach it on their knees. it was a passage at the back of the house, bordered on the left hand by a little rivulet, which separated it from the garden, and, on the right, by the court yard wall; at the end was a private door which opened into the church of the cordeliers. madam de warrens was just passing this door; but on hearing my voice, instantly turned about. what an effect did the sight of her produce! i expected to see a devout, forbidding old woman; m. de pontverre's pious and worthy lady could be no other in my conception; instead of which, i see a face beaming with charms, fine blue eyes full of sweetness, a complexion whose whiteness dazzled the sight, the form of an enchanting neck, nothing escaped the eager eye of the young proselyte; for that instant i was hers!--a religion preached by such missionaries must lead to paradise! my letter was presented with a trembling hand; she took it with a smile --opened it, glanced an eye over m. de pontverre's and again returned to mine, which she read through and would have read again, had not the footman that instant informed her that service was beginning--"child," said she, in a tone of voice which made every nerve vibrate, "you are wandering about at an early age--it is really a pity!"--and without waiting for an answer, added--"go to my house, bid them give you something for breakfast, after mass, i will speak to you." louisa--eleanora de warrens was of the noble and ancient family of la tour de pit, of vevay, a city in the country of the vaudois. she was married very young to a m. de warrens, of the house of loys, eldest son of m. de villardin, of lausanne; there were no children by this marriage, which was far from being a happy one. some domestic uneasiness made madam de warrens take the resolution of crossing the lake, and throwing herself at the feet of victor amadeus, who was then at evian; thus abandoning her husband, family, and country by a giddiness similar to mine, which precipitation she, too, has found sufficient time and reason to lament. the king, who was fond of appearing a zealous promoter of the catholic faith, took her under his protection, and complimented her with a pension of fifteen hundred livres of piedmont, which was a considerable appointment for a prince who never had the character of being generous; but finding his liberality made some conjecture he had an affection for the lady, he sent her to annecy escorted by a detachment of his guards, where, under the direction of michael gabriel de bernex, titular bishop of geneva, she abjured her former religion at the convent of the visitation. i came to annecy just six years after this event; madam de warrens was then eight--and--twenty, being born with the century. her beauty, consisting more in the expressive animation of the countenance, than a set of features, was in its meridian; her manner soothing and tender; an angelic smile played about her mouth, which was small and delicate; she wore her hair (which was of an ash color, and uncommonly beautiful) with an air of negligence that made her appear still more interesting; she was short, and rather thick for her height, though by no means disagreeably so; but there could not be a more lovely face, a finer neck, or hands and arms more exquisitely formed. her education had been derived from such a variety of sources, that it formed an extraordinary assemblage. like me, she had lost her mother at her birth, and had received instruction as it chanced to present itself; she had learned something of her governess, something of her father, a little of her masters, but copiously from her lovers; particularly a m. de tavel, who, possessing both taste and information, endeavored to adorn with them the mind of her he loved. these various instructions, not being properly arranged, tended to impede each other, and she did not acquire that degree of improvement her natural good sense was capable of receiving; she knew something of philosophy and physic, but not enough to eradicate the fondness she had imbibed from her father for empiricism and alchemy; she made elixirs, tinctures, balsams, pretended to secrets, and prepared magestry; while quacks and pretenders, profiting by her weakness, destroyed her property among furnaces, drugs and minerals, diminishing those charms and accomplishments which might have been the delight of the most elegant circles. but though these interested wretches took advantage of her ill-applied education to obscure her natural good sense, her excellent heart retained its purity; her amiable mildness, sensibility for the unfortunate, inexhaustible bounty, and open, cheerful frankness, knew no variation; even at the approach of old age, when attacked by various calamities, rendered more cutting by indigence, the serenity of her disposition preserved to the end of her life the pleasing gayety of her happiest days. her errors proceeded from an inexhaustible fund of activity, which demanded perpetual employment. she found no satisfaction in the customary intrigues of her sex, but, being formed for vast designs, sought the direction of important enterprises and discoveries. in her place madam de longueville would have been a mere trifler, in madam de longueville's situation she would have governed the state. her talents did not accord with her fortune; what would have gained her distinction in a more elevated sphere, became her ruin. in enterprises which suited her disposition, she arranged the plan in her imagination, which was ever carried of its utmost extent, and the means she employed being proportioned rather to her ideas than abilities, she failed by the mismanagement of those upon whom she depended, and was ruined where another would scarce have been a loser. this active disposition, which involved her in so many difficulties, was at least productive of one benefit as it prevented her from passing the remainder of her life in the monastic asylum she had chosen, which she had some thought of. the simple and uniform life of a nun, and the little cabals and gossipings of their parlor, were not adapted to a mind vigorous and active, which, every day forming new systems, had occasions for liberty to attempt their completion. the good bishop of bernex, with less wit than francis of sales, resembled him in many particulars, and madam de warrens, whom he loved to call his daughter, and who was like madam de chantel in several respects, might have increased the resemblance by retiring like her from the world, had she not been disgusted with the idle trifling of a convent. it was not want of zeal prevented this amiable woman from giving those proofs of devotion which might have been expected from a new convert, under the immediate direction of a prelate. whatever might have influenced her to change her religion, she was certainly sincere in that she had embraced; she might find sufficient occasion to repent having abjured her former faith, but no inclination to return to it. she not only died a good catholic, but truly lived one; nay, i dare affirm (and i think i have had the opportunity to read the secrets of her heart) that it was only her aversion to singularity that prevented her acting the devotee in public; in a word, her piety was too sincere to give way to any affectation of it. but this is not the place to enlarge on her principles: i shall find other occasions to speak of them. let those who deny the existence of a sympathy of souls, explain, if they know how, why the first glance, the first word of madam de warrens inspired me, not only with a lively attachment, but with the most unbounded confidence, which has since known no abatement. say this was love (which will at least appear doubtful to those who read the sequel of our attachment) how could this passion be attended with sentiments which scarce ever accompany its commencement, such as peace, serenity, security, and confidence. how, when making application to an amiable and polished woman, whose situation in life was so superior to mine, so far above any i had yet approached, on whom, in a great measure, depended my future fortune by the degree of interest she might take in it; how, i say with so many reasons to depress me, did i feel myself as free, as much at my ease, as if i had been perfectly secure of pleasing her! why did i not experience a moment of embarrassment, timidity or restraint? naturally bashful, easily confused, having seen nothing of the world, could i, the first time, the first moment i beheld her, adopt caressing language, and a familiar tone, as readily as after ten years' intimacy had rendered these freedoms natural? is it possible to possess love, i will not say without desires, for i certainly had them, but without inquietude, without jealousy? can we avoid feeling an anxious wish at least to know whether our affection is returned? yet such a question never entered my imagination; i should as soon have inquired, do i love myself; nor did she ever express a greater degree of curiosity; there was, certainly, something extraordinary in my attachment to this charming woman and it will be found in the sequel, that some extravagances, which cannot be foreseen, attended it. what could be done for me, was the present question, and in order to discuss the point with greater freedom, she made me dine with her. this was the first meal in my life where i had experienced a want of appetite, and her woman, who waited, observed it was the first time she had seen a traveller of my age and appearance deficient in that particular: this remark, which did me no injury in the opinion of her mistress, fell hard on an overgrown clown, who was my fellow guest, and devoured sufficient to have served at least six moderate feeders. for me, i was too much charmed to think of eating; my heart began to imbibe a delicious sensation, which engrossed my whole being, and left no room for other objects. madam de warrens wished to hear the particulars of my little history--all the vivacity i had lost during my servitude returned and assisted the recital. in proportion to the interest this excellent woman took in my story, did she lament the fate to which i had exposed myself; compassion was painted on her features, and expressed by every action. she could not exhort me to return to geneva, being too well aware that her words and actions were strictly scrutinized, and that such advice would be thought high treason against catholicism, but she spoke so feelingly of the affliction i must give her(my) father, that it was easy to perceive she would have approved my returning to console him. alas! she little thought how powerfully this pleaded against herself; the more eloquently persuasive she appeared, the less could i resolve to tear myself from her. i knew that returning to geneva would be putting an insuperable barrier between us, unless i repeated the expedient which had brought me here, and it was certainly better to preserve than expose myself to the danger of a relapse; besides all this, my conduct was predetermined, i was resolved not to return. madam de warrens, seeing her endeavors would be fruitless, became less explicit, and only added, with an air of commiseration, "poor child! thou must go where providence directs thee, but one day thou wilt think of me."--i believe she had no conception at that time how fatally her prediction would be verified. the difficulty still remained how i was to gain a subsistence? i have already observed that i knew too little of engraving for that to furnish my resource, and had i been more expert, savoy was too poor a country to give much encouragement to the arts. the above-mentioned glutton, who eat for us as well as himself, being obliged to pause in order to gain some relaxation from the fatigue of it, imparted a piece of advice, which, according to him, came express from heaven; though to judge by its effects it appeared to have been dictated from a direct contrary quarter: this was that i should go to turin, where, in a hospital instituted for the instruction of catechumens, i should find food, both spiritual and temporal, be reconciled to the bosom of the church, and meet with some charitable christians, who would make it a point to procure me a situation that would turn to my advantage. "in regard to the expenses of the journey," continued our advisor, "his grace, my lord bishop, will not be backward, when once madam has proposed this holy work, to offer his charitable donation, and madam, the baroness, whose charity is so well known," once more addressing himself to the continuation of his meal, "will certainly contribute." i was by no means pleased with all these charities; i said nothing, but my heart was ready to burst with vexation. madam de warrens, who did not seem to think so highly of this expedient as the projector pretended to do, contented herself by saying, everyone should endeavor to promote good actions, and that she would mention it to his lordship; but the meddling devil, who had some private interest in this affair, and questioned whether she would urge it to his satisfaction, took care to acquaint the almoners with my story, and so far influenced those good priests, that when madam de warrens, who disliked the journey on my account, mentioned it to the bishop, she found it so far concluded on, that he immediately put into her hands the money designed for my little viaticum. she dared not advance anything against it; i was approaching an age when a woman like her could not, with any propriety, appear anxious to retain me. my departure being thus determined by those who undertook the management of my concerns, i had only to submit; and i did it without much repugnance. though turin was at a greater distance from madam de warrens than geneva, yet being the capital of the country i was now in, it seemed to have more connection with annecy than a city under a different government and of a contrary religion; besides, as i undertook this journey in obedience to her, i considered myself as living under her direction, which was more flattering than barely to continue in the neighborhood; to sum up all, the idea of a long journey coincided with my insurmountable passion for rambling, which already began to demonstrate itself. to pass the mountains, to my eye appeared delightful; how charming the reflection of elevating myself above my companions by the whole height of the alps! to see the world is an almost irresistible temptation to a genevan, accordingly i gave my consent. he who suggested the journey was to set off in two days with his wife. i was recommended to their care; they were likewise made my purse --bearers, which had been augmented by madam de warrens, who, not contented with these kindnesses, added secretly a pecuniary reinforcement, attended with the most ample instructions, and we departed on the wednesday before easter. the day following, my father arrived at annecy, accompanied by his friend, a mr. rival, who was likewise a watchmaker; he was a man of sense and letters, who wrote better verses than la motte, and spoke almost as well; what is still more to his praise, he was a man of the strictest integrity, but whose taste for literature only served to make one of his sons a comedian. having traced me to the house of madam de warrens, they contented themselves with lamenting, like her, my fate, instead of overtaking me, which, (as they were on horseback and i on foot) they might have accomplished with the greatest ease. my uncle bernard did the same thing, he arrived at consignon, received information that i was gone to annecy, and immediately returned back to geneva; thus my nearest relations seemed to have conspired with my adverse stars to consign me to misery and ruin. by a similar negligence, my brother was so entirely lost, that it was never known what was become of him. my father was not only a man of honor but of the strictest probity, and endured with that magnanimity which frequently produces the most shining virtues: i may add, he was a good father, particularly to me whom he tenderly loved; but he likewise loved his pleasures, and since we had been separated other connections had weakened his paternal affections. he had married again at nion, and though his second wife was too old to expect children, she had relations; my father was united to another family, surrounded by other objects, and a variety of cares prevented my returning to his remembrance. he was in the decline of life and had nothing to support the inconveniences of old age; my mother's property devolved to me and my brother, but, during our absence, the interest of it was enjoyed by my father: i do not mean to infer that this consideration had an immediate effect on his conduct, but it had an imperceptible one, and prevented him making use of that exertion to regain me which he would otherwise have employed; and this, i think, was the reason that having traced me as far as annecy, he stopped short, without proceeding to chambery, where he was almost certain i should be found; and likewise accounts why, on visiting him several times since my flight, he always received me with great kindness, but never made any efforts to retain me. this conduct in a father, whose affection and virtue i was so well convinced of, has given birth to reflections on the regulation of my own conduct which have greatly contributed to preserve the integrity of my heart. it has taught me this great lesson of morality, perhaps the only one that can have any conspicuous influence on our actions, that we should ever carefully avoid putting our interests in competition with our duty, or promise ourselves felicity from the misfortunes of others; certain that in such circumstances, however sincere our love of virtue may be, sooner or later it will give way and we shall imperceptibly become unjust and wicked, in fact, however upright in our intentions. this maxim, strongly imprinted on my mind, and reduced, though rather too late, to practice, has given my conduct an appearance of folly and whimsicality, not only in public, but still more among my acquaintances: it has been said, i affected originality, and sought to act different from other people; the truth is, i neither endeavor to conform or be singular, i desire only to act virtuously and avoid situations, which, by setting my interest in opposition to that of another person's, might inspire me with a secret, though involuntary wish to his disadvantage. two years ago, my lord marshal would have put my name in his will, which i took every method to prevent, assuring him i would not for the world know myself in the will of any one, much less in his; he gave up the idea; but insisted in return, that i should accept an annuity on his life; this i consented to. it will be said, i find my account in the alteration; perhaps i may; but oh, my benefactor! my father, i am now sensible that, should i have the misfortune to survive thee, i should have everything to lose, nothing to gain. this, in my idea, in true philosophy, the surest bulwark of human rectitude; every day do i receive fresh conviction of its profound solidity. i have endeavored to recommend it in all my latter writings, but the multitude read too superficially to have made the remark. if i survive my present undertaking, and am able to begin another, i mean, in a continuation of emilius, to give such a lively and marking example of this maxim as cannot fail to strike attention. but i have made reflections enough for a traveller, it is time to continue my journey. it turned out more agreeable than i expected: my clownish conductor was not so morose as he appeared to be. he was a middle-aged man, wore his black, grizzly hair, in a queue, had a martial air, a strong voice, was tolerably cheerful, and to make up for not having been taught any trade, could turn his hand to every one. having proposed to establish some kind of manufactory at annecy, he had consulted madam de warrens, who immediately gave into the project, and he was now going to turin to lay the plan before the minister and get his approbation, for which journey he took care to be well rewarded. this drole had the art of ingratiating himself with the priests, whom he ever appeared eager to serve; he adopted a certain jargon which he had learned by frequenting their company, and thought himself a notable preacher; he could even repeat one passage from the bible in latin, and it answered his purpose as well as if he had known a thousand, for he repeated it a thousand times a day. he was seldom at a loss for money when he knew what purse contained it; yet, was rather artful than knavish, and when dealing out in an affected tone his unmeaning discourses, resembled peter the hermit, preaching up the crusade with a sabre at his side. madam sabran, his wife, was a tolerable, good sort of woman; more peaceable by day than by night; as i slept in the same chamber i was frequently disturbed by her wakefulness, and should have been more so had i comprehended the cause of it; but i was in the chapter of dullness, which left to nature the whole care of my own instruction. i went on gayly with my pious guide and his hopeful companion, no sinister accident impeding our journey. i was in the happiest circumstances both of mind and body that i ever recollect having experienced; young, full of health and security, placing unbounded confidence in myself and others; in that short but charming moment of human life, whose expansive energy carries, if i may so express myself, our being to the utmost extent of our sensations, embellishing all nature with an inexpressible charm, flowing from the conscious and rising enjoyment of our existence. my pleasing inquietudes became less wandering: i had now an object on which imagination could fix. i looked on myself as the work, the pupil, the friend, almost the lover of madam de warrens; the obliging things she had said, the caresses she had bestowed on me; the tender interest she seemed to take in everything that concerned me; those charming looks, which seemed replete with love, because they so powerfully inspired it, every consideration flattered my ideas during this journey, and furnished the most delicious reveries, which, no doubt, no fear of my future condition arose to embitter. in sending me to turin, i thought they engaged to find me an agreeable subsistence there; thus eased of every care i passed lightly on, while young desires, enchanting hopes, and brilliant prospects employed my mind; each object that presented itself seemed to insure my approaching felicity. i imagined that every house was filled with joyous festivity, the meadows resounded with sports and revelry, the rivers offered refreshing baths, delicious fish wantoned in these streams, and how delightful was it to ramble along the flowery banks! the trees were loaded with the choicest fruits, while their shade afforded the most charming and voluptuous retreats to happy lovers; the mountains abounded with milk and cream; peace and leisure, simplicity and joy, mingled with the charm of going i knew not whither, and everything i saw carried to my heart some new cause for rapture. the grandeur, variety, and real beauty of the scene, in some measure rendered the charm reasonable, in which vanity came in for its share; to go so young to italy, view such an extent of country, and pursue the route of hannibal over the alps, appeared a glory beyond my age; add to all this our frequent and agreeable halts, with a good appetite and plenty to satisfy it; for in truth it was not worth while to be sparing; at mr. sabran's table what i eat could scarce be missed. in the whole course of my life i cannot recollect an interval more perfectly exempt from care, than the seven or eight days i was passing from annecy to turin. as we were obliged to walk madam sabran's pace, it rather appeared an agreeable jaunt than a fatiguing journey; there still remains the most pleasing impressions of it on my mind, and the idea of a pedestrian excursion, particularly among the mountains, has from this time seemed delightful. it was only in my happiest days that i travelled on foot, and ever with the most unbounded satisfaction; afterwards, occupied with business and encumbered with baggage, i was forced to act the gentleman and employ a carriage, where care, embarrassment, and restraint, were sure to be my companions, and instead of being delighted with the journey, i only wished to arrive at the place of destination. i was a long time at paris, wishing to meet with two companions of similar dispositions, who would each agree to appropriate fifty guineas of his property and a year of his time to making the tour of italy on foot, with no other attendance than a young fellow to carry our necessaries; i have met with many who seemed enchanted with the project, but considered it only as a visionary scheme, which served well enough to talk of, without any design of putting it in execution. one day, speaking with enthusiasm of this project to diderot and grimm, they gave into the proposal with such warmth that i thought the matter concluded on; but it only turned out a journey on paper, in which grimm thought nothing so pleasing as making diderot commit a number of impieties, and shutting me up in the inquisition for them, instead of him. my regret at arriving so soon at turin was compensated by the pleasure of viewing a large city, and the hope of figuring there in a conspicuous character, for my brain already began to be intoxicated with the fumes of ambition; my present situation appeared infinitely above that of an apprentice, and i was far from foreseeing how soon i should be much below it. before i proceed, i ought to offer an excuse, or justification to the reader for the great number of unentertaining particulars i am necessitated to repeat. in pursuance of the resolution i have formed to enter on this public exhibition of myself, it is necessary that nothing should bear the appearance of obscurity or concealment. i should be continually under the eye of the reader, he should be enabled to follow me in all the wanderings of my heart, through every intricacy of my adventures; he must find no void or chasm in my relation, nor lose sight of me an instant, lest he should find occasion to say, what was he doing at this time; and suspect me of not having dared to reveal the whole. i give sufficient scope to malignity in what i say; it is unnecessary i should furnish still more by my science. my money was all gone, even that i had secretly received from madam de warrens: i had been so indiscreet as to divulge this secret, and my conductors had taken care to profit by it. madam sabran found means to deprive me of everything i had, even to a ribbon embroidered with silver, with which madam de warrens had adorned the hilt of my sword; this i regretted more than all the rest; indeed the sword itself would have gone the same way, had i been less obstinately bent on retaining it. they had, it is true, supported me during the journey, but left me nothing at the end of it, and i arrived at turin, without money, clothes, or linen, being precisely in the situation to owe to my merit alone the whole honor of that fortune i was about to acquire. i took care in the first place to deliver the letters i was charged with, and was presently conducted to the hospital of the catechumens, to be instructed in that religion, for which, in return, i was to receive subsistence. on entering, i passed an iron-barred gate, which was immediately double-locked on me; this beginning was by no means calculated to give me a favorable opinion of my situation. i was then conducted to a large apartment, whose furniture consisted of a wooden altar at the farther end, on which was a large crucifix, and round it several indifferent chairs, of the same materials. in this hall of audience were assembled four or five ill-looking banditti, my comrades in instruction, who would rather have been taken for trusty servants of the devil than candidates for the kingdom of heaven. two of these fellows were sclavonians, but gave out they were african jews, and (as they assured me) had run through spain and italy, embracing the christian faith, and being baptised wherever they thought it worth their labor. soon after they opened another iron gate, which divided a large balcony that overlooked a court yard, and by this avenue entered our sister catechumens, who, like me, were going to be regenerated, not by baptism but a solemn abjuration. a viler set of idle, dirty, abandoned harlots, never disgraced any persuasion; one among them, however, appeared pretty and interesting; she might be about my own age, perhaps a year or two older, and had a pair of roguish eyes, which frequently encountered mine; this was enough to inspire me with the desire of becoming acquainted with her, but she had been so strongly recommended to the care of the old governess of this respectable sisterhood, and was so narrowly watched by the pious missionary, who labored for her conversion with more zeal than diligence, that during the two months we remained together in this house (where she had already been three) i found it absolutely impossible to exchange a word with her. she must have been extremely stupid, though she had not the appearance of it, for never was a longer course of instruction; the holy man could never bring her to a state of mind fit for abjuration; meantime she became weary of her cloister, declaring that, christian or not, she would stay there no longer; and they were obliged to take her at her word, lest she should grow refractory, and insist on departing as great a sinner as she came. this hopeful community were assembled in honor of the new-comer; when our guides made us a short exhortation: i was conjured to be obedient to the grace that heaven had bestowed on me; the rest were admonished to assist me with their prayers, and give me edification by their good example. our virgins then retired to another apartment, and i was left to contemplate, at leisure, that wherein i found myself. the next morning we were again assembled for instruction: i now began to reflect, for the first time, on the step i was about to take, and the circumstances which had led me to it. i repeat, and shall perhaps repeat again, an assertion i have already advanced, and of whose truth i every day receive fresh conviction, which is, that if ever child received a reasonable and virtuous education, it was myself. born in a family of unexceptionable morals, every lesson i received was replete with maxims of prudence and virtue. my father (though fond of gallantry) not only possessed distinguished probity, but much religion; in the world he appeared a man of pleasure, in his family he was a christian, and implanted early in my mind those sentiments he felt the force of. my three aunts were women of virtue and piety; the two eldest were professed devotees, and the third, who united all the graces of wit and good sense, was, perhaps, more truly religious than either, though with less ostentation. from the bosom of this amiable family i was transplanted to m. lambercier's, a man dedicated to the ministry, who believed the doctrine he taught, and acted up to its precepts. he and his sister matured by their instructions those principles of judicious piety i had already imbibed, and the means employed by these worthy people were so well adapted to the effect they meant to produce, that so far from being fatigued, i scarce ever listened to their admonitions without finding myself sensibly affected, and forming resolutions to live virtuously, from which, except in moments of forgetfulness, i seldom swerved. at my uncle's, religion was far more tiresome, because they made it an employment; with my master i thought no more of it, though my sentiments continued the same: i had no companions to vitiate my morals: i became idle, careless, and obstinate, but my principles were not impaired. i possessed as much religion, therefore, as a child could be supposed capable of acquiring. why should i now disguise my thoughts? i am persuaded i had more. in my childhood, i was not a child; i felt, i thought as a man: as i advanced in years, i mingled with the ordinary class; in my infancy i was distinguished from it. i shall doubtless incur ridicule by thus modestly holding myself up for a prodigy--i am content. let those who find themselves disposed to it, laugh their fill; afterward, let them find a child that at six years old is delighted, interested, affected with romances, even to the shedding floods of tears; i shall then feel my ridiculous vanity, and acknowledge myself in an error. thus when i said we should not converse with children on religion, if we wished them ever to possess any; when i asserted they were incapable of communion with the supreme being, even in our confined degree, i drew my conclusions from general observation; i knew they were not applicable to particular instances: find j. j. rousseau of six years old, converse with them on religious subjects at seven, and i will be answerable that the experiment will be attended with no danger. it is understood, i believe, that a child, or even a man, is likely to be most sincere while persevering in that religion in whose belief he was born and educated; we frequently detract from, seldom make any additions to it: dogmatical faith is the effect of education. in addition to this general principle which attached me to the religion of my forefathers, i had that particular aversion our city entertains for catholicism, which is represented there as the most monstrous idolatry, and whose clergy are painted in the blackest colors. this sentiment was so firmly imprinted on my mind, that i never dared to look into their churches--i could not bear to meet a priest in his surplice, and never did i hear the bells of a procession sound without shuddering with horror; these sensations soon wore off in great cities, but frequently returned in country parishes, which bore more similarity to the spot where i first experienced them; meantime this dislike was singularly contrasted by the remembrance of those caresses which priests in the neighborhood of geneva are fond of bestowing on the children of that city. if the bells of the viaticum alarmed me, the chiming for mass or vespers called me to a breakfast, a collation, to the pleasure of regaling on fresh butter, fruits, or milk; the good cheer of m. de pontverre had produced a considerable effect on me; my former abhorrence began to diminish, and looking on popery through the medium of amusement and good living, i easily reconciled myself to the idea of enduring, though i never entertained but a very transient and distant idea of making a solemn profession of it. at this moment such a transaction appeared in all its horrors; i shuddered at the engagement i had entered into, and its inevitable consequences. the future neophytes with which i was surrounded were not calculated to sustain my courage by their example, and i could not help considering the holy work i was about to perform as the action of a villain. though young, i was sufficiently convinced, that whatever religion might be the true one, i was about to sell mine; and even should i chance to chose the best, i lied to the holy ghost, and merited the disdain of every good man. the more i considered, the more i despised myself, and trembled at the fate which had led me into such a predicament, as if my present situation had not been of my own seeking. there were moments when these compunctions were so strong that had i found the door open but for an instant, i should certainly have made my escape; but this was impossible, nor was the resolution of any long duration, being combated by too many secret motives to stand any chance of gaining the victory. my fixed determination not to return to geneva, the shame that would attend it, the difficulty of repassing the mountains, at a distance from my country, without friends, and without resources, everything concurred to make me consider my remorse of conscience, as a too late repentance. i affected to reproach myself for what i had done, to seek excuses for that i intended to do, and by aggravating the errors of the past, looked on the future as an inevitable consequence. i did not say, nothing is yet done, and you may be innocent if you please; but i said, tremble at the crime thou hast committed, which hath reduced thee to the necessity of filling up the measure of thine iniquities. it required more resolution than was natural to my age to revoke those expectations which i had given them reason to entertain, break those chains with which i was enthralled, and resolutely declare i would continue in the religion of my forefathers, whatever might be the consequence. the affair was already too far advanced, and spite of all my efforts they would have made a point of bringing it to a conclusion. the sophism which ruined me has had a similar affect on the greater part of mankind, who lament the want of resolution when the opportunity for exercising it is over. the practice of virtue is only difficult from our own negligence; were, we always discreet, we should seldom have occasion for any painful exertion of it; we are captivated by desires we might readily surmount, give into temptations that might easily be resisted, and insensibly get into embarrassing, perilous situations, from which we cannot extricate ourselves but with the utmost difficulty; intimidated by the effort, we fall into the abyss, saying to the almighty, why hast thou made us such weak creatures? but, notwithstanding our vain pretexts, he replies, by our consciences, i formed ye too weak to get out of the gulf, because i gave ye sufficient strength not to have fallen into it. i was not absolutely resolved to become a catholic, but, as it was not necessary to declare my intentions immediately, i gradually accustomed myself to the idea; hoping, meantime, that some unforeseen event would extricate me from my embarrassment. in order to gain time, i resolved to make the best defence i possibly could in favor of my own opinion; but my vanity soon rendered this resolution unnecessary, for on finding i frequently embarrassed those who had the care of my instruction, i wished to heighten my triumph by giving them a complete overthrow. i zealously pursued my plan, not without the ridiculous hope of being able to convert my convertors; for i was simple enough to believe, that could i convince them of their errors, they would become protestants; they did not find, therefore, that facility in the work which they had expected, as i differed both in regard to will and knowledge from the opinion they had entertained of me. protestants, in general, are better instructed in the principles of their religion than catholics; the reason is obvious; the doctrine of the former requires discussion, of the latter a blind submission; the catholic must content himself with the decisions of others, the protestant must learn to decide for himself; they were not ignorant of this, but neither my age nor appearance promised much difficulty to men so accustomed to disputation. they knew, likewise, that i had not received my first communion, nor the instructions which accompany it; but, on the other hand, they had no idea of the information i received at m. lambercier's, or that i had learned the history of the church and empire almost by heart at my father's; and though (since that time, nearly forgot, when warmed by the dispute, very unfortunately for these gentlemen), it again returned to my memory. a little old priest, but tolerably venerable, held the first conference; at which we were all convened. on the part of my comrades, it was rather a catechism than a controversy, and he found more pains in giving them instruction than answering their objections; but when it came to my turn, it was a different matter; i stopped him at every article, and did not spare a single remark that i thought would create a difficulty: this rendered the conference long and extremely tiresome to the assistants. my old priest talked a great deal, was very warm, frequently rambled from the subject, and extricated himself from difficulties by saying he was not sufficiently versed in the french language. the next day, lest my indiscreet objections should injure the minds of those who were better disposed, i was led into a separate chamber and put under the care of a younger priest, a fine speaker; that is, one who was fond of long perplexed sentences, and proud of his own abilities, if ever doctor was. i did not, however, suffer myself to be intimidated by his overbearing looks: and being sensible that i could maintain my ground, i combated his assertions, exposed his mistakes, and laid about me in the best manner i was able. he thought to silence me at once with st. augustine, st. gregory, and the rest of the fathers, but found, to his ineffable surprise, that i could handle these almost as dexterously as himself; not that i had ever read them, or he either, perhaps, but i retained a number of passages taken from my le sueur, and when he bore hard on me with one citation, without standing to dispute, i parried it with another, which method embarrassed him extremely. at length, however, he got the better of me for two very potent reasons; in the first place, he was of the strongest side; young as i was, i thought it might be dangerous to drive him to extremities, for i plainly saw the old priest was neither satisfied with me nor my erudition. in the next place, he had studied, i had not; this gave a degree of method to his arguments which i could not follow; and whenever he found himself pressed by an unforeseen objection he put it off to the next conference, pretending i rambled from the question in dispute. sometimes he even rejected all my quotations, maintaining they were false, and, offering to fetch the book, defied me to find them. he knew he ran very little risk, and that, with all my borrowed learning, i was not sufficiently accustomed to books, and too poor a latinist to find a passage in a large volume, had i been ever so well assured it was there. i even suspected him of having been guilty of a perfidy with which he accused our ministers, and that he fabricated passages sometimes in order to evade an objection that incommoded him. meanwhile the hospital became every day more disagreeable to me, and seeing but one way to get out of it, i endeavored to hasten my abjuration with as much eagerness as i had hitherto sought to retard it. the two africans had been baptised with great ceremony, they were habited in white from head to foot to signify the purity of their regenerated souls. my turn came a month after; for all this time was thought necessary by my directors, that they might have the honor of a difficult conversion, and every dogma of their faith was recapitulated, in order to triumph the more completely over my new docility. at length, sufficiently instructed and disposed to the will of my masters, i was led in procession to the metropolitan church of st. john, to make a solemn abjuration, and undergo a ceremony made use of on these occasions, which, though not baptism, is very similar, and serves to persuade the people that protestants are not christians. i was clothed in a kind of gray robe, decorated with white brandenburgs. two men, one behind, the other before me, carried copper basins which they kept striking with a key, and in which those who were charitably disposed put their alms, according as they found themselves influenced by religion or good will for the new convert; in a word, nothing of catholic pageantry was omitted that could render the solemnity edifying to the populace, or humiliating to me. the white dress might have been serviceable, but as i had not the honor to be either moor or jew, they did not think fit to compliment me with it. the affair did not end here, i must now go to the inquisition to be absolved from the dreadful sin of heresy, and return to the bosom of the church with the same ceremony to which henry the fourth was subjected by his ambassador. the air and manner of the right reverend father inquisitor was by no means calculated to dissipate the secret horror that seized my spirits on entering this holy mansion. after several questions relative to my faith, situation, and family, he asked me bluntly if my mother was damned? terror repressed the first gust of indignation; this gave me time to recollect myself, and i answered, i hope not, for god might have enlightened her last moments. the monk made no reply, but his silence was attended with a look by no means expressive of approbation. all these ceremonies ended, the very moment i flattered myself i should be plentifully provided for, they exhorted me to continue a good christian, and live in obedience to the grace i had received; then wishing me good fortune, with rather more than twenty francs of small money in my pocket, the produce of the above--mentioned collection, turned me out, shut the door on me, and i saw no more of them! thus, in a moment, all my flattering expectations were at an end; and nothing remained from my interested conversion but the remembrance of having been made both a dupe and an apostate. it is easy to imagine what a sudden revolution was produced in my ideas, when every brilliant expectation of making a fortune terminated by seeing myself plunged in the completest misery. in the morning i was deliberating what palace i should inhabit, before night i was reduced to seek my lodging in the street. it may be supposed that i gave myself up to the most violent transports of despair, rendered more bitter by a consciousness that my own folly had reduced me to these extremities; but the truth is, i experienced none of these disagreeable sensations. i had passed two months in absolute confinement; this was new to me; i was now emancipated, and the sentiment i felt most forcibly, was joy at my recovered liberty. after a slavery which had appeared tedious, i was again master of my time and actions, in a great city, abundant in resources, crowded with people of fortune, to whom my merit and talents could not fail to recommend me. i had sufficient time before me to expect this good fortune, for my twenty livres seemed an inexhaustible treasure, which i might dispose of without rendering an account of to anyone. it was the first time i had found myself so rich, and far from giving way to melancholy reflections, i only adopted other hopes, in which self-love was by no means a loser. never did i feel so great a degree of confidence and security; i looked on my fortune as already made and was pleased to think i should have no one but myself to thank for the acquisition of it. the first thing i did was to satisfy my curiosity by rambling all over the city, and i seemed to consider it as a confirmation of my liberty; i went to see the soldiers mount guard, and was delighted with their military accouterment; i followed processions, and was pleased with the solemn music of the priests; i next went to see the king's palace, which i approached with awe, but seeing others enter, i followed their example, and no one prevented me; perhaps i owed this favor to the small parcel i carried under my arm; be that as it may, i conceived a high opinion of my consequence from this circumstance, and already thought myself an inhabitant there. the weather was hot; i had walked about till i was both fatigued and hungry; wishing for some refreshment, i went into a milk-house; they brought me some cream-cheese curds and whey, and two slices of that excellent piedmont bread, which i prefer to any other; and for five or six sous i had one of the most delicious meals i ever recollect to have made. it was time to seek a lodging: as i already knew enough of the piedmontese language to make myself understood, this was a work of no great difficulty; and i had so much prudence, that i wished to adapt it rather to the state of my purse than the bent of my inclinations. in the course of my inquiries, i was informed that a soldier's wife, in po-street, furnished lodgings to servants out of place at only one sou a night, and finding one of her poor beds disengaged, i took possession of it. she was young and newly married, though she already had five or six children. mother, children and lodgers, all slept in the same chamber, and it continued thus while i remained there. she was good-natured, swore like a carman, and wore neither cap nor handkerchief; but she had a gentle heart, was officious; and to me both kind and serviceable. for several days i gave myself up to the pleasures of independence and curiosity; i continued wandering about the city and its environs, examining every object that seemed curious or new; and, indeed, most things had that appearance to a young novice. i never omitted visiting the court, and assisted regularly every morning at the king's mass. i thought it a great honor to be in the same chapel with this prince and his retinue; but my passion for music, which now began to make its appearance, was a greater incentive than the splendor of the court, which, soon seen and always the same, presently lost its attraction. the king of sardinia had at that time the best music in europe; somis, desjardins, and the bezuzzi shone there alternately; all these were not necessary to fascinate a youth whom the sound of the most simple instrument, provided it was just, transported with joy. magnificence only produced a stupid admiration, without any violent desire to partake of it, my thoughts were principally employed in observing whether any young princess was present that merited my homage, and whom i could make the heroine of a romance. meantime, i was on the point of beginning one; in a less elevated sphere, it is true, but where could i have brought it to a conclusion, i should have found pleasures a thousand times more delicious. though i lived with the strictest economy, my purse insensibly grew lighter. this economy was, however, less the effect of prudence than that love of simplicity, which, even to this day, the use of the most expensive tables has not been able to vitiate. nothing in my idea, either at that time or since, could exceed a rustic repast; give me milk, vegetables, eggs, and brown bread, with tolerable wine and i shall always think myself sumptuously regaled; a good appetite will furnish out the rest, if the maitre d' hotel, with a number of unnecessary footmen, do not satiate me with their important attentions. five or six sous would then procure me a more agreeable meal than as many livres would have done since; i was abstemious, therefore, for want of a temptation to be otherwise: though i do not know but i am wrong to call this abstinence, for with my pears, new cheese, bread and some glasses of montferrat wine, which you might have cut with a knife, i was the greatest of epicures. notwithstanding my expenses were very moderate, it was possible to see the end of twenty livres; i was every day more convinced of this, and, spite of the giddiness of youth, my apprehensions for the future amounted almost to terror. all my castles in the air were vanished, and i became sensible of the necessity of seeking some occupation that would procure me a subsistence. even this was a work of difficulty; i thought of my engraving, but knew too little of it to be employed as a journeyman, nor do masters abound in turin; i resolved, therefore, till something better presented itself, to go from shop to shop, offering to engrave ciphers, or coats of arms, on pieces of plate, etc., and hoped to get employment by working at a low price; or taking what they chose to give me. even this expedient did not answer my expectations; almost all my applications were ineffectual, the little i procured being hardly sufficient to produce a few scanty meals. walking one morning pretty early in the 'contra nova', i saw a young tradeswoman behind a counter, whose looks were so charmingly attractive, that, notwithstanding my timidity with the ladies, i entered the shop without hesitation, offered my services as usual: and had the happiness to have it accepted. she made me sit down and recite my little history, pitied my forlorn situation; bade me be cheerful, and endeavored to make me so by an assurance that every good christian would give me assistance; then (while she had occasion for) she went up stairs and fetched me something for breakfast. this seemed a promising beginning, nor was what followed less flattering: she was satisfied with my work, and, when i had a little recovered myself, still more with my discourse. she was rather elegantly dressed and notwithstanding her gentle looks this appearance of gayety had disconcerted me; but her good-nature, the compassionate tone of her voice, with her gentle and caressing manner, soon set me at ease with myself; i saw my endeavors to please were crowned with success, and this assurance made me succeed the more. though an italian, and too pretty to be entirely devoid of coquetry, she had so much modesty, and i so great a share of timidity, that our adventure was not likely to be brought to a very speedy conclusion, nor did they give us time to make any good of it. i cannot recall the few short moments i passed with this lovely woman without being sensible of an inexpressible charm, and can yet say, it was there i tasted in their utmost perfection the most delightful, as well as the purest pleasures of love. she was a lively pleasing brunette, and the good nature that was painted on her lovely face rendered her vivacity more interesting. she was called madam basile: her husband, who was considerably older than herself, consigned her, during his absence, to the care of a clerk, too disagreeable to be thought dangerous; but who, notwithstanding, had pretensions that he seldom showed any signs of, except of ill--humors, a good share of which he bestowed on me; though i was pleased to hear him play the flute, on which he was a tolerable musician. this second egistus was sure to grumble whenever he saw me go into his mistress' apartment, treating me with a degree of disdain which she took care to repay him with interest; seeming pleased to caress me in his presence, on purpose to torment him. this kind of revenge, though perfectly to my taste, would have been still more charming in a 'tete a tete', but she did not proceed so far; at least, there was a difference in the expression of her kindness. whether she thought me too young, that it was my place to make advances, or that she was seriously resolved to be virtuous, she had at such times a kind of reserve, which, though not absolutely discouraging, kept my passion within bounds. i did not feel the same real and tender respect for her as i did for madam de warrens: i was embarrassed, agitated, feared to look, and hardly dared to breathe in her presence, yet to have left her would have been worse than death: how fondly did my eyes devour whatever they could gaze on without being perceived! the flowers on her gown, the point of her pretty foot, the interval of a round white arm that appeared between her glove and ruffle, the least part of her neck, each object increased the force of all the rest, and added to the infatuation. gazing thus on what was to be seen, and even more than was to be seen, my sight became confused, my chest seemed contracted, respiration was every moment more painful. i had the utmost difficulty to hide my agitation, to prevent my sighs from being heard, and this difficulty was increased by the silence in which we were frequently plunged. happily, madam basile, busy at her work, saw nothing of all this, or seemed not to see it: yet i sometimes observed a kind of sympathy, especially at the frequent rising of her handkerchief, and this dangerous sight almost mastered every effort, but when on the point of giving way to my transports, she spoke a few words to me with an air of tranquility, and in an instant the agitation subsided. i saw her several times in this manner without a word, a gesture, or even a look, too expressive, making the least intelligence between us. the situation was both my torment and delight, for hardly in the simplicity of my heart, could i imagine the cause of my uneasiness. i should suppose these 'tete a tete' could not be displeasing to her, at least, she sought frequent occasions to renew them; this was a very disinterested labor, certainly, as appeared by the use she made, or ever suffered me to make of them. being, one day, wearied with the clerk's discourse, she had retired to her chamber; i made haste to finish what i had to do in the back shop, and followed her; the door was half open, and i entered without being perceived. she was embroidering near a window on the opposite side of the room; she could not see me; and the carts in the streets made too much noise for me to be heard. she was always well dressed, but this day her attire bordered on coquetry. her attitude was graceful, her head leaning gently forward, discovered a small circle of her neck; her hair, elegantly dressed was ornamented with flowers; her figure was universally charming, and i had an uninterrupted opportunity to admire it. i was absolutely in a state of ecstasy, and, involuntary, sinking on my knees, i passionately extended my arms towards her, certain she could not hear, and having no conception that she could see me; but there was a chimney glass at the end of the room that betrayed all my proceedings. i am ignorant what effect this transport produced on her; she did not speak; she did not look on me; but, partly turning her head, with the movement of her finger only, she pointed to the mat that was at her feet--to start up, with an articulate cry of joy, and occupy the place she had indicated, was the work of a moment; but it will hardly be believed i dared attempt no more, not even to speak, raise my eyes to hers, or rest an instant on her knees, though in an attitude which seemed to render such a support necessary. i was dumb, immovable, but far enough from a state of tranquility; agitation, joy, gratitude, ardent indefinite wishes, restrained by the fear of giving displeasure, which my unpractised heart too much dreaded, were sufficiently discernible. she neither appeared more tranquil, nor less intimidated than myself--uneasy at my present situation; confounded at having brought me there, beginning to tremble for the effects of a sign which she had made without reflecting on the consequences, neither giving encouragement, nor expressing disapprobation, with her eyes fixed on her work, she endeavored to appear unconscious of everything that passed; but all my stupidity could not hinder me from concluding that she partook of my embarrassment, perhaps, my transports, and was only hindered by a bashfulness like mine, without even that supposition giving me power to surmount it. five or six years older than myself, every advance, according to my idea, should have been made by her, and, since she did nothing to encourage mine, i concluded they would offend her. even at this time, i am inclined to believe i thought right; she certainly had wit enough to perceive that a novice like me had occasion, not only for encouragement but instruction. i am ignorant how this animated, though dumb scene would have ended, or how long i should have continued immovable in this ridiculous, though delicious, situation, had we not been interrupted--in the height of my agitation, i heard the kitchen door open, which joined madam basile's chamber; who, being alarmed, said, with a quick voice and action, "get up! here's rosina!" rising hastily i seized one of her hands, which she held out to me, and gave it two eager kisses; at the second i felt this charming hand press gently on my lips. never in my life did i enjoy so sweet a moment; but the occasion i had lost returned no more, this being the conclusion of our amours. this may be the reason why her image yet remains imprinted on my heart in such charming colors, which have even acquired fresh lustre since i became acquainted with the world and women. had she been mistress of the least degree of experience, she would have taken other measures to animate so youthful a lover; but if her heart was weak, it was virtuous; and only suffered itself to be borne away by a powerful though involuntary inclination. this was, apparently, her first infidelity, and i should, perhaps, have found more difficulty in vanquishing her scruples than my own; but, without proceeding so far, i experienced in her company the most inexpressible delights. never did i taste with any other woman pleasures equal to those two minutes which i passed at the feet of madam basile without even daring to touch her gown. i am convinced no satisfaction can be compared to that we feel with a virtuous woman we esteem; all is transport!--a sign with the finger, a hand lightly pressed against my lips, were the only favors i ever received from madam basile, yet the bare remembrance of these trifling condescensions continues to transport me. it was in vain i watched the two following days for another tete a tete; it was impossible to find an opportunity; nor could i perceive on her part any desire to forward it; her behavior was not colder, but more distant than usual, and i believe she avoided my looks for fear of not being able sufficiently to govern her own. the cursed clerk was more vexatious than ever; he even became a wit, telling me, with a satirical sneer, that i should unquestionably make my way among the ladies. i trembled lest i should have been guilty of some indiscretion, and looking at myself as already engaged in an intrigue, endeavored to cover with an air of mystery an inclination which hitherto certainly had no great need of it; this made me more circumspect in my choice of opportunities, and by resolving only to seize such as should be absolutely free from the danger of a surprise, i met none. another romantic folly, which i could never overcome, and which, joined to my natural timidity, tended directly to contradict the clerk's predictions, is, i always loved too sincerely, too perfectly, i may say, to find happiness easily attainable. never were passions at the same time more lively and pure than mine; never was love more tender, more true, or more disinterested; freely would i have sacrificed my own happiness to that of the object of my affection; her reputation was dearer than my life, and i could promise myself no happiness for which i would have exposed her peace of mind for a moment. this disposition has ever made me employ so much care, use so many precautions, such secrecy in my adventures, that all of them have failed; in a word, my want of success with the women has ever proceeded from having loved them too well. to return to our egistus, the fluter; it was remarkable that in becoming more insupportable, the traitor put on the appearance of complaisance. from the first day madam basile had taken me under her protection, she had endeavored to make me serviceable in the warehouse; and finding i understood arithmetic tolerably well, she proposed his teaching me to keep the books; a proposition that was but indifferently received by this humorist, who might, perhaps, be fearful of being supplanted. as this failed, my whole employ, besides what engraving i had to do, was to transcribe some bills and accounts, to write several books over fair, and translate commercial letters from italian into french. all at once he thought fit to accept the before rejected proposal, saying, he would teach me bookkeeping, by double--entry, and put me in a situation to offer my services to m. basile on his return; but there was something so false, malicious, and ironical, in his air and manner, that it was by no means calculated to inspire me with confidence. madam basile, replied archly, that i was much obliged to him for his kind offer, but she hoped fortune would be more favorable to my merits, for it would be a great misfortune, with so much sense, that i should only be a pitiful clerk. she often said, she would procure me some acquaintance that might be useful; she doubtless felt the necessity of parting with me, and had prudently resolved on it. our mute declaration had been made on thursday, the sunday following she gave a dinner. a jacobin of good appearance was among the guests, to whom she did me the honor to present me. the monk treated me very affectionately, congratulated me on my late conversion, mentioned several particulars of my story, which plainly showed he had been made acquainted with it, then, tapping me familiarly on the cheek, bade me be good, to keep up my spirits, and come to see him at his convent, where he should have more opportunity to talk with me. i judged him to be a person of some consequence by the deference that was paid him; and by the paternal tone he assumed with madam basile, to be her confessor. i likewise remember that his decent familiarity was attended with an appearance of esteem, and even respect for his fair penitent, which then made less impression on me than at present. had i possessed more experience how should i have congratulated myself on having touched the heart of a young woman respected by her confessor! the table not being large enough to accommodate all the company, a small one was prepared, where i had the satisfaction of dining with our agreeable clerk; but i lost nothing with regard to attention and good cheer, for several plates were sent to the side-table which were certainly not intended for him. thus far all went well; the ladies were in good spirits, and the gentlemen very gallant, while madam basile did the honors of the table with peculiar grace. in the midst of the dinner we heard a chaise stop at the door, and presently some one coming up stairs--it was m. basile. methinks i now see him entering, in his scarlet coat with gold buttons --from that day i have held the color in abhorrence. m. basile was a tall handsome man, of good address: he entered with a consequential look and an air of taking his family unawares, though none but friends were present. his wife ran to meet him, threw her arms about his neck, and gave him a thousand caresses, which he received with the utmost indifference; and without making any return saluted the company and took his place at table. they were just beginning to speak of his journey, when casting his eye on the small table he asked in a sharp tone, what lad that was? madam basile answered ingenuously. he then inquired whether i lodged in the house; and was answered in the negative. "why not?" replied he, rudely, "since he stays here all day, he might as well remain all night too." the monk now interfered, with a serious and true eulogium on madam basile: in a few words he made mine also, adding, that so far from blaming, he ought to further the pious charity of his wife, since it was evident she had not passed the bounds of discretion. the husband answered with an air of petulance, which (restrained by the presence of the monk) he endeavored to stifle; it was, however, sufficient to let me understand he had already received information of me, and that our worthy clerk had rendered me an ill office. we had hardly risen from table, when the latter came in triumph from his employer, to inform me, i must leave the house that instant, and never more during my life dare to set foot there. he took care to aggravate this commission by everything that could render it cruel and insulting. i departed without a word, my heart overwhelmed with sorrow, less for being obliged to quit this amiable woman, than at the thought of leaving her to the brutality of such a husband. he was certainly right to wish her faithful; but though prudent and wellborn, she was an italian, that is to say, tender and vindictive; which made me think, he was extremely imprudent in using means the most likely in the world to draw on himself the very evil he so much dreaded. such was the success of my first adventure. i walked several times up and down the street, wishing to get a sight of what my heart incessantly regretted; but i could only discover her husband, or the vigilant clerk, who, perceiving me, made a sign with the ell they used in the shop, which was more expressive than alluring: finding, therefore, that i was so completely watched, my courage failed, and i went no more. i wished, at least, to find out the patron she had provided me, but, unfortunately, i did not know his name. i ranged several times round the convent, endeavoring in vain to meet with him. at length, other events banished the delightful remembrance of madam basile; and in a short time i so far forgot her, that i remained as simple, as much a novice as ever, nor did my penchant for pretty women even receive any sensible augmentation. her liberality had, however, increased my little wardrobe, though she had done this with precaution and prudence, regarding neatness more than decoration, and to make me comfortable rather than brilliant. the coat i had brought from geneva was yet wearable, she only added a hat and some linen. i had no ruffles, nor would she give me any, not but i felt a great inclination for them. she was satisfied with having put it in my power to keep myself clean, though a charge to do this was unnecessary while i was to appear before her. a few days after this catastrophe; my hostess, who, as i have already observed, was very friendly, with great satisfaction informed me she had heard of a situation, and that a lady of rank desired to see me. i immediately thought myself in the road to great adventures; that being the point to which all my ideas tended: this, however, did not prove so brilliant as i had conceived it. i waited on the lady with the servant; who had mentioned me: she asked a number of questions, and my answers not displeasing her, i immediately entered into her service not, indeed, in the quality of favorite, but as a footman. i was clothed like the rest of her people, the only difference being, they wore a shoulder--knot, which i had not, and, as there was no lace on her livery, it appeared merely a tradesman's suit. this was the unforeseen conclusion of all my great expectancies! the countess of vercellis, with whom i now lived, was a widow without children; her husband was a piedmontese, but i always believed her to be a savoyard, as i could have no conception that a native of piedmont could speak such good french, and with so pure an accent. she was a middle-aged woman, of a noble appearance and cultivated understanding, being fond of french literature, in which she was well versed. her letters had the expression, and almost the elegance of madam de savigne's; some of them might have been taken for hers. my principal employ, which was by no means displeasing to me, was to write from her dictating; a cancer in the breast, from which she suffered extremely, not permitting her to write herself. madam de vercellis not only possessed a good understanding, but a strong and elevated soul. i was with her during her last illness, and saw her suffer and die, without showing an instant of weakness, or the least effort of constraint; still retaining her feminine manners, without entertaining an idea that such fortitude gave her any claim to philosophy; a word which was not yet in fashion, nor comprehended by her in the sense it is held at present. this strength of disposition sometimes extended almost to apathy, ever appearing to feel as little for others as herself; and when she relieved the unfortunate, it was rather for the sake of acting right, than from a principle of real commiseration. i have frequently experienced this insensibility, in some measure, during the three months i remained with her. it would have been natural to have had an esteem for a young man of some abilities, who was incessantly under her observation, and that she should think, as she felt her dissolution approaching, that after her death he would have occasion for assistance and support: but whether she judged me unworthy of particular attention, or that those who narrowly watched all her motions, gave her no opportunity to think of any but themselves, she did nothing for me. i very well recollect that she showed some curiosity to know my story, frequently questioning me, and appearing pleased when i showed her the letters i wrote to madam de warrens, or explained my sentiments; but as she never discovered her own, she certainly did not take the right means to come at them. my heart, naturally communicative, loved to display its feelings, whenever i encountered a similar disposition; but dry, cold interrogatories, without any sign of blame or approbation on my answers, gave me no confidence. not being able to determine whether my discourse was agreeable or displeasing, i was ever in fear, and thought less of expressing my ideas, than of being careful not to say anything that might seem to my disadvantage. i have since remarked that this dry method of questioning themselves into people's characters is a common trick among women who pride themselves on superior understanding. these imagine, that by concealing their own sentiments, they shall the more easily penetrate into those of others; being ignorant that this method destroys the confidence so necessary to make us reveal them. a man, on being questioned, is immediately on his guard: and if once he supposes that, without any interest in his concerns, you only wish to set him a-talking, either he entertains you with lies, is silent, or, examining every word before he utters it, rather chooses to pass for a fool, than to be the dupe of your curiosity. in short, it is ever a bad method to attempt to read the hearts of others by endeavoring to conceal our own. madam de vercellis never addressed a word to me which seemed to express affection, pity, or benevolence. she interrogated me coldly, and my answers were uttered with so much timidity, that she doubtless entertained but a mean opinion of my intellects, for latterly she never asked me any questions, nor said anything but what was absolutely necessary for her service. she drew her judgment less from what i really was, than from what she had made me, and by considering me as a footman prevented my appearing otherwise. i am inclined to think i suffered at that time by the same interested game of concealed manoeuvre, which has counteracted me throughout my life, and given me a very natural aversion for everything that has the least appearance of it. madam de vercellis having no children, her nephew, the count de la roque, was her heir, and paid his court assiduously, as did her principal domestics, who, seeing her end approaching, endeavored to take care of themselves; in short, so many were busy about her, that she could hardly have found time to think of me. at the head of her household was a m. lorenzy, an artful genius, with a still more artful wife; who had so far insinuated herself into the good graces of her mistress, that she was rather on the footing of a friend than a servant. she had introduced a niece of hers as lady's maid: her name was mademoiselle pontal; a cunning gypsy, that gave herself all the airs of a waiting-woman, and assisted her aunt so well in besetting the countess, that she only saw with their eyes, and acted through their hands. i had not the happiness to please this worthy triumvirate; i obeyed, but did not wait on them, not conceiving that my duty to our general mistress required me to be a servant to her servants. besides this, i was a person that gave them some inquietude; they saw i was not in my proper situation, and feared the countess would discover it likewise, and by placing me in it, decrease their portions; for such sort of people, too greedy to be just, look on every legacy given to others as a diminution of their own wealth; they endeavored, therefore, to keep me as much out of her sight as possible. she loved to write letters, in her situation, but they contrived to give her a distaste to it; persuading her, by the aid of the doctor, that it was too fatiguing; and, under pretence that i did not understand how to wait on her, they employed two great lubberly chairmen for that purpose; in a word, they managed the affair so well, that for eight days before she made her will, i had not been permitted to enter the chamber. afterwards i went in as usual, and was even more assiduous than any one, being afflicted at the sufferings of the unhappy lady, whom i truly respected and beloved for the calmness and fortitude with which she bore her illness, and often did i shed tears of real sorrow without being perceived by any one. at length we lost her--i saw her expire. she had lived like a woman of sense and virtue, her death was that of a philosopher. i can truly say, she rendered the catholic religion amiable to me by the serenity with which she fulfilled its dictates, without any mixture of negligence or affectation. she was naturally serious, but towards the end of her illness she possessed a kind of gayety, too regular to be assumed, which served as a counterpoise to the melancholy of her situation. she only kept her bed two days, continuing to discourse cheerfully with those about her to the very last. she had bequeathed a year's wages to all the under servants, but, not being on the household list, i had nothing: the count de la roque, however, ordered me thirty livres, and the new coat i had on, which m. lorenzy would certainly have taken from me. he even promised to procure me a place; giving me permission to wait on him as often as i pleased. accordingly, i went two or three times, without being able to speak to him, and as i was easily repulsed, returned no more; whether i did wrong will be seen hereafter. would i had finished what i have to say of my living at madam de vercellis's. though my situation apparently remained the same, i did not leave her house as i had entered it: i carried with me the long and painful remembrance of a crime; an insupportable weight of remorse which yet hangs on my conscience, and whose bitter recollection, far from weakening, during a period of forty years, seems to gather strength as i grow old. who would believe, that a childish fault should be productive of such melancholy consequences? but it is for the more than probable effects that my heart cannot be consoled. i have, perhaps, caused an amiable, honest, estimable girl, who surely merited a better fate than myself, to perish with shame and misery. though it is very difficult to break up housekeeping without confusion, and the loss of some property; yet such was the fidelity of the domestics, and the vigilance of m. and madam lorenzy, that no article of the inventory was found wanting; in short, nothing was missing but a pink and silver ribbon, which had been worn, and belonged to mademoiselle pontal. though several things of more value were in my reach, this ribbon alone tempted me, and accordingly i stole it. as i took no great pains to conceal the bauble, it was soon discovered; they immediately insisted on knowing from whence i had taken it; this perplexed me--i hesitated, and at length said, with confusion, that marion gave it me. marion was a young mauriennese, and had been cook to madam de vercellis ever since she left off giving entertainments, for being sensible she had more need of good broths than fine ragouts, she had discharged her former one. marion was not only pretty, but had that freshness of color only to be found among the mountains, and, above all, an air of modesty and sweetness, which made it impossible to see her without affection; she was besides a good girl, virtuous, and of such strict fidelity, that everyone was surprised at hearing her named. they had not less confidence in me, and judged it necessary to certify which of us was the thief. marion was sent for; a great number of people were present, among whom was the count de la roque: she arrives; they show her the ribbon; i accuse her boldly: she remains confused and speechless, casting a look on me that would have disarmed a demon, but which my barbarous heart resisted. at length, she denied it with firmness, but without anger, exhorting me to return to myself, and not injure an innocent girl who had never wronged me. with infernal impudence, i confirmed my accusation, and to her face maintained she had given me the ribbon: on which, the poor girl, bursting into tears, said these words--"ah, rousseau! i thought you a good disposition--you render me very unhappy, but i would not be in your situation." she continued to defend herself with as much innocence as firmness, but without uttering the least invective against me. her moderation, compared to my positive tone, did her an injury; as it did not appear natural to suppose, on one side such diabolical assurance; on the other, such angelic mildness. the affair could not be absolutely decided, but the presumption was in my favor; and the count de la roque, in sending us both away, contented himself with saying, "the conscience of the guilty would revenge the innocent." his prediction was true, and is being daily verified. i am ignorant what became of the victim of my calumny, but there is little probability of her having been able to place herself agreeably after this, as she labored under an imputation cruel to her character in every respect. the theft was a trifle, yet it was a theft, and, what was worse, employed to seduce a boy; while the lie and obstinacy left nothing to hope from a person in whom so many vices were united. i do not even look on the misery and disgrace in which i plunged her as the greatest evil: who knows, at her age, whither contempt and disregarded innocence might have led her?--alas! if remorse for having made her unhappy is insupportable, what must i have suffered at the thought of rendering her even worse than myself. the cruel remembrance of this transaction, sometimes so troubles and disorders me, that, in my disturbed slumbers, i imagine i see this poor girl enter and reproach me with my crime, as though i had committed it but yesterday. while in easy tranquil circumstances, i was less miserable on this account, but, during a troubled agitated life, it has robbed me of the sweet consolation of persecuted innocence, and made me wofully experience, what, i think, i have remarked in some of my works, that remorse sleeps in the calm sunshine of prosperity, but wakes amid the storms of adversity. i could never take on me to discharge my heart of this weight in the bosom of a friend; nor could the closest intimacy ever encourage me to it, even with madam de warrens: all i could do, was to own i had to accuse myself of an atrocious crime, but never said in what it consisted. the weight, therefore, has remained heavy on my conscience to this day; and i can truly own the desire of relieving myself, in some measure, from it, contributed greatly to the resolution of writing my confessions. i have proceeded truly in that i have just made, and it will certainly be thought i have not sought to palliate the turpitude of my offence; but i should not fulfill the purpose of this undertaking, did i not, at the same time, divulge my interior disposition, and excuse myself as far as is conformable with truth. never was wickedness further from my thoughts, than in that cruel moment; and when i accused the unhappy girl, it is strange, but strictly true, that my friendship for her was the immediate cause of it. she was present to my thoughts; i formed my excuse from the first object that presented itself: i accused her with doing what i meant to have done, and as i designed to have given her the ribbon, asserted she had given it to me. when she appeared, my heart was agonized, but the presence of so many people was more powerful than my compunction. i did not fear punishment, but i dreaded shame: i dreaded it more than death, more than the crime, more than all the world. i would have buried, hid myself in the centre of the earth: invincible shame bore down every other sentiment; shame alone caused all my impudence, and in proportion as i became criminal, the fear of discovery rendered me intrepid. i felt no dread but that of being detected, of being publicly, and to my face, declared a thief, liar, and calumniator; an unconquerable fear of this overcame every other sensation. had i been left to myself, i should infallibly have declared the truth. or if m. de la rogue had taken me aside, and said--"do not injure this poor girl; if you are guilty own it,"--i am convinced i should instantly have thrown myself at his feet; but they intimidated, instead of encouraging me. i was hardly out of my childhood, or rather, was yet in it. it is also just to make some allowance for my age. in youth, dark, premeditated villainy is more criminal than in a riper age, but weaknesses are much less so; my fault was truly nothing more; and i am less afflicted at the deed itself than for its consequences. it had one good effect, however, in preserving me through the rest of my life from any criminal action, from the terrible impression that has remained from the only one i ever committed; and i think my aversion for lying proceeds in a great measure from regret at having been guilty of so black a one. if it is a crime that can be expiated, as i dare believe, forty years of uprightness and honor on various difficult occasions, with the many misfortunes that have overwhelmed my latter years, may have completed it. poor marion has found so many avengers in this world, that however great my offence towards her, i do not fear to bear the guilt with me. thus have i disclosed what i had to say on this painful subject; may i be permitted never to mention it again. the confessions of jean jacques rousseau (in books) privately printed for the members of the aldus society london, book vi. hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ila magnus hortus ubi, et leclo vicinus aqua fons; et paululum sylvae superhis forel. i cannot add, 'auctius acque di melius fecere'; but no matter, the former is enough for my purpose; i had no occasion to have any property there, it was sufficient that i enjoyed it; for i have long since both said and felt, that the proprietor and possessor are two very different people, even leaving husbands and lovers out of the question. at this moment began the short happiness of my life, those peaceful and rapid moments, which have given me a right to say, i have lived. precious and ever--regretted moments! ah! recommence your delightful course; pass more slowly through my memory, if possible, than you actually did in your fugitive succession. how shall i prolong, according to my inclination, this recital at once so pleasing and simple? how shall i continue to relate the same occurrences, without wearying my readers with the repetition, any more than i was satiated with the enjoyment? again, if all this consisted of facts, actions, or words, i could somehow or other convey an idea of it; but how shall i describe what was neither said nor done, nor even thought, but enjoyed, felt, without being able to particularize any other object of my happiness than the bare idea? i rose with the sun, and was happy; i walked, and was happy; i saw madam de warrens, and was happy; i quitted her, and still was happy!--whether i rambled through the woods, over the hills, or strolled along the valley; read, was idle, worked in the garden, or gathered fruits, happiness continually accompanied me; it was fixed on no particular object, it was within me, nor could i depart from it a single moment. nothing that passed during that charming epocha, nothing that i did, said, or thought, has escaped my memory. the time that preceded or followed it, i only recollect by intervals, unequally and confused; but here i remember all as distinctly as if it existed at this moment. imagination, which in my youth was perpetually anticipating the future, but now takes a retrograde course, makes some amends by these charming recollections for the deprivation of hope, which i have lost forever. i no longer see anything in the future that can tempt my wishes, it is a recollection of the past alone that can flatter me, and the remembrance of the period i am now describing is so true and lively, that it sometimes makes me happy, even in spite of my misfortunes. of these recollections i shall relate one example, which may give some idea of their force and precision. the first day we went to sleep at charmettes, the way being up-hill, and madam de warrens rather heavy, she was carried in a chair, while i followed on foot. fearing the chairmen would be fatigued, she got out about half-way, designing to walk the rest of it. as we passed along, she saw something blue in the hedge, and said, "there's some periwinkle in flower yet!" i had never seen any before, nor did i stop to examine this: my sight is too short to distinguish plants on the ground, and i only cast a look at this as i passed: an interval of near thirty years had elapsed before i saw any more periwinkle, at least before i observed it, when being at cressier in , with my friend, m. du peyrou, we went up a small mountain, on the summit of which there is a level spot, called, with reason, 'belle--vue', i was then beginning to herbalize;--walking and looking among the bushes, i exclaimed with rapture, "ah, there's some periwinkle!" du peyrou, who perceived my transport, was ignorant of the cause, but will some day be informed: i hope, on reading this. the reader may judge by this impression, made by so small an incident, what an effect must have been produced by every occurrence of that time. meantime, the air of the country did not restore my health; i was languishing and became more so; i could not endure milk, and was obliged to discontinue the use of it. water was at this time the fashionable remedy for every complaint; accordingly i entered on a course of it, and so indiscreetly, that it almost released me, not only from my illness but also from my life. the water i drank was rather hard and difficult to pass, as water from mountains generally is; in short, i managed so well, that in the course of two months i totally ruined my stomach, which until that time had been very good, and no longer digesting anything properly, had no reason to expect a cure. at this time an accident happened, as singular in itself as in its subsequent consequences, which can only terminate with my existence. one morning, being no worse than usual, while putting up the leaf of a small table, i felt a sudden and almost inconceivable revolution throughout my whole frame. i know not how to describe it better than as a kind of tempest, which suddenly rose in my blood, and spread in a moment over every part of my body. my arteries began beating so violently that i not only felt their motion, but even heard it, particularly that of the carotids, attended by a loud noise in my ears, which was of three, or rather four, distinct kinds. for instance, first a grave hollow buzzing; then a more distinct murmur, like the running of water; then an extremely sharp hissing, attended by the beating i before mentioned, and whose throbs i could easily count, without feeling my pulse, or putting a hand to any part of my body. this internal tumult was so violent that it has injured my auricular organs, and rendered me, from that time, not entirely deaf, but hard of hearing. my surprise and fear may easily be conceived; imagining it was the stroke of death, i went to bed, and the physician being sent for, trembling with apprehension, i related my case; judging it past all cure. i believe the doctor was of the same opinion; however he performed his office, running over a long string of causes and effects beyond my comprehension, after which, in consequence of this sublime theory, he set about, 'in anima vili', the experimental part of his art, but the means he was pleased to adopt in order to effect a cure were so troublesome, disgusting, and followed by so little effect, that i soon discontinued it, and after some weeks, finding i was neither better nor worse, left my bed, and returned to my usual method of living; but the beating of my arteries and the buzzing in my ears has never quitted me a moment during the thirty years' time which has elapsed since that time. till now, i had been a great sleeper, but a total privation of repose, with other alarming symptoms which have accompanied it, even to this time, persuaded me i had but a short time to live. this idea tranquillized me for a time: i became less anxious about a cure, and being persuaded i could not prolong life, determined to employ the remainder of it as usefully as possible. this was practicable by a particular indulgence of nature, which, in this melancholy state, exempted me from sufferings which it might have been supposed i should have experienced. i was incommoded by the noise, but felt no pain, nor was it accompanied by any habitual inconvenience, except nocturnal wakefulness, and at all times a shortness of breath, which is not violent enough to be called an asthma, but was troublesome when i attempted to run, or use any degree of exertion. this accident, which seemed to threaten the dissolution of my body, only killed my passions, and i have reason to thank heaven for the happy effect produced by it on my soul. i can truly say, i only began to live when i considered myself as entering the grave; for, estimating at their real value those things i was quitting; i began to employ myself on nobler objects, namely by anticipating those i hoped shortly to have the contemplation of, and which i had hitherto too much neglected. i had often made light of religion, but was never totally devoid of it; consequently, it cost me less pain to employ my thoughts on that subject, which is generally thought melancholy, though highly pleasing to those who make it an object of hope and consolation; madam de warrens, therefore, was more useful to me on this occasion than all the theologians in the world would have been. she, who brought everything into a system, had not failed to do as much by religion; and this system was composed of ideas that bore no affinity to each other. some were extremely good, and others very ridiculous, being made up of sentiments proceeding from her disposition, and prejudices derived from education. men, in general, make god like themselves; the virtuous make him good, and the profligate make him wicked; ill-tempered and bilious devotees see nothing but hell, because they would willingly damn all mankind; while loving and gentle souls disbelieve it altogether; and one of the astonishments i could never overcome, is to see the good fenelon speak of it in his telemachus as if he really gave credit to it; but i hope he lied in that particular, for however strict he might be in regard to truth, a bishop absolutely must lie sometimes. madam de warrens spoke truth with me, and that soul, made up without gall, who could not imagine a revengeful and ever angry god, saw only clemency and forgiveness, where devotees bestowed inflexible justice, and eternal punishment. she frequently said there would be no justice in the supreme being should he be strictly just to us; because, not having bestowed what was necessary to render us essentially good, it would be requiring more than he had given. the most whimsical idea was, that not believing in hell, she was firmly persuaded of the reality of purgatory. this arose from her not knowing what to do with the wicked, being loathed to damn them utterly, nor yet caring to place them with the good till they had become so; and we must really allow, that both in this world and the next, the wicked are very troublesome company. it is clearly seen that the doctrine of original sin and the redemption of mankind is destroyed by this system; consequently that the basis of the christian dispensation, as generally received, is shaken, and that the catholic faith cannot subsist with these principles; madam de warrens, notwithstanding, was a good catholic, or at least pretended to be one, and certainly desired to become such, but it appeared to her that the scriptures were too literally and harshly explained, supposing that all we read of everlasting torments were figurative threatenings, and the death of jesus christ an example of charity, truly divine, which should teach mankind to love god and each other; in a word, faithful to the religion she had embraced, she acquiesced in all its professions of faith, but on a discussion of each particular article, it was plain she thought diametrically opposite to that church whose doctrines she professed to believe. in these cases she exhibited simplicity of art, a frankness more eloquent than sophistry, which frequently embarrassed her confessor; for she disguised nothing from him. "i am a good catholic," she would say, "and will ever remain so; i adopt with all the powers of my soul the decisions of our holy mother church; i am not mistress of my faith, but i am of my will, which i submit to you without reserve; i will endeavor to believe all,--what can you require more?" had there been no christian morality established, i am persuaded she would have lived as if regulated by its principles, so perfectly did they seem to accord with her disposition. she did everything that was required; and she would have done the same had there been no such requisition: but all this morality was subordinate to the principles of m. tavel, or rather she pretended to see nothing in religion that contradicted them; thus she would have favored twenty lovers in a day, without any idea of a crime, her conscience being no more moved in that particular than her passions. i know that a number of devotees are not more scrupulous, but the difference is, they are seduced by constitution, she was blinded by her sophisms. in the midst of conversations the most affecting, i might say the most edifying, she would touch on this subject, without any change of air or manner, and without being sensible of any contradiction in her opinions; so much was she persuaded that our restrictions on that head are merely political, and that any person of sense might interpret, apply, or make exceptions to them, without any danger of offending the almighty. though i was far enough from being of the same opinion in this particular, i confess i dared not combat hers; indeed, as i was situated, it would have been putting myself in rather awkward circumstances, since i could only have sought to establish my opinion for others, myself being an exception. besides, i entertained but little hopes of making her alter hers, which never had any great influence on her conduct, and at the time i am speaking of none; but i have promised faithfully to describe her principles, and i will perform my engagement--i now return to myself. finding in her all those ideas i had occasion for to secure me from the fears of death and its future consequences, i drew confidence and security from this source; my attachment became warmer than ever, and i would willingly have transmitted to her my whole existence, which seemed ready to abandon me. from this redoubled attachment, a persuasion that i had but a short time to live, and profound security on my future state, arose an habitual and even pleasing serenity, which, calming every passion that extends our hopes and fears, made me enjoy without inquietude or concern the few days which i imagined remained for me. what contributed to render them still snore agreeable was an endeavor to encourage her rising taste for the country, by every amusement i could possibly devise, wishing to attach her to her garden, poultry, pigeons, and cows: i amused myself with them and these little occupations, which employed my time without injuring my tranquillity, were more serviceable than a milk diet, or all the remedies bestowed on my poor shattered machine, even to effecting the utmost possible reestablishment of it. the vintage and gathering in our fruit employed the remainder of the year; we became more and more attached to a rustic life, and the society of our honest neighbors. we saw the approach of winter with regret, and returned to the city as if going into exile. to me this return was particularly gloomy, who never expected to see the return of spring, and thought i took an everlasting leave of charmettes. i did not quit it without kissing the very earth and trees, casting back many a wishful look as i went towards chambery. having left my scholars for so long a time, and lost my relish for the amusements of the town, i seldom went out, conversing only with madam de warrens and a monsieur salomon, who had lately become our physician. he was an honest man, of good understanding, a great cartesian, spoke tolerably well on the system of the world, and his agreeable and instructive conversations were more serviceable than his prescriptions. i could never bear that foolish trivial mode of conversation which is so generally adopted; but useful instructive discourse has always given me great pleasure, nor was i ever backward to join in it. i was much pleased with that of m. salomon; it appeared to me, that when in his company, i anticipated the acquisition of that sublime knowledge which my soul would enjoy when freed from its mortal fetters. the inclination i had for him extended to the subjects which he treated on, and i began to look after books which might better enable me to understand his discourse. those which mingled devotion with science were most agreeable to me, particularly port royal's oratory, and i began to read or rather to devour them. one fell into my hands written by father lami, called 'entretiens sur les sciences', which was a kind of introduction to the knowledge of those books it treated of. i read it over a hundred times, and resolved to make this my guide; in short, i found (notwithstanding my ill state of health) that i was irresistibly drawn towards study, and though looking on each day as the last of my life, read with as much avidity as if certain i was to live forever. i was assured that reading would injure me; but on the contrary, i am rather inclined to think it was serviceable, not only to my soul, but also to my body; for this application, which soon became delightful, diverted my thoughts from my disorders, and i soon found myself much less affected by them. it is certain, however, that nothing gave me absolute ease, but having no longer any acute pain, i became accustomed to languishment and wakefulness; to thinking instead of acting; in short, i looked on the gradual and slow decay of my body as inevitably progressive and only to be terminated by death. this opinion not only detached me from all the vain cares of life, but delivered me from the importunity of medicine, to which hitherto, i had been forced to submit, though contrary to my inclination. salomon, convinced that his drugs were unavailing, spared me the disagreeable task of taking them, and contented himself with amusing the grief of my poor madam de warrens by some of those harmless preparations, which serve to flatter the hopes of the patient and keep up the credit of the doctor. i discontinued the strict regimen i had latterly observed, resumed the use of wine, and lived in every respect like a man in perfect health, as far as my strength would permit, only being careful to run into no excess; i even began to go out and visit my acquaintance, particularly m. de conzie, whose conversation was extremely pleasing to me. whether it struck me as heroic to study to my last hour, or that some hopes of life yet lingered in the bottom of my heart, i cannot tell, but the apparent certainty of death, far from relaxing my inclination for improvement, seemed to animate it, and i hastened to acquire knowledge for the other world, as if convinced i should only possess that portion i could carry with me. i took a liking to the shop of a bookseller, whose name was bouchard, which was frequented by some men of letters, and as the spring (whose return i had never expected to see again) was approaching, furnished myself with some books for charmettes, in case i should have the happiness to return there. i had that happiness, and enjoyed it to the utmost extent. the rapture with which i saw the trees put out their first bud, is inexpressible! the return of spring seemed to me like rising from the grave into paradise. the snow was hardly off the ground when we left our dungeon and returned to charmettes, to enjoy the first warblings of the nightingale. i now thought no more of dying, and it is really singular, that from this time i never experienced any dangerous illness in the country. i have suffered greatly, but never kept my bed, and have often said to those about me, on finding myself worse than ordinary, "should you see me at the point of death, carry me under the shade of an oak, and i promise you i shall recover." though weak, i resumed my country occupations, as far as my strength would permit, and conceived a real grief at not being able to manage our garden without help; for i could not take five or six strokes with the spade without being out of breath and overcome with perspiration; when i stooped the beating redoubled, and the blood flew with such violence to my head, that i was instantly obliged to stand upright. being therefore confined to less fatiguing employments, i busied myself about the dove --house, and was so pleased with it that i sometimes passed several hours there without feeling a moment's weariness. the pigeon is very timid and difficult to tame, yet i inspired mine with so much confidence that they followed me everywhere, letting me catch them at pleasure, nor could i appear in the garden without having two or three on my arms or head in an instant, and notwithstanding the pleasure i took in them, their company became so troublesome that i was obliged to lessen the familiarity. i have ever taken great pleasure in taming animals, particularly those that are wild and fearful. it appeared delightful to me, to inspire them with a confidence which i took care never to abuse, wishing them to love me freely. i have already mentioned that i purchased some books: i did not forget to read them, but in a manner more proper to fatigue than instruct me. i imagined that to read a book profitably, it was necessary to be acquainted with every branch of knowledge it even mentioned; far from thinking that the author did not do this himself, but drew assistance from other books, as he might see occasion. full of this silly idea, i was stopped every moment, obliged to run from one book to another, and sometimes, before i could reach the tenth page of what i was studying, found it necessary to turn over a whole library. i was so attached to this ridiculous method, that i lost a prodigious deal of time and had bewildered my head to such a degree, that i was hardly capable of doing, seeing or comprehending anything. i fortunately perceived, at length, that i was in the wrong road, which would entangle me in an inextricable labyrinth, and quitted it before i was irrevocably lost. when a person has any real taste for the sciences, the first thing he perceives in the pursuit of them is that connection by which they mutually attract, assist, and enlighten each other, and that it is impossible to attain one without the assistance of the rest. though the human understanding cannot grasp all, and one must ever be regarded as the principal object, yet if the rest are totally neglected, the favorite study is generally obscure; i was convinced that my resolution to improve was good and useful in itself, but that it was necessary i should change my method; i, therefore, had recourse to the encyclopaedia. i began by a distribution of the general mass of human knowledge into its various branches, but soon discovered that i must pursue a contrary course, that i must take each separately, and trace it to that point where it united with the rest: thus i returned to the general synthetical method, but returned thither with a conviction that i was going right. meditation supplied the want of knowledge, and a very natural reflection gave strength to my resolutions, which was, that whether i lived or died, i had no time to lose; for having learned but little before the age of five-and-twenty, and then resolving to learn everything, was engaging to employ the future time profitably. i was ignorant at what point accident or death might put a period to my endeavors, and resolved at all events to acquire with the utmost expedition some idea of every species of knowledge, as well to try my natural disposition, as to judge for myself what most deserved cultivation. in the execution of my plan, i experienced another advantage which i had never thought of; this was, spending a great deal of time profitably. nature certainly never meant me for study, since attentive application fatigues me so much, that i find it impossible to employ myself half an hour together intently on any one subject; particularly while following another person's ideas, for it has frequently happened that i have pursued my own for a much longer period with success. after reading a few pages of an author with close application, my understanding is bewildered, and should i obstinately continue, i tire myself to no purpose, a stupefaction seizes me, and i am no longer conscious of what i read; but in a succession of various subjects, one relieves me from the fatigue of the other, and without finding respite necessary, i can follow them with pleasure. i took advantage of this observation in the plan of my studies, taking care to intermingle them in such a manner that i was never weary: it is true that domestic and rural concerns furnished many pleasing relaxations; but as my eagerness for improvement increased, i contrived to find opportunities for my studies, frequently employing myself about two things at the same time, without reflecting that both were consequently neglected. in relating so many trifling details, which delight me, but frequently tire my reader, i make use of the caution to suppress a great number, though, perhaps, he would have no idea of this, if i did not take care to inform him of it: for example, i recollect with pleasure all the different methods i adopted for the distribution of my time, in such a manner as to produce the utmost profit and pleasure. i may say, that the portion of my life which i passed in this retirement, though in continual ill-health, was that in which i was least idle and least wearied. two or three months were thus employed in discovering the bent of my genius; meantime, i enjoyed, in the finest season of the year, and in a spot it rendered delightful, the charms of a life whose worth i was so highly sensible of, in such a society, as free as it was charming; if a union so perfect, and the extensive knowledge i purposed to acquire, can be called society. it seemed to me as if i already possessed the improvements i was only in pursuit of: or rather better, since the pleasure of learning constituted a great part of my happiness. i must pass over these particulars, which were to me the height of enjoyment, but are too trivial to bear repeating: indeed, true happiness is indescribable, it is only to be felt, and this consciousness of felicity is proportionately more, the less able we are to describe it; because it does not absolutely result from a concourse of favorable incidents, but is an affection of the mind itself. i am frequently guilty of repetitions, but should be infinitely more so, did i repeat the same thing as often as it recurs with pleasure to my mind. when at length my variable mode of life was reduced to a more uniform course, the following was nearly the distribution of time which i adopted: i rose every morning before the sun, and passed through a neighboring orchard into a pleasant path, which, running by a vineyard, led towards chambery. while walking, i offered up my prayers, not by a vain motion of the lips, but a sincere elevation of my heart, to the great author of delightful nature, whose beauties were so charmingly spread out before me! i never love to pray in a chamber; it seems to me that the walls and all the little workmanship of man interposed between god and myself: i love to contemplate him in his works, which elevate my soul, and raise my thoughts to him. my prayers were pure, i can affirm it, and therefore worthy to be heard:--i asked for myself and her from whom my thoughts were never divided, only an innocent and quiet life, exempt from vice, sorrow and want; i prayed that we might die the death of the just, and partake of their lot hereafter: for the rest, it was rather admiration and contemplation than request, being satisfied that the best means to obtain what is necessary from the giver of every perfect good, is rather to deserve than to solicit. returning from my walk, i lengthened the way by taking a roundabout path, still contemplating with earnestness and delight the beautiful scenes with which i was surrounded, those only objects that never fatigue either the eye or the heart. as i approached our habitation, i looked forward to see if madam de warrens was stirring, and when i perceived her shutters open, i even ran with joy towards the house: if they were yet shut i went into the garden to wait their opening, amusing myself, meantime, by a retrospection of what i had read the preceding evening, or in gardening. the moment the shutter drew back i hastened to embrace her, frequently half asleep; and this salute, pure as it was affectionate, even from its innocence, possessed a charm which the senses can never bestow. we usually breakfasted on milk-coffee; this was the time of day when we had most leisure, and when we chatted with the greatest freedom. these sittings, which were usually pretty long, have given me a fondness for breakfasts, and i infinitely prefer those of england, or switzerland, which are considered as a meal, at which all the family assemble, than those of france, where they breakfast alone in their several apartments, or more frequently have none at all. after an hour or two passed in discourse, i went to my study till dinner; beginning with some philosophical work, such as the logic of port-royal, locke's essays, mallebranche, leibtnitz, descartes, etc. i soon found that these authors perpetually contradict each other, and formed the chimerical project of reconciling them, which cost me much labor and loss of time, bewildering my head without any profit. at length (renouncing this idea) i adopted one infinitely more profitable, to which i attribute all the progress i have since made, notwithstanding the defects of my capacity; for 'tis certain i had very little for study. on reading each author, i acquired a habit of following all his ideas, without suffering my own or those of any other writer to interfere with them, or entering into any dispute on their utility. i said to myself, "i will begin by laying up a stock of ideas, true or false, but clearly conceived, till my understanding shall be sufficiently furnished to enable me to compare and make choice of those that are most estimable." i am sensible this method is not without its inconveniences, but it succeeded in furnishing me with a fund of instruction. having passed some years in thinking after others, without reflection, and almost without reasoning, i found myself possessed of sufficient materials to set about thinking on my own account, and when journeys of business deprived me of the opportunities of consulting books, i amused myself with recollecting and comparing what i had read, weighing every opinion on the balance of reason, and frequently judging my masters. though it was late before i began to exercise my judicial faculties, i have not discovered that they had lost their vigor, and on publishing my own ideas, have never been accused of being a servile disciple or of swearing 'in verba magistri'. from these studies i passed to the elements of geometry, for i never went further, forcing my weak memory to retain them by going the same ground a hundred and a hundred times over. i did not admire euclid, who rather seeks a chain of demonstration than a connection of ideas: i preferred the geometry of father lama, who from that time became one of my favorite authors, and whose works i yet read with pleasure. algebra followed, and father lama was still my guide: when i made some progress, i perused father reynaud's science of calculation, and then his analysis demonstrated; but i never went far enough thoroughly to understand the application of algebra to geometry. i was not pleased with this method of performing operations by rule without knowing what i was about: resolving geometrical problems by the help of equations seemed like playing a tune by turning round a handle. the first time i found by calculation that the square of a binocular figure was composed of the square of each of its parts, and double the product of one by the other; though convinced that my multiplication was right, i could not be satisfied till i had made and examined the figure: not but i admire algebra when applied to abstract quantities, but when used to demonstrate dimensions, i wished to see the operation, and unless explained by lines, could not rightly comprehend it. after this came latin: it was my most painful study, and in which i never made great progress. i began by port-royal's rudiments, but without success; i lost myself in a crowd of rules; and in studying the last forgot all that preceded it. a study of words is not calculated for a man without memory, and it was principally an endeavor to make my memory more retentive, that urged me obstinately to persist in this study, which at length i was obliged to relinquish. as i understood enough to read an easy author by the aid of a dictionary, i followed that method, and found it succeed tolerably well. i likewise applied myself to translation, not by writing, but mentally, and by exercise and perseverance attained to read latin authors easily, but have never been able to speak or write that language, which has frequently embarrassed me when i have found myself (i know not by what means) enrolled among men of letters. another inconvenience that arose from this manner of learning is, that i never understood prosody, much less the rules of versification; yet, anxious to understand the harmony of the language, both in prose and verse, i have made many efforts to obtain it, but am convinced, that without a master it is almost impossible. having learned the composition of the hexameter, which is the easiest of all verses, i had the patience to measure out the greater part of virgil into feet and quantity, and whenever i was dubious whether a syllable was long or short, immediately consulted my virgil. it may easily be conceived that i ran into many errors in consequence of those licenses permitted by the rules of versification; and it is certain, that if there is an advantage in studying alone, there are also great inconveniences and inconceivable labor, as i have experienced more than any one. at twelve i quitted my books, and if dinner was not ready, paid my friends, the pigeons, a visit, or worked in the garden till it was, and when i heard myself called, ran very willingly, and with a good appetite to partake of it, for it is very remarkable, that let me be ever so indisposed my appetite never fails. we dined very agreeably, chatting till madam de warrens could eat. two or three times a week, when it was fine, we drank our coffee in a cool shady arbor behind the house, that i had decorated with hops, and which was very refreshing during the heat; we usually passed an hour in viewing our flowers and vegetables, or in conversation relative to our manner of life, which greatly increased the pleasure of it. i had another little family at the end of the garden; these were several hives of bees, which i never failed to visit once a day, and was frequently accompanied by madam de warrens. i was greatly interested in their labor, and amused myself seeing them return to the hives, their little thighs so loaded with the precious store that they could hardly walk. at first, curiosity made me indiscreet, and they stung me several times, but afterwards, we were so well acquainted, that let me approach as near as i would, they never molested me, though the hives were full and the bees ready to swarm. at these times i have been surrounded, having them on my hands and face without apprehending any danger. all animals are distrustful of man, and with reason, but when once assured he does not mean to injure them, their confidence becomes so great that he must be worse than a barbarian who abuses it. after this i returned to my books; but my afternoon employment ought rather to bear the name of recreation and amusement, than labor or study. i have never been able to bear application after dinner, and in general any kind of attention is painful to me during the heat of the day. i employed myself, 'tis true, but without restraint or rule, and read without studying. what i most attended to at these times, was history and geography, and as these did not require intense application, made as much progress in them as my weak memory would permit. i had an inclination to study father petau, and launched into the gloom of chronology, but was disgusted at the critical part, which i found had neither bottom nor banks; this made me prefer the more exact measurement of time by the course of the celestial bodies. i should even have contracted a fondness for astronomy, had i been in possession of instruments, but was obliged to content myself with some of the elements of that art, learned from books, and a few rude observations made with a telescope, sufficient only to give me a general idea of the situation of the heavenly bodies; for my short sight is insufficient to distinguish the stars without the help of a glass. i recollect an adventure on this subject, the remembrance of which has often diverted me. i had bought a celestial planisphere to study the constellations by, and, having fixed it on a frame, when the nights were fine and the sky clear, i went into the garden; and fixing the frame on four sticks, something higher than myself, which i drove into the ground, turned the planisphere downwards, and contrived to light it by means of a candle (which i put in a pail to prevent the wind from blowing it out) and then placed in the centre of the above--mentioned four supporters; this done, i examined the stars with my glass, and from time to time referring to my planisphere, endeavored to distinguish the various constellations. i think i have before observed that our garden was on a terrace, and lay open to the road. one night, some country people passing very late, saw me in a most grotesque habit, busily employed in these observations: the light, which struck directly on the planisphere, proceeding from a cause they could not divine (the candle being concealed by the sides of the pail), the four stakes supporting a large paper, marked over with various uncouth figures, with the motion of the telescope, which they saw turning backwards and forwards, gave the whole an air of conjuration that struck them with horror and amazement. my figure was by no means calculated to dispel their fears; a flapped hat put on over my nightcap, and a short cloak about my shoulder (which madam de warrens had obliged me to put on) presented in their idea the image of a real sorcerer. being near midnight, they made no doubt but this was the beginning of some diabolical assembly, and having no curiosity to pry further into these mysteries, they fled with all possible speed, awakened their neighbors, and described this most dreadful vision. the story spread so fast that the next day the whole neighborhood was informed that a nocturnal assembly of witches was held in the garden that belonged to monsieur noiret, and i am ignorant what might have been the consequence of this rumor if one of the countrymen who had been witness to my conjurations had not the same day carried his complaint to two jesuits, who frequently came to visit us, and who, without knowing the foundation of the story, undeceived and satisfied them. these jesuits told us the whole affair, and i acquainted them with the cause of it, which altogether furnished us with a hearty laugh. however, i resolved for the future to make my observations without light, and consult my planisphere in the house. those who have read venetian magic, in the 'letters from the mountain', may find that i long since had the reputation of being a conjurer. such was the life i led at charmettes when i had no rural employments, for they ever had the preference, and in those that did not exceed my strength, i worked like a peasant; but my extreme weakness left me little except the will; besides, as i have before observed, i wished to do two things at once, and therefore did neither well. i obstinately persisted in forcing my memory to retain a great deal by heart, and for that purpose, i always carried some book with me, which, while at work, i studied with inconceivable labor. i was continually repeating something, and am really amazed that the fatigue of these vain and continual efforts did not render me entirely stupid. i must have learned and relearned the eclogues of virgil twenty times over, though at this time i cannot recollect a single line of them. i have lost or spoiled a great number of books by a custom i had of carrying them with me into the dove-house, the garden, orchard or vineyard, when, being busy about something else, i laid my book at the foot of a tree, on the hedge, or the first place that came to hand, and frequently left them there, finding them a fortnight after, perhaps, rotted to pieces, or eaten by the ants or snails; and this ardor for learning became so far a madness that it rendered me almost stupid, and i was perpetually muttering some passage or other to myself. the writings of port-royal, and those of the oratory, being what i most read, had made me half a jansenist, and, notwithstanding all my confidence, their harsh theology sometimes alarmed me. a dread of hell, which till then i had never much apprehended, by little and little disturbed my security, and had not madam de warrens tranquillized my soul, would at length have been too much for me. my confessor, who was hers likewise, contributed all in his power to keep up my hopes. this was a jesuit, named father hemet; a good and wise old man, whose memory i shall ever hold in veneration. though a jesuit, he had the simplicity of a child, and his manners, less relaxed than gentle, were precisely what was necessary to balance the melancholy impressions made on me by jansenism. this good man and his companion, father coppier, came frequently to visit us at charmette, though the road was very rough and tedious for men of their age. these visits were very comfortable to me, which may the almighty return to their souls, for they were so old that i cannot suppose them yet living. i sometimes went to see them at chambery, became acquainted at their convent, and had free access to the library. the remembrance of that happy time is so connected with the idea of those jesuits, that i love one on account of the other, and though i have ever thought their doctrines dangerous, could never find myself in a disposition to hate them cordially. i should like to know whether there ever passed such childish notions in the hearts of other men as sometimes do in mine. in the midst of my studies, and of a life as innocent as man could lead, notwithstanding every persuasion to the contrary, the dread of hell frequently tormented me. i asked myself, "what state am i in? should i die at this instant, must i be damned?" according to my jansenists the matter was indubitable, but according to my conscience it appeared quite the contrary: terrified and floating in this cruel uncertainty, i had recourse to the most laughable expedient to resolve my doubts, for which i would willingly shut up any man as a lunatic should i see him practise the same folly. one day, meditating on this melancholy subject, i exercised myself in throwing stones at the trunks of trees, with my usual dexterity, that is to say, without hitting any of them. in the height of this charming exercise, it entered my mind to make a kind of prognostic, that might calm my inquietude; i said, "i will throw this stone at the tree facing me; if i hit my mark, i will consider it as a sign of salvation; if i miss, as a token of damnation." while i said this, i threw the stone with a trembling hand and beating breast but so happily that it struck the body of the tree, which truly was not a difficult matter, for i had taken care to choose one that was very large and very near me. from that moment i never doubted my salvation: i know not on recollecting this trait, whether i ought to laugh or shudder at myself. ye great geniuses, who surely laugh at my folly, congratulate yourselves on your superior wisdom, but insult not my unhappiness, for i swear to you that i feel it most sensibly. these troubles, these alarms, inseparable, perhaps, from devotion, were only at intervals; in general, i was tranquil, and the impression made on my soul by the idea of approaching death, was less that of melancholy than a peaceful languor, which even had its pleasures. i have found among my old papers a kind of congratulation and exhortation which i made to myself on dying at an age when i had the courage to meet death with serenity, without having experienced any great evils, either of body or mind. how much justice was there in the thought! a preconception of what i had to suffer made me fear to live, and it seemed that i dreaded the fate which must attend my future days. i have never been so near wisdom as during this period, when i felt no great remorse for the past, nor tormenting fear for the future; the reigning sentiment of my soul being the enjoyment of the present. serious people usually possess a lively sensuality, which makes them highly enjoy those innocent pleasures that are allowed them. worldlings (i know not why) impute this to them as a crime: or rather, i well know the cause of this imputation, it is because they envy others the enjoyment of those simple and pure delights which they have lost the relish of. i had these inclinations, and found it charming to gratify them in security of conscience. my yet inexperienced heart gave in to all with the calm happiness of a child, or rather (if i dare use the expression) with the raptures of an angel; for in reality these pure delights are as serene as those of paradise. dinners on the grass at montagnole, suppers in our arbor, gathering in the fruits, the vintage, a social meeting with our neighbors; all these were so many holidays, in which madam de warrens took as much pleasure as myself. solitary walks afforded yet purer pleasure, because in them our hearts expanded with greater freedom: one particularly remains in my memory; it was on a st. louis' day, whose name madam de warrens bore: we set out together early and unattended, after having heard a mass at break of day in a chapel adjoining our house, from a carmelite, who attended for that purpose. as i proposed walking over the hills opposite our dwelling, which we had not yet visited, we sent our provisions on before; the excursion being to last the whole day. madam de warrens, though rather corpulent, did not walk ill, and we rambled from hill to hill and wood to wood, sometimes in the sun, but oftener in the shade, resting from time to time, and regardless how the hours stole away; speaking of ourselves, of our union, of the gentleness of our fate, and offering up prayers for its duration, which were never heard. everything conspired to augment our happiness: it had rained for several days previous to this, there was no dust, the brooks were full and rapid, a gentle breeze agitated the leaves, the air was pure, the horizon free from clouds, serenity reigned in the sky as in our hearts. our dinner was prepared at a peasant's house, and shared with him and his family, whose benedictions we received. these poor savoyards are the worthiest of people! after dinner we regained the shade, and while i was picking up bits of dried sticks, to boil our coffee, madam de warrens amused herself with herbalizing among the bushes, and with the flowers i had gathered for her in my way. she made me remark in their construction a thousand natural beauties, which greatly amused me, and which ought to have given me a taste for botany; but the time was not yet come, and my attention was arrested by too many other studies. besides this, an idea struck me, which diverted my thoughts from flowers and plants: the situation of my mind at that moment, all that we had said or done that day, every object that had struck me, brought to my remembrance the kind of waking dream i had at annecy seven or eight years before, and which i have given an account of in its place. the similarity was so striking that it affected me even to tears: in a transport of tenderness i embraced madam de warrens. "my dearest friend," said i, "this day has long since been promised me: i can see nothing beyond it: my happiness, by your means, is at its height; may it never decrease; may it continue as long as i am sensible of its value-then it can only finish with my life." thus happily passed my days, and the more happily as i perceived nothing that could disturb or bring them to a conclusion; not that the cause of my former uneasiness had absolutely ceased, but i saw it take another course, which i directed with my utmost care to useful objects, that the remedy might accompany the evil. madam de warrens naturally loved the country, and this taste did not cool while with me. by little and little she contracted a fondness for rustic employments, wished to make the most of her land, and had in that particular a knowledge which she practised with pleasure. not satisfied with what belonged to the house, she hired first a field, then a meadow, transferring her enterprising humor to the objects of agriculture, and instead of remaining unemployed in the house, was in the way of becoming a complete farmer. i was not greatly pleased to see this passion increase, and endeavored all i could to oppose it; for i was certain she would be deceived, and that her liberal extravagant disposition would infallibly carry her expenses beyond her profits; however, i consoled myself by thinking the produce could not be useless, and would at least help her to live. of all the projects she could form, this appeared the least ruinous: without regarding it, therefore, in the light she did, as a profitable scheme, i considered it as a perpetual employment, which would keep her from more ruinous enterprises, and out of the reach of impostors. with this idea, i ardently wished to recover my health and strength, that i might superintend her affairs, overlook her laborers, or, rather, be the principal one myself. the exercise this naturally obliged me to take, with the relaxation it procured me from books and study, was serviceable to my health. the winter following, barillot returning from italy, brought me some books; and among others, the 'bontempi' and 'la cartella per musica', of father banchieri; these gave me a taste for the history of music and for the theoretical researches of that pleasing art. barillot remained some time with us, and as i had been of age some months, i determined to go to geneva the following spring, and demand my mother's inheritance, or at least that part which belonged to me, till it could be ascertained what had become of my brother. this plan was executed as it had been resolved: i went to geneva; my father met me there, for he had occasionally visited geneva a long time since, without its being particularly noticed, though the decree that had been pronounced against him had never been reversed; but being esteemed for his courage, and respected for his probity, the situation of his affairs was pretended to be forgotten; or perhaps, the magistrates, employed with the great project that broke out some little time after, were not willing to alarm the citizens by recalling to their memory, at an improper time, this instance of their former partiality. i apprehended that i should meet with difficulties, on account of having changed my religion, but none occurred; the laws of geneva being less harsh in that particular than those of berne, where, whoever changes his religion, not only loses his freedom, but his property. my rights, however, were not disputed: but i found my patrimony, i know not how, reduced to very little, and though it was known almost to a certainty that my brother was dead, yet, as there was no legal proof, i could not lay claim to his share, which i left without regret to my father, who enjoyed it as long as he lived. no sooner were the necessary formalities adjusted, and i had received my money, some of which i expended in books, than i flew with the remainder to madam de warrens; my heart beat with joy during the journey, and the moment in which i gave the money into her hands, was to me a thousand times more delightful than that which gave it into mine. she received this with a simplicity common to great souls, who, doing similar actions without effort, see them without admiration; indeed it was almost all expended for my use, for it would have been employed in the same manner had it come from any other quarter. my health was not yet re-established; i decayed visibly, was pale as death, and reduced to an absolute skeleton; the beating of my arteries was extreme, my palpitations were frequent: i was sensible of a continual oppression, and my weakness became at length so great, that i could scarcely move or step without danger of suffocation, stoop without vertigoes, or lift even the smallest weight, which reduced me to the most tormenting inaction for a man so naturally stirring as myself. it is certain my disorder was in a great measure hypochondriacal. the vapors is a malady common to people in fortunate situations: the tears i frequently shed, without reason; the lively alarms i felt on the falling of a leaf, or the fluttering of a bird; inequality of humor in the calm of a most pleasing life; lassitude which made me weary even of happiness, and carried sensibility to extravagance, were an instance of this. we are so little formed for felicity, that when the soul and body do not suffer together, they must necessarily endure separate inconveniences, the good state of the one being almost always injurious to the happiness of the other. had all the pleasure of life courted me, my weakened frame would not have permitted the enjoyment of them, without my being able to particularize the real seat of my complaint; yet in the decline of life; after having encountered very serious and real evils, my body seemed to regain its strength, as if on purpose to encounter additional misfortunes; and, at the moment i write this, though infirm, near sixty, and overwhelmed with every kind of sorrow, i feel more ability to suffer than i ever possessed for enjoyment when in the very flower of my age, and in the bosom of real happiness. to complete me, i had mingled a little physiology among my other readings: i set about studying anatomy, and considering the multitude, movement, and wonderful construction of the various parts that composed the human machine; my apprehensions were instantly increased, i expected to feel mine deranged twenty times a day, and far from being surprised to find myself dying, was astonished that i yet existed! i could not read the description of any malady without thinking it mine, and, had i not been already indisposed, i am certain i should have become so from this study. finding in every disease symptoms similar to mine, i fancied i had them all, and, at length, gained one more troublesome than any i yet suffered, which i had thought myself delivered from; this was, a violent inclination to seek a cure; which it is very difficult to suppress, when once a person begins reading physical books. by searching, reflecting, and comparing, i became persuaded that the foundation of my complaint was a polypus at the heart, and doctor salomon appeared to coincide with the idea. reasonably this opinion should have confirmed my former resolution of considering myself past cure; this, however, was not the case; on the contrary; i exerted every power of my understanding in search of a remedy for a polypus, resolving to undertake this marvellous cure. in a journey which anet had made to montpelier, to see the physical garden there, and visit monsieur sauvages, the demonstrator, he had been informed that monsieur fizes had cured a polypus similar to that i fancied myself afflicted with: madam de warrens, recollecting this circumstance, mentioned it to me, and nothing more was necessary to inspire me with a desire to consult monsieur fizes. the hope of recovery gave me courage and strength to undertake the journey; the money from geneva furnished the means; madam de warrens, far from dissuading, entreated me to go: behold me, therefore, without further ceremony, set out for montpelier!--but it was not necessary to go so far to find the cure i was in search of. finding the motion of the horse too fatiguing, i had hired a chaise at grenoble, and on entering moirans, five or six other chaises arrived in a rank after mine. the greater part of these were in the train of a new married lady called madam du colombier; with her was a madam de larnage, not so young or handsome as the former, yet not less amiable. the bride was to stop at romans, but the other lady was to pursue her route as far as saint-andiol, near the bridge du st. esprit. with my natural timidity it will not be conjectured that i was very ready at forming an acquaintance with these fine ladies, and the company that attended them; but travelling the same road, lodging at the same inns, and being obliged to eat at the same table, the acquaintance seemed unavoidable, as any backwardness on my part would have got me the character of a very unsociable being: it was formed then, and even sooner than i desired, for all this bustle was by no means convenient to a person in ill health, particularly to one of my humor. curiosity renders these vixens extremely insinuating; they accomplish their design of becoming acquainted with a man by endeavoring to turn his brain, and this was precisely what happened to me. madam du colombier was too much surrounded by her young gallants to have any opportunity of paying much attention to me; besides, it was not worthwhile, as we were to separate in so short a time; but madam de larnage (less attended to than her young friend) had to provide herself for the remainder of the journey; behold me, then, attacked by madam de larnage, and adieu to poor jean jacques, or rather farewell to fever, vapors, and polypus; all completely vanished when in her presence. the ill state of my health was the first subject of our conversation; they saw i was indisposed, knew i was going to montpelier, but my air and manner certainly did not exhibit the appearance of a libertine, since it was clear by what followed they did not suspect i was going there for a reason that carries many that road. in the morning they sent to inquire after my health and invite me to take chocolate with them, and when i made my appearance asked how i had passed the night. once, according to my praiseworthy custom of speaking without thought, i replied, "i did not know," which answer naturally made them conclude i was a fool: but, on questioning me further; the examination turned out so far to my advantage, that i rather rose in their opinion, and i once heard madam du colombier say to her friend, "he is amiable, but not sufficiently acquainted with the world." these words were a great encouragement, and assisted me in rendering myself agreeable. as we became more familiar, it was natural to give each other some little account of whence we came and who we were: this embarrassed me greatly, for i was sensible that in good company and among women of spirit, the very name of a new convert would utterly undo me. i know not by what whimsicallity i resolved to pass for an englishman; however, in consequence of that determination i gave myself out for a jacobite, and was readily believed. they called me monsieur dudding, which was the name i assumed with my new character, and a cursed marquis torignan, who was one of the company, an invalid like myself, and both old and ill --tempered, took it in his head to begin a long conversation with me. he spoke of king james, of the pretender, and the old court of st. germain's; i sat on thorns the whole time, for i was totally unacquainted with all these except what little i had picked up in the account of earl hamilton, and from the gazettes; however, i made such fortunate use of the little i did know as to extricate myself from this dilemma, happy in not being questioned on the english language, which i did not know a single word of. the company were all very agreeable; we looked forward to the moment of separation with regret, and therefore made snails' journeys. we arrived one sunday at st. marcelein's; madam de larnage would go to mass; i accompanied her, and had nearly ruined all my affairs, for by my modest reserved countenance during the service, she concluded me a bigot, and conceived a very indifferent opinion of me, as i learned from her own account two days after. it required a great deal of gallantry on my part to efface this ill impression, or rather madam de larnage (who was not easily disheartened) determined to risk the first advances, and see how i should behave. she made several, but far from being presuming on my figure, i thought she was making sport of me: full of this ridiculous idea there was no folly i was not guilty of. madam de larnage persisted in such caressing behavior, that a much wiser man than myself could hardly have taken it seriously. the more obvious her advances were, the more i was confirmed in my mistake, and what increased my torment, i found i was really in love with her. i frequently said to myself, and sometimes to her, sighing, "ah! why is not all this real? then should i be the most fortunate of men." i am inclined to think my stupidity did but increase her resolution, and make her determined to get the better of it. we left madam du colombier at romans; after which madam de larnage, the marquis de torignan, and myself continued our route slowly, and in the most agreeable manner. the marquis, though indisposed, and rather ill-humored, was an agreeable companion, but was not best pleased at seeing the lady bestow all her attentions on me, while he passed unregarded; for madam de larnage took so little care to conceal her inclination, that he perceived it sooner than i did, and his sarcasms must have given me that confidence i could not presume to take from the kindness of the lady, if by a surmise, which no one but myself could have blundered on, i had not imagined they perfectly understood each other, and were agreed to turn my passion into ridicule. this foolish idea completed my stupidity, making me act the most ridiculous part, while, had i listened to the feelings of my heart, i might have been performing one far more brilliant. i am astonished that madam de larnage was not disgusted at my folly, and did not discard me with disdain; but she plainly perceived there was more bashfulness than indifference in my composition. we arrived at valence to dinner, and according to our usual custom passed the remainder of the day there. we lodged out of the city, at the st. james, an inn i shall never forget. after dinner, madam de larnage proposed a walk; she knew the marquis was no walker, consequently, this was an excellent plan for a tete-a-tete, which she was predetermined to make the most of. while we were walking round the city by the side of the moats, i entered on a long history of my complaint, to which she answered in so tender an accent, frequently pressing my arm, which she held to her heart, that it required all my stupidity not to be convinced of the sincerity of her attachment. i have already observed that she was amiable; love rendered her charming, adding all the loveliness of youth: and she managed her advances with so much art, that they were sufficient to have seduced the most insensible: i was, therefore, in very uneasy circumstances, and frequently on the point of making a declaration; but the dread of offending her, and the still greater of being laughed at, ridiculed, made table-talk, and complimented on my enterprise by the satirical marquis, had such unconquerable power over me, that, though ashamed of my ridiculous bashfulness, i could not take courage to surmount it. i had ended the history of my complaints, which i felt the ridiculousness of at this time; and not knowing how to look, or what to say, continued silent, giving the finest opportunity in the world for that ridicule i so much dreaded. happily, madam de larnage took a more favorable resolution, and suddenly interrupted this silence by throwing her arms round my neck, while, at the same instant, her lips spoke too plainly on mine to be any longer misunderstood. this was reposing that confidence in me the want of which has almost always prevented me from appearing myself: for once i was at ease, my heart, eyes and tongue, spoke freely what i felt; never did i make better reparation for my mistakes, and if this little conquest had cost madam de larnage some difficulties, i have reason to believe she did not regret them. was i to live a hundred years, i should never forget this charming woman. i say charming, for though neither young nor beautiful, she was neither old nor ugly, having nothing in her appearance that could prevent her wit and accomplishments from producing all their effects. it was possible to see her without falling in love, but those she favored could not fail to adore her; which proves, in my opinion, that she was not generally so prodigal of her favors. it is true, her inclination for me was so sudden and lively, that it scarce appears excusable; though from the short, but charming interval i passed with her, i have reason to think her heart was more influenced than her passions. our good intelligence did not escape the penetration of the marquis; not that he discontinued his usual raillery; on the contrary, he treated me as a sighing, hopeless swain, languishing under the rigors of his mistress; not a word, smile, or look escaped him by which i could imagine he suspected my happiness; and i should have thought him completely deceived, had not madam de larnage, who was more clear-sighted than myself, assured me of the contrary; but he was a well-bred man, and it was impossible to behave with more attention or greater civility, than he constantly paid me (notwithstanding his satirical sallies), especially after my success, which, as he was unacquainted with my stupidity, he perhaps gave me the honor of achieving. it has already been seen that he was mistaken in this particular; but no matter, i profited by his error, for being conscious that the laugh was on my side, i took all his sallies in good part, and sometimes parried them with tolerable success; for, proud of the reputation of wit which madam de larnage had thought fit to discover in me, i no longer appeared the same man. we were both in a country and season of plenty, and had everywhere excellent cheer, thanks to the good cares of the marquis; though i would willingly have relinquished this advantage to have been more satisfied with the situation of our chambers; but he always sent his footman on to provide them; and whether of his own accord, or by the order of his master, the rogue always took care that the marquis' chamber should be close by madam de larnage's, while mine was at the further end of the house: but that made no great difference, or perhaps it rendered our rendezvous the more charming; this happiness lasted four or five days, during which time i was intoxicated with delight, which i tasted pure and serene without any alloy; an advantage i could never boast before; and, i may add, it is owing to madam de larnage that i did not go out of the world without having tasted real pleasure. if the sentiment i felt for her was not precisely love, it was at least a very tender return of what she testified for me; our meetings were so delightful, that they possessed all the sweets of love; without that kind of delirium which affects the brain, and even tends to diminish our happiness. i never experienced true love but once in my life, and that was not with madam de larnage, neither did i feel that affection for her which i had been sensible of, and yet continued to possess, for madam de warrens; but for this very reason, our tete-a-tetes were a hundred times more delightful. when with madam de warrens, my felicity was always disturbed by a secret sadness, a compunction of heart, which i found it impossible to surmount. instead of being delighted at the acquisition of so much happiness, i could not help reproaching myself for contributing to render her i loved unworthy: on the contrary, with madam de lamage, i was proud of my happiness, and gave in to it without repugnance, while my triumph redoubled every other charm. i do not recollect exactly where we quitted the marquis, who resided in this country, but i know we were alone on our arrival at montelimar, where madam de larnage made her chambermaid get into my chaise, and accommodate me with a seat in hers. it will easily be believed, that travelling in this manner was by no means displeasing to me, and that i should be very much puzzled to give any account of the country we passed through. she had some business at montelimar, which detained her there two or three days; during this time she quitted me but one quarter of an hour, for a visit she could not avoid, which embarrassed her with a number of invitations she had no inclination to accept, and therefore excused herself by pleading some indisposition; though she took care this should not prevent our walking together every day, in the most charming country, and under the finest sky imaginable. oh! these three days! what reason have i to regret them! never did such happiness return again. the amours of a journey cannot be very durable: it was necessary we should part, and i must confess it was almost time; not that i was weary of my happiness, but i might as well have been. we endeavored to comfort each other for the pain of parting, by forming plans for our reunion; and it was concluded, that after staying five or six weeks at montpelier (which would give madam de larnage time to prepare for my reception in such a manner as to prevent scandal) i should return to saint-andiol, and spend the winter under her direction. she gave me ample instruction on what it was necessary i should know, on what it would be proper to say; and how i should conduct myself. she spoke much and earnestly on the care of my health, conjured me to consult skilful physicians, and be attentive and exact in following their prescriptions whatever they might happen to be. i believe her concern was sincere, for she loved me, and gave proofs of her affection less equivocal than the prodigality of her favors; for judging by my mode of travelling, that i was not in very affluent circumstances (though not rich herself), on our parting, she would have had me share the contents of her purse, which she had brought pretty well furnished from grenoble, and it was with great difficulty i could make her put up with a denial. in a word, we parted; my heart full of her idea, and leaving in hers (if i am not mistaken) a firm attachment to me. while pursuing the remainder of my journey, remembrance ran over everything that had passed from the commencement of it, and i was well satisfied at finding myself alone in a comfortable chaise, where i could ruminate at ease on the pleasures i had enjoyed, and those which awaited my return. i only thought of saint-andiol; of the life i was to lead there; i saw nothing but madam de larnage, or what related to her; the whole universe besides was nothing to me--even madam de warrens was forgotten!--i set about combining all the details by which madam de larnage had endeavored to give me in advance an idea of her house, of the neighborhood, of her connections, and manner of life, finding everything charming. she had a daughter, whom she had often described in the warmest terms of maternal affection: this daughter was fifteen lively, charming, and of an amiable disposition. madam de larnage promised me her friendship; i had not forgotten that promise, and was curious to know how mademoiselle de larnage would treat her mother's 'bon ami'. these were the subjects of my reveries from the bridge of st. esprit to remoulin: i had been advised to visit the pont-du-gard; hitherto i had seen none of the remaining monuments of roman magnificence, and i expected to find this worthy the hands by which it was constructed; for once, the reality surpassed my expectation; this was the only time in my life it ever did so, and the romans alone could have produced that effect. the view of this noble and sublime work, struck me the more forcibly, from being in the midst of a desert, where silence and solitude render the majestic edifice more striking, and admiration more lively, for though called a bridge it is nothing more than an aqueduct. one cannot help exclaiming, what strength could have transported these enormous stones so far from any quarry? and what motive could have united the labors of so many millions of men, in a place that no one inhabited? i remained here whole hours, in the most ravishing contemplation, and returned pensive and thoughtful to my inn. this reverie was by no means favorable to madam de larnage; she had taken care to forewarn me against the girls of montpelier, but not against the pont-du-gard--it is impossible to provide for every contingency. on my arrival at nismes, i went to see the amphitheatre, which is a far more magnificent work than even the pont-du-gard, yet it made a much less impression on me, perhaps, because my admiration had been already exhausted on the former object; or that the situation of the latter, in the midst of a city, was less proper to excite it. this vast and superb circus is surrounded by small dirty houses, while yet smaller and dirtier fill up the area, in such a manner that the whole produces an unequal and confused effect, in which regret and indignation stifle pleasure and surprise. the amphitheatre at verona is a vast deal smaller, and less beautiful than that at nismes, but preserved with all possible care and neatness, by which means alone it made a much stronger and more agreeable impression on me. the french pay no regard to these things, respect no monument of antiquity; ever eager to undertake, they never finish, nor preserve anything that is already finished to their hands. i was so much better, and had gained such an appetite by exercise, that i stopped a whole day at pont-du-lunel, for the sake of good entertainment and company, this being deservedly esteemed at that time the best inn in europe; for those who kept it, knowing how to make its fortunate situation turn to advantage, took care to provide both abundance and variety. it was really curious to find in a lonely country-house, a table every day furnished with sea and fresh-water fish, excellent game, and choice wines, served up with all the attention and care, which are only to be expected among the great or opulent, and all this for thirty five sous each person: but the pont-du-lunel did not long remain on this footing, for the proprietor, presuming too much on its reputation, at length lost it entirely. during this journey, i really forgot my complaints, but recollected them again on my arrival at montpelier. my vapors were absolutely gone, but every other complaint remained, and though custom had rendered them less troublesome, they were still sufficient to make any one who had been suddenly seized with them, suppose himself attacked by some mortal disease. in effect they were rather alarming than painful, and made the mind suffer more than the body, though it apparently threatened the latter with destruction. while my attention was called off by the vivacity of my passions, i paid no attention to my health; but as my complaints were not altogether imaginary, i thought of them seriously when the tumult had subsided. recollecting the salutary advice of madam de larnage, and the cause of my journey, i consulted the most famous practitioners, particularly monsieur fizes; and through superabundance of precaution boarded at a doctor's who was an irishman, and named fitz-morris. this person boarded a number of young gentlemen who were studying physic; and what rendered his house very commodious for an invalid, he contented himself with a moderate pension for provisions, lodging, etc., and took nothing of his boarders for attendance as a physician. he even undertook to execute the orders of m. fizes, and endeavored to re-establish my health. he certainly acquitted himself very well in this employment; as to regimen, indigestions were not to be gained at his table; and though i am not much hurt at privations of that kind, the objects of comparison were so near, that i could not help thinking with myself sometimes, that m. de torignan was a much better provider than m. fitz-morris; notwithstanding, as there was no danger of, dying with hunger, and all the youths were gay and good-humored, i believe this manner of living was really serviceable, and prevented my falling into those languors i had latterly been so subject to. i passed the morning in taking medicines, particularly, i know not what kind of waters, but believe they were those of vals, and in writing to madam de larnage: for the correspondence was regularly kept up, and rousseau kindly undertook to receive these letters for his good friend dudding. at noon i took a walk to the canourgue, with some of our young boarders, who were all very good lads; after this we assembled for dinner; when this was over, an affair of importance employed the greater part of us till night; this was going a little way out of town to take our afternoon's collation, and make up two or three parties at mall, or mallet. as i had neither strength nor skill, i did not play myself but i betted on the game, and, interested for the success of my wager, followed the players and their balls over rough and stony roads, procuring by this means both an agreeable and salutary exercise. we took our afternoon's refreshment at an inn out of the city. i need not observe that these meetings were extremely merry, but should not omit that they were equally innocent, though the girls of the house were very pretty. m. fitz-morris (who was a great mall player himself) was our president; and i must observe, notwithstanding the imputation of wildness that is generally bestowed on students, that i found more virtuous dispositions among these youths than could easily be found among an equal number of men: they were rather noisy than fond of wine, and more merry than libertine. i accustomed myself so much to this mode of life, and it accorded so entirely with my humor, that i should have been very well content with a continuance of it. several of my fellow-boarders were irish, from whom i endeavored to learn some english words, as a precaution for saint-andiol. the time now drew near for my departure; every letter madam de larnage wrote, she entreated me not to delay it, and at length i prepared to obey her. i was convinced that the physicians (who understood nothing of my disorder) looked on my complaint as imaginary, and treated me accordingly, with their waters and whey. in this respect physicians and philosophers differ widely from theologians; admitting the truth only of what they can explain, and making their knowledge the measure of possibilities. these gentlemen understood nothing of my illness, therefore concluded i could not be ill; and who would presume to doubt the profound skill of a physician? i plainly saw they only meant to amuse, and make me swallow my money; and judging their substitute at saint-andiol would do me quite as much service, and be infinitely more agreeable, i resolved to give her the preference; full, therefore, of this wise resolution, i quitted montpelier. i set off towards the end of november, after a stay of six weeks or two months in that city, where i left a dozen louis, without either my health or understanding being the better for it, except from a short course of anatomy begun under m. fitz-morris, which i was soon obliged to abandon, from the horrid stench of the bodies he dissected, which i found it impossible to endure. not thoroughly satisfied in my own mind on the rectitude of this expedition, as i advanced towards the bridge of st. esprit (which was equally the road to saint-andiol and to chambery) i began to reflect on madam de warrens, the remembrance of whose letters, though less frequent than those from madam de larnage, awakened in my heart a remorse that passion had stifled in the first part of my journey, but which became so lively on my return, that, setting just estimate on the love of pleasure, i found myself in such a situation of mind that i could listen wholly to the voice of reason. besides, in continuing to act the part of an adventurer, i might be less fortunate than i had been in the beginning; for it was only necessary that in all saint-andiol there should be one person who had been in england, or who knew the english or anything of their language, to prove me an impostor. the family of madam de larnage might not be pleased with me, and would, perhaps, treat me unpolitely; her daughter too made me uneasy, for, spite of myself, i thought more of her than was necessary. i trembled lest i should fall in love with this girl, and that very fear had already half done the business. was i going, in return for the mother's kindness, to seek the ruin of the daughter? to sow dissension, dishonor, scandal, and hell itself, in her family? the very idea struck me with horror, and i took the firmest resolution to combat and vanquish this unhappy attachment, should i be so unfortunate as to experience it. but why expose myself to this danger? how miserable must the situation be to live with the mother, whom i should be weary of, and sigh for the daughter, without daring to make known my affection! what necessity was there to seek this situation, and expose myself to misfortunes, affronts and remorse, for the sake of pleasures whose greatest charm was already exhausted? for i was sensible this attachment had lost its first vivacity. with these thoughts were mingled reflections relative to my situation and duty to that good and generous friend, who already loaded with debts, would become more so from the foolish expenses i was running into, and whom i was deceiving so unworthily. this reproach at length became so keen that it triumphed over every temptation, and on approaching the bridge of st. esprit i formed the resolution to burn my whole magazine of letters from saint-andiol, and continue my journey right forward to chambery. i executed this resolution courageously, with some sighs i confess, but with the heart-felt satisfaction, which i enjoyed for the first time in my life, of saying, "i merit my own esteem, and know how to prefer duty to pleasure." this was the first real obligation i owed my books, since these had taught me to reflect and compare. after the virtuous principles i had so lately adopted, after all the rules of wisdom and honor i had proposed to myself, and felt so proud to follow, the shame of possessing so little stability, and contradicting so egregiously my own maxims, triumphed over the allurements of pleasure. perhaps, after all, pride had as much share in my resolution as virtue; but if this pride is not virtue itself, its effects are so similar that we are pardonable in deceiving ourselves. one advantage resulting from good actions is that they elevate the soul to a disposition of attempting still better; for such is human weakness, that we must place among our good deeds an abstinence from those crimes we are tempted to commit. no sooner was my resolution confirmed than i became another man, or rather, i became what i was before i had erred, and saw in its true colors what the intoxication of the moment had either concealed or disguised. full of worthy sentiments and wise resolutions, i continued my journey, intending to regulate my future conduct by the laws of virtue, and dedicate myself without reserve to that best of friends, to whom i vowed as much fidelity in future as i felt real attachment. the sincerity of this return to virtue appeared to promise a better destiny; but mine, alas! was fixed, and already begun: even at the very moment when my heart, full of good and virtuous sentiments, was contemplating only innocence and happiness through life, i touched on the fatal period that was to draw after it the long chain of my misfortunes! my impatience to arrive at chambery had made me use more diligence than i meant to do. i had sent a letter from valence, mentioning the day and hour i should arrive, but i had gained half a day on this calculation, which time i passed at chaparillan, that i might arrive exactly at the time i mentioned. i wished to enjoy to its full extent the pleasure of seeing her, and preferred deferring this happiness a little, that expectancy might increase the value of it. this precaution had always succeeded; hitherto my arrival had caused a little holiday; i expected no less this time, and these preparations, so dear to me, would have been well worth the trouble of contriving them. i arrived then exactly at the hour, and while at a considerable distance, looked forward with an expectancy of seeing her on the road to meet me. the beating of my heart increased as i drew near the house; at length i arrived, quite out of breath; for i had left my chaise in the town. i see no one in the garden, at the door, or at the windows; i am seized with terror, fearful that some accident has happened. i enter; all is quiet; the laborers are eating their luncheon in the kitchen, and far from observing any preparation, the servants seem surprised to see me, not knowing i was expected. i go up--stairs, at length see her!--that dear friend! so tenderly, truly, and entirely beloved. i instantly ran towards her, and threw myself at her feet. "ah! child!" said she, "art thou returned then!" embracing me at the same time. "have you had a good journey? how do you do?" this reception amused me for some moments. i then asked, whether she had received my letter? she answered "yes."--"i should have thought not," replied i; and the information concluded there. a young man was with her at this time. i recollected having seen him in the house before my departure, but at present he seemed established there; in short, he was so; i found my place already supplied! this young man came from the country of vaud; his father, named vintzenried, was keeper of the prison, or, as he expressed himself, captain of the castle of chillon. this son of the captain was a journeyman peruke-maker, and gained his living in that capacity when he first presented himself to madam de warrens, who received him kindly, as she did all comers, particularly those from her own country. he was a tall, fair, silly youth; well enough made, with an unmeaning face, and a mind of the same description, speaking always like the beau in a comedy, and mingling the manners and customs of his former situation with a long history of his gallantry and success; naming, according to his account, not above half the marchionesses who had favored him and pretending never to have dressed the head of a pretty woman, without having likewise decorated her husband's; vain, foolish, ignorant and insolent; such was the worthy substitute taken in my absence, and the companion offered me on my return! o! if souls disengaged from their terrestrial bonds, yet view from the bosom of eternal light what passes here below, pardon, dear and respectable shade, that i show no more favor to your failings than my own, but equally unveil both. i ought and will be just to you as to myself; but how much less will you lose by this resolution than i shall! how much do your amiable and gentle disposition, your inexhaustible goodness of heart, your frankness and other amiable virtues, compensate for your foibles, if a subversion of reason alone can be called such. you had errors, but not vices; your conduct was reprehensible, but your heart was ever pure. the new-comer had shown himself zealous and exact in all her little commissions, which were ever numerous, and he diligently overlooked the laborers. as noisy and insolent as i was quiet and forbearing, he was seen or rather heard at the plough, in the hay-loft, wood-house, stable, farm-yard, at the same instant. he neglected the gardening, this labor being too peaceful and moderate; his chief pleasure was to load or drive the cart, to saw or cleave wood; he was never seen without a hatchet or pick-axe in his hand, running, knocking and hallooing with all his might. i know not how many men's labor he performed, but he certainly made noise enough for ten or a dozen at least. all this bustle imposed on poor madam de warrens; she thought this young man a treasure, and, willing to attach him to herself, employed the means she imagined necessary for that purpose, not forgetting what she most depended on, the surrender of her person. those who have thus far read this work should be able to form some judgment of my heart; its sentiments were the most constant and sincere, particularly those which had brought me back to chambery; what a sudden and complete overthrow was this to my whole being! but to judge fully of this, the reader must place himself for a moment in my situation. i saw all the future felicity i had promised myself vanish in a moment; all the charming ideas i had indulged so affectionately, disappear entirely; and i, who even from childhood had not been able to consider my existence for a moment as separate from hers, for the first time saw myself utterly alone. this moment was dreadful, and those that succeeded it were ever gloomy. i was yet young, but the pleasing sentiments of enjoyment and hope, which enliven youth, were extinguished. from that hour my existence seemed half annihilated. i contemplated in advance the melancholy remains of an insipid life, and if at any time an image of happiness glanced through my mind, it was not that which appeared natural to me, and i felt that even should i obtain it i must still be wretched. i was so dull of apprehension, and my confidence in her was so great, that, notwithstanding the familiar tone of the new-comer, which i looked on as an effect of the easy disposition of madam de warrens, which rendered her free with everyone, i never should have suspected his real situation had not she herself informed me of it; but she hastened to make this avowal with a freedom calculated to inflame me with resentment, could my heart have turned to that point. speaking of this connection as quite immaterial with respect to herself, she reproached me with negligence in the care of the family, and mentioned my frequent absence, as though she had been in haste to supply my place. "ah!" said i, my heart bursting with the most poignant grief, "what do you dare to inform me of? is this the reward of an attachment like mine? have you so many times preserved my life, for the sole purpose of taking from me all that could render it desirable? your infidelity will bring me to the grave, but you will regret my loss!" she answered with a tranquillity sufficient to distract me, that i talked like a child; that people did not die from such slight causes; that our friendship need be no less sincere, nor we any less intimate, for that her tender attachment to me could neither diminish nor end but with herself; in a word she gave me to understand that my happiness need not suffer any decrease from the good fortune of this new favorite. never did the purity, truth and force of my attachment to her appear more evident; never did i feel the sincerity and honesty of my soul more forcibly, than at that moment. i threw myself at her feet, embracing her knees with torrents of tears. "no, madam," replied i, with the most violent agitation, "i love you too much to disgrace you thus far, and too truly to share you; the regret that accompanied the first acquisition of your favors has continued to increase with my affection. i cannot preserve them by so violent an augmentation of it. you shall ever have my adoration: be worthy of it; to me that is more necessary than all you can bestow. it is to you, o my dearest friend! that i resign my rights; it is to the union of our hearts that i sacrifice my pleasure; rather would i perish a thousand times than thus degrade her i love." i preserved this resolution with a constancy worthy, i may say, of the sentiment that gave it birth. from this moment i saw this beloved woman but with the eyes of a real son. it should be remarked here, that this resolve did not meet her private approbation, as i too well perceived; yet she never employed the least art to make me renounce it either by insinuating proposals, caresses, or any of those means which women so well know how to employ without exposing themselves to violent censure, and which seldom fail to succeed. reduced to seek a fate independent of hers, and not able to devise one, i passed to the other extreme, placing my happiness so absolutely in her, that i became almost regardless of myself. the ardent desire to see her happy, at any rate, absorbed all my affections; it was in vain she endeavored to separate her felicity from mine, i felt i had a part in it, spite of every impediment. thus those virtues whose seeds in my heart begun to spring up with my misfortunes: they had been cultivated by study, and only waited the fermentation of adversity to become prolific. the first-fruit of this disinterested disposition was to put from my heart every sentiment of hatred and envy against him who had supplanted me. i even sincerely wished to attach myself to this young man; to form and educate him; to make him sensible of his happiness, and, if possible, render him worthy of it; in a word, to do for him what anet had formerly done for me. but the similarity of dispositions was wanting. more insinuating and enlightened than anet, i possessed neither his coolness, fortitude, nor commanding strength of character, which i must have had in order to succeed. neither did the young man possess those qualities which anet found in me; such as gentleness, gratitude, and above all, the knowledge of a want of his instructions, and an ardent desire to render them useful. all these were wanting; the person i wished to improve, saw in me nothing but an importunate, chattering pedant: while on the contrary he admired his own importance in the house, measuring the services he thought he rendered by the noise he made, and looking on his saws, hatchets, and pick-axes, as infinitely more useful than all my old books: and, perhaps, in this particular, he might not be altogether blamable; but he gave himself a number of airs sufficient to make anyone die with laughter. with the peasants he assumed the airs of a country gentleman; presently he did as much with me, and at length with madam de warrens herself. his name, vintzenried, did not appear noble enough, he therefore changed it to that of monsieur de courtilles, and by the latter appellation he was known at chambery, and in maurienne, where he married. at length this illustrious personage gave himself such airs of consequence, that he was everything in the house, and myself nothing. when i had the misfortune to displease him, he scolded madam de warrens, and a fear of exposing her to his brutality rendered me subservient to all his whims, so that every time he cleaved wood (an office which he performed with singular pride) it was necessary i should be an idle spectator and admirer of his prowess. this lad was not, however, of a bad disposition; he loved madam de warrens, indeed it was impossible to do otherwise; nor had he any aversion even to me, and when he happened to be out of his airs would listen to our admonitions, and frankly own he was a fool; yet notwithstanding these acknowledgements his follies continued in the same proportion. his knowledge was so contracted, and his inclinations so mean, that it was useless to reason, and almost impossible to be pleased with him. not content with a most charming woman, he amused himself with an old red-haired, toothless waiting-maid, whose unwelcome service madam de warrens had the patience to endure, though it was absolutely disgusting. i soon perceived this new inclination, and was exasperated at it; but i saw something else, which affected me yet more, and made a deeper impression on me than anything had hitherto done; this was a visible coldness in the behavior of madam de warrens towards me. the privation i had imposed on myself, and which she affected to approve, is one of those affronts which women scarcely ever forgive. take the most sensible; the most philosophic female, one the least attached to pleasure, and slighting her favors, if within your reach, will be found the most unpardonable crime, even though she may care nothing for the man. this rule is certainly without exception; since a sympathy so natural and ardent was impaired in her, by an abstinence founded only on virtue, attachment and esteem, i no longer found with her that union of hearts which constituted all the happiness of mine; she seldom sought me but when we had occasion to complain of this new-comer, for when they were agreed, i enjoyed but little of her confidence, and, at length, was scarcely ever consulted in her affairs. she seemed pleased, indeed, with my company, but had i passed whole days without seeing her she would hardly have missed me. insensibly, i found myself desolate and alone in that house where i had formerly been the very soul; where, if i may so express myself, i had enjoyed a double life, and by degrees, i accustomed myself to disregard everything that, passed, and even those who dwelt there. to avoid continual mortifications, i shut myself up with my books, or else wept and sighed unnoticed in the woods. this life soon became insupportable; i felt that the presence of a woman so dear to me, while estranged from her heart, increased my unhappiness, and was persuaded, that, ceasing to see her, i should feel myself less cruelly separated. i resolved, therefore, to quit the house, mentioned it to her, and she, far from opposing my resolution, approved it. she had an acquaintance at grenoble, called madam de deybens, whose husband was on terms of friendship with monsieur malby, chief provost of lyons. m. deybens proposed my educating m. malby's children; i accepted this offer, and departed for lyons without causing, and almost without feeling, the least regret at a separation, the bare idea of which, a few months before, would have given us both the most excruciating torments. i had almost as much knowledge as was necessary for a tutor, and flattered myself that my method would be unexceptionable; but the year i passed at m. malby's was sufficient to undeceive me in that particular. the natural gentleness of my disposition seemed calculated for the employment, if hastiness had not been mingled with it. while things went favorably, and i saw the pains (which i did not spare) succeed, i was an angel; but a devil when they went contrary. if my pupils did not understand me, i was hasty, and when they showed any symptoms of an untoward disposition, i was so provoked that i could have killed them; which behavior was not likely to render them either good or wise. i had two under my care, and they were of very different tempers. st. marie, who was between eight and nine years old, had a good person and quick apprehension, was giddy, lively, playful and mischievous; but his mischief was ever good-humored. the younger one, named condillac, appeared stupid and fretful, was headstrong as a mule, and seemed incapable of instruction. it may be supposed that between both i did not want employment, yet with patience and temper i might have succeeded; but wanting both, i did nothing worth mentioning, and my pupils profited very little. i could only make use of three means, which are very weak, and often pernicious with children; namely, sentiment, reasoning, passion. i sometimes exerted myself so much with st. marie, that i could not refrain from tears, and wished to excite similar sensations in him; as if it was reasonable to suppose a child could be susceptible to such emotions. sometimes i exhausted myself in reasoning, as if persuaded he could comprehend me; and as he frequently formed very subtle arguments, concluded he must be reasonable, because he bid fair to be so good a logician. the little condillac was still more embarrassing; for he neither understood, answered, nor was concerned at anything; he was of an obstinacy beyond belief, and was never happier than when he had succeeded in putting me in a rage; then, indeed, he was the philosopher, and i the child. i was conscious of all my faults, studied the tempers of my pupils, and became acquainted with them; but where was the use of seeing the evil, without being able to apply a remedy? my penetration was unavailing, since it never prevented any mischief; and everything i undertook failed, because all i did to effect my designs was precisely what i ought not to have done. i was not more fortunate in what had only reference to myself, than in what concerned my pupils. madam deybens, in recommending me to her friend madam de malby, had requested her to form my manners, and endeavor to give me an air of the world. she took some pains on this account, wishing to teach me how to do the honors of the house; but i was so awkward, bashful, and stupid, that she found it necessary to stop there. this, however, did not prevent me from falling in love with her, according to my usual custom; i even behaved in such a manner, that she could not avoid observing it; but i never durst declare my passion; and as the lady never seemed in a humor to make advances, i soon became weary of my sighs and ogling, being convinced they answered no manner of purpose. i had quite lost my inclination for little thieveries while with madam de warrens; indeed, as everything belonged to me, there was nothing to steal; besides, the elevated notions i had imbibed ought to have rendered me in future above such meanness, and generally speaking they certainly did so; but this rather proceeded from my having learned to conquer temptations, than having succeeded in rooting out the propensity, and i should even now greatly dread stealing, as in my infancy, were i yet subject to the same inclinations. i had a proof of this at m. malby's, when, though surrounded by a number of little things that i could easily have pilfered, and which appeared no temptation, i took it into my head to covert some white arbois wine, some glasses of which i had drank at table, and thought delicious. it happened to be rather thick, and as i fancied myself an excellent finer of wine, i mentioned my skill, and this was accordingly trusted to my care, but in attempting to mend, i spoiled it, though to the sight only, for it remained equally agreeable to the taste. profiting by this opportunity, i furnished myself from time to time with a few bottles to drink in my own apartment; but unluckily, i could never drink without eating; the difficulty lay therefore, in procuring bread. it was impossible to make a reserve of this article, and to have it brought by the footman was discovering myself, and insulting the master of the house; i could not bear to purchase it myself; how could a fine gentleman, with a sword at his side, enter a baker's shop to buy a small loaf of bread? it was utterly impossible. at length i recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "then let them eat pastry!" yet even this resource was attended with a difficulty. i sometimes went out alone for this very purpose, running over the whole city, and passing thirty pastry cook's shops, without daring to enter any one of them. in the first place, it was necessary there should be only one person in the shop, and that person's physiognomy must be so encouraging as to give me confidence to pass the threshold; but when once the dear little cake was procured, and i shut up in my chamber with that and a bottle of wine, taken cautiously from the bottom of a cupboard, how much did i enjoy drinking my wine, and reading a few pages of a novel; for when i have no company i always wish to read while eating; it seems a substitute for society, and i dispatch alternately a page and a morsel; 'tis indeed, as if my book dined with me. i was neither dissolute nor sottish, never in my whole life having been intoxicated with liquor; my little thefts were not very indiscreet, yet they were discovered; the bottles betrayed me, and though no notice was taken of it, i had no longer the management of the cellar. in all this monsieur malby conducted himself with prudence and politeness, being really a very deserving man, who, under a manner as harsh as his employment, concealed a real gentleness of disposition and uncommon goodness of heart: he was judicious, equitable, and (what would not be expected from an officer of the marechausse) very humane. sensible of his indulgence, i became greatly attached to him, which made my stay at lyons longer than it would otherwise have been; but at length, disgusted with an employment which i was not calculated for, and a situation of great confinement, consequently disagreeable to me, after a year's trial, during which time i spared no pains to fulfill my engagement, i determined to quit my pupils; being convinced i should never succeed in educating them properly. monsieur malby saw this as clearly as myself, though i am inclined to think he would never have dismissed me had i not spared him the trouble, which was an excess of condescension in this particular, that i certainly cannot justify. what rendered my situation yet more insupportable was the comparison i was continually drawing between the life i now led and that which i had quitted; the remembrance of my dear charmettes, my garden, trees, fountain and orchard, but, above all, the company of her who was born to give life and soul to every other enjoyment. on calling to mind our pleasures and innocent life, i was seized with such oppressions and heaviness of heart, as deprived me of the power of performing anything as it should be. a hundred times was i tempted instantly to set off on foot to my dear madam de warrens, being persuaded that could i once more see her, i should be content to die that moment: in fine, i could no longer resist the tender emotions which recalled me back to her, whatever it might cost me. i accused myself of not having been sufficiently patient, complaisant and kind; concluding i might yet live happily with her on the terms of tender friendship, and by showing more for her than i had hitherto done. i formed the finest projects in the world, burned to execute them, left all, renounced everything, departed, fled, and arriving in all the transports of my early youth, found myself once more at her feet. alas! i should have died there with joy, had i found in her reception, in her embrace, or in her heart, one-quarter of what i had formerly found there, and which i yet found the undiminished warmth of. fearful illusions of transitory things, how often dost thou torment us in vain! she received me with that excellence of heart which could only die with her; but i sought the influence there which could never be recalled, and had hardly been half an hour with her before i was once more convinced that my former happiness had vanished forever, and that i was in the same melancholy situation which i had been obliged to fly from; yet without being able to accuse any person with my unhappiness, for courtilles really was not to blame, appearing to see my return with more pleasure than dissatisfaction. but how could i bear to be a secondary person with her to whom i had been everything, and who could never cease being such to me? how could i live an alien in that house where i had been the child? the sight of every object that had been witness to my former happiness, rendered the comparison yet more distressing; i should have suffered less in any other habitation, for this incessantly recalled such pleasing remembrances, that it was irritating the recollection of my loss. consumed with vain regrets, given up to the most gloomy melancholy, i resumed the custom of remaining alone, except at meals; shut up with my books, i sought to give some useful diversion to my ideas, and feeling the imminent danger of want, which i had so long dreaded, i sought means to prepare for and receive it, when madam de warrens should have no other resource. i had placed her household on a footing not to become worse; but since my departure everything had been altered. he who now managed her affairs was a spendthrift, and wished to make a great appearance; such as keeping a good horse with elegant trappings; loved to appear gay in the eyes of the neighbors, and was perpetually undertaking something he did not understand. her pension was taken up in advance, her rent was in arrears, debts of every kind continued to accumulate; i could plainly foresee that her pension would be seized, and perhaps suppressed; in short, i expected nothing but ruin and misfortune, and the moment appeared to approach so rapidly that i already felt all its horrors. my closet was my only amusement, and after a tedious search for remedies for the sufferings of my mind, i determined to seek some against the evil of distressing circumstances, which i daily expected would fall upon us, and returning to my old chimeras, behold me once more building castles in the air to relieve this dear friend from the cruel extremities into which i saw her ready to fall. i did not believe myself wise enough to shine in the republic of letters, or to stand any chance of making a fortune by that means; a new idea, therefore, inspired me with that confidence, which the mediocrity of my talents could not impart. in ceasing to teach music i had not abandoned the thoughts of it; on the contrary, i had studied the theory sufficiently to consider myself well informed on the subject. when reflecting on the trouble it had cost me to read music, and the great difficulty i yet experienced in singing at sight, i began to think the fault might as well arise from the manner of noting as from my own dulness, being sensible it was an art which most people find difficult to understand. by examining the formation of the signs, i was convinced they were frequently very ill devised. i had before thought of marking the gamut by figures, to prevent the trouble of having lines to draw, on noting the plainest air; but had been stopped by the difficulty of the octaves, and by the distinction of measure and quantity: this idea returned again to my mind, and on a careful revision of it, i found the difficulties by no means insurmountable. i pursued it successfully, and was at length able to note any music whatever by figures, with the greatest exactitude and simplicity. from this moment i supposed my fortune made, and in the ardor of sharing it with her to whom i owed everything, thought only of going to paris, not doubting that on presenting my project to the academy, it would be adopted with rapture. i had brought some money from lyons; i augmented this stock by the sale of my books, and in the course of a fortnight my resolution was both formed and executed: in short, full of the magnificent ideas it had inspired, and which were common to me on every occasion, i departed from savoy with my new system of music, as i had formerly done from turin with my heron-fountain. such have been the errors and faults of my youth; i have related the history of them with a fidelity which my heart approves; if my riper years were dignified with some virtues, i should have related them with the same frankness; it was my intention to have done this, but i must forego this pleasing task and stop here. time, which renders justice to the characters of most men, may withdraw the veil; and should my memory reach posterity, they may one day discover what i had to say--they will then understand why i am now silent. the confessions of jean jacques rousseau (in books) privately printed for the members of the aldus society london, book iii. leaving the service of madam de vercellis nearly as i had entered it, i returned to my former hostess, and remained there five or six weeks; during which time health, youth, and laziness, frequently rendered my temperament importunate. i was restless, absent, and thoughtful: i wept and sighed for a happiness i had no idea of, though at the same time highly sensible of some deficiency. this situation is indescribable, few men can even form any conception of it, because, in general, they have prevented that plenitude of life, at once tormenting and delicious. my thoughts were incessantly occupied with girls and women, but in a manner peculiar to myself: these ideas kept my senses in a perpetual and disagreeable activity, though, fortunately, they did not point out the means of deliverance. i would have given my life to have met with a miss goton, but the time was past in which the play of infancy predominated; increase of years had introduced shame, the inseparable companion of a conscious deviation from rectitude, which so confirmed my natural timidity as to render it invincible; and never, either at that time or since, could i prevail on myself to offer a proposition favorable to my wishes (unless in a manner constrained to it by previous advances) even with those whose scruples i had no cause to dread. my stay at madam de vercellis's had procured me some acquaintance, which i thought might be serviceable to me, and therefore wished to retain. among others, i sometimes visited a savoyard abbe, m. gaime, who was tutor to the count of melarede's children. he was young, and not much known, but possessed an excellent cultivated understanding, with great probity, and was, altogether, one of the best men i ever knew. he was incapable of doing me the service i then stood most in need of, not having sufficient interest to procure me a situation, but from him i reaped advantages far more precious, which have been useful to me through life, lessons of pure morality, and maxims of sound judgment. in the successive order of my inclinations and ideas, i had ever been too high or too low. achilles or thersites; sometimes a hero, at others a villain. m. gaime took pains to make me properly acquainted with myself, without sparing or giving me too much discouragement. he spoke in advantageous terms of my disposition and talents, adding, that he foresaw obstacles which would prevent my profiting by them; thus, according to him, they were to serve less as steps by which i should mount to fortune, than as resources which might enable me to exist without one. he gave me a true picture of human life, of which, hitherto, i had formed but a very erroneous idea, teaching me, that a man of understanding, though destined to experience adverse fortune, might, by skilful management, arrive at happiness; that there was no true felicity without virtue, which was practicable in every situation. he greatly diminished my admiration of grandeur, by proving that those in a superior situation are neither better nor happier than those they command. one of his maxims has frequently returned to my memory: it was, that if we could truly read the hearts of others we should feel more inclination to descend than rise: this reflection, the truth of which is striking without extravagance, i have found of great utility, in the various exigences of my life, as it tended to make me satisfied with my condition. he gave me the first just conception of relative duties, which my high-flown imagination had ever pictured in extremes, making me sensible that the enthusiasm of sublime virtues is of little use in society; that while endeavoring to rise too high we are in danger of falling; and that a virtuous and uniform discharge of little duties requires as great a degree of fortitude as actions which are called heroic, and would at the same time procure more honor and happiness. that it was infinitely more desirable to possess the lasting esteem of those about us, than at intervals to attract admiration. in properly arranging the various duties between man and man, it was necessary to ascend to principles; the step i had recently taken, and of which my present situation was the consequence, naturally led us to speak of religion. it will easily be conceived that the honest m. gaime was, in a great measure, the original of the savoyard vicar; prudence only obliging him to deliver his sentiments, on certain points, with more caution and reserve, and explain himself with less freedom; but his sentiments and councils were the same, not even excepting his advice to return to my country; all was precisely as i have since given it to the pubic. dwelling no longer, therefore, on conversations which everyone may see the substance of, i shall only add, that these wise instructions (though they did not produce an immediate effect) were as so many seeds of virtue and religion in my heart which were never rooted out, and only required the fostering cares of friendship to bring to maturity. though my conversation was not very sincere, i was affected by his discourses, and far from being weary, was pleased with them on account of their clearness and simplicity, but above all because his heart seemed interested in what he said. my disposition is naturally tender, i have ever been less attached to people for the good they have really done me than for that they designed to do, and my feelings in this particular have seldom misled me: thus i truly esteemed m. gaime. i was in a manner his second disciple, which even at that time was of inestimable service in turning me from a propensity to vice into which my idleness was leading me. one day, when i least expected it, i was sent for by the count de la roque. having frequently called at his house, without being able to speak with him, i grew weary, and supposing he had either forgot me or retained some unfavorable impression of me, returned no more: but i was mistaken in both these conjectures. he had more than once witnessed the pleasure i took in fulfilling my duty to his aunt: he had even mentioned it to her, and afterwards spoke of it, when i no longer thought of it myself. he received me graciously, saying that instead of amusing me with useless promises, he had sought to place me to advantage; that he had succeeded, and would put me in a way to better my situation, but the rest must depend on myself. that the family into which he should introduce me being both powerful and esteemed, i should need no other patrons; and though at first on the footing of a servant, i might be assured, that if my conduct and sentiments were found above that station, i should not long remain in it. the end of this discourse cruelly disappointed the brilliant hopes the beginning had inspired. "what! forever a footman?" said i to myself, with a bitterness which confidence presently effaced, for i felt myself too superior to that situation to fear long remaining there. he took me to the count de gauvon, master of the horse to the queen, and chief of the illustrious house of solar. the air of dignity conspicuous in this respectable old man, rendered the affability with which he received me yet more interesting. he questioned me with evident interest, and i replied with sincerity. he then told the count de la roque, that my features were agreeable, and promised intellect, which he believed i was not deficient in; but that was not enough, and time must show the rest; after which, turning to me, he said, "child, almost all situations are attended with difficulties in the beginning; yours, however, shall not have too great a portion of them; be prudent, and endeavor to please everyone, that will be almost your only employment; for the rest fear nothing, you shall be taken care of." immediately after he went to the marchioness de breil, his daughter-in-law, to whom he presented me, and then to the abbe de gauvon, his son. i was elated with this beginning, as i knew enough of the world already to conclude, that so much ceremony is not generally used at the reception of a footman. in fact, i was not treated like one. i dined at the steward's table; did not wear a livery; and the count de favria (a giddy youth) having commanded me to get behind his coach, his grandfather ordered that i should get behind no coach, nor follow any one out of the house. meantime, i waited at table, and did, within doors, the business of a footman; but i did it, as it were, of my own free will, without being appointed to any particular service; and except writing some letters, which were dictated to me, and cutting out some ornaments for the count de favria, i was almost the absolute master of my time. this trial of my discretion, which i did not then perceive, was certainly very dangerous, and not very humane; for in this state of idleness i might have contracted vices which i should not otherwise have given into. fortunately, it did not produce that effect; my memory retained the lessons of m. gaime, they had made an impression on my heart, and i sometimes escaped from the house of my patron to obtain a repetition of them. i believe those who saw me going out, apparently by stealth, had no conception of my business. nothing could be more prudent than the advice he gave me respecting my conduct. my beginning was admirable; so much attention, assiduity, and zeal, had charmed everyone. the abby gaime advised me to moderate this first ardor, lest i should relax, and that relaxation should be considered as neglect. "your setting out," said he, "is the rule of what will be expected of you; endeavor gradually to increase your attentions, but be cautious how you diminish them." as they paid but little attention to my trifling talents, and supposed i possessed no more than nature had given me, there was no appearance (notwithstanding the promises of count de gauvon) of my meeting with any particular consideration. some objects of more consequence had intervened. the marquis de breil, son of the count de gauvon, was then ambassador at vienna; some circumstances had occurred at that court which for some weeks kept the family in continual agitation, and left them no time to think of me. meantime i had relaxed but little in my attentions, though one object in the family did me both good and harm, making me more secure from exterior dissipation, but less attentive to my duty. mademoiselle de breil was about my own age, tolerably handsome, and very fair complexioned, with black hair, which notwithstanding, gave her features that air of softness so natural to the flaxen, and which my heart could never resist. the court dress, so favorable to youth, showed her fine neck and shape to advantage, and the mourning, which was then worn, seemed to add to her beauty. it will be said, a domestic should not take notice of these things; i was certainly to blame, yet i perceived all this, nor was i the only one; the maitre d' hotel and valet de chambre spoke of her sometimes at table with a vulgarity that pained me extremely. my head, however, was not sufficiently turned to allow of my being entirely in love; i did not forget myself, or my situation. i loved to see mademoiselle de breil; to hear her utter anything that marked wit, sense, or good humor: my ambition, confined to a desire of waiting on her, never exceeded its just rights. at table i was ever attentive to make the most of them; if her footman quitted her chair, i instantly supplied his place; in default of this, i stood facing her, seeking in her eyes what she was about to ask for, and watching the moment to change her plate. what would i not have given to hear her command, to have her look at, or speak the smallest word to me! but no, i had the mortification to be beneath her regard; she did not even perceive i was there. her brother, who frequently spoke to me while at table, having one day said something which i did not consider obliging, i made him so arch and well-turned an answer, that it drew her attention; she cast her eyes upon me, and this glance was sufficient to fill me with transport. the next day, a second occasion presented itself, which i fortunately made use of. a great dinner was given; and i saw, with astonishment, for the first time, the maitre d' hotel waiting at table, with a sword by his side, and hat on his head. by chance, the discourse turned on the motto of the house of solar, which was, with the arms, worked in the tapestry: 'tel fiert qui ne fue pas'. as the piedmontese are not in general very perfect in the french language, they found fault with the orthography, saying, that in the word fiert there should be no 't'. the old count de gauvon was going to reply, when happening to cast his eyes on me, he perceived i smiled without daring to say anything; he immediately ordered me to speak my opinion. i then said, i did not think the 't' superfluous, 'fiert' being an old french word, not derived from the noun 'ferus', proud, threatening; but from the verb 'ferit', he strikes, he wounds; the motto, therefore, did not appear to mean, some threat, but, 'some strike who do not kill'. the whole company fixed their eyes on me, then on each other, without speaking a word; never was a greater degree of astonishment; but what most flattered me, was an air of satisfaction which i perceived on the countenance of mademoiselle de breil. this scornful lady deigned to cast on me a second look at least as valuable as the former, and turning to her grandfather, appeared to wait with impatience for the praise that was due to me, and which he fully bestowed, with such apparent satisfaction, that it was eagerly chorused by the whole table. this interval was short, but delightful in many respects; it was one of those moments so rarely met with, which place things in their natural order, and revenge depressed merit for the injuries of fortune. some minutes after mademoiselle de breil again raised her eyes, desiring me with a voice of timid affability to give her some drink. it will easily be supposed i did not let her wait, but advancing towards her, i was seized with such a trembling, that having filled the glass too full, i spilled some of the water on her plate, and even on herself. her brother asked me, giddily, why i trembled thus? this question increased my confusion, while the face of mademoiselle de breil was suffused with a crimson blush. here ended the romance; where it may be remarked (as with madam basile, and others in the continuation of my life) that i was not fortunate in the conclusion of my amours. in vain i placed myself in the antechamber of madam de breil, i could not obtain one mark of attention from her daughter; she went in and out without looking at me, nor had i the confidence to raise my eyes to her; i was even so foolishly stupid, that one day, on dropping her glove as she passed, instead of seizing and covering it with kisses, as i would gladly have done, i did not dare to quit my place, but suffered it to be taken up by a great booby of a footman, whom i could willingly have knocked down for his officiousness. to complete my timidity, i perceived i had not the good fortune to please madam de breil; she not only never ordered, but even rejected, my services; and having twice found me in her antechamber, asked me, dryly, "if i had nothing to do?" i was obliged, therefore, to renounce this dear antechamber; at first it caused me some uneasiness, but other things intervening, i presently thought no more of it. the disdain of madam de breil was fully compensated by the kindness of her father-in-law, who at length began to think of me. the evening after the entertainment, i have already mentioned, he had a conversation with me that lasted half an hour, which appeared to satisfy him, and absolutely enchanted me. this good man had less sense than madam de vercellis, but possessed more feeling; i therefore succeeded much better with him. he bade me attach myself to his son, the abbe gauvon, who had an esteem for me, which, if i took care to cultivate, might be serviceable in furnishing me with what was necessary to complete their views for my future establishment. the next morning i flew to m. the abbe, who did not receive me as a servant, but made me sit by his fireside, and questioned me with great affability. he soon found that my education, which had attempted many things, had completed none; but observing that i understood something of latin, he undertook to teach me more, and appointed me to attend him every morning. thus, by one of the whimsicalities which have marked the whole course of my life, at once above and below my natural situation, i was pupil and footman in the same house: and though in servitude, had a preceptor whose birth entitled him to supply that place only to the children of kings. the abbe de gauvon was a younger son, and designed by his family for a bishopric, for which reason his studies had been pursued, further than is usual with people of quality. he had been sent to the university of sienna, where he had resided some years, and from whence he had brought a good portion of cruscantism, designing to be that at turin which the abbe de dangeau was formerly at paris. being disgusted with theology, he gave in to the belle-lettres, which is very frequent in italy, with those who have entered the career of prelacy. he had studied the poets, and wrote tolerable latin and italian verses; in a word, his taste was calculated to form mine, and give some order to that chaos of insignificant trash with which my brain was encumbered; but whether my prating had misled him, or that he could not support the trouble of teaching the elementary parts of latin, he put me at first too high; and i had scarcely translated a few fables of phoedrus before he put me into virgil, where i could hardly understand anything. it will be seen hereafter that i was destined frequently to learn latin, but never to attain it. i labored with assiduity, and the abbe bestowed his attention with a degree of kindness, the remembrance of which, even at this time, both interests and softens me. i passed the greater part of the morning with him as much for my own instruction as his service; not that he ever permitted me to perform any menial office, but to copy, or write from his dictating; and my employment of secretary was more useful than that of scholar, and by this means i not only learned the italian in its utmost purity, but also acquired a taste for literature, and some discernment of composition, which could not have been at la tribu's, and which was useful to me when i afterwards wrote alone. at this period of my life, without being romantic, i might reasonably have indulged the hope of preferment. the abbe, thoroughly pleased with me, expressed his satisfaction to everyone, while his father had such a singular affection for me, that i was assured by the count de favria, that he had spoken of me to the king; even madam de breil had laid aside her disdainful looks; in short i was a general favorite, which gave great jealousy to the other servants, who seeing me honored by the instructions of their master's son, were persuaded i should not remain their equal. as far as i could judge by some words dropped at random, and which i reflected on afterwards, it appeared to me, that the house of solar, wishing to run the career of embassies, and hoping perhaps in time to arrive at the ministry, wished to provide themselves with a person of merit and talents, who depending entirely on them, might obtain their confidence, and be of essential service. this project of the count de gauvon was judicious, magnanimous, and truly worthy of a powerful nobleman, equally provident and generous; but besides my not seeing, at that time, its full extent, it was far too rational for my brain, and required too much confinement. my ridiculous ambition sought for fortune in the midst of brilliant adventures, and not finding one woman in all this scheme, it appeared tedious, painful and melancholy; though i should rather have thought it more honorable on this account, as the species of merit generally patronized by women is certainly less worthy that i was supposed to possess. everything succeeded to my wish: i had obtained, almost forced, the esteem of all; the trial was over, and i was universally considered as a young man with flattering prospects, who was not at present in his proper sphere, but was expected soon to reach it; but my place was not assigned me by man, and i was to reach it by very difficult paths. i now come to one of those characteristic traits, which are so natural to me, and which, indeed, the reader might have observed without this reflection. there were at turin several new converts of my own stamp, whom i neither liked nor wish to see; but i had met with some genevese who were not of this description, and among others a m. mussard, nicknamed wryneck, a miniature painter, and a distant relation. this m. mussard, having learned my situation at the count de gauvon's, came to see me, with another genevese, named bacle, who had been my comrade during my apprenticeship. this bacle was a very sprightly, amusing young fellow, full of lively sallies, which at his time of life appeared extremely agreeable. at once, then, behold me delighted with m. bacle; charmed to such a degree that i found it impossible to quit him. he was shortly to depart for geneva; what a loss had i to sustain! i felt the whole force of it, and resolving to make the best use of this precious interval, i determined not to leave him, or, rather, he never quitted me, for my head was not yet sufficiently turned to think of quitting the house without leave, but it was soon perceived that he engrossed my whole time, and he was accordingly forbid the house. this so incensed me, that forgetting everything but my friend bacle, i went neither to the abbe nor the count, and was no longer to be found at home. i paid no attention to repeated reprimands, and at length was threatened with dismissal. this threat was my ruin, as it suggested the idea that it was not absolutely necessary that bacle should depart alone. from that moment i could think of no other pleasure, no other situation or happiness than taking this journey. to render the felicity still more complete, at the end of it (though at an immense distance) i pictured to myself madam de warrens; for as to returning to geneva, it never entered into my imagination. the hills, fields, brooks and villages, incessantly succeeded each other with new charms, and this delightful jaunt seemed worthy to absorb my whole existence. memory recalled, with inexpressible pleasure, how charming the country had appeared in coming to turin; what then must it be, when, to the pleasure of independence, should be added the company of a good-humored comrade of my own age and disposition, without any constraint or obligation, but free to go or stay as we pleased? would it not be madness to sacrifice the prospect of so much felicity to projects of ambition, slow and difficult in their execution, and uncertain in their event? but even supposing them realized, and in their utmost splendor, they were not worth one quarter of an hour of the sweet pleasure and liberty of youth. full of these wise conclusions, i conducted myself so improperly, that (not indeed without some trouble) i got myself dismissed; for on my return one night the maitre de hotel gave me warning on the part of the count. this was exactly what i wanted; for feeling, spite of myself, the extravagance of my conduct, i wished to excuse it by the addition of injustice and ingratitude, by throwing the blame on others, and sheltering myself under the idea of necessity. i was told the count de favria wished to speak with me the next morning before my departure; but, being sensible that my head was so far turned as to render it possible for me to disobey the injunction, the maitre de hotel declined paying the money designed me, and which certainly i had very ill earned, till after this visit; for my kind patrons being unwilling to place me in the situation of a footman, i had not any fixed wages. the count de favria, though young and giddy, talked to me on this occasion in the most sensible and serious manner: i might add, if it would not be thought vain, with the utmost tenderness. he reminded me, in the most flattering terms, of the cares of his uncle, and intentions of his grandfather; after having drawn in lively colors what i was sacrificing to ruin, he offered to make my peace, without stipulating any conditions, but that i should no more see the worthless fellow who had seduced me. it was so apparent that he did not say all this of himself, that notwithstanding my blind stupidity, i powerfully felt the kindness of my good old master, but the dear journey was too firmly printed on my imagination for any consideration to balance the charm. bereft of understanding, firm to my purpose, i hardened myself against conviction, and arrogantly answered, that as they had thought fit to give me warning, i had resolved to take it, and conceived it was now too late to retract, since, whatever might happen to me, i was fully resolved not to be driven a second time from the same house. the count, justly irritated, bestowed on me some names which i deserved, and putting me out of his apartment by the shoulders, shut the door on me. i departed triumphant, as if i had gained the greatest victory, and fearful of sustaining a second combat even had the ingratitude to leave the house without thanking the abbe for his kindness. to form a just conception of my delirium at that moment, the excess to which my heart is subject to be heated by the most trifling incidents, and the ardor with which my imagination seizes on the most attractive objects should be conceived. at these times, plans the most ridiculous, childish, and void of sense, flatter my favorite idea, and persuade me that it is reasonable to sacrifice everything to the possession of it. would it be believed, that when near nineteen, any one could be so stupid as to build his hopes of future subsistence on an empty phial? for example: the abbe de gauvon had made me a present, some weeks before, of a very pretty heron fountain, with which i was highly delighted. playing with this toy, and speaking of our departure, the sage bacle and myself thought it might be of infinite advantage, and enable us to lengthen our journey. what in the world was so curious as a heron fountain? this idea was the foundation on which we built our future fortune: we were to assemble the country people in every village we might pass through, and delight them with the sight of it, when feasting and good cheer would be sure to pour on us abundantly; for we were both firmly persuaded, that provisions could cost nothing to those who grew and gathered them, and if they did not stuff travellers, it was downright ill-nature. we pictured in all parts entertainments and weddings, reckoning that without any expense but wind from our lungs, and the water of our fountain, we should be maintained through piedmont, savoy, france, and indeed, all the world over. there was no end to our projected travels, and we immediately directed our course northward, rather for the pleasure of crossing the alps, than from a supposed necessity of being obliged to stop at any place. such was the plan on which i set out, abandoning without regret, my preceptors, studies, and hopes, with the almost certain attainment of a fortune, to lead the life of a real vagabond. farewell to the capital; adieu to the court, ambition, love, the fair, and all the great adventures into which hope had led me during the preceding year! i departed with my fountain and my friend bacle, a purse lightly furnished, but a heart over-flowing with pleasure, and only thinking how to enjoy the extensive felicity which i supposed my project encircled. this extravagant journey was performed almost as agreeably as i had expected, though not exactly on the same plan; not but our fountain highly amused the hostess and servants for some minutes at all the ale-houses where we halted, yet we found it equally necessary to pay on our departure; but that gave us no concern, as we never thought of depending on it entirely until our money should be expended. an accident spared us that trouble, our fountain was broken near bramant, and in good time, for we both felt (though without daring to own it to each other) that we began to be weary of it. this misfortune rendered us gayer than ever; we laughed heartily at our giddiness in having forgotten that our clothes and shoes would wear out, or trusting to renew them by the play of our fountain. we continued our journey as merrily as we had begun it, only drawing faster towards that termination where our drained purses made it necessary for us to arrive. at chambery i became pensive; not for the folly i had committed, for never did any one think less of the past, but on account of the reception i should meet with from madam de warrens; for i looked on her house as my paternal home. i had written her an account of my reception at the count de gauvon's; she knew my expectancies, and, in congratulating me on my good fortune, had added some wise lessons on the return i ought to make for the kindness with which they treated me. she looked on my fortune as already made, if not destroyed by my own negligence; what then would she say on my arrival? for it never entered my mind that she might shut the door against me, but i dreaded the uneasiness i might give her; i dreaded her reproaches, to me more wounding than want; i resolved to bear all in silence, and, if possible to appease her. i now saw nothing but madam de warrens in the whole universe, and to live in disgrace with her was impossible. i was most concerned about my companion, whom i did not wish to offend, and feared i should not easily get rid of. i prefaced this separation by an affected coldness during the last day's journey. the drole understood me perfectly; in fact, he was rather giddy than deficient in point of sense--i expected he would have been hurt at my inconstancy, but i was quite mistaken; nothing affected my friend bacle, for hardly had we set foot in town, on our arrival in annecy, before he said, "you are now at home,"--embraced--bade me adieu--turned on his heel, and disappeared; nor have i ever heard of him since. how did my heart beat as i approached the habitation of madam de warrens! my legs trembled under me, my eyes were clouded with a mist, i neither saw, heard, nor recollected any one, and was obliged frequently to stop that i might draw breath, and recall my bewildered senses. was it fear of not obtaining that succor i stood in need of, which agitated me to this degree? at the age i then was, does the fear of perishing with hunger give such alarms? no: i declare with as much truth as pride, that it was not in the power of interest or indigence, at any period of my life, to expand or contract my heart. in the course of a painful life, memorable for its vicissitudes, frequently destitute of an asylum, and without bread, i have contemplated, with equal indifference, both opulence and misery. in want i might have begged or stolen, as others have done, but never could feel distress at being reduced to such necessities. few men have grieved more than myself, few have shed so many tears; yet never did poverty, or the fear of falling into it, make me heave a sigh or moisten my eyelids. my soul, in despite of fortune, has only been sensible of real good and evil, which did not depend on her; and frequently, when in possession of everything that could make life pleasing, i have been the most miserable of mortals. the first glance of madam de warrens banished all my fears--my heart leaped at the sound of her voice; i threw myself at her feet, and in transports of the most lively joy, pressed my lips upon her hand. i am ignorant whether she had received any recent information of me. i discovered but little surprise on her countenance, and no sorrow. "poor child!" said she, in an affectionate tone, "art thou here again? i knew you were too young for this journey; i am very glad, however, that it did not turn out so bad as i apprehended." she then made me recount my history; it was not long, and i did it faithfully: suppressing only some trifling circumstances, but on the whole neither sparing nor excusing myself. the question was, where i could lodge: she consulted her maid on this point--i hardly dared to breathe during the deliberation; but when i heard i was to sleep in the house, i could scarce contain my joy; and saw the little bundle i brought with me carried into my destined apartment with much the same sensations as st. preux saw his chaise put up at madam de wolmar's. to complete all, i had the satisfaction to find that this favor was not to be transitory; for at a moment when they thought me attentive to something else, i heard madam de warrens say, "they may talk as they please, but since providence has sent him back, i am determined not to abandon him." behold me, then, established at her house; not, however, that i date the happiest days of my life from this period, but this served to prepare me for them. though that sensibility of heart, which enables us truly to enjoy our being, is the work of nature, and perhaps a mere effect of organization, yet it requires situations to unfold itself, and without a certain concurrence of favorable circumstances, a man born with the most acute sensibility may go out of the world without ever having been acquainted with his own temperament. this was my case till that time, and such perhaps it might have remained had i never known madam de warrens, or even having known her, had i not remained with her long enough to contract that pleasing habit of affectionate sentiments with which she inspired me. i dare affirm, that those who only love, do not feel the most charming sensations we are capable of: i am acquainted with another sentiment, less impetuous, but a thousand times more delightful; sometimes joined with love, but frequently separated from it. this feeling is not simply friendship; it is more enchanting, more tender; nor do i imagine it can exist between persons of the same sex; at least i have been truly a friend, if ever a man was, and yet never experienced it in that kind. this distinction is not sufficiently clear, but will become so hereafter: sentiments are only distinguishable by their effects. madam de warrens inhabited an old house, but large enough to have a handsome spare apartment, which she made her drawing-room. i now occupied this chamber, which was in the passage i have before mentioned as the place of our first meeting. beyond the brook and gardens was a prospect of the country, which was by no means uninteresting to the young inhabitant, being the first time, since my residence at bossey, that i had seen anything before my windows but walls, roofs, or the dirty street. how pleasing then was this novelty! it helped to increase the tenderness of my disposition, for i looked on this charming landscape as the gift of my dear patroness, who i could almost fancy had placed it there on purpose for me. peaceably seated, my eyes pursued her amidst the flowers and the verdure; her charms seemed to me confounded with those of the spring; my heart, till now contracted, here found means to expand itself, and my sighs exhaled freely in this charming retreat. the magnificence i had been accustomed to at turin was not to be found at madam de warrens, but in lieu of it there was neatness, regularity, and a patriarchal abundance, which is seldom attached to pompous ostentation. she had very little plate, no china, no game in her kitchen, or foreign wines in her cellar, but both were well furnished, and at every one's service; and her coffee, though served in earthenware cups, was excellent. whoever came to her house was invited to dine there, and never did laborer, messenger, or traveller, depart without refreshment. her family consisted of a pretty chambermaid from fribourg, named merceret; a valet from her own country called claude anet (of whom i shall speak hereafter), a cook, and two hired chairmen when she visited, which seldom happened. this was a great deal to be done out of two thousand livres a year; yet, with good management, it might have been sufficient in a country where land is extremely good, and money very scarce. unfortunately, economy was never her favorite virtue; she contracted debts--paid them--thus her money passed from hand to hand like a weaver's shuttle, and quickly disappeared. the arrangement of her housekeeping was exactly what i should have chosen, and i shared it with satisfaction. i was least pleased with the necessity of remaining too long at table. madam de warrens was so much incommoded with the first smell of soup or meat, as almost to occasion fainting; from this she slowly recovered, talking meantime, and never attempting to eat for the first half hour. i could have dined thrice in the time, and had ever finished my meal long before she began; i then ate again for company; and though by this means i usually dined twice, felt no inconvenience from it. in short, i was perfectly at my ease, and the happier as my situation required no care. not being at this time instructed in the state of her finances, i supposed her means were adequate to her expense; and though i afterwards found the same abundance, yet when instructed in her real situation, finding her pension ever anticipated, prevented me from enjoying the same tranquility. foresight with me has always embittered enjoyment; in vain i saw the approach of misfortunes, i was never the more likely to avoid them. from the first moment of our meeting, the softest familiarity was established between us: and in the same degree it continued during the rest of her life. child was my name, mamma was hers, and child and mamma we have ever continued, even after a number of years had almost effaced the apparent difference of age between us. i think those names convey an exact idea of our behavior, the simplicity of our manners, and above all, the similarity of our dispositions. to me she was the tenderest of mothers, ever preferring my welfare to her own pleasure; and if my own satisfaction found some interest in my attachment to her, it was not to change its nature, but only to render it more exquisite, and infatuate me with the charm of having a mother young and handsome, whom i was delighted to caress: i say literally, to caress, for never did it enter into her imagination to deny me the tenderest maternal kisses and endearments, or into my heart to abuse them. it will be said, at length our connection was of a different kind: i confess it; but have patience, that will come in its turn. the sudden sight of her, on our first interview, was the only truly passionate moment she ever inspired me with; and even that was principally the work of surprise. with her i had neither transports nor desires, but remained in a ravishing calm, sensible of a happiness i could not define, and thus could i have passed my whole life, or even eternity, without feeling an instant of uneasiness. she was the only person with whom i never experienced that want of conversation, which to me is so painful to endure. our tete-a-tetes were rather an inexhaustible chat than conversation, which could only conclude from interruption. so far from finding discourse difficult, i rather thought it a hardship to be silent; unless, when contemplating her projects, she sunk into a reverie; when i silently let her meditate, and gazing on her, was the happiest of men. i had another singular fancy, which was that without pretending to the favor of a tete-a-tete, i was perpetually seeking occasion to form them, enjoying such opportunities with rapture; and when importunate visitors broke in upon us, no matter whether it was man or woman, i went out murmuring, not being able to remain a secondary object in her company; then, counting the minutes in her antechamber, i used to curse these eternal visitors, thinking it inconceivable how they could find so much to say, because i had still more. if ever i felt the full force of my attachment, it was when i did not see her. when in her presence, i was only content; when absent, my uneasiness reached almost to melancholy, and a wish to live with her gave me emotions of tenderness even to tears. never shall i forget one great holiday, while she was at vespers, when i took a walk out of the city, my heart full of her image, and the ardent wish to pass my life with her. i could easily enough see that at present this was impossible; that the happiness i enjoyed would be of short duration, and this idea gave to my contemplations a tincture of melancholy, which, however, was not gloomy, but tempered with a flattering hope. the ringing of bells, which ever particularly affects me, the singing of birds, the fineness of the day, the beauty of the landscape, the scattered country houses, among which in idea i placed our future dwelling, altogether struck me with an impression so lively, tender, melancholy, and powerful, that i saw myself in ecstasy transported into that happy time and abode, where my heart, possessing all the felicity it could desire, might taste it with raptures inexpressible. i never recollect to have enjoyed the future with such force of illusions as at that time; and what has particularly struck me in the recollection of this reverie, is that when realized, i found my situation exactly as i had imagined it. if ever waking dream had an appearance of a prophetic vision, it was assuredly this; i was only deceived in its imaginary duration, for days, years, and life itself, passed ideally in perfect tranquility, while the reality lasted but a moment. alas! my most durable happiness was but as a dream, which i had no sooner had a glimpse of, than i instantly awoke. i know not when i should have done, if i was to enter into a detail of all the follies that affection for my dear madam de warrens made me commit. when absent from her, how often have i kissed the bed on a supposition that she had slept there; the curtains and all the furniture of my chamber, on recollecting they were hers, and that her charming hands had touched them; nay, the floor itself, when i considered she had walked there. sometimes even in her presence, extravagancies escaped me, which only the most violent passions seemed capable of inspiring; in a word, there was but one essential difference to distinguish me from an absolute lover, and that particular renders my situation almost inconceivable. i had returned from italy, not absolutely as i went there, but as no one of my age, perhaps, ever did before, being equally unacquainted with women. my ardent constitution had found resources in those means by which youth of my disposition sometimes preserve their purity at the expense of health, vigor, and frequently of life itself. my local situation should likewise be considered--living with a pretty woman, cherishing her image in the bottom of my heart, seeing her during the whole day, at night surrounded with objects that recalled her incessantly to my remembrance, and sleeping in the bed where i knew she had slept. what a situation! who can read this without supposing me on the brink of the grave? but quite the contrary; that which might have ruined me, acted as a preservative, at least for a time. intoxicated with the charm of living with her, with the ardent desire of passing my life there, absent or present i saw in her a tender mother, an amiable sister, a respected friend, but nothing more; meantime, her image filled my heart, and left room far no other object. the extreme tenderness with which she inspired me excluded every other woman from my consideration, and preserved me from the whole sex: in a word, i was virtuous, because i loved her. let these particulars, which i recount but indifferently, be considered, and then let any one judge what kind of attachment i had for her: for my part, all i can say, is, that if it hitherto appears extraordinary, it will appear much more so in the sequel. my time passed in the most agreeable manner, though occupied in a way which was by no means calculated to please me; such as having projects to digest, bills to write fair, receipts to transcribe, herbs to pick, drugs to pound, or distillations to attend; and in the midst of all this, came crowds of travellers, beggars, and visitors of all denominations. some times it was necessary to converse at the same time with a soldier, an apothecary, a prebendary, a fine lady, and a lay brother. i grumbled, swore, and wished all this troublesome medley at the devil, while she seemed to enjoy it, laughing at my chagrin till the tears ran down her cheeks. what excited her mirth still more, was to see that my anger was increased by not being able myself to refrain from laughter. these little intervals, in which i enjoyed the pleasure of grumbling, were charming; and if, during the dispute, another importunate visitor arrived, she would add to her amusement by maliciously prolonging the visit, meantime casting glances at me for which i could almost have beat her; nor could she without difficulty refrain from laughter on seeing my constrained politeness, though every moment glancing at her the look of a fury, while, even in spite of myself, i thought the scene truly diverting. all this, without being pleasing in itself, contributed to amuse, because it made up a part of a life which i thought delightful. nothing that was performed around me, nothing that i was obliged to do, suited my taste, but everything suited my heart; and i believe, at length, i should have liked the study of medicine, had not my natural distaste to it perpetually engaged us in whimsical scenes, that prevented my thinking of it in a serious light. it was, perhaps, the first time that this art produced mirth. i pretended to distinguish a physical book by its smell, and what was more diverting, was seldom mistaken. madam de warrens made me taste the most nauseous drugs; in vain i ran, or endeavored to defend myself; spite of resistance or wry faces, spite of my struggles, or even of my teeth, when i saw her charming fingers approach my lips, i was obliged to give up the contest. when shut up in an apartment with all her medical apparatus, any one who had heard us running and shouting amidst peals of laughter would rather have imagined we had been acting a farce than preparing opiates or elixirs. my time, however, was not entirely passed in these fooleries; in the apartment which i occupied i found a few books: there was the spectator, puffendorf, st. everemond, and the henriade. though i had not my old passion for books, yet i amused myself with reading a part of them. the spectator was particularly pleasing and serviceable to me. the abbe de gauvon had taught me to read less eagerly, and with a greater degree of attention, which rendered my studies more serviceable. i accustomed myself to reflect on elocution and the elegance of composition; exercising myself in discerning pure french from my provincial idiom. for example, i corrected an orthographical fault (which i had in common with all genevese) by these two lines of the henriade: soit qu' un ancient respect pour le sang de leurs maitres, parlat encore pour lui dans le coeur de ces traitres i was struck with the word 'parlat', and found a 't' was necessary to form the third person of the subjunctive, whereas i had always written and pronounced it parla, as in the present of the indicative. sometimes my studies were the subject of conversation with madam de warrens; sometimes i read to her, in which i found great satisfaction; and as i endeavored to read well, it was extremely serviceable to me. i have already observed that her mind was cultivated; her understanding was at this time in its meridian. several people of learning having been assiduous to ingratiate themselves, had taught her to distinguish works of merit; but her taste (if i may so express myself) was rather protestant; ever speaking warmly of bayle, and highly esteeming st. evremond, though long since almost forgotten in france: but this did not prevent her having a taste for literature, or expressing her thoughts with elegance. she had been brought up with polite company, and coming young to savoy, by associating with people of the best fashion, had lost the affected manners of her own country, where the ladies mistake wit for sense, and only speak in epigram. though she had seen the court but superficially, that glance was sufficient to give her a competent idea of it; and notwithstanding secret jealousies and the murmurs excited by her conduct and running in debt, she ever preserved friends there, and never lost her pension. she knew the world, and was useful. this was her favorite theme in our conversations, and was directly opposite to my chimerical ideas, though the kind of instruction i particularly had occasion for. we read bruyere together; he pleased her more than rochefoucault, who is a dull, melancholy author, particularly to youth, who are not fond of contemplating man as he really is. in moralizing she sometimes bewildered herself by the length of her discourse; but by kissing her lips or hand from time to time i was easily consoled, and never found them wearisome. this life was too delightful to be lasting; i felt this, and the uneasiness that thought gave me was the only thing that disturbed my enjoyment. even in playfulness she studied my disposition, observed and interrogated me, forming projects for my future fortune, which i could readily have dispensed with. happily it was not sufficient to know my disposition, inclinations and talents; it was likewise necessary to find a situation in which they would be useful, and this was not the work of a day. even the prejudices this good woman had conceived in favor of my merit put off the time of calling it into action, by rendering her more difficult in the choice of means; thus (thanks to the good opinion she entertained of me), everything answered to my wish; but a change soon happened which put a period to my tranquility. a relation of madam de warrens, named m. d'aubonne, came to see her; a man of great understanding and intrigue, being, like her, fond of projects, though careful not to ruin himself by them. he had offered cardinal fleury a very compact plan for a lottery, which, however, had not been approved of, and he was now going to propose it to the court of turin, where it was accepted and put into execution. he remained some time at annecy, where he fell in love with the intendant's lady, who was very amiable, much to my taste and the only person i saw with pleasure at the house of madam de warrens. m. d'aubonne saw me, i was strongly recommended by his relation; he promised, therefore, to question and see what i was fit for, and, if he found me capable to seek me a situation. madam de warrens sent me to him two or three mornings, under pretense of messages, without acquainting me with her real intention. he spoke to me gayly, on various subjects, without any appearance of observation; his familiarity presently set me talking, which by his cheerful and jesting manner he encouraged without restraint--i was absolutely charmed with him. the result of his observations was, that notwithstanding the animation of my countenance, and promising exterior, if not absolutely silly, i was a lad of very little sense, and without ideas of learning; in fine, very ignorant in all respects, and if i could arrive at being curate of some village, it was the utmost honor i ought ever to aspire to. such was the account he gave of me to madam de warrens. this was not the first time such an opinion had been formed of me, neither was it the last; the judgment of m. masseron having been repeatedly confirmed. the cause of these opinions is too much connected with my character not to need a particular explanation; for it will not be supposed that i can in conscience subscribe to them; and with all possible impartiality, whatever m. masseron, m. d'aubonne and many others may have said, i cannot help thinking them mistaken. two things very opposite, unite in me, and in a manner which i cannot myself conceive. my disposition is extremely ardent, my passions lively and impetuous, yet my ideas are produced slowly, with great embarrassment and after much afterthought. it might be said my heart and understanding do not belong to the same individual. a sentiment takes possession of my soul with the rapidity of lightning, but instead of illuminating, it dazzles and confounds me; i feel all, but see nothing; i am warm, but stupid; to think i must be cool. what is astonishing, my conception is clear and penetrating, if not hurried: i can make excellent impromptus at leisure, but on the instant, could never say or do anything worth notice. i could hold a tolerable conversation by the post, as they say the spaniards play at chess, and when i read that anecdote of a duke of savoy, who turned himself round, while on a journey, to cry out 'a votre gorge, marchand de paris!' i said, "here is a trait of my character!" this slowness of thought, joined to vivacity of feeling, i am not only sensible of in conversation, but even alone. when i write, my ideas are arranged with the utmost difficulty. they glance on my imagination and ferment till they discompose, heat, and bring on a palpitation; during this state of agitation, i see nothing properly, cannot write a single word, and must wait till it is over. insensibly the agitation subsides, the chaos acquires form, and each circumstance takes its proper place. have you never seen an opera in italy? where during the change of scene everything is in confusion, the decorations are intermingled, and any one would suppose that all would be overthrown; yet by little and little, everything is arranged, nothing appears wanting, and we feel surprised to see the tumult succeeded by the most delightful spectacle. this is a resemblance of what passes in my brain when i attempt to write; had i always waited till that confusion was past, and then painted, in their natural beauties, the objects that had presented themselves, few authors would have surpassed me. thence arises the extreme difficulty i find in writing; my manuscripts, blotted, scratched, and scarcely legible, attest the trouble they cost me; nor is there one of them but i have been obliged to transcribe four or five times before it went to press. never could i do anything when placed at a table, pen in hand; it must be walking among the rocks, or in the woods; it is at night in my bed, during my wakeful hours, that i compose; it may be judged how slowly, particularly for a man who has not the advantage of verbal memory, and never in his life could retain by heart six verses. some of my periods i have turned and returned in my head five or six nights before they were fit to be put to paper: thus it is that i succeed better in works that require laborious attention, than those that appear more trivial, such as letters, in which i could never succeed, and being obliged to write one is to me a serious punishment; nor can i express my thoughts on the most trivial subjects without it costing me hours of fatigue. if i write immediately what strikes me, my letter is a long, confused, unconnected string of expressions, which, when read, can hardly be understood. it is not only painful to me to give language to my ideas but even to receive them. i have studied mankind, and think myself a tolerable observer, yet i know nothing from what i see, but all from what i remember, nor have i understanding except in my recollections. from all that is said, from all that passes in my presence, i feel nothing, conceive nothing, the exterior sign being all that strikes me; afterwards it returns to my remembrance; i recollect the place, the time, the manner, the look, and gesture, not a circumstance escapes me; it is then, from what has been done or said, that i imagine what has been thought, and i have rarely found myself mistaken. so little master of my understanding when alone, let any one judge what i must be in conversation, where to speak with any degree of ease you must think of a thousand things at the same time: the bare idea that i should forget something material would be sufficient to intimidate me. nor can i comprehend how people can have the confidence to converse in large companies, where each word must pass in review before so many, and where it would be requisite to know their several characters and histories to avoid saying what might give offence. in this particular, those who frequent the world would have a great advantage, as they know better where to be silent, and can speak with greater confidence; yet even they sometimes let fall absurdities; in what predicament then must he be who drops as it were from the clouds? it is almost impossible he should speak ten minutes with impunity. in a tete-a-tete there is a still worse inconvenience; that is; the necessity of talking perpetually, at least, the necessity of answering when spoken to, and keeping up the conversation when the other is silent. this insupportable constraint is alone sufficient to disgust me with variety, for i cannot form an idea of a greater torment than being obliged to speak continually without time for recollection. i know not whether it proceeds from my mortal hatred of all constraint; but if i am obliged to speak, i infallibly talk nonsense. what is still worse, instead of learning how to be silent when i have absolutely nothing to say, it is generally at such times that i have a violent inclination: and endeavoring to pay my debt of conversation as speedily as possible, i hastily gabble a number of words without ideas, happy when they only chance to mean nothing; thus endeavoring to conquer or hide my incapacity, i rarely fail to show it. i think i have said enough to show that, though not a fool, i have frequently passed for one, even among people capable of judging; this was the more vexatious, as my physiognomy and eyes promised otherwise, and expectation being frustrated, my stupidity appeared the more shocking. this detail, which a particular occasion gave birth to, will not be useless in the sequel, being a key to many of my actions which might otherwise appear unaccountable; and have been attributed to a savage humor i do not possess. i love society as much as any man, was i not certain to exhibit myself in it, not only disadvantageously, but totally different from what i really am. the plan i have adopted of writing and retirement, is what exactly suits me. had i been present, my worth would never have been known, no one would even have suspected it; thus it was with madam dupin, a woman of sense, in whose house i lived for several years; indeed, she has often since owned it to me: though on the whole this rule may be subject to some exceptions. i shall now return to my history. the estimate of my talents thus fixed, the situation i was capable of promised, the question only remained how to render her capable of fulfilling my destined vocation. the principle difficulty was, i did not know latin enough for a priest. madam de warrens determined to have me taught for some time at the seminary, and accordingly spoke of it to the superior, who was a lazarist, called m. gras, a good-natured little fellow, half blind, meagre, gray-haired, insensible, and the least pedantic of any lazarist i ever knew; which, in fact, is saying no great matter. he frequently visited madam de warrens, who entertained, caressed, and made much of him, letting him sometimes lace her stays, an office he was willing enough to perform. while thus employed, she would run about the room, this way or that, as occasion happened to call her. drawn by the lace, monsieur the superior followed, grumbling, repeating at every moment, "pray, madam, do stand still;" the whole forming a scene truly diverting. m. gras willingly assented to the project of madam de warrens, and, for a very moderate pension, charged himself with the care of instructing me. the consent of the bishop was all that remained necessary, who not only granted it, but offered to pay the pension, permitting me to retain the secular habit till they could judge by a trial what success they might have in my improvement. what a change! but i was obliged to submit; though i went to the seminary with about the same spirits as if they had been taking me to execution. what a melancholy abode! especially for one who left the house of a pretty woman. i carried one book with me, that i had borrowed of madam de warrens, and found it a capital resource! it will not be easily conjectured what kind of book this was--it was a music book. among the talents she had cultivated, music was not forgotten; she had a tolerable good voice, sang agreeably, and played on the harpsichord. she had taken the pains to give me some lessons in singing, though before i was very uninformed in that respect, hardly knowing the music of our psalms. eight or ten interrupted lessons, far from putting me in a condition to improve myself, did not teach me half the notes; notwithstanding, i had such a passion for the art, that i determined to exercise myself alone. the book i took was not of the most easy kind; it was the cantatas of clerambault. it may be conceived with what attention and perseverance i studied, when i inform my reader, that without knowing anything of transposition or quantity, i contrived to sing with tolerable correctness, the first recitative and air in the cantata of alpheus and arethusa; it is true this air is, so justly set, that it is only necessary to recite the verses in their just measure to catch the music. there was at the seminary a curst lazarist, who by undertaking to teach me latin made me detest it. his hair was coarse, black and greasy, his face like those formed in gingerbread, he had the voice of a buffalo, the countenance of an owl, and the bristles of a boar in lieu of a beard; his smile was sardonic, and his limbs played like those of a puppet moved by wires. i have forgotten his odious name, but the remembrance of his frightful precise countenance remains with me, though hardly can i recollect it without trembling; especially when i call to mind our meeting in the gallery, when he graciously advanced his filthy square cap as a sign for me to enter his apartment, which appeared more dismal in my apprehension than a dungeon. let any one judge the contrast between my present master and the elegant abbe de gauvon. had i remained two months at the mercy of this monster, i am certain my head could not have sustained it; but the good m. gras, perceiving i was melancholy, grew thin, and did not eat my victuals, guessed the cause of my uneasiness (which indeed was not very difficult) and taking me from the claws of this beast, by another yet more striking contrast, placed me with the gentlest of men, a young faucigneran abbe, named m. gatier, who studied at the seminary, and out of complaisance for m. gras, and humanity to myself, spared some time from the prosecution of his own studies in order to direct mine. never did i see a more pleasing countenance than that of m. gatier. he was fair complexioned, his beard rather inclined to red; his behavior like that of the generality of his countrymen (who under a coarseness of countenance conceal much understanding), marked in him a truly sensible and affectionate soul. in his large blue eyes there was a mixture of softness, tenderness, and melancholy, which made it impossible to see him without feeling one's self interested. from the looks and manner of this young abbe he might have been supposed to have foreseen his destiny, and that he was born to be unhappy. his disposition did not belie his physiognomy: full of patience and complaisance, he rather appeared to study with than to instruct me. so much was not necessary to make me love him, his predecessor having rendered that very easy; yet, notwithstanding all the time he bestowed on me, notwithstanding our mutual good inclinations, and that his plan of teaching was excellent, with much labor, i made little progress. it is very singular, that with a clear conception i could never learn much from masters except my father and m. lambercier; the little i know besides i have learned alone, as will be seen hereafter. my spirit, impatient of every species of constraint, cannot submit to the law of the moment; even the fear of not learning prevents my being attentive, and a dread of wearying those who teach, makes me feign to understand them; thus they proceed faster than i can comprehend, and the conclusion is i learn nothing. my understanding must take its own time and cannot submit to that of another. the time of ordination being arrived, m. gatier returned to his province as deacon, leaving me with gratitude, attachment, and sorrow for his loss. the vows i made for him were no more answered than those i offered for myself. some years after, i learned, that being vicar of a parish, a young girl was with child by him, being the only one (though he possessed a very tender heart) with whom he was ever in love. this was a dreadful scandal in a diocese severely governed, where the priests (being under good regulation) ought never to have children--except by married women. having infringed this politic law, he was put in prison, defamed, and driven from his benefice. i know not whether it was ever after in his power to reestablish his affairs; but the remembrance of his misfortunes, which were deeply engraven on my heart, struck me when i wrote emilius, and uniting m. gatier with m. gaime, i formed from these two worthy priests the character of the savoyard vicar, and flatter myself the imitation has not dishonored the originals. while i was at the seminary, m. d'aubonne was obliged to quit annecy, moultou being displeased that he made love to his wife, which was acting like a dog in the manger, for though madam moultou was extremely amiable, he lived very ill with her, treating her with such brutality that a separation was talked of. moultou, by repeated oppressions, at length procured a dismissal from his employment: he was a disagreeable man; a mole could not be blacker, nor an owl more knavish. it is said the provincials revenge themselves on their enemies by songs; m. d'aubonne revenged himself on his by a comedy, which he sent to madam de warrens, who showed it to me. i was pleased with it, and immediately conceived the idea of writing one, to try whether i was so silly as the author had pronounced me. this project was not executed till i went to chambery, where i wrote 'the lover of himself'. thus when i said in the preface to that piece, "it was written at eighteen," i cut off a few years. nearly about this time an event happened, not very important in itself, but whose consequence affected me, and made a noise in the world when i had forgotten it. once a week i was permitted to go out; it is not necessary to say what use i made of this liberty. being one sunday at madam de warrens, a building belonging to the cordeliers, which joined her house, took fire; this building which contained their oven, being full of dry fagots, blazed violently and greatly endangered the house; for the wind happening to drive the flames that way, it was covered with them. the furniture, therefore, was hastily got out and carried into the garden which fronted the windows, on the other side the before-mentioned brook. i was so alarmed that i threw indiscriminately everything that came to hand out of the window, even to a large stone mortar, which at another time i should have found it difficult to remove, and should have thrown a handsome looking-glass after it had not some one prevented me. the good bishop, who that day was visiting madam de warrens, did not remain idle; he took her into the garden, where they went to prayers with the rest that were assembled there, and where sometime afterwards, i found them on their knees, and presently joined them. while the good man was at his devotions, the wind changed, so suddenly and critically, that the flames which had covered the house and began to enter the windows, were carried to the other side of the court, and the house received no damage. two years after, monsieur de berner being dead, the antoines, his former brethren, began to collect anecdotes which might serve as arguments of his beatification; at the desire of father baudet, i joined to these an attestation of what i have just related, in doing which, though i attested no more than the truth, i certainly acted ill, as it tended to make an indifferent occurrence pass for a miracle. i had seen the bishop in prayer, and had likewise seen the wind change during the prayer, and even much to the purpose, all this i could certify truly; but that one of these facts was the cause of the other, i ought not to have attested, because it is what i could not possibly be assured of. thus much i may say, that as far as i can recollect what my ideas were at that time, i was sincerely, and in good earnest a catholic. love of the marvellous is natural to the human heart; my veneration for the virtuous prelate, and secret pride in having, perhaps, contributed to the event in question, all helped to seduce me; and certainly, if this miracle was the effect of ardent prayer, i had a right to claim a share of the merits. more than thirty years after, when i published the 'lettres de la montagne', m. feron (i know not by what means) discovered this attestation, and made use of it in his paper. i must confess the discovery was very critically timed, and appeared very diverting, even to me. i was destined to be the outcast of every condition; for notwithstanding m. gatier gave the most favorable account he possibly could of my studies, they plainly saw the improvement i received bore no proportion to the pains taken to instruct me, which was no encouragement to continue them: the bishop and superior, therefore, were disheartened, and i was sent back to madam de warrens, as a subject not even fit to make a priest of; but as they allowed, at the same time, that i was a tolerably good lad, and far from being vicious, this account counterbalanced the former, and determined her not to abandon me. i carried back in triumph the dear music book, which had been so useful to me, the air of alpheus and arethusa being almost all i had learned at the seminary. my predilection for this art started the idea of making a musician of, me. a convenient opportunity offered; once a week, at least, she had a concert at her house, and the music-master from the cathedral, who directed this little band, came frequently to see her. this was a parisian, named m. le maitre, a good composer, very lively, gay, young, well made, of little understanding, but, upon the whole, a good sort of man. madam de warrens made us acquainted; i attached myself to him, and he seemed not displeased with me. a pension was talked of, and agreed on; in short, i went home with him, and passed the winter the more agreeably at his chambers, as they were not above twenty paces distant from madam de warrens', where we frequently supped together. it may easily be supposed that this situation, ever gay, and singing with the musicians and children of the choir, was more pleasing to me than the seminary and fathers of st. lazarus. this life, though free, was regular; here i learned to prize independence, but never to abuse it. for six whole months i never once went out except to see madam de warrens, or to church, nor had i any inclination to it. this interval is one of those in which i enjoyed the greatest satisfaction, and which i have ever recollected with pleasure. among the various situations i have been placed in, some were marked with such an idea of virtuous satisfaction, that the bare remembrance affects me as if they were yet present. i vividly recollect the time, the place, the persons, and even the temperature of the air, while the lively idea of a certain local impression peculiar to those times, transports me back again to the very spot; for example, all that was repeated at our meetings, all that was sung in the choir, everything that passed there; the beautiful and noble habits of the canons, the chasubles of the priests, the mitres of the singers, the persons of the musicians; an old lame carpenter who played the counter-bass, a little fair abbe who performed on the violin, the ragged cassock which m. le maitre, after taking off his sword, used to put over his secular habit, and the fine surplice with which he covered the rags of the former, when he went to the choir; the pride with which i held my little flute to my lips, and seated myself in the orchestra, to assist in a recitative which m. le maitre had composed on purpose for me; the good dinner that afterwards awaited us, and the good appetites we carried to it. this concourse of objects, strongly retraced in my memory, has charmed me a hundred time as much, or perhaps more, than ever the reality had done. i have always preserved an affection for a certain air of the 'conditor alme syderum', because one sunday in advent i heard that hymn sung on the steps of the cathedral, (according to the custom of that place) as i lay in bed before daybreak. mademoiselle merceret, madam de warrens' chambermaid, knew something of music; i shall never forget a little piece that m. le maitre made me sing with her, and which her mistress listened to with great satisfaction. in a word, every particular, even down to the servant perrine, whom the boys of the choir took such delight in teasing. the remembrance of these times of happiness and innocence frequently returning to my mind, both ravish and affect me. i lived at annecy during a year without the least reproach, giving universal satisfaction. since my departure from turin i had been guilty of no folly, committed none while under the eye of madam de warrens. she was my conductor, and ever led me right; my attachment for her became my only passion, and what proves it was not a giddy one, my heart and understanding were in unison. it is true that a single sentiment, absorbing all my faculties, put me out of a capacity of learning even music: but this was not my fault, since to the strongest inclination, i added the utmost assiduity. i was attentive and thoughtful; what could i do? nothing was wanting towards my progress that depended on me; meantime, it only required a subject that might inspire me to occasion the commission of new follies: that subject presented itself, chance arranged it, and (as will be seen hereafter) my inconsiderate head gave in to it. one evening, in the month of february, when it was very cold, being all sat round the fire, we heard some one knock at the street door. perrine took a light, went down and opened it: a young man entering, came upstairs, presented himself with an easy air, and making m. maitre a short, but well-turned compliment, announced himself as a french musician, constrained by the state of his finances to take this liberty. the hart of the good le maitre leaped at the name of a french musician, for he passionately loved both his country and profession; he therefore offered the young traveller his service--and use of his apartment, which he appeared to stand much in need of, and which he accepted without much ceremony. i observed him while he was chatting and warming himself before supper; he was short and thick, having some fault in his shape, though without any particular deformity; he had (if i may so express myself) an appearance of being hunchbacked, with flat shoulders, and i think he limped. he wore a black coat, rather worn than old, which hung in tatters, a very fine but dirty shirt, frayed ruffles; a pair of splatterdashes so large that he could have put both legs into either of them, and, to secure himself from the snow, a little hat, only fit to be carried under his arm. with this whimsical equipage, he had, however, something elegant in his manners and conversation; his countenance was expressive and agreeable, and he spoke with facility if not with modesty; in short, everything about him bore the mark of a young debauchee, who did not crave assistance like a beggar, but as a thoughtless madcap. he told us his name was venture de villeneuve, that he came from paris, had lost his way, and seeming to forget that he had announced himself for a musician, added that he was going to grenoble to see a relation that was a member of parliament. during supper we talked of music, on which subject he spoke well: he knew all the great virtuosi, all the celebrated works, all the actors, actresses, pretty women, and powerful lords; in short nothing was mentioned but what he seemed thoroughly acquainted with. though no sooner was any topic started, than by some drollery, which set every one a-laughing, he made them forget what had been said. this was on a saturday; the next day there was to be music at the cathedral: m. le maitre asked if he would sing there--"very willingly."--"what part would he chose?"--"the counter-tenor:" and immediately began speaking of other things. before he went to church they offered him his part to peruse, but he did not even look at it. this gasconade surprised le maitre --"you'll see," said he, whispering to me, "that he does not know a single note."--i replied: "i am very much afraid of him." i followed them into the church; but was extremely uneasy, and when they began, my heart beat violently, so much was i interested in his behalf. i was presently out of pain: he sung his two recitatives with all imaginable taste and judgment; and what was yet more, with a very agreeable voice. i never enjoyed a more pleasing surprise. after mass, m. venture received the highest compliments from the canons and musicians, which he answered jokingly, though with great grace. m. le maitre embraced him heartily; i did the same; he saw i was rejoiced at his success, and appeared pleased at my satisfaction. it will easily be surmised, that after having been delighted with m. bacle, who had little to attract my admiration, i should be infatuated with m. venture, who had education, wit, talents, and a knowledge of the world, and might be called an agreeable rake. this was exactly what happened, and would, i believe, have happened to any other young man in my place; especially supposing him possessed of better judgment to distinguish merit, and more propensity to be engaged by it; for venture doubtless possessed a considerable share, and one in particular, very rare at his age, namely, that of never being in haste to display his talents. it is true, he boasted of many things he did not understand, but of those he knew (which were very numerous) he said nothing, patiently waiting some occasion to display them, which he then did with ease, though without forwardness, and thus gave them more effect. as there was ever some intermission between the proofs of his various abilities, it was impossible to conjecture whether he had ever discovered all his talents. playful, giddy, inexhaustible, seducing in conversation, ever smiling, but never laughing, and repeating the rudest things in the most elegant manner--even the most modest women were astonished at what they endured from him: it was in vain for them to determine to be angry; they could not assume the appearance of it. it was extraordinary that with so many agreeable talents, in a country where they are so well understood, and so much admired, he so long remained only a musician. my attachment to m. venture, more reasonable in its cause, was also less extravagant in its effects, though more lively and durable than that i had conceived for m. bacle. i loved to see him, to hear him, all his actions appeared charming, everything he said was an oracle to me, but the enchantment did not extend far enough to disable me from quitting him. i spoke of him with transport to madam de warrens, le maitre likewise spoke in his praise, and she consented we should bring him to her house. this interview did not succeed; he thought her affected, she found him a libertine, and, alarmed that i had formed such an ill acquaintance, not only forbade me bringing him there again, but likewise painted so strongly the danger i ran with this young man, that i became a little more circumspect in giving in to the attachment; and very happily, both for my manners and wits, we were soon separated. m. le maitre, like most of his profession, loved good wine; at table he was moderate, but when busy in his closet he must drink. his maid was so well acquainted with this humor that no sooner had he prepared his paper to compose, and taken his violoncello, than the bottle and glass arrived, and was replenished from time to time: thus, without being ever absolutely intoxicated, he was usually in a state of elevation. this was really unfortunate, for he had a good heart, and was so playful that madam de warrens used to call him the kitten. unhappily, he loved his profession, labored much and drank proportionately, which injured his health, and at length soured his temper. sometimes he was gloomy and easily offended, though incapable of rudeness, or giving offence to any one, for never did he utter a harsh word, even to the boys of the choir: on the other hand, he would not suffer another to offend him, which was but just: the misfortune was, having little understanding, he did not properly discriminate, and was often angry without cause. the chapter of geneva, where so many princes and bishops formerly thought it an honor to be seated, though in exile it lost its ancient splendor, retained (without any diminution) its pride. to be admitted, you must either be a gentleman or doctor of sorbonne. if there is a pardonable pride, after that derived from personal merit, it is doubtless that arising from birth, though, in general, priests having laymen in their service treat them with sufficient haughtiness, and thus the canons behaved to poor le maitre. the chanter, in particular, who was called the abbe de vidonne, in other respects a well-behaved man, but too full of his nobility, did not always show him the attention his talents merited. m. le maitre could not bear these indignities patiently; and this year, during passion week, they had a more serious dispute than ordinary. at an institution dinner that the bishop gave the canons, and to which m. maitre was always invited, the abbe failed in some formality, adding, at the same time, some harsh words, which the other could not digest; he instantly formed the resolution to quit them the following night; nor could any consideration make him give up his design, though madam de warrens (whom he went to take leave of) spared no pains to appease him. he could not relinquish the pleasure of leaving his tyrants embarrassed for the easter feast, at which time he knew they stood in greatest need of him. he was most concerned about his music, which he wished to take with him; but this could not easily be accomplished, as it filled a large case, and was very heavy, and could not be carried under the arm. madam de warrens did what i should have done in her situation; and indeed, what i should yet do: after many useless efforts to retain him, seeing he was resolved to depart, whatever might be the event, she formed the resolution to give him every possible assistance. i must confess le maitre deserved it of her, for he was (if i may use the expression) dedicated to her service, in whatever appertained to either his art or knowledge, and the readiness with which he obliged gave a double value to his complaisance: thus she only paid back, on an essential occasion, the many favors he had been long conferring on her; though i should observe, she possessed a soul that, to fulfill such duties, had no occasion to be reminded of previous obligations. accordingly she ordered me to follow le maitre to lyons, and to continue with him as long as he might have occasion for my services. she has since avowed, that a desire of detaching me from venture had a great hand in this arrangement. she consulted claude anet about the conveyance of the above-mentioned case. he advised, that instead of hiring a beast at annecy, which would infallibly discover us, it would be better, at night, to take it to some neighboring village, and there hire an ass to carry it to seyssel, which being in the french dominions, we should have nothing to fear. this plan was adopted; we departed the same night at seven, and madam de warrens, under pretense of paying my expenses, increased the purse of poor le maitre by an addition that was very acceptable. claude anet, the gardiner, and myself, carried the case to the first village, then hired an ass, and the same night reached seyssel. i think i have already remarked that there are times in which i am so unlike myself that i might be taken for a man of a direct opposite disposition; i shall now give an example of this. m. reydelet, curate of seyssel, was canon of st. peter's, consequently known to m. le maitre, and one of the people from whom he should have taken most pains to conceal himself; my advice, on the contrary, was to present ourselves to him, and, under some pretext, entreat entertainment as if we visited him by consent of the chapter. le maitre adopted the idea, which seemed to give his revenge the appearance of satire and waggery; in short, we went boldly to reydelet, who received us very kindly. le maitre told him he was going to bellay by desire of the bishop, that he might superintend the music during the easter holidays, and that he proposed returning that way in a few days. to support this tale, i told a hundred others, so naturally that m. reydelet thought me a very agreeable youth, and treated me with great friendship and civility. we were well regaled and well lodged: m. reydelet scarcely knew how to make enough of us; and we parted the best friends in the world, with a promise to stop longer on our return. we found it difficult to refrain from laughter, or wait till we were alone to give free vent to our mirth: indeed, even now, the bare recollection of it forces a smile, for never was waggery better or more fortunately maintained. this would have made us merry during the remainder of our journey, if m. le maitre (who did not cease drinking) had not been two or three times attacked with a complaint that he afterwards became very subject to, and which resembled an epilepsy. these fits threw me into the most fearful embarrassments, from which i resolved to extricate myself with the first opportunity. according to the information given to m. reydelet, we passed our easter holidays at bellay, and though not expected there, were received by the music--master, and welcomed by every one with great pleasure. m. le maitre was of considerable note in his profession, and, indeed, merited that distinction. the music-master of bellay (who was fond of his own works) endeavored to obtain the approbation of so good a judge; for besides being a connoisseur, m. le maitre was equitable, neither a jealous, ill-natured critic, nor a servile flatterer. he was so superior to the generality of country music-masters and they were so sensible of it, that they treated him rather as their chief than a brother musician. having passed four or five days very agreeably at bellay, we departed, and continuing our journey without meeting with any accidents, except those i have just spoken of, arrived at lyons, and were lodged at notre dame de pitie. while we waited for the arrival of the before-mentioned case (which by the assistance of another lie, and the care of our good patron, m. reydelet, we had embarked on the rhone) m. le maitre went to visit his acquaintance, and among others father cato, a cordelier, who will be spoken of hereafter, and the abbe dortan, count of lyons, both of whom received him well, but afterwards betrayed him, as will be seen presently; indeed, his good fortune terminated with m. reydelet. two days after our arrival at lyons, as we passed a little street not far from our inn, le maitre was attacked by one of his fits; but it was now so violent as to give me the utmost alarm. i screamed with terror, called for help, and naming our inn, entreated some one to bear him to it, then (while the people were assembled, and busy round a man that had fallen senseless in the street) he was abandoned by the only friend on whom he could have any reasonable dependence; i seized the instant when no one heeded me, turned the corner of the street and disappeared. thanks to heaven, i have made my third painful confession; if many such remained, i should certainly abandon the work i have undertaken. of all the incidents i have yet related, a few traces are remaining in the places where i have lived; but what i have to relate in the following book is almost entirely unknown; these are the greatest extravagancies of my life, and it is happy they had not worse conclusions. my head, (if i may use the simile) screwed up to the pitch of an instrument it did not naturally accord with, had lost its diapason; in time it returned to it again, when i discontinued my follies, or at least gave in to those more consonant to my disposition. this epoch of my youth i am least able to recollect, nothing having passed sufficiently interesting to influence my heart, to make me clearly retrace the remembrance. in so many successive changes, it is difficult not to make some transpositions of time or place. i write absolutely from memory, without notes or materials to help my recollection. some events are as fresh in my idea as if they had recently happened, but there are certain chasms which i cannot fill up but by the aid of recital, as confused as the remaining traces of those to which they refer. it is possible, therefore, that i may have erred in trifles, and perhaps shall again, but in every matter of importance i can answer that the account is faithfully exact, and with the same veracity the reader may depend i shall be careful to continue it. my resolution was soon taken after quitting le maitre; i set out immediately for annecy. the cause and mystery of our departure had interested me for the security of our retreat: this interest, which entirely employed my thoughts for some days, had banished every other idea; but no sooner was i secure and in tranquility, than my predominant sentiment regained its place. nothing flattered, nothing tempted me, i had no wish but to return to madam de warrens; the tenderness and truth of my attachment to her had rooted from my heart every imaginable project, and all the follies of ambition, i conceived no happiness but living near her, nor could i take a step without feeling that the distance between us was increased. i returned, therefore, as soon as possible, with such speed, and with my spirits in such a state of agitation, that though i recall with pleasure all my other travels, i have not the least recollection of this, only remembering my leaving lyons and reaching annecy. let anyone judge whether this last event can have slipped my memory, when informed that on my arrival i found madam de warrens was not there, having set out for paris. i was never well informed of the motives of this journey. i am certain she would have told me had i asked her, but never was man less curious to learn the secrets of his friend. my heart is ever so entirely filled with the present, or with past pleasures, which become a principal part of my enjoyment, that there is not a chink or corner for curiosity to enter. all that i conceive from what i heard of it, is, that in the revolution caused at turin by the abdication of the king of sardinia, she feared being forgotten, and was willing by favor of the intrigues of m. d' aubonne to seek the same advantage in the court of france, where she has often told me she should, have preferred it, as the multiplicity of business there prevents your conduct from being so closely inspected. if this was her business, it is astonishing that on her return she was not ill received; be that as it will, she continued to enjoy her allowance without any interruption. many people imagined she was charged with some secret commission, either by the bishop, who then had business at the court of france, where he himself was soon after obliged to go, or some one yet more powerful, who knew how to insure her a gracious reception at her return. if this was the case, it is certain the ambassadress was not ill chosen, since being young and handsome, she had all the necessary qualifications to succeed in a negotiation. cyrano de bergerac a play in five acts by edmond rostand translated from the french by gladys thomas and mary f. guillemard the characters cyrano de bergerac christian de neuvillette count de guiche ragueneau le bret carbon de castel-jaloux the cadets ligniere de valvert a marquis second marquis third marquis montfleury bellerose jodelet cuigy brissaille the doorkeeper a lackey a second lackey a bore a musketeer another a spanish officer a porter a burgher his son a pickpocket a spectator a guardsman bertrand the fifer a monk two musicians the poets the pastry cooks roxane sister martha lise the buffet-girl mother marguerite the duenna sister claire an actress the pages the shop-girl the crowd, troopers, burghers (male and female), marquises, musketeers, pickpockets, pastry-cooks, poets, gascons cadets, actors (male and female), violinists, pages, children, soldiers, spaniards, spectators (male and female), precieuses, nuns, etc. act i. a representation at the hotel de bourgogne. the hall of the hotel de bourgogne, in . a sort of tennis-court arranged and decorated for a theatrical performance. the hall is oblong and seen obliquely, so that one of its sides forms the back of the right foreground, and meeting the left background makes an angle with the stage, which is partly visible. on both sides of the stage are benches. the curtain is composed of two tapestries which can be drawn aside. above a harlequin's mantle are the royal arms. there are broad steps from the stage to the hall; on either side of these steps are the places for the violinists. footlights. two rows, one over the other, of side galleries: the highest divided into boxes. no seats in the pit of the hall, which is the real stage of the theater; at the back of the pit, i.e., on the right foreground, some benches forming steps, and underneath, a staircase which leads to the upper seats. an improvised buffet ornamented with little lusters, vases, glasses, plates of tarts, cakes, bottles, etc. the entrance to the theater is in the center of the background, under the gallery of the boxes. a large door, half open to let in the spectators. on the panels of this door, in different corners, and over the buffet, red placards bearing the words, 'la clorise.' at the rising of the curtain the hall is in semi-darkness, and still empty. the lusters are lowered in the middle of the pit ready to be lighted. scene .i. the public, arriving by degrees. troopers, burghers, lackeys, pages, a pickpocket, the doorkeeper, etc., followed by the marquises. cuigy, brissaille, the buffet-girl, the violinists, etc. (a confusion of loud voices is heard outside the door. a trooper enters hastily.) the doorkeeper (following him): hollo! you there! your money! the trooper: i enter gratis. the doorkeeper: why? the trooper: why? i am of the king's household cavalry, 'faith! the doorkeeper (to another trooper who enters): and you? second trooper: i pay nothing. the doorkeeper: how so? second trooper: i am a musketeer. first trooper (to the second): the play will not begin till two. the pit is empty. come, a bout with the foils to pass the time. (they fence with the foils they have brought.) a lackey (entering): pst. . .flanquin. . .! another (already there): champagne?. . . the first (showing him cards and dice which he takes from his doublet): see, here be cards and dice. (he seats himself on the floor): let's play. the second (doing the same): good; i am with you, villain! first lackey (taking from his pocket a candle-end, which he lights, and sticks on the floor): i made free to provide myself with light at my master's expense! a guardsman (to a shop-girl who advances): 'twas prettily done to come before the lights were lit! (he takes her round the waist.) one of the fencers (receiving a thrust): a hit! one of the card-players: clubs! the guardsman (following the girl): a kiss! the shop-girl (struggling to free herself): they're looking! the guardsman (drawing her to a dark corner): no fear! no one can see! a man (sitting on the ground with others, who have brought their provisions): by coming early, one can eat in comfort. a burgher (conducting his son): let us sit here, son. a card-player: triple ace! a man (taking a bottle from under his cloak, and also seating himself on the floor): a tippler may well quaff his burgundy (he drinks): in the burgundy hotel! the burgher (to his son): 'faith! a man might think he had fallen in a bad house here! (he points with his cane to the drunkard): what with topers! (one of the fencers in breaking off, jostles him): brawlers! (he stumbles into the midst of the card-players): gamblers! the guardsman (behind him, still teasing the shop-girl): come, one kiss! the burgher (hurriedly pulling his son away): by all the holies! and this, my boy, is the theater where they played rotrou erewhile. the young man: ay, and corneille! a troop of pages (hand-in-hand, enter dancing the farandole, and singing): tra' a la, la, la, la, la, la, la, lere. . . the doorkeeper (sternly, to the pages): you pages there, none of your tricks!. . . first page (with an air of wounded dignity): oh, sir!--such a suspicion!. . . (briskly, to the second page, the moment the doorkeeper's back is turned): have you string? the second: ay, and a fish-hook with it. first page: we can angle for wigs, then, up there i' th' gallery. a pickpocket (gathering about him some evil-looking youths): hark ye, young cut-purses, lend an ear, while i give you your first lesson in thieving. second page (calling up to others in the top galleries): you there! have you peashooters? third page (from above): ay, have we, and peas withal! (he blows, and peppers them with peas.) the young man (to his father): what piece do they give us? the burgher: 'clorise.' the young man: who may the author be? the burgher: master balthazar baro. it is a play!. . . (he goes arm-in-arm with his son.) the pickpocket (to his pupils): have a care, above all, of the lace knee-ruffles--cut them off! a spectator (to another, showing him a corner in the gallery): i was up there, the first night of the 'cid.' the pickpocket (making with his fingers the gesture of filching): thus for watches-- the burgher (coming down again with his son): ah! you shall presently see some renowned actors. . . the pickpocket (making the gestures of one who pulls something stealthily, with little jerks): thus for handkerchiefs-- the burgher: montfleury. . . some one (shouting from the upper gallery): light up, below there! the burgher: . . .bellerose, l'epy, la beaupre, jodelet! a page (in the pit): here comes the buffet-girl! the buffet-girl (taking her place behind the buffet): oranges, milk, raspberry-water, cedar bitters! (a hubbub outside the door is heard.) a falsetto voice: make place, brutes! a lackey (astonished): the marquises!--in the pit?. . . another lackey: oh! only for a minute or two! (enter a band of young marquises.) a marquis (seeing that the hall is half empty): what now! so we make our entrance like a pack of woolen-drapers! peaceably, without disturbing the folk, or treading on their toes!--oh, fie! fie! (recognizing some other gentlemen who have entered a little before him): cuigy! brissaille! (greetings and embraces.) cuigy: true to our word!. . .troth, we are here before the candles are lit. the marquis: ay, indeed! enough! i am of an ill humor. another: nay, nay, marquis! see, for your consolation, they are coming to light up! all the audience (welcoming the entrance of the lighter): ah!. . . (they form in groups round the lusters as they are lit. some people have taken their seats in the galleries. ligniere, a distinguished-looking roue, with disordered shirt-front arm-in-arm with christian de neuvillette. christian, who is dressed elegantly, but rather behind the fashion, seems preoccupied, and keeps looking at the boxes.) scene .ii. the same. christian, ligniere, then ragueneau and le bret. cuigy: ligniere! brissaille (laughing): not drunk as yet? ligniere (aside to christian): i may introduce you? (christian nods in assent): baron de neuvillette. (bows.) the audience (applauding as the first luster is lighted and drawn up): ah! cuigy (to brissaille, looking at christian): 'tis a pretty fellow! first marquis (who has overheard): pooh! ligniere (introducing them to christian): my lords de cuigy. de brissaille. . . christian (bowing): delighted!. . . first marquis (to second): he is not ill to look at, but certes, he is not costumed in the latest mode. ligniere (to cuigy): this gentleman comes from touraine. christian: yes, i have scarce been twenty days in paris; tomorrow i join the guards, in the cadets. first marquis (watching the people who are coming into the boxes): there is the wife of the chief-justice. the buffet-girl: oranges, milk. . . the violinists (tuning up): la--la-- cuigy (to christian, pointing to the hall, which is filling fast): 'tis crowded. christian: yes, indeed. first marquis: all the great world! (they recognize and name the different elegantly dressed ladies who enter the boxes, bowing low to them. the ladies send smiles in answer.) second marquis: madame de guemenee. cuigy: madame de bois-dauphin. first marquis: adored by us all! brissaille: madame de chavigny. . . second marquis: who sports with our poor hearts!. . . ligniere: ha! so monsieur de corneille has come back from rouen! the young man (to his father): is the academy here? the burgher: oh, ay, i see several of them. there is boudu, boissat, and cureau de la chambre, porcheres, colomby, bourzeys, bourdon, arbaud. . .all names that will live! 'tis fine! first marquis: attention! here come our precieuses; barthenoide, urimedonte, cassandace, felixerie. . . second marquis: ah! how exquisite their fancy names are! do you know them all, marquis? first marquis: ay, marquis, i do, every one! ligniere (drawing christian aside): friend, i but came here to give you pleasure. the lady comes not. i will betake me again to my pet vice. christian (persuasively): no, no! you, who are ballad-maker to court and city alike, can tell me better than any who the lady is for whom i die of love. stay yet awhile. the first violin (striking his bow on the desk): gentlemen violinists! (he raises his bow.) the buffet-girl: macaroons, lemon-drink. . . (the violins begin to play.) christian: ah! i fear me she is coquettish, and over nice and fastidious! i, who am so poor of wit, how dare i speak to her--how address her? this language that they speak to-day--ay, and write--confounds me; i am but an honest soldier, and timid withal. she has ever her place, there, on the right--the empty box, see you! ligniere (making as if to go): i must go. christian (detaining him): nay, stay. ligniere: i cannot. d'assoucy waits me at the tavern, and here one dies of thirst. the buffet-girl (passing before him with a tray): orange drink? ligniere: ugh! the buffet-girl: milk? ligniere: pah! the buffet-girl: rivesalte? ligniere: stay. (to christian): i will remain awhile.--let me taste this rivesalte. (he sits by the buffet; the girl pours some out for him.) cries (from all the audience, at the entrance of a plump little man, joyously excited): ah! ragueneau! ligniere (to christian): 'tis the famous tavern-keeper ragueneau. ragueneau (dressed in the sunday clothes of a pastry-cook, going up quickly to ligniere): sir, have you seen monsieur de cyrano? ligniere (introducing him to christian): the pastry-cook of the actors and the poets! ragueneau (overcome): you do me too great honor. . . ligniere: nay, hold your peace, maecenas that you are! ragueneau: true, these gentlemen employ me. . . ligniere: on credit! he is himself a poet of a pretty talent. . . ragueneau: so they tell me. ligniere: --mad after poetry! ragueneau: 'tis true that, for a little ode. . . ligniere: you give a tart. . . ragueneau: oh!--a tartlet! ligniere: brave fellow! he would fain fain excuse himself! --and for a triolet, now, did you not give in exchange. . . ragueneau: some little rolls! ligniere (severely): they were milk-rolls! and as for the theater, which you love? ragueneau: oh! to distraction! ligniere: how pay you your tickets, ha?--with cakes. your place, to-night, come tell me in my ear, what did it cost you? ragueneau: four custards, and fifteen cream-puffs. (he looks around on all sides): monsieur de cyrano is not here? 'tis strange. ligniere: why so? ragueneau: montfleury plays! ligniere: ay, 'tis true that that old wine-barrel is to take phedon's part to-night; but what matter is that to cyrano? ragueneau: how? know you not? he has got a hot hate for montfleury, and so!--has forbid him strictly to show his face on the stage for one whole month. ligniere (drinking his fourth glass): well? ragueneau: montfleury will play! cuigy: he can not hinder that. ragueneau: oh! oh! that i have come to see! first marquis: who is this cyrano? cuigy: a fellow well skilled in all tricks of fence. second marquis: is he of noble birth? cuigy: ay, noble enough. he is a cadet in the guards. (pointing to a gentleman who is going up and down the hall as if searching for some one): but 'tis his friend le bret, yonder, who can best tell you. (he calls him): le bret! (le bret comes towards them): seek you for de bergerac? le bret: ay, i am uneasy. . . cuigy: is it not true that he is the strangest of men? le bret (tenderly): true, that he is the choicest of earthly beings! ragueneau: poet! cuigy: soldier! brissaille: philosopher! le bret: musician! ligniere: and of how fantastic a presence! rageneau: marry, 'twould puzzle even our grim painter philippe de champaigne to portray him! methinks, whimsical, wild, comical as he is, only jacques callot, now dead and gone, had succeeded better, and had made of him the maddest fighter of all his visored crew--with his triple-plumed beaver and six-pointed doublet--the sword-point sticking up 'neath his mantle like an insolent cocktail! he's prouder than all the fierce artabans of whom gascony has ever been and will ever be the prolific alma mater! above his toby ruff he carries a nose!--ah, good my lords, what a nose is his! when one sees it one is fain to cry aloud, 'nay! 'tis too much! he plays a joke on us!' then one laughs, says 'he will anon take it off.' but no!--monsieur de bergerac always keeps it on. le bret (throwing back his head): he keeps it on--and cleaves in two any man who dares remark on it! ragueneau (proudly): his sword--'tis one half of the fates' shears! first marquis (shrugging his shoulders): he will not come! ragueneau: i say he will! and i wager a fowl--a la ragueneau. the marquis (laughing): good! (murmurs of admiration in hall. roxane has just appeared in her box. she seats herself in front, the duenna at the back. christian, who is paying the buffet-girl, does not see her entrance.) second marquis (with little cries of joy): ah, gentlemen! she is fearfully--terribly--ravishing! first marquis: when one looks at her one thinks of a peach smiling at a strawberry! second marquis: and what freshness! a man approaching her too near might chance to get a bad chill at the heart! christian (raising his head, sees roxane, and catches ligniere by the arm): 'tis she! ligniere: ah! is it she? christian: ay, tell me quick--i am afraid. ligniere (tasting his rivesalte in sips): magdaleine robin--roxane, so called! a subtle wit--a precieuse. christian: woe is me! ligniere: free. an orphan. the cousin of cyrano, of whom we were now speaking. (at this moment an elegant nobleman, with blue ribbon across his breast, enters the box, and talks with roxane, standing.) christian (starting): who is yonder man? ligniere (who is becoming tipsy, winking at him): ha! ha! count de guiche. enamored of her. but wedded to the niece of armand de richelieu. would fain marry roxane to a certain sorry fellow, one monsieur de valvert, a viscount--and--accommodating! she will none of that bargain; but de guiche is powerful, and can persecute the daughter of a plain untitled gentleman. more by token, i myself have exposed this cunning plan of his to the world, in a song which. . .ho! he must rage at me! the end hit home. . .listen! (he gets up staggering, and raises his glass, ready to sing.) christian: no. good-night. ligniere: where go you? christian: to monsieur de valvert! ligniere: have a care! it is he who will kill you (showing him roxane by a look): stay where you are--she is looking at you. christian: it is true! (he stands looking at her. the group of pickpockets seeing him thus, head in air and open-mouthed, draw near to him.) ligniere: 'tis i who am going. i am athirst! and they expect me--in the taverns! (he goes out, reeling.) le bret (who has been all round the hall, coming back to ragueneau reassured): no sign of cyrano. ragueneau (incredulously): all the same. . . le bret: a hope is left to me--that he has not seen the playbill! the audience: begin, begin! scene .iii. the same, all but ligniere. de guiche, valvert, then montfleury. a marquis (watching de guiche, who comes down from roxane's box, and crosses the pit surrounded by obsequious noblemen, among them the viscount de valvert): he pays a fine court, your de guiche! another: faugh!. . .another gascon! the first: ay, but the cold, supple gascon--that is the stuff success is made of! believe me, we had best make our bow to him. (they go toward de guiche.) second marquis: what fine ribbons! how call you the color, count de guiche? 'kiss me, my darling,' or 'timid fawn?' de guiche: 'tis the color called 'sick spaniard.' first marquis: 'faith! the color speaks truth, for, thanks to your valor, things will soon go ill for spain in flanders. de guiche: i go on the stage! will you come? (he goes toward the stage, followed by the marquises and gentlemen. turning, he calls): come you valvert! christian (who is watching and listening, starts on hearing this name): the viscount! ah! i will throw full in his face my. . . (he puts his hand in his pocket, and finds there the hand of a pickpocket who is about to rob him. he turns round): hey? the pickpocket: oh! christian (holding him tightly): i was looking for a glove. the pickpocket (smiling piteously): and you find a hand. (changing his tone, quickly and in a whisper): let me but go, and i will deliver you a secret. christian (still holding him): what is it? the pickpocket: ligniere. . .he who has just left you. . . christian (same play): well? the pickpocket: his life is in peril. a song writ by him has given offense in high places-- and a hundred men--i am of them--are posted to-night. . . christian: a hundred men! by whom posted? the pickpocket: i may not say--a secret. . . christian (shrugging his shoulders): oh! the pickpocket (with great dignity): . . .of the profession. christian: where are they posted? the pickpocket: at the porte de nesle. on his way homeward. warn him. christian (letting go of his wrists): but where can i find him? the pickpocket: run round to all the taverns--the golden wine press, the pine cone, the belt that bursts, the two torches, the three funnels, and at each leave a word that shall put him on his guard. christian: good--i fly! ah, the scoundrels! a hundred men 'gainst one! (looking lovingly at roxane): ah, to leave her!. . . (looking with rage at valvert): and him!. . .but save ligniere i must! (he hurries out. de guiche, the viscount, the marquises, have all disappeared behind the curtain to take their places on the benches placed on the stage. the pit is quite full; the galleries and boxes are also crowded.) the audience: begin! a burgher (whose wig is drawn up on the end of a string by a page in the upper gallery): my wig! cries of delight: he is bald! bravo, pages--ha! ha! ha!. . . the burgher (furious, shaking his fist): young villain! laughter and cries (beginning very loud, and dying gradually away): ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! (total silence.) le bret (astonished): what means this sudden silence?. . . (a spectator says something to him in a low voice): is't true? the spectator: i have just heard it on good authority. murmurs (spreading through the hall): hush! is it he? no! ay, i say! in the box with the bars in front! the cardinal! the cardinal! the cardinal! a page: the devil! we shall have to behave ourselves. . . (a knock is heard upon the stage. every one is motionless. a pause.) the voice of a marquis (in the silence, behind the curtain): snuff that candle! another marquis (putting his head through the opening in the curtain): a chair! (a chair is passed from hand to hand, over the heads of the spectators. the marquis takes it and disappears, after blowing some kisses to the boxes.) a spectator: silence! (three knocks are heard on the stage. the curtain opens in the centre tableau. the marquises in insolent attitudes seated on each side of the stage. the scene represents a pastoral landscape. four little lusters light the stage; the violins play softly.) le bret (in a low voice to ragueneau): montfleury comes on the scene? ragueneau (also in a low voice): ay, 'tis he who begins. le bret: cyrano is not here. ragueneau: i have lost my wager. le bret: 'tis all the better! (an air on the drone-pipes is heard, and montfleury enters, enormously stout, in an arcadian shepherd's dress, a hat wreathed with roses drooping over one ear, blowing into a ribboned drone pipe.) the pit (applauding): bravo, montfleury! montfleury! montfleury (after bowing low, begins the part of phedon): 'heureux qui loin des cours, dans un lieu solitaire, se prescrit a soi-meme un exil volontaire, et qui, lorsque zephire a souffle sur les bois. . .' a voice (from the middle of the pit): villain! did i not forbid you to show your face here for month? (general stupor. every one turns round. murmurs.) different voices: hey?--what?--what is't?. . . (the people stand up in the boxes to look.) cuigy: 'tis he! le bret (terrified): cyrano! the voice: king of clowns! leave the stage this instant! all the audience (indignantly): oh! montfleury: but. . . the voice: do you dare defy me? different voices (from the pit and the boxes): peace! enough!--play on, montfleury--fear nothing! montfleury (in a trembling voice): 'heureux qui loin des cours, dans un lieu sol--' the voice (more fiercely): well! chief of all the blackguards, must i come and give you a taste of my cane? (a hand holding a cane starts up over the heads of the spectators.) montfleury (in a voice that trembles more and more): 'heureux qui. . .' (the cane is shaken.) the voice: off the stage! the pit: oh! montfleury (choking): 'heureux qui loin des cours. . .' cyrano (appearing suddenly in the pit, standing on a chair, his arms crossed, his beaver cocked fiercely, his mustache bristling, his nose terrible to see): ah! i shall be angry in a minute!. . . (sensation.) scene .iv. the same. cyrano, then bellerose, jodelet. montfleury (to the marquises): come to my help, my lords! a marquis (carelessly): go on! go on! cyrano: fat man, take warning! if you go on, i shall feel myself constrained to cuff your face! the marquis: have done! cyrano: and if these lords hold not their tongue shall feel constrained to make them taste my cane! all the marquises (rising): enough!. . .montfleury. . . cyrano: if he goes not quick i will cut off his ears and slit him up! a voice: but. . . cyrano: out he goes! another voice: yet. . . cyrano: is he not gone yet? (he makes the gesture of turning up his cuffs): good! i shall mount the stage now, buffet-wise, to carve this fine italian sausage--thus! montfleury (trying to be dignified): you outrage thalia in insulting me! cyrano (very politely): if that muse, sir, who knows you not at all, could claim acquaintance with you--oh, believe (seeing how urn-like, fat, and slow you are) that she would make you taste her buskin's sole! the pit: montfleury! montfleury! come--baro's play! cyrano (to those who are calling out): i pray you have a care! if you go on my scabbard soon will render up its blade! (the circle round him widens.) the crowd (drawing back): take care! cyrano (to montfleury): leave the stage! the crowd (coming near and grumbling): oh!-- cyrano: did some one speak? (they draw back again.) a voice (singing at the back): monsieur de cyrano displays his tyrannies: a fig for tyrants! what, ho! come! play us 'la clorise!' all the pit (singing): 'la clorise!' 'la clorise!'. . . cyrano: let me but hear once more that foolish rhyme, i slaughter every man of you. a burgher: oh! samson? cyrano: yes samson! will you lend your jawbone, sir? a lady (in the boxes): outrageous! a lord: scandalous! a burgher: 'tis most annoying! a page: fair good sport! the pit: kss!--montfleury. . .cyrano! cyrano: silence! the pit (wildly excited): ho-o-o-o-h! quack! cock-a-doodle-doo! cyrano: i order-- a page: miow! cyrano: i order silence, all! and challenge the whole pit collectively!-- i write your names!--approach, young heroes, here! each in his turn! i cry the numbers out!-- now which of you will come to ope the lists? you, sir? no! you? no! the first duellist shall be dispatched by me with honors due! let all who long for death hold up their hands! (a silence): modest? you fear to see my naked blade? not one name?--not one hand?--good, i proceed! (turning toward the stage, where montfleury waits in an agony): the theater's too full, congested,--i would clear it out. . .if not. . . (puts his hand on his sword): the knife must act! montfleury: i. . . cyrano (leaves his chair, and settles himself in the middle of the circle which has formed): i will clap my hands thrice, thus--full moon! at the third clap, eclipse yourself! the pit (amused): ah! cyrano (clapping his hands): one! montfleury: i. . . a voice (in the boxes): stay! the pit: he stays. . .he goes. . .he stays. . . montfleury: i think. . .gentlemen,. . . cyrano: two! montfleury: i think 'twere wisest. . . cyrano: three! (montfleury disappears as through a trap. tempest of laughs, whistling cries, etc.) the whole house: coward. . .come back! cyrano (delighted, sits back in his chair, arms crossed): come back an if you dare! a burgher: call for the orator! (bellerose comes forward and bows.) the boxes: ah! here's bellerose! bellerose (elegantly): my noble lords. . . the pit: no! no! jodelet! jodelet (advancing, speaking through his nose): calves! the pit: ah! bravo! good! go on! jodelet: no bravos, sirs! the fat tragedian whom you all love felt. . . the pit: coward! jodelet: . . .was obliged to go. the pit: come back! some: no! others: yes! a young man (to cyrano): but pray, sir, for what reason, say, hate you montfleury? cyrano (graciously, still seated): youthful gander, know i have two reasons--either will suffice. primo. an actor villainous! who mouths, and heaves up like a bucket from a well the verses that should, bird-like, fly! secundo-- that is my secret. . . the old burgher (behind him): shameful! you deprive us of the 'clorise!' i must insist. . . cyrano (turning his chair toward the burgher, respectfully): old mule! the verses of old baro are not worth a doit! i'm glad to interrupt. . . the precieuses (in the boxes): our baro!-- my dear! how dares he venture!. . . cyrano (turning his chair toward the boxes gallantly): fairest ones, radiate, bloom, hold to our lips the cup of dreams intoxicating, hebe-like! or, when death strikes, charm death with your sweet smiles; inspire our verse, but--criticise it not! bellerose: we must give back the entrance fees! cyrano (turning his chair toward the stage): bellerose, you make the first intelligent remark! would i rend thespis' sacred mantle? nay! (he rises and throws a bag on the stage): catch then the purse i throw, and hold your peace! the house (dazzled): ah! oh! jodelet (catching the purse dexterously and weighing it): at this price, you've authority to come each night, and stop 'clorise,' sir! the pit: ho!. . .ho! ho!. . . jodelet: e'en if you chase us in a pack!. . . bellerose: clear out the hall!. . . jodelet: get you all gone at once! (the people begin to go out, while cyrano looks on with satisfaction. but the crowd soon stop on hearing the following scene, and remain where they are. the women, who, with their mantles on, are already standing up in the boxes, stop to listen, and finally reseat themselves.) le bret (to cyrano): 'tis mad!. . . a bore (coming up to cyrano): the actor montfleury! 'tis shameful! why, he's protected by the duke of candal! have you a patron? cyrano: no! the bore: no patron?. . . cyrano: none! the bore: what! no great lord to shield you with his name? cyrano (irritated): no, i have told you twice! must i repeat? no! no protector. . . (his hand on his sword): a protectress. . .here! the bore: but you must leave the town? cyrano: well, that depends! the bore: the duke has a long arm! cyrano: but not so long as mine, when it is lengthened out. . . (shows his sword): as thus! the bore: you think not to contend? cyrano: 'tis my idea! the bore: but. . . cyrano: show your heels! now! the bore: but i. . . cyrano: or tell me why you stare so at my nose! the bore (staggered): i. . . cyrano (walking straight up to him): well, what is there strange? the bore (drawing back): your grace mistakes! cyrano: how now? is't soft and dangling, like a trunk?. . . the bore (same play): i never. . . cyrano: is it crook'd, like an owl's beak? the bore: i. . . cyrano: do you see a wart upon the tip? the bore: nay. . . cyrano: or a fly, that takes the air there? what is there to stare at? the bore: oh. . . cyrano: what do you see? the bore: but i was careful not to look--knew better. cyrano: and why not look at it, an if you please? the bore: i was. . . cyrano: oh! it disgusts you! the bore: sir! cyrano: its hue unwholesome seems to you? the bore: sir! cyrano: or its shape? the bore: no, on the contrary!. . . cyrano: why then that air disparaging?--perchance you think it large? the bore (stammering): no, small, quite small--minute! cyrano: minute! what now? accuse me of a thing ridiculous! small--my nose? the bore: heaven help me! cyrano: 'tis enormous! old flathead, empty-headed meddler, know that i am proud possessing such appendice. 'tis well known, a big nose is indicative of a soul affable, and kind, and courteous, liberal, brave, just like myself, and such as you can never dare to dream yourself, rascal contemptible! for that witless face that my hand soon will come to cuff--is all as empty. . . (he cuffs him.) the bore: aie! cyrano: --of pride, of aspiration, of feeling, poetry--of godlike spark of all that appertains to my big nose, (he turns him by the shoulders, suiting the action to the word): as. . .what my boot will shortly come and kick! the bore (running away): help! call the guard! cyrano: take notice, boobies all, who find my visage's center ornament a thing to jest at--that it is my wont-- an if the jester's noble--ere we part to let him taste my steel, and not my boot! de guiche (who, with the marquises, has come down from the stage): but he becomes a nuisance! the viscount de valvert (shrugging his shoulders): swaggerer! de guiche: will no one put him down?. . . the viscount: no one? but wait! i'll treat him to. . .one of my quips!. . .see here!. . . (he goes up to cyrano, who is watching him, and with a conceited air): sir, your nose is. . .hmm. . .it is. . .very big! cyrano (gravely): very! the viscount (laughing): ha! cyrano (imperturbably): is that all?. . . the viscount: what do you mean? cyrano: ah no! young blade! that was a trifle short! you might have said at least a hundred things by varying the tone. . .like this, suppose,. . . aggressive: 'sir, if i had such a nose i'd amputate it!' friendly: 'when you sup it must annoy you, dipping in your cup; you need a drinking-bowl of special shape!' descriptive: ''tis a rock!. . .a peak!. . .a cape! --a cape, forsooth! 'tis a peninsular!' curious: 'how serves that oblong capsular? for scissor-sheath? or pot to hold your ink?' gracious: 'you love the little birds, i think? i see you've managed with a fond research to find their tiny claws a roomy perch!' truculent: 'when you smoke your pipe. . .suppose that the tobacco-smoke spouts from your nose-- do not the neighbors, as the fumes rise higher, cry terror-struck: "the chimney is afire"?' considerate: 'take care,. . .your head bowed low by such a weight. . .lest head o'er heels you go!' tender: 'pray get a small umbrella made, lest its bright color in the sun should fade!' pedantic: 'that beast aristophanes names hippocamelelephantoles must have possessed just such a solid lump of flesh and bone, beneath his forehead's bump!' cavalier: 'the last fashion, friend, that hook? to hang your hat on? 'tis a useful crook!' emphatic: 'no wind, o majestic nose, can give thee cold!--save when the mistral blows!' dramatic: 'when it bleeds, what a red sea!' admiring: 'sign for a perfumery!' lyric: 'is this a conch?. . .a triton you?' simple: 'when is the monument on view?' rustic: 'that thing a nose? marry-come-up! 'tis a dwarf pumpkin, or a prize turnip!' military: 'point against cavalry!' practical: 'put it in a lottery! assuredly 'twould be the biggest prize!' or. . .parodying pyramus' sighs. . . 'behold the nose that mars the harmony of its master's phiz! blushing its treachery!' --such, my dear sir, is what you might have said, had you of wit or letters the least jot: but, o most lamentable man!--of wit you never had an atom, and of letters you have three letters only!--they spell ass! and--had you had the necessary wit, to serve me all the pleasantries i quote before this noble audience. . .e'en so, you would not have been let to utter one-- nay, not the half or quarter of such jest! i take them from myself all in good part, but not from any other man that breathes! de guiche (trying to draw away the dismayed viscount): come away, viscount! the viscount (choking with rage): hear his arrogance! a country lout who. . .who. . .has got no gloves! who goes out without sleeve-knots, ribbons, lace! cyrano: true; all my elegances are within. i do not prank myself out, puppy-like; my toilet is more thorough, if less gay; i would not sally forth--a half-washed-out affront upon my cheek--a conscience yellow-eyed, bilious, from its sodden sleep, a ruffled honor,. . .scruples grimed and dull! i show no bravery of shining gems. truth, independence, are my fluttering plumes. 'tis not my form i lace to make me slim, but brace my soul with efforts as with stays, covered with exploits, not with ribbon-knots, my spirit bristling high like your mustaches, i, traversing the crowds and chattering groups make truth ring bravely out like clash of spurs! the viscount: but, sir. . . cyrano: i wear no gloves? and what of that? i had one,. . .remnant of an old worn pair, and, knowing not what else to do with it, i threw it in the face of. . .some young fool. the viscount: base scoundrel! rascally flat-footed lout! cyrano (taking off his hat, and bowing as if the viscount had introduced himself): ah?. . .and i, cyrano savinien hercule de bergerac (laughter.) the viscount (angrily): buffoon! cyrano (calling out as if he had been seized with the cramp): aie! aie! the viscount (who was going away, turns back): what on earth is the fellow saying now? cyrano (with grimaces of pain): it must be moved--it's getting stiff, i vow, --this comes of leaving it in idleness! aie!. . . the viscount: what ails you? cyrano: the cramp! cramp in my sword! the viscount (drawing his sword): good! cyrano: you shall feel a charming little stroke! the viscount (contemptuously): poet!. . . cyrano: ay, poet, sir! in proof of which, while we fence, presto! all extempore i will compose a ballade. the viscount: a ballade? cyrano: belike you know not what a ballade is. the viscount: but. . . cyrano (reciting, as if repeating a lesson): know then that the ballade should contain three eight-versed couplets. . . the viscount (stamping): oh! cyrano (still reciting): and an envoi of four lines. . . the viscount: you. . . cyrano: i'll make one while we fight; and touch you at the final line. the viscount: no! cyrano: no? (declaiming): the duel in hotel of burgundy--fought by de bergerac and a good-for-naught! the viscount: what may that be, an if you please? cyrano: the title. the house (in great excitement): give room!--good sport!--make place!--fair play!--no noise! (tableau. a circle of curious spectators in the pit; the marquises and officers mingled with the common people; the pages climbing on each other's shoulders to see better. all the women standing up in the boxes. to the right, de guiche and his retinue. left, le bret, ragueneau, cyrano, etc.) cyrano (shutting his eyes for a second): wait while i choose my rhymes. . .i have them now! (he suits the action to each word): i gayly doff my beaver low, and, freeing hand and heel, my heavy mantle off i throw, and i draw my polished steel; graceful as phoebus, round i wheel, alert as scaramouch, a word in your ear, sir spark, i steal-- at the envoi's end, i touch! (they engage): better for you had you lain low; where skewer my cock? in the heel?-- in the heart, your ribbon blue below?-- in the hip, and make you kneel? ho for the music of clashing steel! --what now?--a hit? not much! 'twill be in the paunch the stroke i steal, when, at the envoi, i touch. oh, for a rhyme, a rhyme in o?-- you wriggle, starch-white, my eel? a rhyme! a rhyme! the white feather you show! tac! i parry the point of your steel; --the point you hoped to make me feel; i open the line, now clutch your spit, sir scullion--slow your zeal! at the envoi's end, i touch. (he declaims solemnly): envoi. prince, pray heaven for your soul's weal! i move a pace--lo, such! and such! cut over--feint! (thrusting): what ho! you reel? (the viscount staggers. cyrano salutes): at the envoi's end, i touch! (acclamations. applause in the boxes. flowers and handkerchiefs are thrown down. the officers surround cyrano, congratulating him. ragueneau dances for joy. le bret is happy, but anxious. the viscount's friends hold him up and bear him away.) the crowd (with one long shout): ah! a trooper: 'tis superb! a woman: a pretty stroke! ragueneau: a marvel! a marquis: a novelty! le bret: o madman! the crowd (presses round cyrano. chorus of): compliments! bravo! let me congratulate!. . .quite unsurpassed!. . . a woman's voice: there is a hero for you!. . . a musketeer (advancing to cyrano with outstretched hand): sir, permit; naught could be finer--i'm a judge i think; i stamped, i' faith!--to show my admiration! (he goes away.) cyrano (to cuigy): who is that gentleman? cuigy: why--d'artagnan! le bret (to cyrano, taking his arm): a word with you!. . . cyrano: wait; let the rabble go!. . . (to bellerose): may i stay? bellerose (respectfully): without doubt! (cries are heard outside.) jodelet (who has looked out): they hoot montfleury! bellerose (solemnly): sic transit!. . . (to the porters): sweep--close all, but leave the lights. we sup, but later on we must return, for a rehearsal of to-morrow's farce. (jodelet and bellerose go out, bowing low to cyrano.) the porter (to cyrano): you do not dine, sir? cyrano: no. (the porter goes out.) le bret: because? cyrano (proudly): because. . . (changing his tone as the porter goes away): i have no money!. . . le bret (with the action of throwing a bag): how! the bag of crowns?. . . cyrano: paternal bounty, in a day, thou'rt sped! le bret: how live the next month?. . . cyrano: i have nothing left. le bret: folly! cyrano: but what a graceful action! think! the buffet-girl (coughing, behind her counter): hum! (cyrano and le bret turn. she comes timidly forward): sir, my heart mislikes to know you fast. (showing the buffet): see, all you need. serve yourself! cyrano (taking off his hat): gentle child, although my gascon pride would else forbid to take the least bestowal from your hands, my fear of wounding you outweighs that pride, and bids accept. . . (he goes to the buffet): a trifle!. . .these few grapes. (she offers him the whole bunch. he takes a few): nay, but this bunch!. . . (she tries to give him wine, but he stops her): a glass of water fair!. . . and half a macaroon! (he gives back the other half.) le bret: what foolery! the buffet-girl: take something else! cyrano: i take your hand to kiss. (he kisses her hand as though she were a princess.) the buffet-girl: thank you, kind sir! (she courtesies): good-night. (she goes out.) scene .v. cyrano, le bret. cyrano (to le bret): now talk--i listen. (he stands at the buffet, and placing before him first the macaroon): dinner!. . . (then the grapes): dessert!. . . (then the glass of water): wine!. . . (he seats himself): so! and now to table! ah! i was hungry, friend, nay, ravenous! (eating): you said--? le bret: these fops, would-be belligerent, will, if you heed them only, turn your head!. . . ask people of good sense if you would know the effect of your fine insolence-- cyrano (finishing his macaroon): enormous! le bret: the cardinal. . . cyrano (radiant): the cardinal--was there? le bret: must have thought it. . . cyrano: original, i' faith! le bret: but. . . cyrano: he's an author. 'twill not fail to please him that i should mar a brother-author's play. le bret: you make too many enemies by far! cyrano (eating his grapes): how many think you i have made to-night? le bret: forty, no less, not counting ladies. cyrano: count! le bret: montfleury first, the bourgeois, then de guiche, the viscount, baro, the academy. . . cyrano: enough! i am o'erjoyed! le bret: but these strange ways, where will they lead you, at the end? explain your system--come! cyrano: i in a labyrinth was lost--too many different paths to choose; i took. . . le bret: which? cyrano: oh! by far the simplest path. . . decided to be admirable in all! le bret (shrugging his shoulders): so be it! but the motive of your hate to montfleury--come, tell me! cyrano (rising): this silenus, big-bellied, coarse, still deems himself a peril-- a danger to the love of lovely ladies, and, while he sputters out his actor's part, makes sheep's eyes at their boxes--goggling frog! i hate him since the evening he presumed to raise his eyes to hers. . .meseemed i saw a slug crawl slavering o'er a flower's petals! le bret (stupefied): how now? what? can it be. . .? cyrano (laughing bitterly): that i should love?. . . (changing his tone, gravely): i love. le bret: and may i know?. . .you never said. . . cyrano: come now, bethink you!. . .the fond hope to be beloved, e'en by some poor graceless lady, is, by this nose of mine for aye bereft me; --this lengthy nose which, go where'er i will, pokes yet a quarter-mile ahead of me; but i may love--and who? 'tis fate's decree i love the fairest--how were't otherwise? le bret: the fairest?. . . cyrano: ay, the fairest of the world, most brilliant--most refined--most golden-haired! le bret: who is this lady? cyrano: she's a danger mortal, all unsuspicious--full of charms unconscious, like a sweet perfumed rose--a snare of nature, within whose petals cupid lurks in ambush! he who has seen her smile has known perfection, --instilling into trifles grace's essence, divinity in every careless gesture; not venus' self can mount her conch blown sea-ward, as she can step into her chaise a porteurs, nor dian fleet across the woods spring-flowered, light as my lady o'er the stones of paris!. . . le bret: sapristi! all is clear! cyrano: as spiderwebs! le bret: your cousin, madeleine robin? cyrano: roxane! le bret: well, but so much the better! tell her so! she saw your triumph here this very night! cyrano: look well at me--then tell me, with what hope this vile protuberance can inspire my heart! i do not lull me with illusions--yet at times i'm weak: in evening hours dim i enter some fair pleasance, perfumed sweet; with my poor ugly devil of a nose i scent spring's essence--in the silver rays i see some knight--a lady on his arm, and think 'to saunter thus 'neath the moonshine, i were fain to have my lady, too, beside!' thought soars to ecstasy. . .o sudden fall! --the shadow of my profile on the wall! le bret (tenderly): my friend!. . . cyrano: my friend, at times 'tis hard, 'tis bitter, to feel my loneliness--my own ill-favor. . . le bret (taking his hand): you weep? cyrano: no, never! think, how vilely suited adown this nose a tear its passage tracing! i never will, while of myself i'm master, let the divinity of tears--their beauty be wedded to such common ugly grossness. nothing more solemn than a tear--sublimer; and i would not by weeping turn to laughter the grave emotion that a tear engenders! le bret: never be sad! what's love?--a chance of fortune! cyrano (shaking his head): look i a caesar to woo cleopatra? a tito to aspire to berenice? le bret: your courage and your wit!--the little maid who offered you refreshment even now, her eyes did not abhor you--you saw well! cyrano (impressed): true! le bret: well, how then?. . .i saw roxane herself was death-pale as she watched the duel. cyrano: pale? le bret: her heart, her fancy, are already caught! put it to th' touch! cyrano: that she may mock my face? that is the one thing on this earth i fear! the porter (introducing some one to cyrano): sir, some one asks for you. . . cyrano (seeing the duenna): god! her duenna! scene .vi. cyrano, le bret, the duenna. the duenna (with a low bow): i was bid ask you where a certain lady could see her valiant cousin--but in secret. cyrano (overwhelmed): see me? the duenna (courtesying): ay, sir! she has somewhat to tell. cyrano: somewhat?. . . the duenna (still courtesying): ay, private matters! cyrano (staggering): ah, my god! the duenna: to-morrow, at the early blush of dawn, we go to hear mass at st. roch. cyrano (leaning against le bret): my god! the duenna: after--what place for a few minutes' speech? cyrano (confused): where? ah!. . .but. . .ah, my god!. . . the duenna: say! cyrano: i reflect!. . . the duenna: where? cyrano: at--the pastry-house of ragueneau. the duenna: where lodges he? cyrano: the rue--god!--st. honore! the duenna (going): good. be you there. at seven. cyrano: without fail. (the duenna goes out.) scene .vii. cyrano, le bret. then actors, actresses, cuigy, brissaille, ligniere, the porter, the violinists. cyrano (falling into le bret's arms): a rendezvous. . .from her!. . . le bret: you're sad no more! cyrano: ah! let the world go burn! she knows i live! le bret: now you'll be calm, i hope? cyrano (beside himself for joy): calm? i now calm? i'll be frenetic, frantic,--raving mad! oh, for an army to attack!--a host! i've ten hearts in my breast; a score of arms; no dwarfs to cleave in twain!. . . (wildly): no! giants now! (for a few moments the shadows of the actors have been moving on the stage, whispers are heard--the rehearsal is beginning. the violinists are in their places.) a voice from the stage: hollo there! silence! we rehearse! cyrano (laughing): we go! (he moves away. by the big door enter cuigy, brissaille, and some officers, holding up ligniere, who is drunk.) cuigy: cyrano! cyrano: well, what now? cuigy: a lusty thrush they're bringing you! cyrano (recognizing him): ligniere!. . .what has chanced? cuigy: he seeks you! brissaille: he dare not go home! cyrano: why not? ligniere (in a husky voice, showing him a crumpled letter): this letter warns me. . .that a hundred men. . . revenge that threatens me. . .that song, you know-- at the porte de nesle. to get to my own house i must pass there. . .i dare not!. . .give me leave to sleep to-night beneath your roof! allow. . . cyrano: a hundred men? you'll sleep in your own bed! ligniere (frightened): but-- cyrano (in a terrible voice, showing him the lighted lantern held by the porter, who is listening curiously): take the lantern. (ligniere seizes it): let us start! i swear that i will make your bed to-night myself! (to the officers): follow; some stay behind, as witnesses! cuigy: a hundred!. . . cyrano: less, to-night--would be too few! (the actors and actresses, in their costumes, have come down from the stage, and are listening.) le bret: but why embroil yourself? cyrano: le bret who scolds! le bret: that worthless drunkard!-- cyrano (slapping ligniere on the shoulder): wherefore? for this cause;-- this wine-barrel, this cask of burgundy, did, on a day, an action full of grace; as he was leaving church, he saw his love take holy water--he, who is affeared at water's taste, ran quickly to the stoup, and drank it all, to the last drop!. . . an actress: indeed, that was a graceful thing! cyrano: ay, was it not? the actress (to the others): but why a hundred men 'gainst one poor rhymer? cyrano: march! (to the officers): gentlemen, when you shall see me charge, bear me no succor, none, whate'er the odds! another actress (jumping from the stage): oh! i shall come and see! cyrano: come, then! another (jumping down--to an old actor): and you?. . . cyrano: come all--the doctor, isabel, leander, come, for you shall add, in a motley swarm, the farce italian to this spanish drama! all the women (dancing for joy): bravo!--a mantle, quick!--my hood! jodelet: come on! cyrano: play us a march, gentlemen of the band! (the violinists join the procession, which is forming. they take the footlights, and divide them for torches): brave officers! next, women in costume, and, twenty paces on-- (he takes his place): i all alone, beneath the plume that glory lends, herself, to deck my beaver--proud as scipio!. . . --you hear me?--i forbid you succor me!-- one, two three! porter, open wide the doors! (the porter opens the doors; a view of old paris in the moonlight is seen): ah!. . .paris wrapped in night! half nebulous: the moonlight streams o'er the blue-shadowed roofs; a lovely frame for this wild battle-scene; beneath the vapor's floating scarves, the seine trembles, mysterious, like a magic mirror, and, shortly, you shall see what you shall see! all: to the porte de nesle! cyrano (standing on the threshold): ay, to the porte de nesle! (turning to the actress): did you not ask, young lady, for what cause against this rhymer fivescore men were sent? (he draws his sword; then, calmly): 'twas that they knew him for a friend of mine! (he goes out. ligniere staggers first after him, then the actresses on the officers' arms--the actors. the procession starts to the sound of the violins and in the faint light of the candles.) curtain. act ii. the poet's eating-house. ragueneau's cook and pastry-shop. a large kitchen at the corner of the rue st. honore and the rue de l'arbre sec, which are seen in the background through the glass door, in the gray dawn. on the left, in the foreground, a counter, surmounted by a stand in forged iron, on which are hung geese, ducks, and water peacocks. in great china vases are tall bouquets of simple flowers, principally yellow sunflowers. on the same side, farther back, an immense open fireplace, in front of which, between monster firedogs, on each of which hangs a little saucepan; the roasts are dripping into the pans. on the right, foreground with door. farther back, staircase leading to a little room under the roof, the entrance of which is visible through the open shutter. in this room a table is laid. a small flemish luster is alight. it is a place for eating and drinking. a wooden gallery, continuing the staircase, apparently leads to other similar little rooms. in the middle of the shop an iron hoop is suspended from the ceiling by a string with which it can be drawn up and down, and big game is hung around it. the ovens in the darkness under the stairs give forth a red glow. the copper pans shine. the spits are turning. heaps of food formed into pyramids. hams suspended. it is the busy hour of the morning. bustle and hurry of scullions, fat cooks, and diminutive apprentices, their caps profusely decorated with cock's feathers and wings of guinea-fowl. on metal and wicker plates they are bringing in piles of cakes and tarts. tables laden with rolls and dishes of food. other tables surrounded with chairs are ready for the consumers. a small table in a corner covered with papers, at which ragueneau is seated writing on the rising of the curtain. scene .i. ragueneau, pastry-cooks, then lise. ragueneau is writing, with an inspired air, at a small table, and counting on his fingers. first pastry-cook (bringing in an elaborate fancy dish): fruits in nougat! second pastry-cook (bringing another dish): custard! third pastry-cook (bringing a roast, decorated with feathers): peacock! fourth pastry-cook (bringing a batch of cakes on a slab): rissoles! fifth pastry-cook (bringing a sort of pie-dish): beef jelly! ragueneau (ceasing to write, and raising his head): aurora's silver rays begin to glint e'en now on the copper pans, and thou, o ragueneau! must perforce stifle in thy breast the god of song! anon shall come the hour of the lute!--now 'tis the hour of the oven! (he rises. to a cook): you, make that sauce longer, 'tis too short! the cook: how much too short? ragueneau: three feet. (he passes on farther.) the cook: what means he? first pastry-cook (showing a dish to ragueneau): the tart! second pastry-cook: the pie! ragueneau (before the fire): my muse, retire, lest thy bright eyes be reddened by the fagot's blaze! (to a cook, showing him some loaves): you have put the cleft o' th' loaves in the wrong place; know you not that the coesura should be between the hemistiches? (to another, showing him an unfinished pasty): to this palace of paste you must add the roof. . . (to a young apprentice, who, seated on the ground, is spitting the fowls): and you, as you put on your lengthy spit the modest fowl and the superb turkey, my son, alternate them, as the old malherbe loved well to alternate his long lines of verse with the short ones; thus shall your roasts, in strophes, turn before the flame! another apprentice (also coming up with a tray covered by a napkin): master, i bethought me erewhile of your tastes, and made this, which will please you, i hope. (he uncovers the tray, and shows a large lyre made of pastry.) ragueneau (enchanted): a lyre! the apprentice: 'tis of brioche pastry. ragueneau (touched): with conserved fruits. the apprentice: the strings, see, are of sugar. ragueneau (giving him a coin): go, drink my health! (seeing lise enter): hush! my wife. bustle, pass on, and hide that money! (to lise, showing her the lyre, with a conscious look): is it not beautiful? lise: 'tis passing silly! (she puts a pile of papers on the counter.) ragueneau: bags? good. i thank you. (he looks at them): heavens! my cherished leaves! the poems of my friends! torn, dismembered, to make bags for holding biscuits and cakes!. . .ah, 'tis the old tale again. . .orpheus and the bacchantes! lise (dryly): and am i not free to turn at last to some use the sole thing that your wretched scribblers of halting lines leave behind them by way of payment? ragueneau: groveling ant!. . .insult not the divine grasshoppers, the sweet singers! lise: before you were the sworn comrade of all that crew, my friend, you did not call your wife ant and bacchante! ragueneau: to turn fair verse to such a use! lise: 'faith, 'tis all it's good for. ragueneau: pray then, madam, to what use would you degrade prose? scene .ii. the same. two children, who have just trotted into the shop. ragueneau: what would you, little ones? first child: three pies. ragueneau (serving them): see, hot and well browned. second child: if it please you, sir, will you wrap them up for us? ragueneau (aside, distressed): alas! one of my bags! (to the children): what? must i wrap them up? (he takes a bag, and just as he is about to put in the pies, he reads): 'ulysses thus, on leaving fair penelope. . .' not that one! (he puts it aside, and takes another, and as he is about to put in the pies, he reads): 'the gold-locked phoebus. . .' nay, nor that one!. . . (same play.) lise (impatiently): what are you dallying for? ragueneau: here! here! here (he chooses a third, resignedly): the sonnet to phillis!. . .but 'tis hard to part with it! lise: by good luck he has made up his mind at last! (shrugging her shoulders): nicodemus! (she mounts on a chair, and begins to range plates on a dresser.) ragueneau (taking advantage of the moment she turns her back, calls back the children, who are already at the door): hist! children!. . .render me back the sonnet to phillis, and you shall have six pies instead of three. (the children give him back the bag, seize the cakes quickly, and go out.) ragueneau (smoothing out the paper, begins to declaim): 'phillis!. . .' on that sweet name a smear of butter! 'phillis!. . .' (cyrano enters hurriedly.) scene .iii. ragueneau, lise, cyrano, then the musketeer. cyrano: what's o'clock? ragueneau (bowing low): six o'clock. cyrano (with emotion): in one hour's time! (he paces up and down the shop.) ragueneau (following him): bravo! i saw. . . cyrano: well, what saw you, then? ragueneau: your combat!. . . cyrano: which? ragueneau: that in the burgundy hotel, 'faith! cyrano (contemptuously): ah!. . .the duel! ragueneau (admiringly): ay! the duel in verse!. . . lise: he can talk of naught else! cyrano: well! good! let be! ragueneau (making passes with a spit that he catches up): 'at the envoi's end, i touch!. . .at the envoi's end, i touch!'. . .'tis fine, fine! (with increasing enthusiasm): 'at the envoi's end--' cyrano: what hour is it now, ragueneau? ragueneau (stopping short in the act of thrusting to look at the clock): five minutes after six!. . .'i touch!' (he straightens himself): . . .oh! to write a ballade! lise (to cyrano, who, as he passes by the counter, has absently shaken hands with her): what's wrong with your hand? cyrano: naught; a slight cut. ragueneau: have you been in some danger? cyrano: none in the world. lise (shaking her finger at him): methinks you speak not the truth in saying that! cyrano: did you see my nose quiver when i spoke? 'faith, it must have been a monstrous lie that should move it! (changing his tone): i wait some one here. leave us alone, and disturb us for naught an it were not for crack of doom! ragueneau: but 'tis impossible; my poets are coming. . . lise (ironically): oh, ay, for their first meal o' the day! cyrano: prythee, take them aside when i shall make you sign to do so. . .what's o'clock? ragueneau: ten minutes after six. cyrano (nervously seating himself at ragueneau's table, and drawing some paper toward him): a pen!. . . ragueneau (giving him the one from behind his ear): here--a swan's quill. a musketeer (with fierce mustache, enters, and in a stentorian voice): good-day! (lise goes up to him quickly.) cyrano (turning round): who's that? ragueneau: 'tis a friend of my wife--a terrible warrior--at least so says he himself. cyrano (taking up the pen, and motioning ragueneau away): hush! (to himself): i will write, fold it, give it her, and fly! (throws down the pen): coward!. . .but strike me dead if i dare to speak to her,. . .ay, even one single word! (to ragueneau): what time is it? ragueneau: a quarter after six!. . . cyrano (striking his breast): ay--a single word of all those here! here! but writing, 'tis easier done. . . (he takes up the pen): go to, i will write it, that love-letter! oh! i have writ it and rewrit it in my own mind so oft that it lies there ready for pen and ink; and if i lay but my soul by my letter-sheet, 'tis naught to do but to copy from it. (he writes. through the glass of the door the silhouettes of their figures move uncertainly and hesitatingly.) scene .iv. ragueneau, lise, the musketeer. cyrano at the little table writing. the poets, dressed in black, their stockings ungartered, and covered with mud. lise (entering, to ragueneau): here they come, your mud-bespattered friends! first poet (entering, to ragueneau): brother in art!. . . second poet (to ragueneau, shaking his hands): dear brother! third poet: high soaring eagle among pastry-cooks! (he sniffs): marry! it smells good here in your eyrie! fourth poet: 'tis at phoebus' own rays that thy roasts turn! fifth poet: apollo among master-cooks-- ragueneau (whom they surround and embrace): ah! how quick a man feels at his ease with them!. . . first poet: we were stayed by the mob; they are crowded all round the porte de nesle!. . . second poet: eight bleeding brigand carcasses strew the pavements there--all slit open with sword-gashes! cyrano (raising his head a minute): eight?. . .hold, methought seven. (he goes on writing.) ragueneau (to cyrano): know you who might be the hero of the fray? cyrano (carelessly): not i. lise (to the musketeer): and you? know you? the musketeer (twirling his mustache): maybe! cyrano (writing a little way off:--he is heard murmuring a word from time to time): 'i love thee!' first poet: 'twas one man, say they all, ay, swear to it, one man who, single-handed, put the whole band to the rout! second poet: 'twas a strange sight!--pikes and cudgels strewed thick upon the ground. cyrano (writing): . . .'thine eyes'. . . third poet: and they were picking up hats all the way to the quai d'orfevres! first poet: sapristi! but he must have been a ferocious. . . cyrano (same play): . . .'thy lips'. . . first poet: 'twas a parlous fearsome giant that was the author of such exploits! cyrano (same play): . . .'and when i see thee come, i faint for fear.' second poet (filching a cake): what hast rhymed of late, ragueneau? cyrano (same play): . . .'who worships thee'. . . (he stops, just as he is about to sign, and gets up, slipping the letter into his doublet): no need i sign, since i give it her myself. ragueneau (to second poet): i have put a recipe into verse. third poet (seating himself by a plate of cream-puffs): go to! let us hear these verses! fourth poet (looking at a cake which he has taken): its cap is all a' one side! (he makes one bite of the top.) first poet: see how this gingerbread woos the famished rhymer with its almond eyes, and its eyebrows of angelica! (he takes it.) second poet: we listen. third poet (squeezing a cream-puff gently): how it laughs! till its very cream runs over! second poet (biting a bit off the great lyre of pastry): this is the first time in my life that ever i drew any means of nourishing me from the lyre! ragueneau (who has put himself ready for reciting, cleared his throat, settled his cap, struck an attitude): a recipe in verse!. . . second poet (to first, nudging him): you are breakfasting? first poet (to second): and you dining, methinks. ragueneau: how almond tartlets are made. beat your eggs up, light and quick; froth them thick; mingle with them while you beat juice of lemon, essence fine; then combine the burst milk of almonds sweet. circle with a custard paste the slim waist of your tartlet-molds; the top with a skillful finger print, nick and dint, round their edge, then, drop by drop, in its little dainty bed your cream shed: in the oven place each mold: reappearing, softly browned, the renowned almond tartlets you behold! the poets (with mouths crammed full): exquisite! delicious! a poet (choking): homph! (they go up, eating.) cyrano (who has been watching, goes toward ragueneau): lulled by your voice, did you see how they were stuffing themselves? ragueneau (in a low voice, smiling): oh, ay! i see well enough, but i never will seem to look, fearing to distress them; thus i gain a double pleasure when i recite to them my poems; for i leave those poor fellows who have not breakfasted free to eat, even while i gratify my own dearest foible, see you? cyrano (clapping him on the shoulder): friend, i like you right well!. . . (ragueneau goes after his friends. cyrano follows him with his eyes, then, rather sharply): ho there! lise! (lise, who is talking tenderly to the musketeer, starts, and comes down toward cyrano): so this fine captain is laying siege to you? lise (offended): one haughty glance of my eye can conquer any man that should dare venture aught 'gainst my virtue. cyrano: pooh! conquering eyes, methinks, are oft conquered eyes. lise (choking with anger): but-- cyrano (incisively): i like ragueneau well, and so--mark me, dame lise--i permit not that he be rendered a laughing-stock by any. . . lise: but. . . cyrano (who has raised his voice so as to be heard by the gallant): a word to the wise. . . (he bows to the musketeer, and goes to the doorway to watch, after looking at the clock.) lise (to the musketeer, who has merely bowed in answer to cyrano's bow): how now? is this your courage?. . .why turn you not a jest on his nose? the musketeer: on his nose?. . .ay, ay. . .his nose. (he goes quickly farther away; lise follows him.) cyrano (from the doorway, signing to ragueneau to draw the poets away): hist!. . . ragueneau (showing them the door on the right): we shall be more private there. . . cyrano (impatiently): hist! hist!. . . ragueneau (drawing them farther): to read poetry, 'tis better here. . . first poet (despairingly, with his mouth full): what! leave the cakes?. . . second poet: never! let's take them with us! (they all follow ragueneau in procession, after sweeping all the cakes off the trays.) scene .v. cyrano, roxane, the duenna. cyrano: ah! if i see but the faint glimmer of hope, then i draw out my letter! (roxane, masked, followed by the duenna, appears at the glass pane of the door. he opens quickly): enter!. . . (walking up to the duenna): two words with you, duenna. the duenna: four, sir, an it like you. cyrano: are you fond of sweet things? the duenna: ay, i could eat myself sick on them! cyrano (catching up some of the paper bags from the counter): good. see you these two sonnets of monsieur beuserade. . . the duenna: hey? cyrano: . . .which i fill for you with cream cakes! the duenna (changing her expression): ha. cyrano: what say you to the cake they call a little puff? the duenna: if made with cream, sir, i love them passing well. cyrano: here i plunge six for your eating into the bosom of a poem by saint amant! and in these verses of chapelain i glide a lighter morsel. stay, love you hot cakes? the duenna: ay, to the core of my heart! cyrano (filling her arms with the bags): pleasure me then; go eat them all in the street. the duenna: but. . . cyrano (pushing her out): and come not back till the very last crumb be eaten! (he shuts the door, comes down toward roxane, and, uncovering, stands at a respectful distance from her.) scene .vi. cyrano, roxane. cyrano: blessed be the moment when you condescend-- remembering that humbly i exist-- to come to meet me, and to say. . .to tell?. . . roxane (who has unmasked): to thank you first of all. that dandy count, whom you checkmated in brave sword-play last night,. . .he is the man whom a great lord, desirous of my favor. . . cyrano: ha, de guiche? roxane (casting down her eyes): sought to impose on me. . .for husband. . . cyrano: ay! husband!--dupe-husband!. . .husband a la mode! (bowing): then i fought, happy chance! sweet lady, not for my ill favor--but your favors fair! roxane: confession next!. . .but, ere i make my shrift, you must be once again that brother-friend with whom i used to play by the lake-side!. . . cyrano: ay, you would come each spring to bergerac! roxane: mind you the reeds you cut to make your swords?. . . cyrano: while you wove corn-straw plaits for your dolls' hair! roxane: those were the days of games!. . . cyrano: and blackberries!. . . roxane: in those days you did everything i bid!. . . cyrano: roxane, in her short frock, was madeleine. . . roxane: was i fair then? cyrano: you were not ill to see! roxane: ofttimes, with hands all bloody from a fall, you'd run to me! then--aping mother-ways-- i, in a voice would-be severe, would chide,-- (she takes his hand): 'what is this scratch, again, that i see here?' (she starts, surprised): oh! 'tis too much! what's this? (cyrano tries to draw away his hand): no, let me see! at your age, fie! where did you get that scratch? cyrano: i got it--playing at the porte de nesle. roxane (seating herself by the table, and dipping her handkerchief in a glass of water): give here! cyrano (sitting by her): so soft! so gay maternal-sweet! roxane: and tell me, while i wipe away the blood, how many 'gainst you? cyrano: oh! a hundred--near. roxane: come, tell me! cyrano: no, let be. but you, come tell the thing, just now, you dared not. . . roxane (keeping his hand): now, i dare! the scent of those old days emboldens me! yes, now i dare. listen. i am in love. cyrano: ah!. . . roxane: but with one who knows not. cyrano: ah!. . . roxane: not yet. cyrano: ah!. . . roxane: but who, if he knows not, soon shall learn. cyrano: ah!. . . roxane: a poor youth who all this time has loved timidly, from afar, and dares not speak. . . cyrano: ah!. . . roxane: leave your hand; why, it is fever-hot!-- but i have seen love trembling on his lips. cyrano: ah!. . . roxane (bandaging his hand with her handkerchief): and to think of it! that he by chance-- yes, cousin, he is of your regiment! cyrano: ah!. . . roxane (laughing): --is cadet in your own company! cyrano: ah!. . . roxane: on his brow he bears the genius-stamp; he is proud, noble, young, intrepid, fair. . . cyrano (rising suddenly, very pale): fair! roxane: why, what ails you? cyrano: nothing; 'tis. . . (he shows his hand, smiling): this scratch! roxane: i love him; all is said. but you must know i have only seen him at the comedy. . . cyrano: how? you have never spoken? roxane: eyes can speak. cyrano: how know you then that he. . .? roxane: oh! people talk 'neath the limes in the place royale. . . gossip's chat has let me know. . . cyrano: he is cadet? roxane: in the guards. cyrano: his name? roxane: baron christian de neuvillette. cyrano: how now?. . .he is not of the guards! roxane: to-day he is not join your ranks, under captain carbon de castel-jaloux. cyrano: ah, how quick, how quick the heart has flown!. . .but, my poor child. . . the duenna (opening the door): the cakes are eaten, monsieur bergerac! cyrano: then read the verses printed on the bags! (she goes out): . . .my poor child, you who love but flowing words, bright wit,--what if he be a lout unskilled? roxane: no, his bright locks, like d'urfe's heroes. . . cyrano: ah! a well-curled pate, and witless tongue, perchance! roxane: ah no! i guess--i feel--his words are fair! cyrano: all words are fair that lurk 'neath fair mustache! --suppose he were a fool!. . . roxane (stamping her foot): then bury me! cyrano (after a pause): was it to tell me this you brought me here? i fail to see what use this serves, madame. roxane: nay, but i felt a terror, here, in the heart, on learning yesterday you were gascons all of your company. . . cyrano: and we provoke all beardless sprigs that favor dares admit 'midst us pure gascons--(pure! heaven save the mark! they told you that as well? roxane: ah! think how i trembled for him! cyrano (between his teeth): not causelessly! roxane: but when last night i saw you,--brave, invincible,-- punish that dandy, fearless hold your own against those brutes, i thought--i thought, if he whom all fear, all--if he would only. . . cyrano: good. i will befriend your little baron. roxane: ah! you'll promise me you will do this for me? i've always held you as a tender friend. cyrano: ay, ay. roxane: then you will be his friend? cyrano: i swear! roxane: and he shall fight no duels, promise! cyrano: none. roxane: you are kind, cousin! now i must be gone. (she puts on her mask and veil quickly; then, absently): you have not told me of your last night's fray. ah, but it must have been a hero-fight!. . . --bid him to write. (she sends him a kiss with her fingers): how good you are! cyrano: ay! ay! roxane: a hundred men against you? now, farewell.-- we are great friends? cyrano: ay, ay! roxane: oh, bid him write! you'll tell me all one day--a hundred men!-- ah, brave!. . .how brave! cyrano (bowing to her): i have fought better since. (she goes out. cyrano stands motionless, with eyes on the ground. a silence. the door (right) opens. ragueneau looks in.) scene .vii. cyrano, ragueneau, poets, carbon de castel-jaloux, the cadets, a crowd, then de guiche. ragueneau: can we come in? cyrano (without stirring): yes. . . (ragueneau signs to his friends, and they come in. at the same time, by door at back, enters carbon de castel-jaloux, in captain's uniform. he makes gestures of surprise on seeing cyrano.) carbon: here he is! cyrano (raising his head): captain!. . . carbon (delightedly): our hero! we heard all! thirty or more of my cadets are there!. . . cyrano (shrinking back): but. . . carbon (trying to draw him away): come with me! they will not rest until they see you! cyrano: no! carbon: they're drinking opposite, at the bear's head. cyrano: i. . . carbon (going to the door and calling across the street in a voice of thunder): he won't come! the hero's in the sulks! a voice (outside): ah! sandious! (tumult outside. noise of boots and swords is heard approaching.) carbon (rubbing his hands): they are running 'cross the street! cadets (entering): mille dious! capdedious! pocapdedious! ragueneau (drawing back startled): gentlemen, are you all from gascony? the cadets: all! a cadet (to cyrano): bravo! cyrano: baron! another (shaking his hands): vivat! cyrano: baron! third cadet: come! i must embrace you! cyrano: baron! several gascons: we'll embrace him, all in turn! cyrano (not knowing whom to reply to): baron!. . .baron!. . .i beg. . . ragueneau: are you all barons, sirs? the cadets: ay, every one! ragueneau: is it true?. . . first cadet: ay--why, you could build a tower with nothing but our coronets, my friend! le bret (entering, and running up to cyrano): they're looking for you! here's a crazy mob led by the men who followed you last night. . . cyrano (alarmed): what! have you told them where to find me? le bret (rubbing his hands): yes! a burgher (entering, followed by a group of men): sir, all the marais is a-coming here! (outside the street has filled with people. chaises a porteurs and carriages have drawn up.) le bret (in a low voice, smiling, to cyrano): and roxane? cyrano (quickly): hush! the crowd (calling outside): cyrano!. . . (a crowd rush into the shop, pushing one another. acclamations.) ragueneau (standing on a table): lo! my shop invaded! they break all! magnificent! people (crowding round cyrano): my friend!. . .my friend. . . cyrano: meseems that yesterday i had not all these friends! le bret (delighted): success! a young marquis (hurrying up with his hands held out): my friend, didst thou but know. . . cyrano: thou!. . .marry!. . .thou!. . .pray when did we herd swine together, you and i! another: i would present you, sir, to some fair dames who in my carriage yonder. . . cyrano (coldly): ah! and who will first present you, sir, to me? le bret (astonished): what's wrong? cyrano: hush! a man of letters (with writing-board): a few details?. . . cyrano: no. le bret (nudging his elbow): 'tis theophrast, renaudet,. . .of the 'court gazette'! cyrano: who cares? le bret: this paper--but it is of great importance!. . . they say it will be an immense success! a poet (advancing): sir. . . cyrano: what, another! the poet: . . .pray permit i make a pentacrostic on your name. . . some one (also advancing): pray, sir. . . cyrano: enough! enough! (a movement in the crowd. de guiche appears, escorted by officers. cuigy, brissaille, the officers who went with cyrano the night before. cuigy comes rapidly up to cyrano.) cuigy (to cyrano): here is monsieur de guiche? (a murmur--every one makes way): he comes from the marshal of gassion! de guiche (bowing to cyrano): . . .who would express his admiration, sir, for your new exploit noised so loud abroad. the crowd: bravo! cyrano (bowing): the marshal is a judge of valor. de guiche: he could not have believed the thing, unless these gentlemen had sworn they witnessed it. cuigy: with our own eyes! le bret (aside to cyrano, who has an absent air): but. . .you. . . cyrano: hush! le bret: but. . .you suffer? cyrano (starting): before this rabble?--i?. . . (he draws himself up, twirls his mustache, and throws back his shoulders): wait!. . .you shall see! de guiche (to whom cuigy has spoken in a low voice): in feats of arms, already your career abounded.--you serve with those crazy pates of gascons? cyrano: ay, with the cadets. a cadet (in a terrible voice): with us! de guiche (looking at the cadets, ranged behind cyrano): ah!. . .all these gentlemen of haughty mien, are they the famous?. . . carbon: cyrano! cyrano: ay, captain! carbon: since all my company's assembled here, pray favor me,--present them to my lord! cyrano (making two steps toward de guiche): my lord de guiche, permit that i present-- (pointing to the cadets): the bold cadets of gascony, of carbon of castel-jaloux! brawling and swaggering boastfully, the bold cadets of gascony! spouting of armory, heraldry, their veins a-brimming with blood so blue, the bold cadets of gascony, of carbon of castel-jaloux: eagle-eye, and spindle-shanks, fierce mustache, and wolfish tooth! slash-the-rabble and scatter-their-ranks; eagle-eye and spindle-shanks, with a flaming feather that gayly pranks, hiding the holes in their hats, forsooth! eagle-eye and spindle-shanks, fierce mustache, and wolfish tooth! 'pink-your-doublet' and 'slit-your-trunk' are their gentlest sobriquets; with fame and glory their soul is drunk! 'pink-your-doublet' and 'slit-your-trunk,' in brawl and skirmish they show their spunk, give rendezvous in broil and fray; 'pink-your-doublet' and 'slit-your-trunk' are their gentlest sobriquets! what, ho! cadets of gascony! all jealous lovers are sport for you! o woman! dear divinity! what, ho! cadets of gascony! whom scowling husbands quake to see. blow, 'taratara,' and cry 'cuckoo.' what, ho! cadets of gascony! husbands and lovers are game for you! de guiche (seated with haughty carelessness in an armchair brought quickly by ragueneau): a poet! 'tis the fashion of the hour! --will you be mine? cyrano: no, sir,--no man's! de guiche: last night your fancy pleased my uncle richelieu. i'll gladly say a word to him for you. le bret (overjoyed): great heavens! de guiche: i imagine you have rhymed five acts, or so? le bret (in cyrano's ear): your play!--your 'agrippine!' you'll see it staged at last! de guiche: take them to him. cyrano (beginning to be tempted and attracted): in sooth,--i would. . . de guiche: he is a critic skilled: he may correct a line or two, at most. cyrano (whose face stiffens at once): impossible! my blood congeals to think that other hand should change a comma's dot. de guiche: but when a verse approves itself to him he pays it dear, good friend. cyrano: he pays less dear than i myself; when a verse pleases me i pay myself, and sing it to myself! de guiche: you are proud. cyrano: really? you have noticed that? a cadet (entering, with a string of old battered plumed beaver hats, full of holes, slung on his sword): see, cyrano,--this morning, on the quay what strange bright-feathered game we caught! the hats o' the fugitives. . . carbon: 'spolia opima!' all (laughing): ah! ah! ah! cuigy: he who laid that ambush, 'faith! must curse and swear! brissaille: who was it? de guiche: i myself. (the laughter stops): i charged them--work too dirty for my sword, to punish and chastise a rhymster sot. (constrained silence.) the cadet (in a low voice, to cyrano, showing him the beavers): what do with them? they're full of grease!--a stew? cyrano (taking the sword and, with a salute, dropping the hats at de guiche's feet): sir, pray be good enough to render them back to your friends. de guiche (rising, sharply): my chair there--quick!--i go! (to cyrano passionately): as to you, sirrah!. . . voice (in the street): porters for my lord de guiche! de guiche (who has controlled himself--smiling): have you read 'don quixote'? cyrano: i have! and doff my hat at th' mad knight-errant's name. de guiche: i counsel you to study. . . a porter (appearing at back): my lord's chair! de guiche: . . .the windmill chapter! cyrano (bowing): chapter the thirteenth. de guiche: for when one tilts 'gainst windmills--it may chance. . . cyrano: tilt i 'gainst those who change with every breeze? de guiche: . . .that windmill sails may sweep you with their arm down--in the mire!. . . cyrano: or upward--to the stars! (de guiche goes out, and mounts into his chair. the other lords go away whispering together. le bret goes to the door with them. the crowd disperses.) scene .viii. cyrano, le bret, the cadets, who are eating and drinking at the tables right and left. cyrano (bowing mockingly to those who go out without daring to salute him): gentlemen. . .gentlemen. . . le bret (coming back, despairingly): here's a fine coil! cyrano: oh! scold away! le bret: at least, you will agree that to annihilate each chance of fate exaggerates. . . cyrano: yes!--i exaggerate! le bret (triumphantly): ah! cyrano: but for principle--example too,-- i think 'tis well thus to exaggerate. le bret: oh! lay aside that pride of musketeer, fortune and glory wait you!. . . cyrano: ay, and then?. . . seek a protector, choose a patron out, and like the crawling ivy round a tree that licks the bark to gain the trunk's support, climb high by creeping ruse instead of force? no, grammercy! what! i, like all the rest dedicate verse to bankers?--play buffoon in cringing hope to see, at last, a smile not disapproving, on a patron's lips? grammercy, no! what! learn to swallow toads? --with frame aweary climbing stairs?--a skin grown grimed and horny,--here, about the knees? and, acrobat-like, teach my back to bend?-- no, grammercy! or,--double-faced and sly-- run with the hare, while hunting with the hounds; and, oily-tongued, to win the oil of praise, flatter the great man to his very nose? no, grammercy! steal soft from lap to lap, --a little great man in a circle small, or navigate, with madrigals for sails, blown gently windward by old ladies' sighs? no, grammercy! bribe kindly editors to spread abroad my verses? grammercy! or try to be elected as the pope of tavern-councils held by imbeciles? no, grammercy! toil to gain reputation by one small sonnet, 'stead of making many? no, grammercy! or flatter sorry bunglers? be terrorized by every prating paper? say ceaselessly, 'oh, had i but the chance of a fair notice in the "mercury"!' grammercy, no! grow pale, fear, calculate? prefer to make a visit to a rhyme? seek introductions, draw petitions up? no, grammercy! and no! and no again! but--sing? dream, laugh, go lightly, solitary, free, with eyes that look straight forward--fearless voice! to cock your beaver just the way you choose,-- for 'yes' or 'no' show fight, or turn a rhyme! --to work without one thought of gain or fame, to realize that journey to the moon! never to pen a line that has not sprung straight from the heart within. embracing then modesty, say to oneself, 'good my friend, be thou content with flowers,--fruit,--nay, leaves, but pluck them from no garden but thine own!' and then, if glory come by chance your way, to pay no tribute unto caesar, none, but keep the merit all your own! in short, disdaining tendrils of the parasite, to be content, if neither oak nor elm-- not to mount high, perchance, but mount alone! le bret: alone, an if you will! but not with hand 'gainst every man! how in the devil's name have you conceived this lunatic idea, to make foes for yourself at every turn? cyrano: by dint of seeing you at every turn make friends,--and fawn upon your frequent friends with mouth wide smiling, slit from ear to ear! i pass, still unsaluted, joyfully, and cry,--what, ho! another enemy? le bret: lunacy! cyrano: well, what if it be my vice, my pleasure to displease--to love men hate me! ah, friend of mine, believe me, i march better 'neath the cross-fire of glances inimical! how droll the stains one sees on fine-laced doublets, from gall of envy, or the poltroon's drivel! --the enervating friendship which enfolds you is like an open-laced italian collar, floating around your neck in woman's fashion; one is at ease thus,--but less proud the carriage! the forehead, free from mainstay or coercion, bends here, there, everywhere. but i, embracing hatred, she lends,--forbidding, stiffly fluted, the ruff's starched folds that hold the head so rigid; each enemy--another fold--a gopher, who adds constraint, and adds a ray of glory; for hatred, like the ruff worn by the spanish, grips like a vice, but frames you like a halo! le bret (after a silence, taking his arm): speak proud aloud, and bitter!--in my ear whisper me simply this,--she loves thee not! cyrano (vehemently): hush! (christian has just entered, and mingled with the cadets, who do not speak to him; he has seated himself at a table, where lise serves him.) scene .ix. cyrano, le bret, the cadets, christian de neuvillette. a cadet (seated at a table, glass in hand): cyrano! (cyrano turns round): the story! cyrano: in its time! (he goes up on le bret's arm. they talk in low voices.) the cadet (rising and coming down): the story of the fray! 'twill lesson well (he stops before the table where christian is seated): this timid young apprentice! christian (raising his head): 'prentice! who? another cadet: this sickly northern greenhorn! christian: sickly! first cadet (mockingly): hark! monsieur de neuvillette, this in your ear: there's somewhat here, one no more dares to name, than to say 'rope' to one whose sire was hanged! christian: what may that be? another cadet (in a terrible voice): see here! (he puts his finger three times, mysteriously, on his nose): do you understand? christian: oh! 'tis the. . . another: hush! oh, never breathe that word, unless you'd reckon with him yonder! (he points to cyrano, who is talking with le bret.) another (who has meanwhile come up noiselessly to sit on the table--whispering behind him): hark! he put two snuffling men to death, in rage, for the sole reason they spoke through their nose! another (in a hollow voice, darting on all-fours from under the table, where he had crept): and if you would not perish in flower o' youth, --oh, mention not the fatal cartilage! another (clapping him on the shoulder): a word? a gesture! for the indiscreet his handkerchief may prove his winding-sheet! (silence. all, with crossed arms, look at christian. he rises and goes over to carbon de castel-jaloux, who is talking to an officer, and feigns to see nothing.) christian: captain! carbon (turning and looking at him from head to foot): sir! christian: pray, what skills it best to do to southerners who swagger?. . . carbon: give them proof that one may be a northerner, yet brave! (he turns his back on him.) christian: i thank you. first cadet (to cyrano): now the tale! all: the tale! cyrano (coming toward them): the tale?. . . (all bring their stools up, and group round him, listening eagerly. christian is astride a chair): well! i went all alone to meet the band. the moon was shining, clock-like, full i' th' sky, when, suddenly, some careful clockwright passed a cloud of cotton-wool across the case that held this silver watch. and, presto! heigh! the night was inky black, and all the quays were hidden in the murky dark. gadsooks! one could see nothing further. . . christian: than one's nose! (silence. all slowly rise, looking in terror at cyrano, who has stopped-- dumfounded. pause.) cyrano: who on god's earth is that? a cadet (whispering): it is a man who joined to-day. cyrano (making a step toward christian): to-day? carbon (in a low voice): yes. . .his name is the baron de neuvil. . . cyrano (checking himself): good! it is well. . . (he turns pale, flushes, makes as if to fall on christian): i. . . (he controls himself): what said i?. . . (with a burst of rage): mordious!. . . (then continues calmly): that it was dark. (astonishment. the cadets reseat themselves, staring at him): on i went, thinking, 'for a knavish cause i may provoke some great man, some great prince, who certainly could break'. . . christian: my nose!. . . (every one starts up. christian balances on his chair.) cyrano (in a choked voice): . . .'my teeth! who would break my teeth, and i, imprudent-like, was poking. . .' christian: my nose!. . . cyrano: 'my finger,. . .in the crack between the tree and bark! he may prove strong and rap me. . .' christian: over the nose. . . cyrano (wiping his forehead): . . .'o' th' knuckles! ay,' but i cried, 'forward, gascon! duty calls! on, cyrano!' and thus i ventured on. . . when, from the shadow, came. . . christian: a crack o' th' nose. cyrano: i parry it--find myself. . . christian: nose to nose. . . cyrano (bounding on to him): heaven and earth! (all the gascons leap up to see, but when he is close to christian he controls himself and continues): . . .with a hundred brawling sots, who stank. . . christian: a noseful. . . cyrano (white, but smiling): onions, brandy-cups! i leapt out, head well down. . . christian: nosing the wind! cyrano: i charge!--gore two, impale one--run him through, one aims at me--paf! and i parry. . . christian: pif! cyrano (bursting out): great god! out! all of you! (the cadets rush to the doors.) first cadet: the tiger wakes! cyrano: every man, out! leave me alone with him! second cadet: we shall find him minced fine, minced into hash in a big pasty! ragueneau: i am turning pale, and curl up, like a napkin, limp and white! carbon: let us be gone. another: he will not leave a crumb! another: i die of fright to think what will pass here! another (shutting door right): something too horrible! (all have gone out by different doors, some by the staircase. cyrano and christian are face to face, looking at each other for a moment.) scene .x. cyrano, christian. cyrano: embrace me now! christian: sir. . . cyrano: you are brave. christian: oh! but. . . cyrano: nay, i insist. christian: pray tell me. . . cyrano: come, embrace! i am her brother. christian: whose brother? cyrano: hers i' faith! roxane's! christian (rushing up to him): o heavens! her brother. . .? cyrano: cousin--brother!. . .the same thing! christian: and she has told you. . .? cyrano: all! christian: she loves me? say! cyrano: maybe! christian (taking his hands): how glad i am to meet you, sir! cyrano: that may be called a sudden sentiment! christian: i ask your pardon. . . cyrano (looking at him, with his hand on his shoulder): true, he's fair, the villain! christian: ah, sir! if you but knew my admiration!. . . cyrano: but all those noses?. . . christian: oh! i take them back! cyrano: roxane expects a letter. christian: woe the day! cyrano: how? christian: i am lost if i but ope my lips! cyrano: why so? christian: i am a fool--could die for shame! cyrano: none is a fool who knows himself a fool. and you did not attack me like a fool. christian: bah! one finds battle-cry to lead th' assault! i have a certain military wit, but, before women, can but hold my tongue. their eyes! true, when i pass, their eyes are kind. . . cyrano: and, when you stay, their hearts, methinks, are kinder? christian: no! for i am one of those men--tongue-tied, i know it--who can never tell their love. cyrano: and i, meseems, had nature been more kind, more careful, when she fashioned me,--had been one of those men who well could speak their love! christian: oh, to express one's thoughts with facile grace!. . . cyrano: . . .to be a musketeer, with handsome face! christian: roxane is precieuse. i'm sure to prove a disappointment to her! cyrano (looking at him): had i but such an interpreter to speak my soul! christian (with despair): eloquence! where to find it? cyrano (abruptly): that i lend, if you lend me your handsome victor-charms; blended, we make a hero of romance! christian: how so? cyrano: think you you can repeat what things i daily teach your tongue? christian: what do you mean? cyrano: roxane shall never have a disillusion! say, wilt thou that we woo her, double-handed? wilt thou that we two woo her, both together? feel'st thou, passing from my leather doublet, through thy laced doublet, all my soul inspiring? christian: but, cyrano!. . . cyrano: will you, i say? christian: i fear! cyrano: since, by yourself, you fear to chill her heart, will you--to kindle all her heart to flame-- wed into one my phrases and your lips? christian: your eyes flash! cyrano: will you? christian: will it please you so? --give you such pleasure? cyrano (madly): it!. . . (then calmly, business-like): it would amuse me! it is an enterprise to tempt a poet. will you complete me, and let me complete you? you march victorious,--i go in your shadow; let me be wit for you, be you my beauty! christian: the letter, that she waits for even now! i never can. . . cyrano (taking out the letter he had written): see! here it is--your letter! christian: what? cyrano: take it! look, it wants but the address. christian: but i. . . cyrano: fear nothing. send it. it will suit. christian: but have you. . .? cyrano: oh! we have our pockets full, we poets, of love-letters, writ to chloes, daphnes--creations of our noddle-heads. our lady-loves,--phantasms of our brains, --dream-fancies blown into soap-bubbles! come! take it, and change feigned love-words into true; i breathed my sighs and moans haphazard-wise; call all these wandering love-birds home to nest. you'll see that i was in these lettered lines, --eloquent all the more, the less sincere! --take it, and make an end! christian: were it not well to change some words? written haphazard-wise, will it fit roxane? cyrano: 'twill fit like a glove! christian: but. . . cyrano: ah, credulity of love! roxane will think each word inspired by herself! christian: my friend! (he throws himself into cyrano's arms. they remain thus.) scene .xi. cyrano, christian, the gascons, the musketeer, lise. a cadet (half opening the door): naught here!. . .the silence of the grave! i dare not look. . . (he puts his head in): why?. . . all the cadets (entering, and seeing cyrano and christian embracing): oh!. . . a cadet: this passes all! (consternation.) the musketeer (mockingly): ho, ho!. . . carbon: our demon has become a saint? struck on one nostril--lo! he turns the other! musketeer: then we may speak about his nose, henceforth!. . . (calling to lise, boastfully): --ah, lise, see here! (sniffing ostentatiously): o heavens!. . .what a stink!. . . (going up to cyrano): you, sir, without a doubt have sniffed it up! --what is the smell i notice here? cyrano (cuffing his head): clove-heads. (general delight. the cadets have found the old cyrano again! they turn somersaults.) curtain. act iii. roxane's kiss. a small square in the old marais. old houses. a perspective of little streets. on the right roxane's house and the wall of her garden overhung with thick foliage. window and balcony over the door. a bench in front. from the bench and the stones jutting out of the wall it is easy to climb to the balcony. in front of an old house in the same style of brick and stone. the knocker of this door is bandaged with linen like a sore thumb. at the rising of the curtain the duenna is seated on the bench. the window on roxane's balcony is wide open. ragueneau is standing near the door in a sort of livery. he has just finished relating something to the duenna, and is wiping his eyes. scene .i. ragueneau, the duenna. then roxane, cyrano, and two pages. ragueneau: --and then, off she went, with a musketeer! deserted and ruined too, i would make an end of all, and so hanged myself. my last breath was drawn:-- then in comes monsieur de bergerac! he cuts me down, and begs his cousin to take me for her steward. the duenna: well, but how came it about that you were thus ruined? ragueneau: oh! lise loved the warriors, and i loved the poets! what cakes there were that apollo chanced to leave were quickly snapped up by mars. thus ruin was not long a-coming. the duenna (rising, and calling up to the open window): roxane, are you ready? they wait for us! roxane's voice (from the window): i will but put me on a cloak! the duenna (to ragueneau, showing him the door opposite): they wait us there opposite, at clomire's house. she receives them all there to-day--the precieuses, the poets; they read a discourse on the tender passion. ragueneau: the tender passion? the duenna (in a mincing voice): ay, indeed! (calling up to the window): roxane, an you come not down quickly, we shall miss the discourse on the tender passion! roxane's voice: i come! i come! (a sound of stringed instruments approaching.) cyrano's voice (behind the scenes, singing): la, la, la, la! the duenna (surprised): they serenade us? cyrano (followed by two pages with arch-lutes): i tell you they are demi-semi-quavers, demi-semi-fool! first page (ironically): you know then, sir, to distinguish between semi-quavers and demi-semi- quavers? cyrano: is not every disciple of gassendi a musician? the page (playing and singing): la, la! cyrano (snatching the lute from him, and going on with the phrase): in proof of which, i can continue! la, la, la, la! roxane (appearing on the balcony): what? 'tis you? cyrano (going on with the air, and singing to it): 'tis i, who come to serenade your lilies, and pay my devoir to your ro-o- oses! roxane: i am coming down! (she leaves the balcony.) the duenna (pointing to the pages): how come these two virtuosi here? cyrano: 'tis for a wager i won of d'assoucy. we were disputing a nice point in grammar; contradictions raged hotly--''tis so!' 'nay, 'tis so!' when suddenly he shows me these two long-shanks, whom he takes about with him as an escort, and who are skillful in scratching lute-strings with their skinny claws! 'i will wager you a day's music,' says he!--and lost it! thus, see you, till phoebus' chariot starts once again, these lute-twangers are at my heels, seeing all i do, hearing all i say, and accompanying all with melody. 'twas pleasant at the first, but i' faith, i begin to weary of it already! (to the musicians): ho there! go serenade montfleury for me! play a dance to him! (the pages go toward the door. to the duenna): i have come, as is my wont, nightly, to ask roxane whether. . . (to the pages, who are going out): play a long time,--and play out of tune! (to the duenna): . . .whether her soul's elected is ever the same, ever faultless! roxane (coming out of the house): ah! how handsome he is, how brilliant a wit! and--how well i love him! cyrano (smiling): christian has so brilliant a wit? roxane: brighter than even your own, cousin! cyrano: be it so, with all my heart! roxane: ah! methinks 'twere impossible that there could breathe a man on this earth skilled to say as sweetly as he all the pretty nothings that mean so much-- that mean all! at times his mind seems far away, the muse says naught--and then, presto! he speaks--bewitchingly! enchantingly! cyrano (incredulously): no, no! roxane: fie! that is ill said! but lo! men are ever thus! because he is fair to see, you would have it that he must be dull of speech. cyrano: he hath an eloquent tongue in telling his love? roxane: in telling his love? why, 'tis not simple telling, 'tis dissertation, 'tis analysis! cyrano: how is he with the pen? roxane: still better! listen,--here:-- (reciting): 'the more of my poor heart you take the larger grows my heart!' (triumphantly to cyrano): how like you those lines? cyrano: pooh! roxane: and thus it goes on. . . 'and, since some target i must show for cupid's cruel dart, oh, if mine own you deign to keep, then give me your sweet heart!' cyrano: lord! first he has too much, then anon not enough! how much heart does the fellow want? roxane: you would vex a saint!. . .but 'tis your jealousy. cyrano (starting): what mean you? roxane: ay, your poet's jealousy! hark now, if this again be not tender-sweet?-- 'my heart to yours sounds but one cry: if kisses fast could flee by letter, then with your sweet lips my letters read should be! if kisses could be writ with ink, if kisses fast could flee!' cyrano (smiling approvingly in spite of himself): ha! those last lines are,--hm!. . .hm!. . . (correcting himself--contemptuously): --they are paltry enough! roxane: and this. . . cyrano (enchanted): then you have his letters by heart? roxane: every one of them! cyrano: by all oaths that can be sworn,--'tis flattering! roxane: they are the lines of a master! cyrano (modestly): come, nay. . .a master?. . . roxane: ay, i say it--a master! cyrano: good--be it so. the duenna (coming down quickly): here comes monsieur de guiche! (to cyrano, pushing him toward the house): in with you! 'twere best he see you not; it might perchance put him on the scent. . . roxane (to cyrano): ay, of my own dear secret! he loves me, and is powerful, and, if he knew, then all were lost! marry! he could well deal a deathblow to my love! cyrano (entering the house): good! good! (de guiche appears.) scene .ii. roxane, de guiche, the duenna standing a little way off. roxane (courtesying to de guiche): i was going out. de guiche: i come to take my leave. roxane: whither go you? de guiche: to the war. roxane: ah! de guiche: ay, to-night. roxane: oh! de guiche: i am ordered away. we are to besiege arras. roxane: ah--to besiege?. . . de guiche: ay. my going moves you not, meseems. roxane: nay. . . de guiche: i am grieved to the core of the heart. shall i again behold you?. . .when? i know not. heard you that i am named commander?. . . roxane (indifferently): bravo! de guiche: of the guards regiment. roxane (startled): what! the guards? de guiche: ay, where serves your cousin, the swaggering boaster. i will find a way to revenge myself on him at arras. roxane (choking): what mean you? the guards go to arras? de guiche (laughing): bethink you, is it not my own regiment? roxane (falling seated on the bench--aside): christian! de guiche: what ails you? roxane (moved deeply): oh--i am in despair! the man one loves!--at the war! de guiche (surprised and delighted): you say such sweet words to me! 'tis the first time!--and just when i must quit you! roxane (collected, and fanning herself): thus,--you would fain revenge your grudge against my cousin? de guiche: my fair lady is on his side? roxane: nay,--against him! de guiche: do you see him often? roxane: but very rarely. de guiche: he is ever to be met now in company with one of the cadets,. . .one new-- villen--viller-- roxane: of high stature? de guiche: fair-haired! roxane: ay, a red-headed fellow! de guiche: handsome!. . . roxane: tut! de guiche: but dull-witted. roxane: one would think so, to look at him! (changing her tone): how mean you to play your revenge on cyrano? perchance you think to put him i' the thick of the shots? nay, believe me, that were a poor vengeance--he would love such a post better than aught else! i know the way to wound his pride far more keenly! de guiche: what then? tell. . . roxane: if, when the regiment march to arras, he were left here with his beloved boon companions, the cadets, to sit with crossed arms so long as the war lasted! there is your method, would you enrage a man of his kind; cheat him of his chance of mortal danger, and you punish him right fiercely. de guiche (coming nearer): o woman! woman! who but a woman had e'er devised so subtle a trick? roxane: see you not how he will eat out his heart, while his friends gnaw their thick fists for that they are deprived of the battle? so are you best avenged. de guiche: you love me, then, a little? (she smiles): i would fain--seeing you thus espouse my cause, roxane--believe it a proof of love! roxane: 'tis a proof of love! de guiche (showing some sealed papers): here are the marching orders; they will be sent instantly to each company-- except-- (he detaches one): --this one! 'tis that of the cadets. (he puts it in his pocket): this i keep. (laughing): ha! ha! ha! cyrano! his love of battle!. . .so you can play tricks on people?. . .you, of all ladies! roxane: sometimes! de guiche (coming close to her): oh! how i love you!--to distraction! listen! to-night--true, i ought to start--but--how leave you now that i feel your heart is touched! hard by, in the rue d'orleans, is a convent founded by father athanasius, the syndic of the capuchins. true that no layman may enter--but--i can settle that with the good fathers! their habit sleeves are wide enough to hide me in. 'tis they who serve richelieu's private chapel: and from respect to the uncle, fear the nephew. all will deem me gone. i will come to you, masked. give me leave to wait till tomorrow, sweet lady fanciful! roxane: but, of this be rumored, your glory. . . de guiche: bah! roxane: but the siege--arras. . . de guiche: 'twill take its chance. grant but permission. roxane: no! de guiche: give me leave! roxane (tenderly): it were my duty to forbid you! de guiche: ah! roxane: you must go! (aside): christian stays here. (aloud): i would have you heroic--antoine! de guiche: o heavenly word! you love, then, him?. . . roxane: . . .for whom i trembled. de guiche (in an ecstasy): ah! i go then! (he kisses her hand): are you content? roxane: yes, my friend! (he goes out.) the duenna (making behind his back a mocking courtesy): yes, my friend! roxane (to the duenna): not a word of what i have done. cyrano would never pardon me for stealing his fighting from him! (she calls toward the house): cousin! scene .iii. roxane, the duenna, cyrano. roxane: we are going to clomire's house. (she points to the door opposite): alcandre and lysimon are to discourse! the duenna (putting her little finger in her ear): yes! but my little finger tells me we shall miss them. cyrano: 'twere a pity to miss such apes! (they have come to clomire's door.) the duenna: oh, see! the knocker is muffled up! (speaking to the knocker): so they have gagged that metal tongue of yours, little noisy one, lest it should disturb the fine orators! (she lifts it carefully and knocks with precaution.) roxane (seeing that the door opens): let us enter! (on the threshold, to cyrano): if christian comes, as i feel sure he will, bid him wait for me! cyrano (quickly, as she is going in): listen! (she turns): what mean you to question him on, as is your wont, to-night? roxane: oh-- cyrano (eagerly): well, say. roxane: but you will be mute? cyrano: mute as a fish. roxane: i shall not question him at all, but say: give rein to your fancy! prepare not your speeches,--but speak the thoughts as they come! speak to me of love, and speak splendidly! cyrano (smiling): very good! roxane: but secret!. . . cyrano: secret. roxane: not a word! (she enters and shuts the door.) cyrano (when the door is shut, bowing to her): a thousand thanks! (the door opens again, and roxane puts her head out.) roxane: lest he prepare himself! cyrano: the devil!--no, no! both together: secret. (the door shuts.) cyrano (calling): christian! scene .iv. cyrano, christian. cyrano: i know all that is needful. here's occasion for you to deck yourself with glory. come, lose no time; put away those sulky looks, come to your house with me, i'll teach you. . . christian: no! cyrano: why? christian: i will wait for roxane here. cyrano: how? crazy? come quick with me and learn. . . christian: no, no! i say. i am aweary of these borrowed letters, --borrowed love-makings! thus to act a part, and tremble all the time!--'twas well enough at the beginning!--now i know she loves! i fear no longer!--i will speak myself. cyrano: mercy! christian: and how know you i cannot speak?-- i am not such a fool when all is said! i've by your lessons profited. you'll see i shall know how to speak alone! the devil! i know at least to clasp her in my arms! (seeing roxane come out from clomire's house): --it is she! cyrano, no!--leave me not! cyrano (bowing): speak for yourself, my friend, and take your chance. (he disappears behind the garden wall.) scene .v. christian, roxane, the duenna. roxane (coming out of clomire's house, with a company of friends, whom she leaves. bows and good-byes): barthenoide!--alcandre!--gremione!-- the duenna (bitterly disappointed): we've missed the speech upon the tender passion! (goes into roxane's house.) roxane (still bowing): urimedonte--adieu! (all bow to roxane and to each other, and then separate, going up different streets. roxane suddenly seeing christian): you! (she goes to him): evening falls. let's sit. speak on. i listen. christian (sits by her on the bench. a silence): oh! i love you! roxane (shutting her eyes): ay, speak to me of love. christian: i love thee! roxane: that's the theme! but vary it. christian: i. . . roxane: vary it! christian: i love you so! roxane: oh! without doubt!--and then?. . . christian: and then--i should be--oh!--so glad--so glad if you would love me!--roxane, tell me so! roxane (with a little grimace): i hoped for cream,--you give me gruel! say how love possesses you? christian: oh utterly! roxane: come, come!. . .unknot those tangled sentiments! christian: your throat i'd kiss it! roxane: christian! christian: i love thee! roxane (half-rising): again! christian (eagerly, detaining her): no, no! i love thee not! roxane (reseating herself): 'tis well! christian: but i adore thee! roxane (rising, and going further off): oh! christian: i am grown stupid! roxane (dryly): and that displeases me, almost as much as 'twould displease me if you grew ill-favored. christian: but. . . roxane: rally your poor eloquence that's flown! christian: i. . . roxane: yes, you love me, that i know. adieu. (she goes toward her house.) christian: oh, go not yet! i'd tell you-- roxane (opening the door): you adore me? i've heard it very oft. no!--go away! christian: but i would fain. . . (she shuts the door in his face.) cyrano (who has re-entered unseen): i' faith! it is successful! scene .vi. christian, cyrano, two pages. christian: come to my aid! cyrano: not i! christian: but i shall die, unless at once i win back her fair favor. cyrano: and how can i, at once, i' th' devil's name, lesson you in. . . christian (seizing his arm): oh, she is there! (the window of the balcony is now lighted up.) cyrano (moved): her window! christian: oh! i shall die! cyrano: speak lower! christian (in a whisper): i shall die! cyrano: the night is dark. . . christian: well! cyrano: all can be repaired. although you merit not. stand there, poor wretch! fronting the balcony! i'll go beneath and prompt your words to you. . . christian: but. . . cyrano: hold your tongue! the pages (reappearing at back--to cyrano): ho! cyrano: hush! (he signs to them to speak softly.) first page (in a low voice): we've played the serenade you bade to montfleury! cyrano (quickly, in a low voice): go! lurk in ambush there, one at this street corner, and one at that; and if a passer-by should here intrude, play you a tune! second page: what tune, sir gassendist? cyrano: gay, if a woman comes,--for a man, sad! (the pages disappear, one at each street corner. to christian): call her! christian: roxane! cyrano (picking up stones and throwing them at the window): some pebbles! wait awhile! roxane (half-opening the casement): who calls me? christian: i! roxane: who's that? christian: christian! roxane (disdainfully): oh! you? christian: i would speak with you. cyrano (under the balcony--to christian): good. speak soft and low. roxane: no, you speak stupidly! christian: oh, pity me! roxane: no! you love me no more! christian (prompted by cyrano): you say--great heaven! i love no more?--when--i--love more and more! roxane (who was about to shut the casement, pausing): hold! 'tis a trifle better! ay, a trifle! christian (same play): love grew apace, rocked by the anxious beating. . . of this poor heart, which the cruel wanton boy. . . took for a cradle! roxane (coming out on to the balcony): that is better! but an if you deem that cupid be so cruel you should have stifled baby-love in's cradle! christian (same play): ah, madame, i assayed, but all in vain this. . .new-born babe is a young. . .hercules! roxane: still better! christian (same play): thus he strangled in my heart the. . .serpents twain, of. . .pride. . .and doubt! roxane (leaning over the balcony): well said! --but why so faltering? has mental palsy seized on your faculty imaginative? cyrano (drawing christian under the balcony, and slipping into his place): give place! this waxes critical!. . . roxane: to-day. . . your words are hesitating. cyrano (imitating christian--in a whisper): night has come. . . in the dusk they grope their way to find your ear. roxane: but my words find no such impediment. cyrano: they find their way at once? small wonder that! for 'tis within my heart they find their home; bethink how large my heart, how small your ear! and,--from fair heights descending, words fall fast, but mine must mount, madame, and that takes time! roxane: meseems that your last words have learned to climb. cyrano: with practice such gymnastic grows less hard! roxane: in truth, i seem to speak from distant heights! cyrano: true, far above; at such a height 'twere death if a hard word from you fell on my heart. roxane (moving): i will come down. . . cyrano (hastily): no! roxane (showing him the bench under the balcony): mount then on the bench! cyrano (starting back alarmed): no! roxane: how, you will not? cyrano (more and more moved): stay awhile! 'tis sweet,. . . the rare occasion, when our hearts can speak our selves unseen, unseeing! roxane: why--unseen? cyrano: ay, it is sweet! half hidden,--half revealed-- you see the dark folds of my shrouding cloak, and i, the glimmering whiteness of your dress: i but a shadow--you a radiance fair! know you what such a moment holds for me? if ever i were eloquent. . . roxane: you were! cyrano: yet never till to-night my speech has sprung straight from my heart as now it springs. roxane: why not? cyrano: till now i spoke haphazard. . . roxane: what? cyrano: your eyes have beams that turn men dizzy!--but to-night methinks i shall find speech for the first time! roxane: 'tis true, your voice rings with a tone that's new. cyrano (coming nearer, passionately): ay, a new tone! in the tender, sheltering dusk i dare to be myself for once,--at last! (he stops, falters): what say i? i know not!--oh, pardon me-- it thrills me,--'tis so sweet, so novel. . . roxane: how? so novel? cyrano (off his balance, trying to find the thread of his sentence): ay,--to be at last sincere; till now, my chilled heart, fearing to be mocked. . . roxane: mocked, and for what? cyrano: for its mad beating!--ay, my heart has clothed itself with witty words, to shroud itself from curious eyes:--impelled at times to aim at a star, i stay my hand, and, fearing ridicule,--cull a wild flower! roxane: a wild flower's sweet. cyrano: ay, but to-night--the star! roxane: oh! never have you spoken thus before! cyrano: if, leaving cupid's arrows, quivers, torches, we turned to seek for sweeter--fresher things! instead of sipping in a pygmy glass dull fashionable waters,--did we try how the soul slakes its thirst in fearless draught by drinking from the river's flooding brim! roxane: but wit?. . . cyrano: if i have used it to arrest you at the first starting,--now, 'twould be an outrage, an insult--to the perfumed night--to nature-- to speak fine words that garnish vain love-letters! look up but at her stars! the quiet heaven will ease our hearts of all things artificial; i fear lest, 'midst the alchemy we're skilled in the truth of sentiment dissolve and vanish,-- the soul exhausted by these empty pastimes, the gain of fine things be the loss of all things! roxane: but wit? i say. . . cyrano: in love 'tis crime,--'tis hateful! turning frank loving into subtle fencing! at last the moment comes, inevitable,-- --oh, woe for those who never know that moment! when feeling love exists in us, ennobling, each well-weighed word is futile and soul-saddening! roxane: well, if that moment's come for us--suppose it! what words would serve you? cyrano: all, all, all, whatever that came to me, e'en as they came, i'd fling them in a wild cluster, not a careful bouquet. i love thee! i am mad! i love, i stifle! thy name is in my heart as in a sheep-bell, and as i ever tremble, thinking of thee, ever the bell shakes, ever thy name ringeth! all things of thine i mind, for i love all things; i know that last year on the twelfth of may-month, to walk abroad, one day you changed your hair-plaits! i am so used to take your hair for daylight that,--like as when the eye stares on the sun's disk, one sees long after a red blot on all things-- so, when i quit thy beams, my dazzled vision sees upon all things a blonde stain imprinted. roxane (agitated): why, this is love indeed!. . . cyrano: ay, true, the feeling which fills me, terrible and jealous, truly love,--which is ever sad amid its transports! love,--and yet, strangely, not a selfish passion! i for your joy would gladly lay mine own down, --e'en though you never were to know it,--never! --if but at times i might--far off and lonely,-- hear some gay echo of the joy i bought you! each glance of thine awakes in me a virtue,-- a novel, unknown valor. dost begin, sweet, to understand? so late, dost understand me? feel'st thou my soul, here, through the darkness mounting? too fair the night! too fair, too fair the moment! that i should speak thus, and that you should hearken! too fair! in moments when my hopes rose proudest, i never hoped such guerdon. naught is left me but to die now! have words of mine the power to make you tremble,--throned there in the branches? ay, like a leaf among the leaves, you tremble! you tremble! for i feel,--an if you will it, or will it not,--your hand's beloved trembling thrill through the branches, down your sprays of jasmine! (he kisses passionately one of the hanging tendrils.) roxane: ay! i am trembling, weeping!--i am thine! thou hast conquered all of me! cyrano: then let death come! 'tis i, 'tis i myself, who conquered thee! one thing, but one, i dare to ask-- christian (under the balcony): a kiss! roxane (drawing back): what? cyrano: oh! roxane: you ask. . .? cyrano: i. . . (to christian, whispering): fool! you go too quick! christian: since she is moved thus--i will profit by it! cyrano (to roxane): my words sprang thoughtlessly, but now i see-- shame on me!--i was too presumptuous. roxane (a little chilled): how quickly you withdraw. cyrano: yes, i withdraw without withdrawing! hurt i modesty? if so--the kiss i asked--oh, grant it not. christian (to cyrano, pulling him by his cloak): why? cyrano: silence, christian! hush! roxane (leaning over): what whisper you? cyrano: i chid myself for my too bold advances; said, 'silence, christian!' (the lutes begin to play): hark! wait awhile,. . . steps come! (roxane shuts the window. cyrano listens to the lutes, one of which plays a merry, the other a melancholy, tune): why, they play sad--then gay--then sad! what? neither man nor woman?--oh! a monk! (enter a capuchin friar, with a lantern. he goes from house to house, looking at every door.) scene .vii. cyrano, christian, a capuchin friar. cyrano (to the friar): what do you, playing at diogenes? the friar: i seek the house of madame. . . christian: oh! plague take him! the friar: madeleine robin. . . christian: what would he?. . . cyrano (pointing to a street at the back): this way! straight on. . . the friar i thank you, and, in your intention will tell my rosary to its last bead. (he goes out.) cyrano: good luck! my blessings rest upon your cowl! (he goes back to christian.) scene .viii. cyrano, christian. christian: oh! win for me that kiss. . . cyrano: no! christian: soon or late!. . . cyrano: 'tis true! the moment of intoxication-- of madness,--when your mouths are sure to meet thanks to your fair mustache--and her rose lips! (to himself): i'd fainer it should come thanks to. . . (a sound of shutters reopening. christian goes in again under the balcony.) scene .ix. cyrano, christian, roxane. roxane (coming out on the balcony): still there? we spoke of a. . . cyrano: a kiss! the word is sweet. i see not why your lip should shrink from it; if the word burns it,--what would the kiss do? oh! let it not your bashfulness affright; have you not, all this time, insensibly, left badinage aside, and unalarmed glided from smile to sigh,--from sigh to weeping? glide gently, imperceptibly, still onward-- from tear to kiss,--a moment's thrill!--a heartbeat! roxane: hush! hush! cyrano: a kiss, when all is said,--what is it? an oath that's ratified,--a sealed promise, a heart's avowal claiming confirmation,-- a rose-dot on the 'i' of 'adoration,'-- a secret that to mouth, not ear, is whispered,-- brush of a bee's wing, that makes time eternal,-- communion perfumed like the spring's wild flowers,-- the heart's relieving in the heart's outbreathing, when to the lips the soul's flood rises, brimming! roxane: hush! hush! cyrano: a kiss, madame, is honorable: the queen of france, to a most favored lord did grant a kiss--the queen herself! roxane: what then? cyrano (speaking more warmly): buckingham suffered dumbly,--so have i,-- adored his queen, as loyally as i,-- was sad, but faithful,--so am i. . . roxane: and you are fair as buckingham! cyrano (aside--suddenly cooled): true,--i forgot! roxane: must i then bid thee mount to cull this flower? cyrano (pushing christian toward the balcony): mount! roxane: this heart-breathing!. . . cyrano: mount! roxane: this brush of bee's wing!. . . cyrano: mount! christian (hesitating): but i feel now, as though 'twere ill done! roxane: this moment infinite!. . . cyrano (still pushing him): come, blockhead, mount! (christian springs forward, and by means of the bench, the branches, and the pillars, climbs to the balcony and strides over it.) christian: ah, roxane! (he takes her in his arms, and bends over her lips.) cyrano: aie! strange pain that wrings my heart! the kiss, love's feast, so near! i, lazarus, lie at the gate in darkness. yet to me falls still a crumb or two from the rich man's board-- ay, 'tis my heart receives thee, roxane--mine! for on the lips you press you kiss as well the words i spoke just now!--my words--my words! (the lutes play): a sad air,--a gay air: the monk! (he begins to run as if he came from a long way off, and cries out): hola! roxane: who is it? cyrano: i--i was but passing by. . . is christian there? christian (astonished): cyrano! roxane: good-day, cousin! cyrano: cousin, good-day! roxane: i'm coming! (she disappears into the house. at the back re-enter the friar.) christian (seeing him): back again! (he follows roxane.) scene .x. cyrano, christian, roxane, the friar, ragueneau. the friar: 'tis here,--i'm sure of it--madame madeleine robin. cyrano: why, you said ro-lin. the friar: no, not i. b,i,n,bin! roxane (appearing on the threshold, followed by ragueneau, who carries a lantern, and christian): what is't? the friar: a letter. christian: what? the friar (to roxane): oh, it can boot but a holy business! 'tis from a worthy lord. . . roxane (to christian): de guiche! christian: he dares. . . roxane: oh, he will not importune me forever! (unsealing the letter): i love you,--therefore-- (she reads in a low voice by the aid of ragueneau's lantern): 'lady, the drums beat; my regiment buckles its harness on and starts; but i,--they deem me gone before-- but i stay. i have dared to disobey your mandate. i am here in convent walls. i come to you to-night. by this poor monk-- a simple fool who knows not what he bears-- i send this missive to apprise your ear. your lips erewhile have smiled on me, too sweet: i go not ere i've seen them once again! i would be private; send each soul away, receive alone him,--whose great boldness you have deigned, i hope, to pardon, ere he asks,-- he who is ever your--et cetera.' (to the monk): father, this is the matter of the letter:-- (all come near her, and she reads aloud): 'lady, the cardinal's wish is law; albeit it be to you unwelcome. for this cause i send these lines--to your fair ear addressed-- by a holy man, discreet, intelligent: it is our will that you receive from him, in your own house, the marriage (she turns the page): benediction straightway, this night. unknown to all the world christian becomes your husband. him we send. he is abhorrent to your choice. let be. resign yourself, and this obedience will be by heaven well recompensed. receive, fair lady, all assurance of respect, from him who ever was, and still remains, your humble and obliged--et cetera.' the friar (with great delight): o worthy lord! i knew naught was to fear; it could be but holy business! roxane (to christian, in a low voice): am i not apt at reading letters? christian: hum! roxane (aloud, with despair): but this is horrible! the friar (who has turned his lantern on cyrano): 'tis you? christian: 'tis i! the friar (turning the light on to him, and as if a doubt struck him on seeing his beauty): but. . . roxane (quickly): i have overlooked the postscript--see:-- 'give twenty pistoles for the convent.' the friar: . . .oh! most worthy lord! (to roxane): submit you? roxane (with a martyr's look): i submit! (while ragueneau opens the door, and christian invites the friar to enter, she whispers to cyrano): oh, keep de guiche at bay! he will be here! let him not enter till. . . cyrano: i understand! (to the friar): what time need you to tie the marriage-knot? the friar: a quarter of an hour. cyrano (pushing them all toward the house): go! i stay. roxane (to christian): come!. . . (they enter.) cyrano: now, how to detain de guiche so long? (he jumps on the bench, climbs to the balcony by the wall): come!. . .up i go!. . .i have my plan!. . . (the lutes begin to play a very sad air): what, ho! (the tremolo grows more and more weird): it is a man! ay! 'tis a man this time! (he is on the balcony, pulls his hat over his eyes, takes off his sword, wraps himself in his cloak, then leans over): 'tis not too high! (he strides across the balcony, and drawing to him a long branch of one of the trees that are by the garden wall, he hangs on to it with both hands, ready to let himself fall): i'll shake this atmosphere! scene .xi. cyrano, de guiche. de guiche (who enters, masked, feeling his way in the dark): what can that cursed friar be about? cyrano: the devil!. . .if he knows my voice! (letting go with one hand, he pretends to turn an invisible key. solemnly): cric! crac! assume thou, cyrano, to serve the turn, the accent of thy native bergerac!. . . de guiche (looking at the house): 'tis there. i see dim,--this mask hinders me! (he is about to enter, when cyrano leaps from the balcony, holding on to the branch, which bends, dropping him between the door and de guiche; he pretends to fall heavily, as from a great height, and lies flat on the ground, motionless, as if stunned. de guiche starts back): what's this? (when he looks up, the branch has sprung back into its place. he sees only the sky, and is lost in amazement): where fell that man from? cyrano (sitting up, and speaking with a gascon accent): from the moon! de guiche: from?. . . cyrano (in a dreamy voice): what's o'clock? de guiche: he's lost his mind, for sure! cyrano: what hour? what country this? what month? what day? de guiche: but. . . cyrano: i am stupefied! de guiche: sir! cyrano: like a bomb i fell from the moon! de guiche (impatiently): come now! cyrano (rising, in a terrible voice): i say,--the moon! de guiche (recoiling): good, good! let it be so!. . .he's raving mad! cyrano (walking up to him): i say from the moon! i mean no metaphor!. . . de guiche: but. . . cyrano: was't a hundred years--a minute, since? --i cannot guess what time that fall embraced!-- that i was in that saffron-colored ball? de guiche (shrugging his shoulders): good! let me pass! cyrano (intercepting him): where am i? tell the truth! fear not to tell! oh, spare me not! where? where? have i fallen like a shooting star? de guiche: morbleu! cyrano: the fall was lightning-quick! no time to choose where i should fall--i know not where it be! oh, tell me! is it on a moon or earth, that my posterior weight has landed me? de guiche: i tell you, sir. . . cyrano (with a screech of terror, which makes de guiche start back): no? can it be? i'm on a planet where men have black faces? de guiche (putting a hand to his face): what? cyrano (feigning great alarm): am i in africa? a native you? de guiche (who has remembered his mask): this mask of mine. . . cyrano (pretending to be reassured): in venice? ha!--or rome? de guiche (trying to pass): a lady waits. . cyrano (quite reassured): oh-ho! i am in paris! de guiche (smiling in spite of himself): the fool is comical! cyrano: you laugh? de guiche: i laugh, but would get by! cyrano (beaming with joy): i have shot back to paris! (quite at ease, laughing, dusting himself, bowing): come--pardon me--by the last water-spout, covered with ether,--accident of travel! my eyes still full of star-dust, and my spurs encumbered by the planets' filaments! (picking something off his sleeve): ha! on my doublet?--ah, a comet's hair!. . . (he puffs as if to blow it away.) de guiche (beside himself): sir!. . . cyrano (just as he is about to pass, holds out his leg as if to show him something and stops him): in my leg--the calf--there is a tooth of the great bear, and, passing neptune close, i would avoid his trident's point, and fell, thus sitting, plump, right in the scales! my weight is marked, still registered, up there in heaven! (hurriedly preventing de guiche from passing, and detaining him by the button of his doublet): i swear to you that if you squeezed my nose it would spout milk! de guiche: milk? cyrano: from the milky way! de guiche: oh, go to hell! cyrano (crossing his arms): i fall, sir, out of heaven! now, would you credit it, that as i fell i saw that sirius wears a nightcap? true! (confidentially): the other bear is still too small to bite. (laughing): i went through the lyre, but i snapped a cord; (grandiloquent): i mean to write the whole thing in a book; the small gold stars, that, wrapped up in my cloak, i carried safe away at no small risks, will serve for asterisks i' the printed page! de guiche: come, make an end! i want. . . cyrano: oh-ho! you are sly! de guiche: sir! cyrano: you would worm all out of me!--the way the moon is made, and if men breathe and live in its rotund cucurbita? de guiche (angrily): no, no! i want. . . cyrano: ha, ha!--to know how i got up? hark, it was by a method all my own. de guiche (wearied): he's mad! cyrano(contemptuously): no! not for me the stupid eagle of regiomontanus, nor the timid pigeon of archytas--neither of those! de guiche: ay, 'tis a fool! but 'tis a learned fool! cyrano: no imitator i of other men! (de guiche has succeeded in getting by, and goes toward roxane's door. cyrano follows him, ready to stop him by force): six novel methods, all, this brain invented! de guiche (turning round): six? cyrano (volubly): first, with body naked as your hand, festooned about with crystal flacons, full o' th' tears the early morning dew distils; my body to the sun's fierce rays exposed to let it suck me up, as 't sucks the dew! de guiche (surprised, making one step toward cyrano): ah! that makes one! cyrano (stepping back, and enticing him further away): and then, the second way, to generate wind--for my impetus-- to rarefy air, in a cedar case, by mirrors placed icosahedron-wise. de guiche (making another step): two! cyrano (still stepping backward): or--for i have some mechanic skill-- to make a grasshopper, with springs of steel, and launch myself by quick succeeding fires saltpeter-fed to the stars' pastures blue! de guiche (unconsciously following him and counting on his fingers): three! cyrano: or (since fumes have property to mount)-- to charge a globe with fumes, sufficiently to carry me aloft! de guiche (same play, more and more astonished): well, that makes four! cyrano: or smear myself with marrow from a bull, since, at the lowest point of zodiac, phoebus well loves to suck that marrow up! de guiche (amazed): five! cyrano (who, while speaking, had drawn him to the other side of the square near a bench): sitting on an iron platform--thence to throw a magnet in the air. this is a method well conceived--the magnet flown, infallibly the iron will pursue: then quick! relaunch your magnet, and you thus can mount and mount unmeasured distances! de guiche: here are six excellent expedients! which of the six chose you? cyrano: why, none!--a seventh! de guiche: astonishing! what was it? cyrano: i'll recount. de guiche: this wild eccentric becomes interesting! cyrano (making a noise like the waves, with weird gestures): houuh! houuh! de guiche: well. cyrano: you have guessed? de guiche: not i! cyrano: the tide! i' th' witching hour when the moon woos the wave, i laid me, fresh from a sea-bath, on the shore-- and, failing not to put head foremost--for the hair holds the sea-water in its mesh-- i rose in air, straight! straight! like angel's flight, and mounted, mounted, gently, effortless,. . . when lo! a sudden shock! then. . . de guiche (overcome by curiosity, sitting down on the bench): then? cyrano: oh! then. . . (suddenly returning to his natural voice): the quarter's gone--i'll hinder you no more: the marriage-vows are made. de guiche (springing up): what? am i mad? that voice? (the house-door opens. lackeys appear carrying lighted candelabra. light. cyrano gracefully uncovers): that nose--cyrano? cyrano (bowing): cyrano. while we were chatting, they have plighted troth. de guiche: who? (he turns round. tableau. behind the lackeys appear roxane and christian, holding each other by the hand. the friar follows them, smiling. ragueneau also holds a candlestick. the duenna closes the rear, bewildered, having made a hasty toilet): heavens! scene .xii. the same. roxane, christian, the friar, ragueneau, lackeys, the duenna. de guiche (to roxane): you? (recognizing christian, in amazement): he? (bowing, with admiration, to roxane): cunningly contrived! (to cyrano): my compliments--sir apparatus-maker! your story would arrest at peter's gate saints eager for their paradise! note well the details. 'faith! they'd make a stirring book! cyrano (bowing): i shall not fail to follow your advice. the friar (showing with satisfaction the two lovers to de guiche): a handsome couple, son, made one by you! de guiche (with a freezing look): ay! (to roxane): bid your bridegroom, madame, fond farewell. roxane: why so? de guiche (to christian): even now the regiment departs. join it! roxane: it goes to battle? de guiche: without doubt. roxane: but the cadets go not? de guiche: oh ay! they go. (drawing out the paper he had put in his pocket): here is the order. (to christian): baron, bear it, quick! roxane (throwing herself in christian's arms): christian! de guiche (sneeringly to cyrano): the wedding-night is far, methinks! cyrano (aside): he thinks to give me pain of death by this! christian (to roxane): oh! once again! your lips! cyrano: come, come, enough! christian (still kissing roxane): --'tis hard to leave her, you know not. . . cyrano (trying to draw him away): i know. (sound of drums beating a march in the distance.) de guiche: the regiment starts! roxane (to cyrano, holding back christian, whom cyrano is drawing away): oh!--i trust him you! promise me that no risks shall put his life in danger! cyrano: i will try my best, but promise. . . that i cannot! roxane: but swear he shall be prudent? cyrano: again, i'll do my best, but. . . roxane: in the siege let him not suffer! cyrano: all that man can do, i. . . roxane: that he shall be faithful! cyrano: doubtless, but. . . roxane: that he will write oft? cyrano (pausing): that, i promise you! curtain. act iv. the cadets of gascony. post occupied by company of carbon de castel-jaloux at the siege of arras. in the background an embankment across the whole stage. beyond, view of plain extending to the horizon. the country covered with intrenchments. the walls of arras and the outlines of its roofs against the sky in the distance. tents. arms strewn about, drums, etc. day is breaking with a faint glimmer of yellow sunrise in the east. sentinels at different points. watch-fires. the cadets of gascony, wrapped in their mantles, are sleeping. carbon de castel-jaloux and le bret are keeping watch. they are very pale and thin. christian sleeps among the others in his cloak in the foreground, his face illuminated by the fire. silence. scene .i. christian, carbon de castel-jaloux, le bret, the cadets, then cyrano. le bret: 'tis terrible. carbon: not a morsel left. le bret: mordioux! carbon (making a sign that he should speak lower): curse under your breath. you will awake them. (to the cadets): hush! sleep on. (to le bret): he who sleeps, dines! le bret: but that is sorry comfort for the sleepless!. . . what starvation! (firing is heard in the distance.) carbon: oh, plague take their firing! 'twill wake my sons. (to the cadets, who lift up their heads): sleep on! (firing is again heard, nearer this time.) a cadet (moving): the devil!. . .again. carbon: 'tis nothing! 'tis cyrano coming back! (those who have lifted up their heads prepare to sleep again.) a sentinel (from without): ventrebieu! who goes there? the voice of cyrano: bergerac. the sentinel (who is on the redoubt): ventrebieu! who goes there? cyrano (appearing at the top): bergerac, idiot! (he comes down; le bret advances anxiously to meet him.) le bret: heavens! cyrano (making signs that he should not awake the others): hush! le bret: wounded? cyrano: oh! you know it has become their custom to shoot at me every morning and to miss me. le bret: this passes all! to take letters at each day's dawn. to risk. . . cyrano (stopping before christian): i promised he should write often. (he looks at him): he sleeps. how pale he is! but how handsome still, despite his sufferings. if his poor little lady-love knew that he is dying of hunger. . . le bret: get you quick to bed. cyrano: nay, never scold, le bret. i ran but little risk. i have found me a spot to pass the spanish lines, where each night they lie drunk. le bret: you should try to bring us back provision. cyrano: a man must carry no weight who would get by there! but there will be surprise for us this night. the french will eat or die. . .if i mistake not! le bret: oh!. . .tell me!. . . cyrano: nay, not yet. i am not certain. . .you will see! carbon: it is disgraceful that we should starve while we're besieging! le bret: alas, how full of complication is this siege of arras! to think that while we are besieging, we should ourselves be caught in a trap and besieged by the cardinal infante of spain. cyrano: it were well done if he should be besieged in his turn. le bret: i am in earnest. cyrano: oh! indeed! le bret: to think you risk a life so precious. . .for the sake of a letter. . .thankless one. (seeing him turning to enter the tent): where are you going? cyrano: i am going to write another. (he enters the tent and disappears.) scene .ii. the same, all but cyrano. the day is breaking in a rosy light. the town of arras is golden in the horizon. the report of cannon is heard in the distance, followed immediately by the beating of drums far away to the left. other drums are heard much nearer. sounds of stirring in the camp. voices of officers in the distance. carbon (sighing): the reveille! (the cadets move and stretch themselves): nourishing sleep! thou art at an end!. . .i know well what will be their first cry! a cadet (sitting up): i am so hungry! another: i am dying of hunger. together: oh! carbon: up with you! third cadet: --cannot move a limb. fourth cadet: nor can i. the first (looking at himself in a bit of armor): my tongue is yellow. the air at this season of the year is hard to digest. another: my coronet for a bit of chester! another: if none can furnish to my gaster wherewith to make a pint of chyle, i shall retire to my tent--like achilles! another: oh! something! were it but a crust! carbon (going to the tent and calling softly): cyrano! all the cadets: we are dying! carbon (continuing to speak under his breath at the opening of the tent): come to my aid, you, who have the art of quick retort and gay jest. come, hearten them up. second cadet (rushing toward another who is munching something): what are you crunching there? first cadet: cannon-wads soaked in axle-grease! 'tis poor hunting round about arras! a cadet (entering): i have been after game. another (following him): and i after fish. all (rushing to the two newcomers): well! what have you brought?--a pheasant?--a carp?--come, show us quick! the angler: a gudgeon! the sportsman: a sparrow! all together (beside themselves): 'tis more than can be borne! we will mutiny! carbon: cyrano! come to my help. (the daylight has now come.) scene .iii. the same. cyrano. cyrano (appearing from the tent, very calm, with a pen stuck behind his ear and a book in his hand): what is wrong? (silence. to the first cadet): why drag you your legs so sorrowfully? the cadet: i have something in my heels which weighs them down. cyrano: and what may that be? the cadet: my stomach! cyrano: so have i, 'faith! the cadet: it must be in your way? cyrano: nay, i am all the taller. a third: my stomach's hollow. cyrano: 'faith, 'twill make a fine drum to sound the assault. another: i have a ringing in my ears. cyrano: no, no, 'tis false; a hungry stomach has no ears. another: oh, to eat something--something oily! cyrano (pulling off the cadet's helmet and holding it out to him): behold your salad! another: what, in god's name, can we devour? cyrano (throwing him the book which he is carrying): the 'iliad'. another: the first minister in paris has his four meals a day! cyrano: 'twere courteous an he sent you a few partridges! the same: and why not? with wine, too! cyrano: a little burgundy. richelieu, s'il vous plait! the same: he could send it by one of his friars. cyrano: ay! by his eminence joseph himself. another: i am as ravenous as an ogre! cyrano: eat your patience, then. the first cadet (shrugging his shoulders): always your pointed word! cyrano: ay, pointed words! i would fain die thus, some soft summer eve, making a pointed word for a good cause. --to make a soldier's end by soldier's sword, wielded by some brave adversary--die on blood-stained turf, not on a fever-bed, a point upon my lips, a point within my heart. cries from all: i'm hungry! cyrano (crossing his arms): all your thoughts of meat and drink! bertrand the fifer!--you were shepherd once,-- draw from its double leathern case your fife, play to these greedy, guzzling soldiers. play old country airs with plaintive rhythm recurring, where lurk sweet echoes of the dear home-voices, each note of which calls like a little sister, those airs slow, slow ascending, as the smoke-wreaths rise from the hearthstones of our native hamlets, their music strikes the ear like gascon patois!. . . (the old man seats himself, and gets his flute ready): your flute was now a warrior in durance; but on its stem your fingers are a-dancing a bird-like minuet! o flute! remember that flutes were made of reeds first, not laburnum; make us a music pastoral days recalling-- the soul-time of your youth, in country pastures!. . . (the old man begins to play the airs of languedoc): hark to the music, gascons!. . .'tis no longer the piercing fife of camp--but 'neath his fingers the flute of the woods! no more the call to combat, 'tis now the love-song of the wandering goat-herds!. . . hark!. . .'tis the valley, the wet landes, the forest, the sunburnt shepherd-boy with scarlet beret, the dusk of evening on the dordogne river,-- 'tis gascony! hark, gascons, to the music! (the cadets sit with bowed heads; their eyes have a far-off look as if dreaming, and they surreptitiously wipe away their tears with their cuffs and the corner of their cloaks.) carbon (to cyrano in a whisper): but you make them weep! cyrano: ay, for homesickness. a nobler pain than hunger,--'tis of the soul, not of the body! i am well pleased to see their pain change its viscera. heart-ache is better than stomach-ache. carbon: but you weaken their courage by playing thus on their heart-strings! cyrano (making a sign to a drummer to approach): not i. the hero that sleeps in gascon blood is ever ready to awake in them. 'twould suffice. . . (he makes a signal; the drum beats.) all the cadets (stand up and rush to take arms): what? what is it? cyrano (smiling): you see! one roll of the drum is enough! good-by dreams, regrets, native land, love. . .all that the pipe called forth the drum has chased away! a cadet (looking toward the back of the stage): ho! here comes monsieur de guiche. all the cadets (muttering): ugh!. . .ugh!. . . cyrano (smiling): a flattering welcome! a cadet: we are sick to death of him! another cadet: --with his lace collar over his armor, playing the fine gentleman! another: as if one wore linen over steel! the first: it were good for a bandage had he boils on his neck. the second: another plotting courtier! another cadet: his uncle's own nephew! carbon: for all that--a gascon. the first: ay, false gascon!. . .trust him not. . . gascons should ever be crack-brained. . . naught more dangerous than a rational gascon. le bret: how pale he is! another: oh! he is hungry, just like us poor devils; but under his cuirass, with its fine gilt nails, his stomach-ache glitters brave in the sun. cyrano (hurriedly): let us not seem to suffer either! out with your cards, pipes, and dice. . . (all begin spreading out the games on the drums, the stools, the ground, and on their cloaks, and light long pipes): and i shall read descartes. (he walks up and down, reading a little book which he has drawn from his pocket. tableau. enter de guiche. all appear absorbed and happy. he is very pale. he goes up to carbon.) scene .iv. the same. de guiche. de guiche (to carbon): good-day! (they examine each other. aside, with satisfaction): he's green. carbon (aside): he has nothing left but eyes. de guiche (looking at the cadets): here are the rebels! ay, sirs, on all sides i hear that in your ranks you scoff at me; that the cadets, these loutish, mountain-bred, poor country squires, and barons of perigord, scarce find for me--their colonel--a disdain sufficient! call me plotter, wily courtier! it does not please their mightiness to see a point-lace collar on my steel cuirass,-- and they enrage, because a man, in sooth, may be no ragged-robin, yet a gascon! (silence. all smoke and play): shall i command your captain punish you? no. carbon: i am free, moreover,--will not punish-- de guiche: ah! carbon: i have paid my company--'tis mine. i bow but to headquarters. de guiche: so?--in faith! that will suffice. (addressing himself to the cadets): i can despise your taunts 'tis well known how i bear me in the war; at bapaume, yesterday, they saw the rage with which i beat back the count of bucquoi; assembling my own men, i fell on his, and charged three separate times! cyrano (without lifting his eyes from his book): and your white scarf? de guiche (surprised and gratified): you know that detail?. . .troth! it happened thus: while caracoling to recall the troops for the third charge, a band of fugitives bore me with them, close by the hostile ranks: i was in peril--capture, sudden death!-- when i thought of the good expedient to loosen and let fall the scarf which told my military rank; thus i contrived --without attention waked--to leave the foes, and suddenly returning, reinforced with my own men, to scatter them! and now, --what say you, sir? (the cadets pretend not to be listening, but the cards and the dice-boxes remain suspended in their hands, the smoke of their pipes in their cheeks. they wait.) cyrano: i say, that henri quatre had not, by any dangerous odds, been forced to strip himself of his white helmet plume. (silent delight. the cards fall, the dice rattle. the smoke is puffed.) de guiche: the ruse succeeded, though! (same suspension of play, etc.) cyrano: oh, may be! but one does not lightly abdicate the honor to serve as target to the enemy (cards, dice, fall again, and the cadets smoke with evident delight): had i been present when your scarf fell low, --our courage, sir, is of a different sort-- i would have picked it up and put it on. de guiche: oh, ay! another gascon boast! cyrano: a boast? lend it to me. i pledge myself, to-night, --with it across my breast,--to lead th' assault. de guiche: another gascon vaunt! you know the scarf lies with the enemy, upon the brink of the stream,. . .the place is riddled now with shot,-- no one can fetch it hither! cyrano (drawing the scarf from his pocket, and holding it out to him): here it is. (silence. the cadets stifle their laughter in their cards and dice-boxes. de guiche turns and looks at them; they instantly become grave, and set to play. one of them whistles indifferently the air just played by the fifer.) de guiche (taking the scarf): i thank you. it will now enable me to make a signal,--that i had forborne to make--till now. (he goes to the rampart, climbs it, and waves the scarf thrice.) all: what's that? the sentinel (from the top of the rampart): see you yon man down there, who runs?. . . de guiche (descending): 'tis a false spanish spy who is extremely useful to my ends. the news he carries to the enemy are those i prompt him with--so, in a word, we have an influence on their decisions! cyrano: scoundrel! de guiche (carelessly knotting on his scarf): 'tis opportune. what were we saying? ah! i have news for you. last evening --to victual us--the marshal did attempt a final effort:--secretly he went to dourlens, where the king's provisions be. but--to return to camp more easily-- he took with him a goodly force of troops. those who attacked us now would have fine sport! half of the army's absent from the camp! carbon: ay, if the spaniards knew, 'twere ill for us, but they know nothing of it? de guiche: oh! they know. they will attack us. carbon: ah! de guiche: for my false spy came to warn me of their attack. he said, 'i can decide the point for their assault; where would you have it? i will tell them 'tis the least defended--they'll attempt you there.' i answered, 'good. go out of camp, but watch my signal. choose the point from whence it comes.' carbon (to cadets): make ready! (all rise; sounds of swords and belts being buckled.) de guiche: 'twill be in an hour. first cadet: good!. . . (they all sit down again and take up their games.) de guiche (to carbon): time must be gained. the marshal will return. carbon: how gain it? de guiche: you will all be good enough to let yourselves to be killed. cyrano: vengeance! oho! de guiche: i do not say that, if i loved you well, i had chosen you and yours,--but, as things stand,-- your courage yielding to no corps the palm-- i serve my king, and serve my grudge as well. cyrano: permit that i express my gratitude. . . de guiche: i know you love to fight against five score; you will not now complain of paltry odds. (he goes up with carbon.) cyrano (to the cadets): we shall add to the gascon coat of arms, with its six bars of blue and gold, one more-- the blood-red bar that was a-missing there! (de guiche speaks in a low voice with carbon at the back. orders are given. preparations go forward. cyrano goes up to christian, who stands with crossed arms.) cyrano (putting his hand on christian's shoulder): christian! christian (shaking his head): roxane! cyrano: alas! christian: at least, i'd send my heart's farewell to her in a fair letter!. . . cyrano: i had suspicion it would be to-day, (he draws a letter out of his doublet): and had already writ. . . christian: show! cyrano: will you. . .? christian (taking the letter): ay! (he opens and reads it): hold! cyrano: what? christian: this little spot! cyrano (taking the letter, with an innocent look): a spot? christian: a tear! cyrano: poets, at last,--by dint of counterfeiting-- take counterfeit for true--that is the charm! this farewell letter,--it was passing sad, i wept myself in writing it! christian: wept? why? cyrano: oh!. . .death itself is hardly terrible,. . . --but, ne'er to see her more! that is death's sting! --for. . .i shall never. . . (christian looks at him): we shall. . . (quickly): i mean, you. . . christian (snatching the letter from him): give me that letter! (a rumor, far off in the camp.) voice of sentinel: who goes there? halloo! (shots--voices--carriage-bells.) carbon: what is it? a sentinel (on the rampart): 'tis a carriage! (all rush to see.) cries: in the camp? it enters!--it comes from the enemy! --fire!--no!--the coachman cries!--what does he say? --'on the king's service!' (everyone is on the rampart, staring. the bells come nearer.) de guiche: the king's service? how? (all descend and draw up in line.) carbon: uncover, all! de guiche: the king's! draw up in line! let him describe his curve as it befits! (the carriage enters at full speed covered with dust and mud. the curtains are drawn close. two lackeys behind. it is pulled up suddenly.) carbon: beat a salute! (a roll of drums. the cadets uncover.) de guiche: lower the carriage-steps! (two cadets rush forward. the door opens.) roxane (jumping down from the carriage): good-day! (all are bowing to the ground, but at the sound of a woman's voice every head is instantly raised.) scene .v. the same. roxane. de guiche: on the king's service! you? roxane: ay,--king love's! what other king? cyrano: great god! christian (rushing forward): why have you come? roxane: this siege--'tis too long! christian: but why?. . . roxane: i will tell you all! cyrano (who, at the sound of her voice, has stood still, rooted to the ground, afraid to raise his eyes): my god! dare i look at her? de guiche: you cannot remain here! roxane (merrily): but i say yes! who will push a drum hither for me? (she seats herself on the drum they roll forward): so! i thank you. (she laughs): my carriage was fired at (proudly): by the patrol! look! would you not think 'twas made of a pumpkin, like cinderella's chariot in the tale,--and the footmen out of rats? (sending a kiss with her lips to christian): good-morrow! (examining them all): you look not merry, any of you! ah! know you that 'tis a long road to get to arras? (seeing cyrano): cousin, delighted! cyrano (coming up to her): but how, in heaven's name?. . . roxane: how found i the way to the army? it was simple enough, for i had but to pass on and on, as far as i saw the country laid waste. ah, what horrors were there! had i not seen, then i could never have believed it! well, gentlemen, if such be the service of your king, i would fainer serve mine! cyrano: but 'tis sheer madness! where in the fiend's name did you get through? roxane: where? through the spanish lines. first cadet: --for subtle craft, give me a woman! de guiche: but how did you pass through their lines? le bret: faith! that must have been a hard matter!. . . roxane: none too hard. i but drove quietly forward in my carriage, and when some hidalgo of haughty mien would have stayed me, lo! i showed at the window my sweetest smile, and these senors being (with no disrespect to you) the most gallant gentlemen in the world,--i passed on! carbon: true, that smile is a passport! but you must have been asked frequently to give an account of where you were going, madame? roxane: yes, frequently. then i would answer, 'i go to see my lover.' at that word the very fiercest spaniard of them all would gravely shut the carriage-door, and, with a gesture that a king might envy, make signal to his men to lower the muskets leveled at me;--then, with melancholy but withal very graceful dignity--his beaver held to the wind that the plumes might flutter bravely, he would bow low, saying to me, 'pass on, senorita!' christian: but, roxane. . . roxane: forgive me that i said, 'my lover!' but bethink you, had i said 'my husband,' not one of them had let me pass! christian: but. . . roxane: what ails you? de guiche: you must leave this place! roxane: i? cyrano: and that instantly! le bret: no time to lose. christian: indeed, you must. roxane: but wherefore must i? christian (embarrassed): 'tis that. . . cyrano (the same): --in three quarters of an hour. . . de guiche (the same): --or for. . . carbon (the same): it were best. . . le bret (the same): you might. . . roxane: you are going to fight?--i stay here. all: no, no! roxane: he is my husband! (she throws herself into christian's arms): they shall kill us both together! christian: why do you look at me thus? roxane: i will tell you why! de guiche (in despair): 'tis a post of mortal danger! roxane (turning round): mortal danger! cyrano: proof enough, that he has put us here! roxane (to de guiche): so, sir, you would have made a widow of me? de guiche: nay, on my oath. . . roxane: i will not go! i am reckless now, and i shall not stir from here!--besides, 'tis amusing! cyrano: oh-ho! so our precieuse is a heroine! roxane: monsieur de bergerac, i am your cousin. a cadet: we will defend you well! roxane (more and more excited): i have no fear of that, my friends! another (in ecstasy): the whole camp smells sweet of orris-root! roxane: and, by good luck, i have chosen a hat that will suit well with the battlefield! (looking at de guiche): but were it not wisest that the count retire? they may begin the attack. de guiche: that is not to be brooked! i go to inspect the cannon, and shall return. you have still time--think better of it! roxane: never! (de guiche goes out.) scene .vi. the same, all but de guiche. christian (entreatingly): roxane! roxane: no! first cadet (to the others): she stays! all (hurrying, hustling each other, tidying themselves): a comb!--soap!--my uniform is torn!--a needle!--a ribbon!--lend your mirror!--my cuffs!--your curling-iron!--a razor!. . . roxane (to cyrano, who still pleads with her): no! naught shall make me stir from this spot! carbon (who, like the others, has been buckling, dusting, brushing his hat, settling his plume, and drawing on his cuffs, advances to roxane, and ceremoniously): it is perchance more seemly, since things are thus, that i present to you some of these gentlemen who are about to have the honor of dying before your eyes. (roxane bows, and stands leaning on christian's arm, while carbon introduces the cadets to her): baron de peyrescous de colignac! the cadet (with a low reverence): madame. . . carbon (continuing): baron de casterac de cahuzac,--vidame de malgouyre estressac lesbas d'escarabiot, chevalier d'antignac-juzet, baron hillot de blagnac-salechan de castel crabioules. . . roxane: but how many names have you each? baron hillot: scores! carbon (to roxane): pray, upon the hand that holds your kerchief. roxane (opens her hand, and the handkerchief falls): why? (the whole company start forward to pick it up.) carbon (quickly raising it): my company had no flag. but now, by my faith, they will have the fairest in all the camp! roxane (smiling): 'tis somewhat small. carbon (tying the handkerchief on the staff of his lance): but--'tis of lace! a cadet (to the rest): i could die happy, having seen so sweet a face, if i had something in my stomach--were it but a nut! carbon (who has overheard, indignantly): shame on you! what, talk of eating when a lovely woman!. . . roxane: but your camp air is keen; i myself am famished. pasties, cold fricassee, old wines--there is my bill of fare? pray bring it all here. (consternation.) a cadet: all that? another: but where on earth find it? roxane (quietly): in my carriage. all: how? roxane: now serve up--carve! look a little closer at my coachman, gentlemen, and you will recognize a man most welcome. all the sauces can be sent to table hot, if we will! the cadets (rushing pellmell to the carriage): 'tis ragueneau! (acclamations): oh, oh! roxane (looking after them): poor fellows! cyrano (kissing her hand): kind fairy! ragueneau (standing on the box like a quack doctor at a fair): gentlemen!. . . (general delight.) the cadets: bravo! bravo! ragueneau: . . .the spaniards, gazing on a lady so dainty fair, overlooked the fare so dainty!. . . (applause.) cyrano (in a whisper to christian): hark, christian! ragueneau: . . .and, occupied with gallantry, perceived not-- (his draws a plate from under the seat, and holds it up): --the galantine!. . . (applause. the galantine passes from hand to hand.) cyrano (still whispering to christian): prythee, one word! ragueneau: and venus so attracted their eyes that diana could secretly pass by with-- (he holds up a shoulder of mutton): --her fawn! (enthusiasm. twenty hands are held out to seize the shoulder of mutton.) cyrano (in a low whisper to christian): i must speak to you! roxane (to the cadets, who come down, their arms laden with food): put it all on the ground! (she lays all out on the grass, aided by the two imperturbable lackeys who were behind the carriage.) roxane (to christian, just as cyrano is drawing him apart): come, make yourself of use! (christian comes to help her. cyrano's uneasiness increases.) ragueneau: truffled peacock! first cadet (radiant, coming down, cutting a big slice of ham): by the mass! we shall not brave the last hazard without having had a gullet-full!-- (quickly correcting himself on seeing roxane): --pardon! a balthazar feast! ragueneau (throwing down the carriage cushions): the cushions are stuffed with ortolans! (hubbub. they tear open and turn out the contents of the cushions. bursts of laughter--merriment.) third cadet: ah! viedaze! ragueneau (throwing down to the cadets bottles of red wine): flasks of rubies!-- (and white wine): --flasks of topaz! roxane (throwing a folded tablecloth at cyrano's head): unfold me that napkin!--come, come! be nimble! ragueneau (waving a lantern): each of the carriage-lamps is a little larder! cyrano (in a low voice to christian, as they arrange the cloth together): i must speak with you ere you speak to her. ragueneau: my whip-handle is an arles sausage! roxane (pouring out wine, helping): since we are to die, let the rest of the army shift for itself. all for the gascons! and mark! if de guiche comes, let no one invite him! (going from one to the other): there! there! you have time enough! do not eat too fast!--drink a little.- -why are you crying? first cadet: it is all so good!. . . roxane: tut!--red or white?--some bread for monsieur de carbon!--a knife! pass your plate!--a little of the crust? some more? let me help you!--some champagne?- -a wing? cyrano (who follows her, his arms laden with dishes, helping her to wait on everybody): how i worship her! roxane (going up to christian): what will you? christian: nothing. roxane: nay, nay, take this biscuit, steeped in muscat; come!. . .but two drops! christian (trying to detain her): oh! tell me why you came? roxane: wait; my first duty is to these poor fellows.--hush! in a few minutes. . . le bret (who had gone up to pass a loaf on the end of a lance to the sentry on the rampart): de guiche! cyrano: quick! hide flasks, plates, pie-dishes, game-baskets! hurry!--let us all look unconscious! (to ragueneau): up on your seat!--is everything covered up? (in an instant all has been pushed into the tents, or hidden under doublets, cloaks, and beavers. de guiche enters hurriedly--stops suddenly, sniffing the air. silence.) scene .vii. the same. de guiche. de guiche: it smells good here. a cadet (humming): lo! lo-lo! de guiche (looking at him): what is the matter?--you are very red. the cadet: the matter?--nothing!--'tis my blood--boiling at the thought of the coming battle! another: poum, poum--poum. . . de guiche (turning round): what's that? the cadet (slightly drunk): nothing!. . .'tis a song!--a little. . . de guiche: you are merry, my friend! the cadet: the approach of danger is intoxicating! de guiche (calling carbon de castel-jaloux, to give him an order): captain! i. . . (he stops short on seeing him): plague take me! but you look bravely, too! carbon (crimson in the face, hiding a bottle behind his back, with an evasive movement): oh!. . . de guiche: i have one cannon left, and have had it carried there-- (he points behind the scenes): --in that corner. . .your men can use it in case of need. a cadet (reeling slightly): charming attention! another (with a gracious smile): kind solicitude! de guiche: how? they are all gone crazy? (drily): as you are not used to cannon, beware of the recoil. first cadet: pooh! de guiche (furious, going up to him): but. . . the cadet: gascon cannons never recoil! de guiche (taking him by the arm and shaking him): you are tipsy!--but what with? the cadet (grandiloquently): --with the smell of powder! de guiche (shrugging his shoulders and pushing him away, then going quickly to roxane): briefly, madame, what decision do you deign to take? roxane: i stay here. de guiche: you must fly! roxane: no! i will stay. de guiche: since things are thus, give me a musket, one of you! carbon: wherefore? de guiche: because i too--mean to remain. cyrano: at last! this is true valor, sir! first cadet: then you are gascon after all, spite of your lace collar? roxane: what is all this? de guiche: i leave no woman in peril. second cadet (to the first): hark you! think you not we might give him something to eat? (all the viands reappear as if by magic.) de guiche (whose eyes sparkle): victuals! the third cadet: yes, you'll see them coming from under every coat! de guiche (controlling himself, haughtily): do you think i will eat your leavings? cyrano (saluting him): you make progress. de guiche (proudly, with a light touch of accent on the word 'breaking'): i will fight without br-r-eaking my fast! first cadet (with wild delight): br-r-r-eaking! he has got the accent! de guiche (laughing): i? the cadet: 'tis a gascon! (all begin to dance.) carbon de castel-jaloux (who had disappeared behind the rampart, reappearing on the ridge): i have drawn my pikemen up in line. they are a resolute troop. (he points to a row of pikes, the tops of which are seen over the ridge.) de guiche (bowing to roxane): will you accept my hand, and accompany me while i review them? (she takes it, and they go up toward the rampart. all uncover and follow them.) christian (going to cyrano, eagerly): tell me quickly! (as roxane appears on the ridge, the tops of the lances disappear, lowered for the salute, and a shout is raised. she bows.) the pikemen (outside): vivat! christian: what is this secret? cyrano: if roxane should. . . christian: should?. . . cyrano: speak of the letters?. . . christian: yes, i know!. . . cyrano: do not spoil all by seeming surprised. . . christian: at what? cyrano: i must explain to you!. . .oh! 'tis no great matter--i but thought of it to- day on seeing her. you have. . . christian: tell quickly! cyrano: you have. . .written to her oftener than you think. . . christian: how so? cyrano: thus, 'faith! i had taken it in hand to express your flame for you!. . .at times i wrote without saying, 'i am writing!' christian: ah!. . . cyrano: 'tis simple enough! christian: but how did you contrive, since we have been cut off, thus. . .to?. . . cyrano: . . .oh! before dawn. . .i was able to get through. . . christian (folding his arms): that was simple, too? and how oft, pray you, have i written?. . .twice in the week?. . .three times?. . .four?. . . cyrano: more often still. christian: what! every day? cyrano: yes, every day,--twice. christian (violently): and that became so mad a joy for you, that you braved death. . . cyrano (seeing roxane returning): hush! not before her! (he goes hurriedly into his tent.) scene .viii. roxane, christian. in the distance cadets coming and going. carbon and de guiche give orders. roxane (running up to christian): ah, christian, at last!. . . christian (taking her hands): now tell me why-- why, by these fearful paths so perilous-- across these ranks of ribald soldiery, you have come? roxane: love, your letters brought me here! christian: what say you? roxane: 'tis your fault if i ran risks! your letters turned my head! ah! all this month, how many!--and the last one ever bettered the one that went before! christian: what!--for a few inconsequent love-letters! roxane: hold your peace! ah! you cannot conceive it! ever since that night, when, in a voice all new to me, under my window you revealed your soul-- ah! ever since i have adored you! now your letters all this whole month long!--meseemed as if i heard that voice so tender, true, sheltering, close! thy fault, i say! it drew me, the voice o' th' night! oh! wise penelope would ne'er have stayed to broider on her hearthstone, if her ulysses could have writ such letters! but would have cast away her silken bobbins, and fled to join him, mad for love as helen! christian: but. . . roxane: i read, read again--grew faint for love; i was thine utterly. each separate page was like a fluttering flower-petal, loosed from your own soul, and wafted thus to mine. imprinted in each burning word was love sincere, all-powerful. . . christian: a love sincere! can that be felt, roxane! roxane: ay, that it can! christian: you come. . .? roxane: o, christian, my true lord, i come-- (were i to throw myself, here, at your knees, you would raise me--but 'tis my soul i lay at your feet--you can raise it nevermore!) --i come to crave your pardon. (ay, 'tis time to sue for pardon, now that death may come!) for the insult done to you when, frivolous, at first i loved you only for your face! christian (horror-stricken): roxane! roxane: and later, love--less frivolous-- like a bird that spreads its wings, but can not fly-- arrested by your beauty, by your soul drawn close--i loved for both at once! christian: and now? roxane: ah! you yourself have triumphed o'er yourself, and now, i love you only for your soul! christian (stepping backward): roxane! roxane: be happy. to be loved for beauty-- a poor disguise that time so soon wears threadbare-- must be to noble souls--to souls aspiring-- a torture. your dear thoughts have now effaced that beauty that so won me at the outset. now i see clearer--and i no more see it! christian: oh!. . . roxane: you are doubtful of such victory? christian (pained): roxane! roxane: i see you cannot yet believe it. such love. . .? christian: i do not ask such love as that! i would be loved more simply; for. . . roxane: for that which they have all in turns loved in thee?-- shame! oh! be loved henceforth in a better way! christian: no! the first love was best! roxane: ah! how you err! 'tis now that i love best--love well! 'tis that which is thy true self, see!--that i adore! were your brilliance dimmed. . . christian: hush! roxane: i should love still! ay, if your beauty should to-day depart. . . christian: say not so! roxane: ay, i say it! christian: ugly? how? roxane: ugly! i swear i'd love you still! christian: my god! roxane: are you content at last? christian (in a choked voice): ay!. . . roxane: what is wrong? christian (gently pushing her away): nothing. . .i have two words to say:--one second. . . roxane: but?. . . christian (pointing to the cadets): those poor fellows, shortly doomed to death,-- my love deprives them of the sight of you: go,--speak to them--smile on them ere they die! roxane (deeply affected): dear christian!. . . (she goes up to the cadets, who respectfully crowd round her.) scene .ix. christian, cyrano. at back roxane talking to carbon and some cadets. christian (calling toward cyrano's tent): cyrano! cyrano (reappearing, fully armed): what? why so pale? christian: she does not love me! cyrano: what? christian: 'tis you she loves! cyrano: no! christian: --for she loves me only for my soul! cyrano: truly? christian: yes! thus--you see, that soul is you,. . . therefore, 'tis you she loves!--and you--love her! cyrano: i? christian: oh, i know it! cyrano: ay, 'tis true! christian: you love to madness! cyrano: ay! and worse! christian: then tell her so! cyrano: no! christian: and why not? cyrano: look at my face!--be answered! christian: she'd love me--were i ugly. cyrano: said she so? christian: ay! in those words! cyrano: i'm glad she told you that! but pooh!--believe it not! i am well pleased she thought to tell you. take it not for truth. never grow ugly:--she'd reproach me then! christian: that i intend discovering! cyrano: no! i beg! christian: ay! she shall choose between us!--tell her all! cyrano: no! no! i will not have it! spare me this! christian: because my face is haply fair, shall i destroy your happiness? 'twere too unjust! cyrano: and i,--because by nature's freak i have the gift to say--all that perchance you feel. shall i be fatal to your happiness? christian: tell all! cyrano: it is ill done to tempt me thus! christian: too long i've borne about within myself a rival to myself--i'll make an end! cyrano: christian! christian: our union, without witness--secret-- clandestine--can be easily dissolved if we survive. cyrano: my god!--he still persists! christian: i will be loved myself--or not at all! --i'll go see what they do--there, at the end of the post: speak to her, and then let her choose one of us two! cyrano: it will be you. christian: pray god! (he calls): roxane! cyrano: no! no! roxane (coming up quickly): what? christian: cyrano has things important for your ear. . . (she hastens to cyrano. christian goes out.) scene .x. roxane, cyrano. then le bret, carbon de castel-jaloux, the cadets, ragueneau, de guiche, etc. roxane: important, how? cyrano (in despair. to roxane): he's gone! 'tis naught!--oh, you know how he sees importance in a trifle! roxane (warmly): did he doubt of what i said?--ah, yes, i saw he doubted! cyrano (taking her hand): but are you sure you told him all the truth? roxane: yes, i would love him were he. . . (she hesitates.) cyrano: does that word embarrass you before my face, roxane? roxane: i. . . cyrano (smiling sadly): 'twill not hurt me! say it! if he were ugly!. . . roxane: yes, ugly! (musket report outside): hark! i hear a shot! cyrano (ardently): hideous! roxane: hideous! yes! cyrano: disfigured. roxane: ay! cyrano: grotesque? roxane: he could not be grotesque to me! cyrano: you'd love the same?. . . roxane: the same--nay, even more! cyrano (losing command over himself--aside): my god! it's true, perchance, love waits me there! (to roxane): i. . .roxane. . .listen. . . le bret (entering hurriedly--to cyrano): cyrano! cyrano (turning round): what? le bret: hush! (he whispers something to him.) cyrano (letting go roxane's hand and exclaiming): ah, god! roxane: what is it? cyrano (to himself--stunned): all is over now. (renewed reports.) roxane: what is the matter? hark! another shot! (she goes up to look outside.) cyrano: it is too late, now i can never tell! roxane (trying to rush out): what has chanced? cyrano (rushing to stop her): nothing! (some cadets enter, trying to hide something they are carrying, and close round it to prevent roxane approaching.) roxane: and those men? (cyrano draws her away): what were you just about to say before. . .? cyrano: what was i saying? nothing now, i swear! (solemnly): i swear that christian's soul, his nature, were. . . (hastily correcting himself): nay, that they are, the noblest, greatest. . . roxane: were? (with a loud scream): oh! (she rushes up, pushing every one aside.) cyrano: all is over now! roxane (seeing christian lying on the ground, wrapped in his cloak): o christian! le bret (to cyrano): struck by first shot of the enemy! (roxane flings herself down by christian. fresh reports of cannon--clash of arms--clamor--beating of drums.) carbon (with sword in the air): o come! your muskets. (followed by the cadets, he passes to the other side of the ramparts.) roxane: christian! the voice of carbon (from the other side): ho! make haste! roxane: christian! carbon: form line! roxane: christian! carbon: handle your match! (ragueneau rushes up, bringing water in a helmet.) christian (in a dying voice): roxane! cyrano (quickly, whispering into christian's ear, while roxane distractedly tears a piece of linen from his breast, which she dips into the water, trying to stanch the bleeding): i told her all. she loves you still. (christian closes his eyes.) roxane: how, my sweet love? carbon: draw ramrods! roxane (to cyrano): he is not dead? carbon: open your charges with your teeth! roxane: his cheek grows cold against my own! carbon: ready! present! roxane (seeing a letter in christian's doublet): a letter!. . . 'tis for me! (she opens it.) cyrano (aside): my letter! carbon: fire! (musket reports--shouts--noise of battle.) cyrano (trying to disengage his hand, which roxane on her knees is holding): but, roxane, hark, they fight! roxane (detaining him): stay yet awhile. for he is dead. you knew him, you alone. (weeping quietly): ah, was not his a beauteous soul, a soul wondrous! cyrano (standing up--bareheaded): ay, roxane. roxane: an inspired poet? cyrano: ay, roxane. roxane: and a mind sublime? cyrano: oh, yes! roxane: a heart too deep for common minds to plumb, a spirit subtle, charming? cyrano (firmly): ay, roxane. roxane (flinging herself on the dead body): dead, my love! cyrano (aside--drawing his sword): ay, and let me die to-day, since, all unconscious, she mourns me--in him! (sounds of trumpets in the distance.) de guiche (appearing on the ramparts--bareheaded--with a wound on his forehead--in a voice of thunder): it is the signal! trumpet flourishes! the french bring the provisions into camp! hold but the place awhile! roxane: see, there is blood upon the letter--tears! a voice (outside--shouting): surrender! voice of cadets: no! ragueneau (standing on the top of his carriage, watches the battle over the edge of the ramparts): the danger's ever greater! cyrano (to de guiche--pointing to roxane): i will charge! take her away! roxane (kissing the letter--in a half-extinguished voice): o god! his tears! his blood!. . . ragueneau (jumping down from the carriage and rushing toward her): she's swooned away! de guiche (on the rampart--to the cadets--with fury): stand fast! a voice (outside): lay down your arms! the cadets: no! cyrano (to de guiche): now that you have proved your valor, sir, (pointing to roxane): fly, and save her! de guiche (rushing to roxane, and carrying her away in his arms): so be it! gain but time, the victory's ours! cyrano: good. (calling out to roxane, whom de guiche, aided by ragueneau, is bearing away in a fainting condition): farewell, roxane! (tumult. shouts. cadets reappear, wounded, falling on the scene. cyrano, rushing to the battle, is stopped by carbon de castel-jaloux, who is streaming with blood.) carbon: we are breaking! i am wounded--wounded twice! cyrano (shouting to the gascons): gascons! ho, gascons! never turn your backs! (to carbon, whom he is supporting): have no fear! i have two deaths to avenge: my friend who's slain;--and my dead happiness! (they come down, cyrano brandishing the lance to which is attached roxane's handkerchief): float there! laced kerchief broidered with her name! (he sticks it in the ground and shouts to the cadets): fall on them, gascons! crush them! (to the fifer): fifer, play! (the fife plays. the wounded try to rise. some cadets, falling one over the other down the slope, group themselves round cyrano and the little flag. the carriage is crowded with men inside and outside, and, bristling with arquebuses, is turned into a fortress.) a cadet (appearing on the crest, beaten backward, but still fighting, cries): they're climbing the redoubt! (and falls dead.) cyrano: let us salute them! (the rampart is covered instantly by a formidable row of enemies. the standards of the imperialists are raised): fire! (general discharge.) a cry in the enemy's ranks: fire! (a deadly answering volley. the cadets fall on all sides.) a spanish officer (uncovering): who are these men who rush on death? cyrano (reciting, erect, amid a storm of bullets): the bold cadets of gascony, of carbon of castel-jaloux! brawling, swaggering boastfully, (he rushes forward, followed by a few survivors): the bold cadets. . . (his voice is drowned in the battle.) curtain. act v. cyrano's gazette. fifteen years later, in . park of the sisters of the holy cross in paris. magnificent trees. on the left the house: broad steps on to which open several doors. an enormous plane tree in the middle of the stage, standing alone. on the right, among big boxwood trees, a semicircular stone bench. the whole background of the stage is crossed by an alley of chestnut trees leading on the right hand to the door of a chapel seen through the branches. through the double row of trees of this alley are seen lawns, other alleys, clusters of trees, winding of the park, the sky. the chapel opens by a little side door on to a colonnade which is wreathed with autumn leaves, and is lost to view a little farther on in the right-hand foreground behind the boxwood. it is autumn. all the foliage is red against the fresh green of the lawns. the green boxwood and yews stand out dark. under each tree a patch of yellow leaves. the stage is strewn with dead leaves, which rustle under foot in the alleys, and half cover the steps and benches. between the benches on the right hand and the tree a large embroidery frame, in front of which a little chair has been set. baskets full of skeins and balls of wool. a tapestry begun. at the rising of the curtains nuns are walking to and fro in the park; some are seated on the bench around an older sister. the leaves are falling. scene .i. mother marguerite, sister martha, sister claire, other sisters. sister martha (to mother marguerite): sister claire glanced in the mirror, once--nay, twice, to see if her coif suited. mother marguerite (to sister claire): 'tis not well. sister claire: but i saw sister martha take a plum out of the tart. mother marguerite (to sister martha): that was ill done, my sister. sister claire: a little glance! sister martha: and such a little plum! mother marguerite: i shall tell this to monsieur cyrano. sister claire: nay, prithee do not!--he will mock! sister martha: he'll say we nuns are vain! sister claire: and greedy! mother marguerite (smiling): ay, and kind! sister claire: is it not true, pray, mother marguerite, that he has come, each week, on saturday for ten years, to the convent? mother marguerite: ay! and more! ever since--fourteen years ago--the day his cousin brought here, 'midst our woolen coifs, the worldly mourning of her widow's veil, like a blackbird's wing among the convent doves! sister martha: he only has the skill to turn her mind from grief--unsoftened yet by time--unhealed! all the sisters: he is so droll!--it's cheerful when he comes!-- he teases us!--but we all like him well!-- --we make him pasties of angelica! sister martha: but, he is not a faithful catholic! sister claire: we will convert him! the sisters: yes! yes! mother marguerite: i forbid, my daughters, you attempt that subject. nay, weary him not--he might less oft come here! sister martha: but. . .god. . . mother marguerite: nay, never fear! god knows him well! sister martha: but--every saturday, when he arrives, he tells me, 'sister, i eat meat on friday!' mother marguerite: ah! says he so? well, the last time he came food had not passed his lips for two whole days! sister martha: mother! mother marguerite: he's poor. sister martha: who told you so, dear mother? mother marguerite: monsieur le bret. sister martha: none help him? mother marguerite: he permits not. (in an alley at the back roxane appears, dressed in black, with a widow's coif and veil. de guiche, imposing-looking and visibly aged, walks by her side. they saunter slowly. mother marguerite rises): 'tis time we go in; madame madeleine walks in the garden with a visitor. sister martha (to sister claire, in a low voice): the marshal of grammont? sister claire (looking at him): 'tis he, i think. sister martha: 'tis many months now since he came to see her. the sisters: he is so busy!--the court,--the camp!. . . sister claire: the world! (they go out. de guiche and roxane come forward in silence, and stop close to the embroidery frame.) scene .ii. roxane; the duke de grammont, formerly count de guiche. then le bret and ragueneau. the duke: and you stay here still--ever vainly fair, ever in weeds? roxane: ever. the duke: still faithful? roxane: still. the duke (after a pause): am i forgiven? roxane: ay, since i am here. (another pause.) the duke: his was a soul, you say?. . . roxane: ah!--when you knew him! the duke: ah, may be!. . .i, perchance, too little knew him! . . .and his last letter, ever next your heart? roxane: hung from this chain, a gentle scapulary. the duke: and, dead, you love him still? roxane: at times,--meseems he is but partly dead--our hearts still speak, as if his love, still living, wrapped me round! the duke (after another pause): cyrano comes to see you? roxane: often, ay. dear, kind old friend! we call him my 'gazette.' he never fails to come: beneath this tree they place his chair, if it be fine:--i wait, i broider;--the clock strikes;--at the last stroke i hear,--for now i never turn to look-- too sure to hear his cane tap down the steps; he seats himself:--with gentle raillery he mocks my tapestry that's never done; he tells me all the gossip of the week. . . (le bret appears on the steps): why, here's le bret! (le bret descends): how goes it with our friend? le bret: ill!--very ill. the duke: how? roxane (to the duke): he exaggerates! le bret: all that i prophesied: desertion, want!. . . his letters now make him fresh enemies!-- attacking the sham nobles, sham devout, sham brave,--the thieving authors,--all the world! roxane: ah! but his sword still holds them all in check; none get the better of him. the duke (shaking his head): time will show! le bret: ah, but i fear for him--not man's attack,-- solitude--hunger--cold december days, that wolf-like steal into his chamber drear:-- lo! the assassins that i fear for him! each day he tightens by one hole his belt: that poor nose--tinted like old ivory: he has retained one shabby suit of serge. the duke: ay, there is one who has no prize of fortune!-- yet is not to be pitied! le bret (with a bitter smile): my lord marshal!. . . the duke: pity him not! he has lived out his vows, free in his thoughts, as in his actions free! le bret (in the same tone): my lord!. . . the duke (haughtily): true! i have all, and he has naught;. . . yet i were proud to take his hand! (bowing to roxane): adieu! roxane: i go with you. (the duke bows to le bret, and goes with roxane toward the steps.) the duke (pausing, while she goes up): ay, true,--i envy him. look you, when life is brimful of success --though the past hold no action foul--one feels a thousand self-disgusts, of which the sum is not remorse, but a dim, vague unrest; and, as one mounts the steps of worldly fame, the duke's furred mantles trail within their folds a sound of dead illusions, vain regrets, a rustle--scarce a whisper--like as when, mounting the terrace steps, by your mourning robe sweeps in its train the dying autumn leaves. roxane (ironically): you are pensive? the duke: true! i am! (as he is going out, suddenly): monsieur le bret! (to roxane): a word, with your permission? (he goes to le bret, and in a low voice): true, that none dare to attack your friend;--but many hate him; yesterday, at the queen's card-play, 'twas said 'that cyrano may die--by accident!' let him stay in--be prudent! le bret (raising his arms to heaven): prudent! he!. . . he's coming here. i'll warn him--but!. . . roxane (who has stayed on the steps, to a sister who comes toward her): what is it? the sister: ragueneau would see you, madame. roxane: let him come. (to the duke and le bret): he comes to tell his troubles. having been an author (save the mark!)--poor fellow--now by turns he's singer. . . le bret: bathing-man. . . roxane: then actor. . . le bret: beadle. . . roxane: wig-maker. . . le bret: teacher of the lute. . . roxane: what will he be to-day, by chance? ragueneau (entering hurriedly): ah! madame! (he sees le bret): ah! you here, sir! roxane (smiling): tell all your miseries to him; i will return anon. ragueneau: but, madame. . . (roxane goes out with the duke. ragueneau goes toward le bret.) scene .iii. le bret, ragueneau. ragueneau: since you are here, 'tis best she should not know! i was going to your friend just now--was but a few steps from the house, when i saw him go out. i hurried to him. saw him turn the corner. . .suddenly, from out a window where he was passing--was it chance?. . .may be! a lackey let fall a large piece of wood. le bret: cowards! o cyrano! ragueneau: i ran--i saw. . . le bret: 'tis hideous! ragueneau: saw our poet, sir--our friend-- struck to the ground--a large wound in his head! le bret: he's dead? ragueneau: no--but--i bore him to his room. . . ah! his room! what a thing to see!--that garret! le bret: he suffers? ragueneau: no, his consciousness has flown. le bret: saw you a doctor? ragueneau: one was kind--he came. le bret: my poor cyrano!--we must not tell this to roxane suddenly.--what said this leech?-- ragueneau: said,--what, i know not--fever, meningitis!-- ah! could you see him--all his head bound up!-- but let us haste!--there's no one by his bed!-- and if he try to rise, sir, he might die! le bret (dragging him toward the right): come! through the chapel! 'tis the quickest way! roxane (appearing on the steps, and seeing le bret go away by the colonnade leading to the chapel door): monsieur le bret! (le bret and ragueneau disappear without answering): le bret goes--when i call! 'tis some new trouble of good ragueneau's. (she descends the steps.) scene .iv. roxane alone. two sisters, for a moment. roxane: ah! what a beauty in september's close! my sorrow's eased. april's joy dazzled it, but autumn wins it with her dying calm. (she seats herself at the embroidery frame. two sisters come out of the house, and bring a large armchair under the tree): there comes the famous armchair where he sits, dear faithful friend! sister martha: it is the parlor's best! roxane: thanks, sister. (the sisters go): he'll be here now. (she seats herself. a clock strikes): the hour strikes. --my silks?--why, now, the hour's struck! how strange to be behind his time, at last, to-day! perhaps the portress--where's my thimble?. . . here!--is preaching to him. (a pause): yes, she must be preaching! surely he must come soon!--ah, a dead leaf!-- (she brushes off the leaf from her work): nothing, besides, could--scissors?--in my bag! --could hinder him. . . a sister (coming to the steps): monsieur de bergerac. scene .v. roxane, cyrano and, for a moment, sister martha. roxane (without turning round): what was i saying?. . . (she embroiders. cyrano, very pale, his hat pulled down over his eyes, appears. the sister who had announced him retires. he descends the steps slowly, with a visible difficulty in holding himself upright, bearing heavily on his cane. roxane still works at her tapestry): time has dimmed the tints. . . how harmonize them now? (to cyrano, with playful reproach): for the first time late!--for the first time, all these fourteen years! cyrano (who has succeeded in reaching the chair, and has seated himself--in a lively voice, which is in great contrast with his pale face): ay! it is villainous! i raged--was stayed. . . roxane: by?. . . cyrano: by a bold, unwelcome visitor. roxane (absently, working): some creditor? cyrano: ay, cousin,--the last creditor who has a debt to claim from me. roxane: and you have paid it? cyrano: no, not yet! i put it off; --said, 'cry you mercy; this is saturday, when i have get a standing rendezvous that naught defers. call in an hour's time!' roxane (carelessly): oh, well, a creditor can always wait! i shall not let you go ere twilight falls. cyrano: haply, perforce, i quit you ere it falls! (he shuts his eyes, and is silent for a moment. sister martha crosses the park from the chapel to the flight of steps. roxane, seeing her, signs to her to approach.) roxane (to cyrano): how now? you have not teased the sister? cyrano (hastily opening his eyes): true! (in a comically loud voice): sister! come here! (the sister glides up to him): ha! ha! what? those bright eyes bent ever on the ground? sister martha (who makes a movement of astonishment on seeing his face): oh! cyrano (in a whisper, pointing to roxane): hush! 'tis naught!-- (loudly, in a blustering voice): i broke fast yesterday! sister martha (aside): i know, i know! that's how he is so pale! come presently to the refectory, i'll make you drink a famous bowl of soup. . .you'll come? cyrano: ay, ay! sister martha: there, see! you are more reasonable to-day! roxane (who hears them whispering): the sister would convert you? sister martha: nay, not i! cyrano: hold! but it's true! you preach to me no more, you, once so glib with holy words! i am astonished!. . . (with burlesque fury): stay, i will surprise you too! hark! i permit you. . . (he pretends to be seeking for something to tease her with, and to have found it): . . .it is something new!-- to--pray for me, to-night, at chapel-time! roxane: oh! oh! cyrano (laughing): good sister martha is struck dumb! sister martha (gently): i did not wait your leave to pray for you. (she goes out.) cyrano (turning to roxane, who is still bending over her work): that tapestry! beshrew me if my eyes will ever see it finished! roxane: i was sure to hear that well-known jest! (a light breeze causes the leaves to fall.) cyrano: the autumn leaves! roxane (lifting her head, and looking down the distant alley): soft golden brown, like a venetian's hair. --see how they fall! cyrano: ay, see how brave they fall, in their last journey downward from the bough, to rot within the clay; yet, lovely still, hiding the horror of the last decay, with all the wayward grace of careless flight! roxane: what, melancholy--you? cyrano (collecting himself): nay, nay, roxane! roxane: then let the dead leaves fall the way they will. . . and chat. what, have you nothing new to tell, my court gazette? cyrano: listen. roxane: ah! cyrano (growing whiter and whiter): saturday the nineteenth: having eaten to excess of pear-conserve, the king felt feverish; the lancet quelled this treasonable revolt, and the august pulse beats at normal pace. at the queen's ball on sunday thirty score of best white waxen tapers were consumed. our troops, they say, have chased the austrians. four sorcerers were hanged. the little dog of madame d'athis took a dose. . . roxane: i bid you hold your tongue, monsieur de bergerac! cyrano: monday--not much--claire changed protector. roxane: oh! cyrano (whose face changes more and more): tuesday, the court repaired to fontainebleau. wednesday, the montglat said to comte de fiesque. . . no! thursday--mancini, queen of france! (almost!) friday, the monglat to count fiesque said--'yes!' and saturday the twenty-sixth. . . (he closes his eyes. his head falls forward. silence.) roxane (surprised at his voice ceasing, turns round, looks at him, and rising, terrified): he swoons! (she runs toward him crying): cyrano! cyrano (opening his eyes, in an unconcerned voice): what is this? (he sees roxane bending over him, and, hastily pressing his hat on his head, and shrinking back in his chair): nay, on my word 'tis nothing! let me be! roxane: but. . . cyrano: that old wound of arras, sometimes,--as you know. . . roxane: dear friend! cyrano: 'tis nothing, 'twill pass soon; (he smiles with an effort): see!--it has passed! roxane: each of us has his wound; ay, i have mine,-- never healed up--not healed yet, my old wound! (she puts her hand on her breast): 'tis here, beneath this letter brown with age, all stained with tear-drops, and still stained with blood. (twilight begins to fall.) cyrano: his letter! ah! you promised me one day that i should read it. roxane: what would you?--his letter? cyrano: yes, i would fain,--to-day. . . roxane (giving the bag hung at her neck): see! here it is! cyrano (taking it): have i your leave to open? roxane: open--read! (she comes back to her tapestry frame, folds it up, sorts her wools.) cyrano (reading): 'roxane, adieu! i soon must die! this very night, beloved; and i feel my soul heavy with love untold. i die! no more, as in days of old, my loving, longing eyes will feast on your least gesture--ay, the least! i mind me the way you touch your cheek with your finger, softly, as you speak! ah me! i know that gesture well! my heart cries out!--i cry "farewell"!' roxane: but how you read that letter! one would think. . . cyrano (continuing to read): 'my life, my love, my jewel, my sweet, my heart has been yours in every beat!' (the shades of evening fall imperceptibly.) roxane: you read in such a voice--so strange--and yet-- it is not the first time i hear that voice! (she comes nearer very softly, without his perceiving it, passes behind his chair, and, noiselessly leaning over him, looks at the letter. the darkness deepens.) cyrano: 'here, dying, and there, in the land on high, i am he who loved, who loves you,--i. . .' roxane (putting her hand on his shoulder): how can you read? it is too dark to see! (he starts, turns, sees her close to him. suddenly alarmed, he holds his head down. then in the dusk, which has now completely enfolded them, she says, very slowly, with clasped hands): and, fourteen years long, he has played this part of the kind old friend who comes to laugh and chat. cyrano: roxane! roxane: 'twas you! cyrano: no, never; roxane, no! roxane: i should have guessed, each time he said my name! cyrano: no, it was not i! roxane: it was you! cyrano: i swear! roxane: i see through all the generous counterfeit-- the letters--you! cyrano: no. roxane: the sweet, mad love-words! you! cyrano: no! roxane: the voice that thrilled the night--you, you! cyrano: i swear you err. roxane: the soul--it was your soul! cyrano: i loved you not. roxane: you loved me not? cyrano: 'twas he! roxane: you loved me! cyrano: no! roxane: see! how you falter now! cyrano: no, my sweet love, i never loved you! roxane: ah! things dead, long dead, see! how they rise again! --why, why keep silence all these fourteen years, when, on this letter, which he never wrote, the tears were your tears? cyrano (holding out the letter to her): the bloodstains were his. roxane: why, then, that noble silence,--kept so long-- broken to-day for the first time--why? cyrano: why?. . . (le bret and ragueneau enter running.) scene .vi. the same. le bret and ragueneau. le bret: what madness! here? i knew it well! cyrano (smiling and sitting up): what now? le bret: he has brought his death by coming, madame. roxane: god! ah, then! that faintness of a moment since. . .? cyrano: why, true! it interrupted the 'gazette:' . . .saturday, twenty-sixth, at dinner-time, assassination of de bergerac. (he takes off his hat; they see his head bandaged.) roxane: what says he? cyrano!--his head all bound! ah, what has chanced? how?--who?. . . cyrano: 'to be struck down, pierced by sword i' the heart, from a hero's hand!' that i had dreamed. o mockery of fate! --killed, i! of all men--in an ambuscade! struck from behind, and by a lackey's hand! 'tis very well. i am foiled, foiled in all, even in my death. ragueneau: ah, monsieur!. . . cyrano (holding out his hand to him): ragueneau, weep not so bitterly!. . .what do you now, old comrade? ragueneau (amid his tears): trim the lights for moliere's stage. cyrano: moliere! ragueneau: yes; but i shall leave to-morrow. i cannot bear it!--yesterday, they played 'scapin'--i saw he'd thieved a scene from you! le bret: what! a whole scene? ragueneau: oh, yes, indeed, monsieur, the famous one, 'que diable allait-il faire?' le bret: moliere has stolen that? cyrano: tut! he did well!. . . (to ragueneau): how went the scene? it told--i think it told? ragueneau (sobbing): ah! how they laughed! cyrano: look you, it was my life to be the prompter every one forgets! (to roxane): that night when 'neath your window christian spoke --under your balcony, you remember? well! there was the allegory of my whole life: i, in the shadow, at the ladder's foot, while others lightly mount to love and fame! just! very just! here on the threshold drear of death, i pay my tribute with the rest, to moliere's genius,--christian's fair face! (the chapel-bell chimes. the nuns are seen passing down the alley at the back, to say their office): let them go pray, go pray, when the bell rings! roxane (rising and calling): sister! sister! cyrano (holding her fast): call no one. leave me not; when you come back, i should be gone for aye. (the nuns have all entered the chapel. the organ sounds): i was somewhat fain for music--hark! 'tis come. roxane: live, for i love you! cyrano: no, in fairy tales when to the ill-starred prince the lady says 'i love you!' all his ugliness fades fast-- but i remain the same, up to the last! roxane: i have marred your life--i, i! cyrano: you blessed my life! never on me had rested woman's love. my mother even could not find me fair: i had no sister; and, when grown a man, i feared the mistress who would mock at me. but i have had your friendship--grace to you a woman's charm has passed across my path. le bret (pointing to the moon, which is seen between the trees): your other lady-love is come. cyrano (smiling): i see. roxane: i loved but once, yet twice i lose my love! cyrano: hark you, le bret! i soon shall reach the moon. to-night, alone, with no projectile's aid!. . . le bret: what are you saying? cyrano: i tell you, it is there, there, that they send me for my paradise, there i shall find at last the souls i love, in exile,--galileo--socrates! le bret (rebelliously): no, no! it is too clumsy, too unjust! so great a heart! so great a poet! die like this? what, die. . .? cyrano: hark to le bret, who scolds! le bret (weeping): dear friend. . . cyrano (starting up, his eyes wild): what ho! cadets of gascony! the elemental mass--ah yes! the hic. . . le bret: his science still--he raves! cyrano: copernicus said. . . roxane: oh! cyrano: mais que diable allait-il faire, mais que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere?. . . philosopher, metaphysician, rhymer, brawler, and musician, famed for his lunar expedition, and the unnumbered duels he fought,-- and lover also,--by interposition!-- here lies hercule savinien de cyrano de bergerac, who was everything, yet was naught. i cry you pardon, but i may not stay; see, the moon-ray that comes to call me hence! (he has fallen back in his chair; the sobs of roxane recall him to reality; he looks long at her, and, touching her veil): i would not bid you mourn less faithfully that good, brave christian: i would only ask that when my body shall be cold in clay you wear those sable mourning weeds for two, and mourn awhile for me, in mourning him. roxane: i swear it you!. . . cyrano (shivering violently, then suddenly rising): not there! what, seated?--no! (they spring toward him): let no one hold me up-- (he props himself against the tree): only the tree! (silence): it comes. e'en now my feet have turned to stone, my hands are gloved with lead! (he stands erect): but since death comes, i meet him still afoot, (he draws his sword): and sword in hand! le bret: cyrano! roxane (half fainting): cyrano! (all shrink back in terror.) cyrano: why, i well believe he dares to mock my nose? ho! insolent! (he raises his sword): what say you? it is useless? ay, i know but who fights ever hoping for success? i fought for lost cause, and for fruitless quest! you there, who are you!--you are thousands! ah! i know you now, old enemies of mine! falsehood! (he strikes in air with his sword): have at you! ha! and compromise! prejudice, treachery!. . . (he strikes): surrender, i? parley? no, never! you too, folly,--you? i know that you will lay me low at last; let be! yet i fall fighting, fighting still! (he makes passes in the air, and stops, breathless): you strip from me the laurel and the rose! take all! despite you there is yet one thing i hold against you all, and when, to-night, i enter christ's fair courts, and, lowly bowed, sweep with doffed casque the heavens' threshold blue, one thing is left, that, void of stain or smutch, i bear away despite you. (he springs forward, his sword raised; it falls from his hand; he staggers, falls back into the arms of le bret and ragueneau.) roxane (bending and kissing his forehead): 'tis?. . . cyrano (opening his eyes, recognizing her, and smiling): my panache. curtain. the confessions of jean jacques rousseau (in books) privately printed for the members of the aldus society london, book v. it was, i believe, in , that i arrived at chambery, as already related, and began my employment of registering land for the king. i was almost twenty-one, my mind well enough formed for my age, with respect to sense, but very deficient in point of judgment, and needing every instruction from those into whose hands i fell, to make me conduct myself with propriety; for a few years' experience had not been able to cure me radically of my romantic ideas; and notwithstanding the ills i had sustained, i knew as little of the world, or mankind, as if i had never purchased instruction. i slept at home, that is, at the house of madam de warrens; but it was not as at annecy: here were no gardens, no brook, no landscape; the house was dark and dismal, and my apartment the most gloomy of the whole. the prospect a dead wall, an alley instead of a street, confined air, bad light, small rooms, iron bars, rats, and a rotten floor; an assemblage of circumstances that do not constitute a very agreeable habitation; but i was in the same house with my best friend, incessantly near her, at my desk, or in chamber, so that i could not perceive the gloominess of my own, or have time to think of it. it may appear whimsical that she should reside at chambery on purpose to live in this disagreeable house; but it was a trait of contrivance which i ought not to pass over in silence. she had no great inclination for a journey to turin, fearing that after the recent revolutions, and the agitation in which the court yet was, she should not be very favorably received there; but her affairs seemed to demand her presence, as she feared being forgotten or ill-treated, particularly as the count de saint-laurent, intendent-general of the finances, was not in her interest. he had an old house in chambery, ill-built, and standing in so disagreeable a situation that it was always untenanted; she hired, and settled in this house, a plan that succeeded much better than a journey to turin would have done, for her pension was not suppressed, and the count de saint-laurent was ever after one of her best friends. her household was much on the old footing; her faithful claude anet still remained with her. he was, as i have before mentioned, a peasant of moutru, who in his childhood had gathered herbs in jura for the purpose of making swiss tea; she had taken him into her service for his knowledge of drugs, finding it convenient to have a herbalist among her domestics. passionately fond of the study of plants, he became a real botanist, and had he not died young, might have acquired as much fame in that science as he deserved for being an honest man. serious even to gravity, and older than myself, he was to me a kind of tutor, commanding respect, and preserving me from a number of follies, for i dared not forget myself before him. he commanded it likewise from his mistress, who knew his understanding, uprightness, and inviolable attachment to herself, and returned it. claude anet was of an uncommon temper. i never encountered a similar disposition: he was slow, deliberate, and circumspect in his conduct; cold in his manner; laconic and sententious in his discourse; yet of an impetuosity in his passions, which (though careful to conceal) preyed upon him inwardly, and urged him to the only folly he ever committed; that folly, indeed was terrible, it was poisoning himself. this tragic scene passed soon after my arrival, and opened my eyes to the intimacy that subsisted between claude anet and his mistress, for had not the information come from her, i should never have suspected it; yet, surely, if attachment, fidelity, and zeal, could merit such a recompense, it was due to him, and what further proves him worthy such a distinction, he never once abused her confidence. they seldom disputed, and their disagreements ever ended amicably; one, indeed, was not so fortunate; his mistress, in a passion, said something affronting, which not being able to digest, he consulted only with despair, and finding a bottle of laudanum at hand, drank it off; then went peaceably to bed, expecting to awake no more. madam de warrens herself was uneasy, agitated, wandering about the house and happily--finding the phial empty--guessed the rest. her screams, while flying to his assistance, alarmed me; she confessed all, implored my help, and was fortunate enough, after repeated efforts, to make him throw up the laudanum. witness of this scene, i could not but wonder at my stupidity in never having suspected the connection; but claude anet was so discreet, that a more penetrating observer might have been deceived. their reconciliation affected me, and added respect to the esteem i before felt for him. from this time i became, in some measure, his pupil, nor did i find myself the worse for his instruction. i could not learn, without pain, that she lived in greater intimacy with another than with myself: it was a situation i had not even thought of, but (which was very natural) it hurt me to see another in possession of it. nevertheless, instead of feeling any aversion to the person who had this advantage over me, i found the attachment i felt for her actually extend to him. i desired her happiness above all things, and since he was concerned in her plan of felicity, i was content he should be happy likewise. meantime he perfectly entered into the views of his mistress; conceived a sincere friendship for me, and without affecting the authority his situation might have entitled him to, he naturally possessed that which his superior judgment gave him over mine. i dared do nothing he disproved of, but he was sure to disapprove only what merited disapprobation: thus we lived in an union which rendered us mutually happy, and which death alone could dissolve. one proof of the excellence of this amiable woman's character, is, that all those who loved her, loved each other; even jealousy and rivalship submitting to the more powerful sentiment with which she inspired them, and i never saw any of those who surrounded her entertain the least ill will among themselves. let the reader pause a moment on this encomium, and if he can recollect any other woman who deserves it, let him attach himself to her, if he would obtain happiness. from my arrival at chambery to my departure for paris, , included an interval of eight or nine years, during which time i have few adventures to relate; my life being as simple as it was agreeable. this uniformity was precisely what was most wanting to complete the formation of my character, which continual troubles had prevented from acquiring any degree of stability. it was during this pleasing interval, that my unconnected, unfinished education, gained consistence, and made me what i have unalterably remained amid the storms with which i have since been surrounded. the progress was slow, almost imperceptible, and attended by few memorable circumstances; yet it deserves to be followed and investigated. at first, i was wholly occupied with my business, the constraint of a desk left little opportunity for other thoughts, the small portion of time i was at liberty was passed with my dear madam de warrens, and not having leisure to read, i felt no inclination for it; but when my business (by daily repetition) became familiar, and my mind was less occupied, study again became necessary, and (as my desires were ever irritated by any difficulty that opposed the indulgence of them) might once more have become a passion, as at my master's, had not other inclinations interposed and diverted it. though our occupation did not demand a very profound skill in arithmetic, it sometimes required enough to puzzle me. to conquer this difficulty, i purchased books which treated on that science, and learned well, for i now studied alone. practical arithmetic extends further than is usually supposed if you would attain exact precision. there are operations of extreme length in which i have sometimes seen good geometricians lose themselves. reflection, assisted by practice, gives clear ideas, and enables you to devise shorter methods, these inventions flatter our self-complacency, while their exactitude satisfies our understanding, and renders a study pleasant, which is, of itself, heavy and unentertaining. at length i became so expert as not to be puzzled by any question that was solvable by arithmetical calculation; and even now, while everything i formerly knew fades daily on my memory, this acquirement, in a great measure remains, through an interval of thirty years. a few days ago, in a journey i made to davenport, being with my host at an arithmetical lesson given his children, i did (with pleasure, and without errors) a most complicated work. while setting down my figures, methought i was still at chambery, still in my days of happiness--how far had i to look back for them! the colored plans of our geometricians had given me a taste for drawing: accordingly i bought colors, and began by attempting flowers and landscapes. it was unfortunate that i had not talents for this art, for my inclination was much disposed to it, and while surrounded with crayons, pencils, and colors, i could have passed whole months without wishing to leave them. this amusement engaged me so much that they were obliged to force me from it; and thus it is with every inclination i give into, it continues to augment, till at length it becomes so powerful, that i lose sight of everything except the favorite amusement. years have not been able to cure me of that fault, nay, have not even diminished it; for while i am writing this, behold me, like an old dotard, infatuated with another, to me useless study, which i do not understand, and which even those who have devoted their youthful days to the acquisition of, are constrained to abandon, at the age i am beginning with it. at that time, the study i am now speaking of would have been well placed, the opportunity was good, and i had some temptation to profit by it; for the satisfaction i saw in the eyes of anet, when he came home loaded with new discovered plants, set me two or three times on the point of going to herbalize with him, and i am almost certain that had i gone once, i should have been caught, and perhaps at this day might have been an excellent botanist, for i know no study more congenial to my natural inclination, than that of plants; the life i have led for these ten years past, in the country, being little more than a continual herbalizing, though i must confess, without object, and without improvement; but at the time i am now speaking of i had no inclination for botany, nay, i even despised, and was disgusted at the idea, considering it only as a fit study for an apothecary. madam de warrens was fond of it merely for this purpose, seeking none but common plants to use in her medical preparations; thus botany, chemistry, and anatomy were confounded in my idea under the general denomination of medicine, and served to furnish me with pleasant sarcasms the whole day, which procured me, from time to time, a box on the ear, applied by madam de warrens. besides this, a very contrary taste grew up with me, and by degrees absorbed all others; this was music. i was certainly born for that science, i loved it from my infancy, and it was the only inclination i have constantly adhered to; but it is astonishing that what nature seemed to have designed me for should have cost so much pains to learn, and that i should acquire it so slowly, that after a whole life spent in the practice of this art, i could never attain to sing with any certainty at sight. what rendered the study of music more agreeable to me at that time, was, being able to practise it with madam de warrens. in other respects our tastes were widely different: this was a point of coincidence, which i loved to avail myself of. she had no more objection to this than myself. i knew at that time almost as much of it as she did, and after two or three efforts, we could make shift to decipher an air. sometimes, when i saw her busy at her furnace, i have said, "here now is a charming duet, which seems made for the very purpose of spoiling your drugs;" her answer would be, "if you make me burn them, i'll make you eat them:" thus disputing, i drew her to the harpsichord; the furnace was presently forgotten, the extract of juniper or wormwood calcined (which i cannot recollect without transport), and these scenes usually ended by her smearing my face with the remains of them. it may easily be conjectured that i had plenty of employment to fill up my leisure hours; one amusement, however, found room, that was well worth all the rest. we lived in such a confined dungeon, that it was necessary sometimes to breathe the open air; anet, therefore, engaged madam de warrens to hire a garden in the suburbs, both for this purpose and the convenience of rearing plants, etc.; to this garden was added a summer--house, which was furnished in the customary manner; we sometimes dined, and i frequently slept, there. insensibly i became attached to this little retreat, decorated it with books and prints, spending part of my time in ornamenting it during the absence of madam de warrens, that i might surprise her the more agreeably on her return. sometimes i quitted this dear friend, that i might enjoy the uninterrupted pleasure of thinking on her; this was a caprice i can neither excuse nor fully explain, i only know this really was the case, and therefore i avow it. i remember madam de luxembourg told me one day in raillery, of a man who used to leave his mistress that he might enjoy the satisfaction of writing to her; i answered, i could have been this man; i might have added, that i had done the very same. i did not, however, find it necessary to leave madam de warrens that i might love her the more ardently, for i was ever as perfectly free with her as when alone; an advantage i never enjoyed with any other person, man or woman, however i might be attached to them; but she was so often surrounded by company who were far from pleasing me, that spite and weariness drove me to this asylum, where i could indulge the idea, without danger of being interrupted by impertinence. thus, my time being divided between business, pleasure, and instruction, my life passed in the most absolute serenity. europe was not equally tranquil: france and the emperor had mutually declared war, the king of sardinia had entered into the quarrel, and a french army had filed off into piedmont to awe the milanese. our division passed through chambery, and, among others, the regiment of champaigne, whose colonel was the duke de la trimouille, to whom i was presented. he promised many things, but doubtless never more thought of me. our little garden was exactly at the end of the suburb by which the troops entered, so that i could fully satisfy my curiosity in seeing them pass, and i became as anxious for the success of the war as if it had nearly concerned me. till now i had never troubled myself about politics, for the first time i began reading the gazettes, but with so much partiality on the side of france, that my heart beat with rapture on its most trifling advantages, and i was as much afflicted on a reverse of fortune, as if i had been particularly concerned. had this folly been transient, i should not, perhaps, have mentioned it, but it took such root in my heart (without any reasonable cause) that when i afterwards acted the anti-despot and proud republican at paris, in spite of myself, i felt a secret predilection for the nation i declared servile, and for that government i affected to oppose. the pleasantest of all was that, ashamed of an inclination so contrary to my professed maxims, i dared not own it to any one, but rallied the french on their defeats, while my heart was more wounded than their own. i am certainly the first man, that, living with a people who treated him well, and whom he almost adored, put on, even in their own country, a borrowed air of despising them; yet my original inclination is so powerful, constant, disinterested, and invincible, that even since my quitting that kingdom, since its government, magistrates, and authors, have outvied each other in rancor against me, since it has become fashionable to load me with injustice and abuse, i have not been able to get rid of this folly, but notwithstanding their ill-treatment, love them in spite of myself. i long sought the cause of this partiality, but was never able to find any, except in the occasion that gave it birth. a rising taste for literature attached me to french books, to their authors, and their country: at the very moment the french troops were passing chambery, i was reading brantome's 'celebrated captains'; my head was full of the clissons, bayards, lautrecs colignys, monlmoreneys, and trimouille, and i loved their descendants as the heirs of their merit and courage. in each regiment that passed by methought i saw those famous black bands who had formerly done so many noble exploits in piedmont; in fine, i applied to these all the ideas i had gathered from books; my reading continued, which, still drawn from the same nation, nourished my affection for that country, till, at length, it became a blind passion, which nothing could overcome. i have had occasion to remark several times in the course of my travels, that this impression was not peculiar to me for france, but was more or less active in every country, for that part of the nation who were fond of literature, and cultivated learning; and it was this consideration that balanced in my mind the general hatred which the conceited air of the french is so apt to inspire. their romances, more than their men, attract the women of all countries, and the celebrated dramatic pieces of france create a fondness in youth for their theaters; the reputation which that of paris in particular has acquired, draws to it crowds of strangers, who return enthusiasts to their own country: in short, the excellence of their literature captivates the senses, and in the unfortunate war just ended, i have seen their authors and philosophers maintain the glory of france, so tarnished by its warriors. i was, therefore, an ardent frenchman; this rendered me a politician, and i attended in the public square, amid a throng of news-mongers, the arrival of the post, and, sillier than the ass in the fable, was very uneasy to know whose packsaddle i should next have the honor to carry, for it was then supposed we should belong to france, and that savoy would be exchanged for milan. i must confess, however, that i experienced some uneasiness, for had this war terminated unfortunately for the allies, the pension of madam de warrens would have been in a dangerous situation; nevertheless, i had great confidence in my good friends, the french, and for once (in spite of the surprise of m. de broglio) my confidence was not ill-founded--thanks to the king of sardinia, whom i had never thought of. while we were fighting in italy, they were singing in france: the operas of rameau began to make a noise there, and once more raise the credit of his theoretic works, which, from their obscurity, were within the compass of very few understandings. by chance i heard of his 'treatise on harmony', and had no rest till i purchased it. by another chance i fell sick; my illness was inflammatory, short and violent, but my convalescence was tedious, for i was unable to go abroad for a whole month. during this time i eagerly ran over my treatise on harmony, but it was so long, so diffuse, and so badly disposed, that i found it would require a considerable time to unravel it: accordingly i suspended my inclination, and recreated my sight with music. the cantatas of bernier were what i principally exercised myself with. these were never out of my mind; i learned four or five by heart, and among the rest, 'the sleeping cupids', which i have never seen since that time, though i still retain it almost entirely; as well as 'cupid stung by a bee', a very pretty cantata by clerambault, which i learned about the same time. to complete me, there arrived a young organist from valdoste, called the abbe palais, a good musician and an agreeable companion, who performed very well on the harpsichord; i got acquainted with him, and we soon became inseparable. he had been brought up by an italian monk, who was a capital organist. he explained to me his principles of music, which i compared with rameau; my head was filled with accompaniments, concords and harmony, but as it was necessary to accustom the ear to all this, i proposed to madam de warrens having a little concert once a month, to which she consented. behold me then so full of this concert, that night or day i could think of nothing else, and it actually employed a great part of my time to select the music, assemble the musicians, look to the instruments, and write out the several parts. madam de warrens sang; father cato (whom i have before mentioned, and shall have occasion to speak of again) sang likewise; a dancing--master named roche, and his son, played on the violin; canavas, a piedmontese musician (who was employed like myself in the survey, and has since married at paris), played on the violoncello; the abbe palais performed on the harpsichord, and i had the honor to conduct the whole. it may be supposed all this was charming; i cannot say it equalled my concert at monsieur de tretoren's, but certainly it was not far behind it. this little concert, given by madam de warrens, the new convert, who lived (it was expressed) on the king's charity, made the whole tribe of devotees murmur, but was a very agreeable amusement to several worthy people, at the head of whom it would not be easily surmised that i should place a monk; yet, though a monk, a man of considerable merit, and even of a very amiable disposition, whose subsequent misfortunes gave me the most lively concern, and whose idea, attached to that of my happy days, is yet dear to my memory. i speak of father cato, a cordelier, who, in conjunction with the count d'ortan, had caused the music of poor le maitre to be seized at lyons; which action was far from being the brightest trait in his history. he was a bachelor of sorbonne, had lived long in paris among the great world, and was particularly caressed by the marquis d'antremont, then ambassador from sardinia. he was tall and well made; full faced, with very fine eyes, and black hair, which formed natural curls on each side of his forehead. his manner was at once noble, open, and modest; he presented himself with ease and good manners, having neither the hypocritical nor impudent behavior of a monk, or the forward assurance of a fashionable coxcomb, but the manners of a well-bred man, who, without blushing for his habit, set a value on himself, and ever felt in his proper situation when in good company. though father cato was not deeply studied for a doctor, he was much so for a man of the world, and not being compelled to show his talents, he brought them forward so advantageously that they appeared greater than they really were. having lived much in the world, he had rather attached himself to agreeable acquirements than to solid learning; had sense, made verses, spoke well, sang better, and aided his good voice by playing on the organ and harpsichord. so many pleasing qualities were not necessary to make his company sought after, and, accordingly, it was very much so, but this did not make him neglect the duties of his function: he was chosen (in spite of his jealous competitors) definitor of his province, or, according to them, one of the greatest pillars of their order. father cato became acquainted with madam de warrens at the marquis of antremont's; he had heard of her concerts, wished to assist at them, and by his company rendered our meetings truly agreeable. we were soon attached to each other by our mutual taste for music, which in both was a most lively passion, with this difference, that he was really a musician, and myself a bungler. sometimes assisted by canavas and the abbe palais, we had music in his apartment; or on holidays at his organ, and frequently dined with him; for, what was very astonishing in a monk, he was generous, profuse, and loved good cheer, without the least tincture of greediness. after our concerts, he always used to stay to supper, and these evenings passed with the greatest gayety and good-humor; we conversed with the utmost freedom, and sang duets; i was perfectly at my ease, had sallies of wit and merriment; father cato was charming, madam de warrens adorable, and the abbe palais, with his rough voice, was the butt of the company. pleasing moments of sportive youth, how long since have ye fled! as i shall have no more occasion to speak of poor father cato, i will here conclude in a few words his melancholy history. his brother monks, jealous, or rather exasperated to discover in him a merit and elegance of manners which favored nothing of monastic stupidity, conceived the most violent hatred to him, because he was not as despicable as themselves; the chiefs, therefore, combined against this worthy man, and set on the envious rabble of monks, who otherwise would not have dared to hazard the attack. he received a thousand indignities; they degraded him from his office, took away the apartment which he had furnished with elegant simplicity, and, at length, banished him, i know not whither: in short, these wretches overwhelmed him with so many evils, that his honest and proud soul sank under the pressure, and, after having been the delight of the most amiable societies, he died of grief, on a wretched bed, hid in some cell or dungeon, lamented by all worthy people of his acquaintance, who could find no fault in him, except his being a monk. accustomed to this manner of life for some time, i became so entirely attached to music that i could think of nothing else. i went to my business with disgust, the necessary confinement and assiduity appeared an insupportable punishment, which i at length wished to relinquish, that i might give myself up without reserve to my favorite amusement. it will be readily believed that this folly met with some opposition; to give up a creditable employment and fixed salary to run after uncertain scholars was too giddy a plan to be approved of by madam de warrens, and even supposing my future success should prove as great as i flattered myself, it was fixing very humble limits to my ambition to think of reducing myself for life to the condition of a music-master. she, who formed for me the brightest projects, and no longer trusted implicitly to the judgment of m. d'aubonne, seeing with concern that i was so seriously occupied with a talent which she thought frivolous, frequently repeated to me that provincial proverb, which does not hold quite so good in paris, "qui biens chante et biens dance, fait un metier qui peu avance." [he who can sweetly sing and featly dance. his interests right little shall advance.] on the other hand, she saw me hurried away by this irresistible passion, my taste for music having become a furor, and it was much to be feared that my employment, suffering by my distraction, might draw on me a discharge, which would be worse than a voluntary resignation. i represented to her; that this employment could not last long, that it was necessary i should have some permanent means of subsistence, and that it would be much better to complete by practice the acquisition of that art to which my inclination led me than to make fresh essays, which possibly might not succeed, since by this means, having passed the age most proper for improvement, i might be left without a single resource for gaining a livelihood: in short, i extorted her consent more by importunity and caresses than by any satisfactory reasons. proud of my success, i immediately ran to thank m. coccelli, director-general of the survey, as though i had performed the most heroic action, and quitted my employment without cause, reason, or pretext, with as much pleasure as i had accepted it two years before. this step, ridiculous as it may appear, procured me a kind of consideration, which i found extremely useful. some supposed i had resources which i did not possess; others, seeing me totally given up to music, judged of my abilities by the sacrifice i had made, and concluded that with such a passion for the art, i must possess it in a superior degree. in a nation of blind men, those with one eye are kings. i passed here for an excellent master, because all the rest were very bad ones. possessing taste in singing, and being favored by my age and figure, i soon procured more scholars than were sufficient to compensate for the losses of my secretary's pay. it is certain, that had it been reasonable to consider the pleasure of my situation only, it was impossible to pass more speedily from one extreme to the other. at our measuring, i was confined eight hours in the day to the most unentertaining employment, with yet more disagreeable company. shut up in a melancholy counting-house, empoisoned by the smell and respiration of a number of clowns, the major part of whom were ill-combed and very dirty, what with attention, bad air, constraint and weariness, i was sometimes so far overcome as to occasion a vertigo. instead of this, behold me admitted into the fashionable world, sought after in the first houses, and everywhere received with an air of satisfaction; amiable and gay young ladies awaiting my arrival, and welcoming me with pleasure; i see nothing but charming objects, smell nothing but roses and orange flowers; singing, chatting, laughter, and amusements, perpetually succeed each other. it must be allowed, that reckoning all these advantages, no hesitation was necessary in the choice; in fact, i was so content with mine, that i never once repented it; nor do i even now, when, free from the irrational motives that influenced me at that time, i weigh in the scale of reason every action of my life. this is, perhaps, the only time that, listening to inclination, i was not deceived in my expectations. the easy access, obliging temper, and free humor of this country, rendered a commerce with the world agreeable, and the inclination i then felt for it, proves to me, that if i have a dislike for society, it is more their fault than mine. it is a pity the savoyards are not rich: though, perhaps, it would be a still greater pity if they were so, for altogether they are the best, the most sociable people that i know, and if there is a little city in the world where the pleasures of life are experienced in an agreeable and friendly commerce, it is at chambery. the gentry of the province who assemble there have only sufficient wealth to live and not enough to spoil them; they cannot give way to ambition, but follow, through necessity, the counsel of cyneas, devoting their youth to a military employment, and returning home to grow old in peace; an arrangement over which honor and reason equally preside. the women are handsome, yet do not stand in need of beauty, since they possess all those qualifications which enhance its value and even supply the want of it. it is remarkable, that being obliged by my profession to see a number of young girls, i do not recollect one at chambery but what was charming: it will be said i was disposed to find them so, and perhaps there maybe some truth in the surmise. i cannot remember my young scholars without pleasure. why, in naming the most amiable, cannot i recall them and myself also to that happy age in which our moments, pleasing as innocent, were passed with such happiness together? the first was mademoiselle de mallarede, my neighbor, and sister to a pupil of monsieur gaime. she was a fine clear brunette, lively and graceful, without giddiness; thin as girls of that age usually are; but her bright eyes, fine shape, and easy air, rendered her sufficiently pleasing with that degree of plumpness which would have given a heightening to her charms. i went there of mornings, when she was usually in her dishabille, her hair carelessly turned up, and, on my arrival, ornamented with a flower, which was taken off at my departure for her hair to be dressed. there is nothing i fear so much as a pretty woman in an elegant dishabille; i should dread them a hundred times less in full dress. mademoiselle de menthon, whom i attended in the afternoon, was ever so. she made an equally pleasing, but quite different impression on me. her hair was flaxen, her person delicate, she was very timid and extremely fair, had a clear voice, capable of just modulation, but which she had not courage to employ to its full extent. she had the mark of a scald on her bosom, which a scanty piece of blue chenille did not entirely cover, this scar sometimes drew my attention, though not absolutely on its own account. mademoiselle des challes, another of my neighbors, was a woman grown, tall, well-formed, jolly, very pleasing though not a beauty, and might be quoted for her gracefulness, equal temper, and good humor. her sister, madam de charly, the handsomest woman of chambery, did not learn music, but i taught her daughter, who was yet young, but whose growing beauty promised to equal her mother's, if she had not unfortunately been a little red-haired. i had likewise among my scholars a little french lady, whose name i have forgotten, but who merits a place in my list of preferences. she had adopted the slow drawling tone of the nuns, in which voice she would utter some very keen things, which did not in the least appear to correspond with her manner; but she was indolent, and could not generally take pains to show her wit, that being a favor she did not grant to every one. after a month or two of negligent attendance, this was an expedient she devised to make me more assiduous, for i could not easily persuade myself to be so. when with my scholars, i was fond enough of teaching, but could not bear the idea of being obliged to attend at a particular hour; constraint and subjection in every shape are to me insupportable, and alone sufficient to make me hate even pleasure itself. i had some scholars likewise among the tradespeople, and, among others, one who was the indirect cause of a change of relationship, which (as i have promised to declare all) i must relate in its place. she was the daughter of a grocer, and was called mademoiselle de larnage, a perfect model for a grecian statue, and whom i should quote for the handsomest girl i have ever seen, if true beauty could exist without life or soul. her indolence, reserve, and insensibility were inconceivable; it was equally impossible to please or make her angry, and i am convinced that had any one formed a design upon her virtue, he might have succeeded, not through her inclination, but from her stupidity. her mother, who would run no risk of this, did not leave her a single moment. in having her taught to sing and providing a young master, she had hoped to enliven her, but it all proved ineffectual. while the master was admiring the daughter, the mother was admiring the master, but this was equally lost labor. madam de larnage added to her natural vivacity that portion of sprightliness which should have belonged to the daughter. she was a little, ugly, lively trollop, with small twinkling ferret eyes, and marked with smallpox. on my arrival in the morning, i always found my coffee and cream ready, and the mother never failed to welcome me with a kiss on the lips, which i would willingly have returned the daughter, to see how she would have received it. all this was done with such an air of carelessness and simplicity, that even when m. de larnage was present; her kisses and caresses were not omitted. he was a good quiet fellow, the true original of his daughter; nor did his wife endeavor to deceive him, because there was absolutely no occasion for it. i received all these caresses with my usual stupidity, taking them only for marks of pure friendship, though they were sometimes troublesome; for the lively madam lard was displeased, if, during the day, i passed the shop without calling; it became necessary, therefore (when i had no time to spare), to go out of my way through another street, well knowing it was not so easy to quit her house as to enter it. madam lard thought so much of me, that i could not avoid thinking something of her. her attentions affected me greatly; and i spoke of them to madam de warrens, without supposing any mystery in the matter, but had there been one i should equally have divulged it, for to have kept a secret of any kind from her would have been impossible. my heart lay as open to madam de warrens as to heaven. she did not understand the matter quite so simply as i had done, but saw advances where i only discovered friendship. she concluded that madam lard would make a point of not leaving me as great a fool as she found me, and, some way or other, contrive to make herself understood; but exclusive of the consideration that it was not just, that another should undertake the instruction of her pupil, she had motives more worthy of her, wishing to guard me against the snares to which my youth and inexperience exposed me. meantime, a more dangerous temptation offered which i likewise escaped, but which proved to her that such a succession of dangers required every preservative she could possibly apply. the countess of menthon, mother to one of my scholars, was a woman of great wit, and reckoned to possess, at least, an equal share of mischief, having (as was reported) caused a number of quarrels, and, among others, one that terminated fatally for the house of d' antremont. madam de warrens had seen enough of her to know her character: for having (very innocently) pleased some person to whom madam de menthon had pretensions, she found her guilty of the crime of this preference, though madam de warrens had neither sought after nor accepted it, and from that moment endeavored to play her rival a number of ill turns, none of which succeeded. i shall relate one of the most whimsical, by way of specimen. they were together in the country, with several gentlemen of the neighborhood, and among the rest the lover in question. madam de menthon took an opportunity to say to one of these gentlemen, that madam de warrens was a prude, that she dressed ill, and particularly that she covered her neck like a tradeswoman. "o, for that matter," replied the person she was speaking to (who was fond of a joke), "she has good reason, for i know she is marked with a great ugly rat on her bosom, so naturally, that it even appears to be running." hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous. madam de menthon resolved to make use of this discovery, and one day, while madam de warrens was at cards with this lady's ungrateful favorite, she contrived, in passing behind her rival, almost to overset the chair she sat on, and at the same instant, very dexterously displaced her handkerchief; but instead of this hideous rat, the gentleman beheld a far different object, which it was not more easy to forget than to obtain a sight of, and which by no means answered the intentions of the lady. i was not calculated to engross the attention of madam de menthon, who loved to be surrounded by brilliant company; notwithstanding she bestowed some attention on me, not for the sake of my person, which she certainly did not regard, but for the reputation of wit which i had acquired, and which might have rendered me convenient to her predominant inclination. she had a very lively passion for ridicule, and loved to write songs and lampoons on those who displeased her: had she found me possessed of sufficient talents to aid the fabrication of her verses, and complaisance enough to do so, we should presently have turned chambery upside down; these libels would have been traced to their source, madam de menthon would have saved herself by sacrificing me, and i should have been cooped up in prison, perhaps, for the rest of my life, as a recompense for having figured away as the apollo of the ladies. fortunately, nothing of this kind happened; madam de menthon made me stay for dinner two or three days, to chat with me, and soon found i was too dull for her purpose. i felt this myself, and was humiliated at the discovery, envying the talents of my friend venture; though i should rather have been obliged to my stupidity for keeping me out of the reach of danger. i remained, therefore, madam de menthon's daughter's singing-master, and nothing more! but i lived happily, and was ever well received at chambery, which was a thousand times more desirable than passing for a wit with her, and for a serpent with everybody else. however this might be, madam de warrens conceived it necessary to guard me from the perils of youth by treating me as a man: this she immediately set about, but in the most extraordinary manner that any woman, in similar circumstances, ever devised. i all at once observed that her manner was graver, and her discourse more moral than usual. to the playful gayety with which she used to intermingle her instructions suddenly succeeded an uniformity of manner, neither familiar nor severe, but which seemed to prepare me for some explanation. after having vainly racked my brain for the reason of this change, i mentioned it to her; this she had expected and immediately proposed a walk to our garden the next day. accordingly we went there the next morning; she had contrived that we should remain alone the whole day, which she employed in preparing me for those favors she meant to bestow; not as another woman would have done, by toying and folly, but by discourses full of sentiment and reason, rather tending to instruct than seduce, and which spoke more to my heart than to my senses. meantime, however excellent and to the purpose these discourses might be, and though far enough from coldness or melancholy, i did not listen to them with all the attention they merited, nor fix them in my memory as i should have done at any other time. that air of preparation which she had adopted gave me a degree of inquietude; while she spoke (in spite of myself) i was thoughtful and absent, attending less to what she said than curious to know what she aimed at; and no sooner had i comprehended her design (which i could not easily do) than the novelty of the idea, which, during all the years i had passed with her, had never once entered my imagination, took such entire possession of me that i was no longer capable of minding what she said! i only thought of her; i heard her no longer. thinking to render young minds attentive to reason by proposing some highly interesting object as the result of it, is an error instructors frequently run into, and one which i have not avoided in my umilius. the young pupil, struck with the object presented to him, is occupied only with that, and leaping lightly over your preliminary discourses, lights at once on the point, to which, in his idea, you lead him too tediously. to render him attentive, he must be prevented from seeing the whole of your design; and, in this particular, madam de warrens did not act with sufficient precaution. by a singularity which adhered to her systematic disposition, she took the vain precaution of proposing conditions; but the moment i knew the purchase, i no longer even heard them, but immediately consented to everything; and i doubt whether there is a man on the whole earth who would have been sincere or courageous enough to dispute terms, or one single woman who would have pardoned such a dispute. by a continuation of the same whimsicality, she attached a number of the gravest formalities to the acquisition of her favors, and gave me eight days to think of them, which i assured her i had no need of, though that assurance was far from a truth: for to complete this assemblage of singularities, i was very glad to have this intermission; so much had the novelty of these ideas struck me, and such disorder did i feel in mine, that it required time to arrange them. it will be supposed, that these eight days appeared to me as many ages; on the contrary, i should have been very glad had the time been lengthened. i find it difficult to describe the state i found myself in; it was a strange chaos of fear and impatience, dreading what i desired, and studying some civil pretext to evade my happiness. let the warmth of my constitution be remembered, my age, and my heart intoxicated with love; let my tender attachment to her be supposed, which, far from having diminished, had daily gained additional strength; let it be considered that i was only happy when with her, that my heart was full, not only of her bounty, of her amiable disposition, but of her shape, of her person, of herself; in a word, conceive me united to her by every affinity that could possibly render her dear; nor let it be supposed, that, being ten or twelve years older than myself, she began to grow an old woman, or was so in my opinion. from the time the first sight of her had made such an impression on me, she had really altered very little, and, in my mind, not at all. to me she was ever charming, and was still thought so by everyone. she had got something jollier, but had the same fine eyes, the same clear complexion, the same features, the same beautiful light hair, the sane gayety, and even the same voice, whose youthful and silvery sound made so lively an impression on my heart, that, even to this day, i cannot hear a young woman's voice, that is at all harmonious, without emotion. it will be seen, that in a more advanced age, the bare idea of some trifling favors i had to expect from the person i loved, inflamed me so far, that i could not support, with any degree of patience, the time necessary to traverse the short space that separated us; how then, by what miracle, when in the flower of my youth, had i so little impatience for a happiness i had never tasted but in idea? how could i see the moment advancing with more pain than pleasure? why, instead of transports that should have intoxicated me with their deliciousness, did i experience only fears and repugnance? i have no doubt that if i could have avoided this happiness with any degree of decency, i should have relinquished it with all my heart. i have promised a number of extravagancies in the history of my attachment to her; this certainly is one that no idea could be formed of. the reader (already disgusted) supposes, that being in the situation i have before described with claude anet, she was already degraded in my opinion by this participation of her favors, and that a sentiment of disesteem weakened those she had before inspired me with; but he is mistaken. 'tis true that this participation gave me a cruel uneasiness, as well from a very natural sentiment of delicacy, as because it appeared unworthy both of her and myself; but as to my sentiments for her, they were still the same, and i can solemnly aver, that i never loved her more tenderly than when i felt so little propensity to avail myself of her condescension. i was too well acquainted with the chastity of her heart and the iciness of her constitution, to suppose a moment that the gratification of the senses had any influence over her; i was well convinced that her only motive was to guard me from dangers, which appeared otherwise inevitable, by this extraordinary favor, which she did not consider in the same light that women usually do; as will presently be explained. the habit of living a long time innocently together, far from weakening the first sentiments i felt for her, had contributed to strengthen them, giving a more lively, a more tender, but at the same time a less sensual, turn to my affection. having ever accustomed myself to call her mama (as formerly observed) and enjoying the familiarity of a son, it became natural to consider myself as such, and i am inclined to think this was the true reason of that insensibility with a person i so tenderly loved; for i can perfectly recollect that my emotions on first seeing her, though not more lively, were more voluptuous: at annecy i was intoxicated, at chambery i possessed my reason. i always loved her as passionately as possible, but i now loved her more for herself and less on my own account; or, at least, i rather sought for happiness than pleasure in her company. she was more to me than a sister, a mother, a friend, or even than a mistress, and for this very reason she was not a mistress; in a word, i loved her too much to desire her. this day, more dreaded than hoped for, at length arrived. i have before observed, that i promised everything that was required of me, and i kept my word: my heart confirmed my engagements without desiring the fruits, though at length i obtained them. was i happy? no: i felt i know not what invincible sadness which empoisoned my happiness, it seemed that i had committed an incest, and two or three times, pressing her eagerly in my arms, i deluged her bosom with my tears. on her part, as she had never sought pleasure, she had not the stings of remorse. i repeat it, all her failings were the effect of her errors, never of her passions. she was well born, her heart was pure, her manners noble, her desires regular and virtuous, her taste delicate; she seemed formed for that elegant purity of manners which she ever loved, but never practised, because instead of listening to the dictates of her heart, she followed those of her reason, which led her astray: for when once corrupted by false principles it will ever run counter to its natural sentiments. unhappily, she piqued herself on philosophy, and the morals she drew from thence clouded the genuine purity of her heart. m. tavel, her first lover, was also her instructor in this philosophy, and the principles he instilled into her mind were such as tended to seduce her. finding her cold and impregnable on the side of her passions, and firmly attached to her husband and her duty, he attacked her by sophisms, endeavoring to prove that the list of duties she thought so sacred, was but a sort of catechism, fit only for children. that the kind of infidelity she thought so terrible, was, in itself, absolutely indifferent; that all the morality of conjugal faith consisted in opinion, the contentment of husbands being the only reasonable rule of duty in wives; consequently that concealed infidelities, doing no injury, could be no crime; in a word, he persuaded her that the sin consisted only in the scandal, that woman being really virtuous who took care to appear so. thus the deceiver obtained his end in the subverting the reason of a girl; whose heart he found it impossible to corrupt, and received his punishment in a devouring jealousy, being persuaded she would treat him as he had prevailed on her to treat her husband. i don't know whether he was mistaken in this respect: the minister perret passed for his successor; all i know, is, that the coldness of temperament which it might have been supposed would have kept her from embracing this system, in the end prevented her from renouncing it. she could not conceive how so much importance should be given to what seemed to have none for her; nor could she honor with the name of virtue, an abstinence which would have cost her little. she did not, therefore, give in to this false principle on her own account, but for the sake of others; and that from another maxim almost as false as the former, but more consonant to the generosity of her disposition. she was persuaded that nothing could attach a man so truly to any woman as an unbounded freedom, and though she was only susceptible of friendship, this friendship was so tender, that she made use of every means which depended on her to secure the objects of it, and, which is very extraordinary, almost always succeeded: for she was so truly amiable, that an increase of intimacy was sure to discover additional reasons to love and respect her. another thing worthy of remark is, that after her first folly, she only favored the unfortunate. lovers in a more brilliant station lost their labor with her, but the man who at first attracted her pity, must have possessed very few good qualities if in the end he did not obtain her affection. even when she made an unworthy choice, far from proceeding from base inclinations (which were strangers to her noble heart) it was the effect of a disposition too generous, humane, compassionate, and sensible, which she did not always govern with sufficient discernment. if some false principles misled her, how many admirable ones did she not possess, which never forsook her! by how many virtues did she atone for her failings! if we can call by that name errors in which the senses had so little share. the man who in one particular deceived her so completely, had given her excellent instructions in a thousand others; and her passions, being far from turbulent, permitted her to follow the dictates. she ever acted wisely when her sophisms did not intervene, and her designs were laudable even in her failings. false principles might lead her to do ill, but she never did anything which she conceived to be wrong. she abhorred lying and duplicity, was just, equitable, humane, disinterested, true to her word, her friends, and those duties which she conceived to be such; incapable of hatred or revenge, and not even conceiving there was a merit in pardoning; in fine (to return to those qualities which were less excusable), though she did not properly value, she never made a vile commerce of her favors; she lavished, but never sold them, though continually reduced to expedients for a subsistence: and i dare assert, that if socrates could esteem aspasia, he would have respected madam de warrens. i am well aware that ascribing sensibility of heart with coldness of temperament to the same person, i shall generally, and with great appearance of reason, be accused of a contradiction. perhaps nature sported or blundered, and this combination ought not to have existed; i only know it did exist. all those who know madam de warrens (a great number of whom are yet living) have had opportunities of knowing this was a fact; i dare even aver she had but one pleasure in the world, which was serving those she loved. let every one argue on the point as he pleases, and gravely prove that this cannot be; my business is to declare the truth, and not to enforce a belief of it. i became acquainted with the particulars i have just related, in those conversations which succeeded our union, and alone rendered it delicious. she was right when she concluded her complaisance would be useful to me; i derived great advantages from it in point of useful instruction. hitherto she had used me as a child, she now began to treat me as a man, and entertain me with accounts of herself. everything she said was so interesting, and i was so sensibly touched with it, that, reasoning with myself, i applied these confidential relations to my own improvement and received more instruction from them than from her teaching. when we truly feel that the heart speaks, our own opens to receive its instructions, nor can all the pompous morality of a pedagogue have half the effect that is produced by the tender, affectionate, and artless conversation of a sensible woman on him who loves her. the intimacy in which i lived with madam de warrens, having placed me more advantageously in her opinion than formerly, she began to think (notwithstanding my awkward manner) that i deserved cultivation for the polite world, and that if i could one day show myself there in an eligible situation, i should soon be able to make my way. in consequence of this idea, she set about forming not only my judgment, but my address, endeavoring to render me amiable, as well as estimable; and if it is true that success in this world is consistent with strict virtue (which, for my part, i do not believe), i am certain there is no other road than that she had taken, and wished to point out to me. for madam de warrens knew mankind, and understood exquisitely well the art of treating all ranks, without falsehood, and without imprudence, neither deceiving nor provoking them; but this art was rather in her disposition than her precepts, she knew better how to practise than explain it, and i was of all the world the least calculated to become master of such an attainment; accordingly, the means employed for this purpose were nearly lost labor, as well as the pains she took to procure me a fencing and a dancing master. though very well made, i could never learn to dance a minuet; for being plagued with corns, i had acquired a habit of walking on my heels, which roche, the dancing master, could never break me of. it was still worse at the fencing-school, where, after three months' practice, i made but very little progress, and could never attempt fencing with any but my master. my wrist was not supple enough, nor my arm sufficiently firm to retain the foil, whenever he chose to make it fly out of my hand. add to this, i had a mortal aversion both to the art itself and to the person who undertook to teach it to me, nor should i ever have imagined, that anyone could have been so proud of the science of sending men out of the world. to bring this vast genius within the compass of my comprehension, he explained himself by comparisons drawn from music, which he understood nothing of. he found striking analogies between a hit in 'quarte' or 'tierce' with the intervals of music which bears those names: when he made a feint he cried out, "take care of this 'diesis'," because anciently they called the 'diesis' a feint: and when he had made the foil fly from my hand, he would add, with a sneer, that this was a pause: in a word, i never in my life saw a more insupportable pedant. i made, therefore, but little progress in my exercises, which i presently quitted from pure disgust; but i succeeded better in an art of a thousand times more value, namely, that of being content with my situation, and not desiring one more brilliant, for which i began to be persuaded that nature had not designed me. given up to the endeavor of rendering madam de warrens happy, i was ever best pleased when in her company, and, notwithstanding my fondness for music, began to grudge the time i employed in giving lessons to my scholars. i am ignorant whether anet perceived the full extent of our union; but i am inclined to think he was no stranger to it. he was a young man of great penetration, and still greater discretion; who never belied his sentiments, but did not always speak them: without giving me the least hint that he was acquainted with our intimacy, he appeared by his conduct to be so; nor did this moderation proceed from baseness of soul, but, having entered entirely into the principles of his mistress, he could not reasonably disapprove of the natural consequences of them. though as young as herself, he was so grave and thoughtful, that he looked on us as two children who required indulgence, and we regarded him as a respectable man, whose esteem we had to preserve. it was not until after she was unfaithful to anet, that i learned the strength of her attachment to him. she was fully sensible that i only thought, felt, or lived for her; she let me see, therefore, how much she loved anet, that i might love him likewise, and dwell less on her friendship, than on her esteem, for him, because this was the sentiment that i could most fully partake of. how often has she affected our hearts and made us embrace with tears, by assuring us that we were both necessary to her happiness! let not women read this with an ill-natured smile; with the temperament she possessed, this necessity was not equivocal, it was only that of the heart. thus there was established, among us three, a union without example, perhaps, on the face of the earth. all our wishes, our cares, our very hearts, were for each other, and absolutely confined to this little circle. the habit of living together, and living exclusively from the rest of the world, became so strong, that if at our repasts one of the three was wanting, or a fourth person came in, everything seemed deranged; and, notwithstanding our particular attachments, even our tete-a-tete were less agreeable than our reunion. what banished every species of constraint from our little community, was a lively reciprocal confidence, and dulness or insipidity could find no place among us, because we were always fully employed. madam de warrens always projecting, always busy, left us no time for idleness, though, indeed, we had each sufficient employment on our own account. it is my maxim, that idleness is as much the pest of society as of solitude. nothing more contracts the mind, or engenders more tales, mischief, gossiping, and lies, than for people to be eternally shut up in the same apartment together, and reduced, from the want of employment, to the necessity of an incessant chat. when every one is busy (unless you have really something to say), you may continue silent; but if you have nothing to do, you must absolutely speak continually, and this, in my mind, is the most burdensome and the most dangerous constraint. i will go further, and maintain, that to render company harmless, as well as agreeable, it is necessary, not only that they should have something to do, but something that requires a degree of attention. knitting, for instance, is absolutely as bad as doing nothing; you must take as much pains to amuse a woman whose fingers are thus employed, as if she sat with her arms crossed; but let her embroider, and it is a different matter; she is then so far busied, that a few intervals of silence may be borne with. what is most disgusting and ridiculous, during these intermissions of conversation, is to see, perhaps, a dozen over-grown fellows, get up, sit down again, walk backwards and forwards, turn on their heels, play with the chimney ornaments, and rack their brains to maintain an inexhaustible chain of words: what a charming occupation! such people, wherever they go, must be troublesome both to others and themselves. when i was at motiers, i used to employ myself in making laces with my neighbors, and were i again to mix with the world, i would always carry a cup-and-ball in my pocket; i should sometimes play with it the whole day, that i might not be constrained to speak when i had nothing to discourse about; and i am persuaded, that if every one would do the same, mankind would be less mischievous, their company would become more rational, and, in my opinion, a vast deal more agreeable; in a word, let wits laugh if they please, but i maintain, that the only practical lesson of morality within the reach of the present age, is that of the cup-and-ball. at chambery they did not give us the trouble of studying expedients to avoid weariness, when by ourselves, for a troop of important visitors gave us too much by their company, to feel any when alone. the annoyance they formerly gave me had not diminished; all the difference was, that i now found less opportunity to abandon myself to my dissatisfaction. poor madam de warrens had not lost her old predilection for schemes and systems; on the contrary, the more she felt the pressure of her domestic necessities, the more she endeavored to extricate herself from them by visionary projects; and, in proportion to the decrease of her present resources, she contrived to enlarge, in idea, those of the future. increase of years only strengthened this folly: as she lost her relish for the pleasures of the world and youth, she replaced it by an additional fondness for secrets and projects; her house was never clear of quacks, contrivers of new manufactures, alchemists, projects of all kinds and of all descriptions, whose discourses began by a distribution of millions and concluded by giving you to understand that they were in want of a crown--piece. no one went from her empty-handed; and what astonished me most was, how she could so long support such profusion, without exhausting the source or wearying her creditors. her principal project at the time i am now speaking of was that of establishing a royal physical garden at chambery, with a demonstrator attached to it; it will be unnecessary to add for whom this office was designed. the situation of this city, in the midst of the alps, was extremely favorable to botany, and as madam de warrens was always for helping out one project with another, a college of pharmacy was to be added, which really would have been a very useful foundation in so poor a country, where apothecaries are almost the only medical practitioners. the retreat of the chief physician, grossi, to chambery, on the demise of king victor, seemed to favor this idea, or perhaps, first suggest it; however this may be, by flattery and attention she set about managing grossi, who, in fact, was not very manageable, being the most caustic and brutal, for a man who had any pretensions to the quality of a gentleman, that ever i knew. the reader may judge for himself by two or three traits of character, which i shall add by way of specimen. he assisted one day at a consultation with some other doctors, and among the rest, a young gentleman from annecy, who was physician in ordinary to the sick person. this young man, being but indifferently taught for a doctor, was bold enough to differ in opinion from m. grossi, who only answered him by asking him when he should return, which way he meant to take, and what conveyance he should make use of? the other, having satisfied grossi in these particulars, asked him if there was anything he could serve him in? "nothing, nothing," answered he, "only i shall place myself at a window in your way, that i may have the pleasure of seeing an ass ride on horseback." his avarice equalled his riches and want of feeling. one of his friends wanted to borrow some money of him, on good security. "my friend," answered he, shaking him by the arm, and grinding his teeth, "should st. peter descend from heaven to borrow ten pistoles of me, and offer the trinity as securities, i would not lend them." one day, being invited to dinner with count picon, governor of savoy, who was very religious, he arrived before it was ready, and found his excellency busy with his devotions, who proposed to him the same employment; not knowing how to refuse, he knelt down with a frightful grimace, but had hardly recited two ave-marias, when, not being able to contain himself any longer, he rose hastily, snatched his hat and cane, and without speaking a word, was making toward the door; count picon ran after him, crying, "monsieur grossi! monsieur grossi! stop, there's a most excellent ortolan on the spit for you." "monsieur le count," replied the other, turning his head, "though you should give me a roasted angel, i would not stay." such was m. grossi, whom madam de warrens undertook and succeeded in civilizing. though his time was very much occupied, he accustomed himself to come frequently to her house, conceived a friendship for anet, seemed to think him intelligent, spoke of him with esteem, and, what would not have been expected of such a brute, affected to treat him with respect, wishing to efface the impressions of the past; for though anet was no longer on the footing of a domestic, it was known that he had been one, and nothing less than the countenance and example of the chief physician was necessary to set an example of respect which would not otherwise have been paid him. thus claude anet, with a black coat, a well-dressed wig, a grave, decent behavior, a circumspect conduct, and a tolerable knowledge in medical and botanical matters, might reasonably have hoped to fill, with universal satisfaction, the place of public demonstrator, had the proposed establishment taken place. grossi highly approved the plan, and only waited an opportunity to propose it to the administration, whenever a return of peace should permit them to think of useful institutions, and enable them to spare the necessary pecuniary supplies. but this project, whose execution would probably have plunged me into botanical studies, for which i am inclined to think nature designed me, failed through one of those unexpected strokes which frequently overthrow the best concerted plans. i was destined to become an example of human misery; and it might be said that providence, who called me by degrees to these extraordinary trials, disconcerted every opportunity that could prevent my encountering them. in an excursion which anet made to the top of the mountain to seek for genipi, a scarce plant that grows only on the alps, and which monsieur grossi had occasion for, unfortunately he heated himself so much, that he was seized with a pleurisy, which the genipi could not relieve, though said to be specific in that disorder; and, notwithstanding all the art of grossi (who certainly was very skillful), and all the care of his good mistress and myself, he died the fifth day of his disorder, in the most cruel agonies. during his illness he had no exhortations but mine, bestowed with such transports of grief and zeal, that had he been in a state to understand them, they must have been some consolation to him. thus i lost the firmest friend i ever had; a man estimable and extraordinary; in whom nature supplied the defects of education, and who (though in a state of servitude) possessed all the virtues necessary to form a great man, which, perhaps, he would have shown himself, and been acknowledged, had he lived to fill the situation he seemed so perfectly adapted to. the next day i spoke of him to madam de warrens with the most sincere and lively affection; when, suddenly, in the midst of our conversation, the vile, ungrateful thought occurred, that i should inherit his wardrobe, and particularly a handsome black coat, which i thought very becoming. as i thought this, i consequently uttered it; for when with her, to think and to speak was the same thing. nothing could have made her feel more forcibly the loss she had sustained, than this unworthy and odious observation; disinterestedness and greatness of soul being qualities that poor anet had eminently possessed. the generous madam de warrens turned from me, and (without any reply) burst into tears. dear and precious tears! your reprehension was fully felt; ye ran into my very heart, washing from thence even the smallest traces of such despicable and unworthy sentiments, never to return. this loss caused madam de warrens as much inconvenience as sorrow, since from this moment her affairs were still more deranged. anet was extremely exact, and kept everything in order; his vigilance was universally feared, and this set some bounds to that profusion they were too apt to run into; even madam de warrens, to avoid his censure, kept her dissipation within bounds; his attachment was not sufficient, she wished to preserve his esteem, and avoid the just remonstrances he sometimes took the liberty to make her, by representing that she squandered the property of others as well as her own. i thought as he did, nay, i even sometimes expressed myself to the same effect, but had not an equal ascendancy over her, and my advice did not make the same impression. on his decease, i was obliged to occupy his place, for which i had as little inclination as abilities, and therefore filled it ill. i was not sufficiently careful, and so very timid, that though i frequently found fault to myself, i saw ill-management without taking courage to oppose it; besides, though i acquired an equal share of respect, i had not the same authority. i saw the disorder that prevailed, trembled at it, sometimes complained, but was never attended to. i was too young and lively to have any pretensions to the exercise of reason, and when i would have acted the reformer, madam de warrens calling me her little mentor, with two or three playful slaps on the cheek, reduced me to my natural thoughtlessness. notwithstanding, an idea of the certain distress in which her ill-regulated expenses, sooner or later, must necessarily plunge her, made a stronger impression on me since i had become the inspector of her household, and had a better opportunity of calculating the inequality that subsisted between her income and her expenses. i even date from this period the beginning of that inclination to avarice which i have ever since been sensible of. i was never foolishly prodigal, except by intervals; but till then i was never concerned whether i had much or little money. i now began to pay more attention to this circumstance, taking care of my purse, and becoming mean from a laudable motive; for i only sought to insure madam de warrens some resources against that catastrophe which i dreaded the approach of. i feared her creditors would seize her pension or that it might be discontinued and she reduced to want, when i foolishly imagined that the trifle i could save might be of essential service to her; but to accomplish this, it was necessary i should conceal what i meant to make a reserve of; for it would have been an awkward circumstance, while she was perpetually driven to expedients, to have her know that i hoarded money. accordingly, i sought out some hiding-place, where i laid up a few louis, resolving to augment this stock from time to time, till a convenient opportunity to lay it at her feet; but i was so incautious in the choice of my repositories, that she always discovered them, and, to convince me that she did so, changed the louis i had concealed for a larger sum in different pieces of coin. ashamed of these discoveries, i brought back to the common purse my little treasure, which she never failed to lay out in clothes, or other things for my use, such as a silver hilted sword, watch, etc. being convinced that i should never succeed in accumulating money, and that what i could save would furnish but a very slender resource against the misfortune i dreaded, made me wish to place myself in such a situation that i might be enabled to provide for her, whenever she might chance to be reduced to want. unhappily, seeking these resources on the side of my inclinations, i foolishly determined to consider music as my principal dependence; and ideas of harmony rising in my brain, i imagined, that if placed in a proper situation to profit by them, i should acquire celebrity, and presently become a modern orpheus, whose mystic sounds would attract all the riches of peru. as i began to read music tolerably well, the question was, how i should learn composition? the difficulty lay in meeting with a good master, for, with the assistance of my rameau alone, i despaired of ever being able to accomplish it; and, since the departure of m. le maitre, there was nobody in savoy who understood anything of the principles of harmony. i am now about to relate another of those inconsequences, which my life is full of, and which have so frequently carried me directly from my designs, even when i thought myself immediately within reach of them. venture had spoken to me in very high terms of the abbe blanchard, who had taught him composition; a deserving man, possessed of great talents, who was music-master to the cathedral at besancon, and is now in that capacity at the chapel of versailles. i therefore determined to go to besancon, and take some lessons from the abbe blanchard, and the idea appeared so rational to me, that i soon made madam de warrens of the same opinion, who immediately set about the preparations for my journey, in the same style of profusion with which all her plans were executed. thus this project for preventing a bankruptcy, and repairing in future the waste of dissipation, began by causing her to expend eight hundred livres; her ruin being accelerated that i might be put in a condition to prevent it. foolish as this conduct may appear, the illusion was complete on my part, and even on hers, for i was persuaded i should labor for her emolument, and she thought she was highly promoting mine. i expected to find venture still at annecy, and promised myself to obtain a recommendatory letter from him to the abbe blanchard; but he had left that place, and i was obliged to content myself in the room of it, with a mass in four parts of his composition, which he had left with me. with this slender recommendation i set out for besancon by the way of geneva, where i saw my relations; and through nion, where i saw my father, who received me in his usual manner, and promised to forward my portmanteau, which, as i travelled on horseback, came after me. i arrived at besancon, and was kindly received by the abbe blanchard, who promised me his instruction, and offered his services in any other particular. we had just set about our music, when i received a letter from my father, informing me that my portmanteau had been seized and confiscated at rousses, a french barrier on the side of switzerland. alarmed at the news, i employed the acquaintance i had formed at besancon, to learn the motive of this confiscation. being certain there was nothing contraband among my baggage, i could not conceive on what pretext it could have been seized on; at length, however, i learned the rights of the story, which (as it is a very curious one) must not be omitted. i became acquainted at chambery with a very worthy old man, from lyons, named monsieur duvivier, who had been employed at the visa, under the regency, and for want of other business, now assisted at the survey. he had lived in the polite world, possessed talents, was good-humored, and understood music. as we both wrote in the same chamber, we preferred each other's acquaintance to that of the unlicked cubs that surrounded us. he had some correspondents at paris, who furnished him with those little nothings, those daily novelties, which circulate one knows not why, and die one cares not when, without any one thinking of them longer than they are heard. as i sometimes took him to dine with madam de warrens, he in some measure treated me with respect, and (wishing to render himself agreeable) endeavored to make me fond of these trifles, for which i naturally had such a distaste, that i never in my life read any of them. unhappily one of these cursed papers happened to be in the waistcoat pocket of a new suit, which i had only worn two or three times to prevent its being seized by the commissioners of the customs. this paper contained an insipid jansenist parody on that beautiful scene in racine's mithridates: i had not read ten lines of it, but by forgetfulness left it in my pocket, and this caused all my necessaries to be confiscated. the commissioners at the head of the inventory of my portmanteau, set a most pompous verbal process, in which it was taken for granted that this most terrible writing came from geneva for the sole purpose of being printed and distributed in france, and then ran into holy invectives against the enemies of god and the church, and praised the pious vigilance of those who had prevented the execution of these most infernal machinations. they doubtless found also that my spirits smelt of heresy, for on the strength of this dreadful paper, they were all seized, and from that time i never received any account of my unfortunate portmanteau. the revenue officers whom i applied to for this purpose required so many instructions, informations, certificates, memorials, etc., etc., that, lost a thousand times in the perplexing labyrinth, i was glad to abandon them entirely. i feel a real regret for not having preserved this verbal process from the office of rousses, for it was a piece calculated to hold a distinguished rank in the collection which is to accompany this work. the loss of my necessities immediately brought me back to chambery, without having learned anything of the abbe blanchard. reasoning with myself on the events of this journey, and seeing that misfortunes attended all my enterprises, i resolved to attach myself entirely to madam de warrens, to share her fortune, and distress myself no longer about future events, which i could not regulate. she received me as if i had brought back treasures, replaced by degrees my little wardrobe, and though this misfortune fell heavy enough on us both, it was forgotten almost as suddenly as it arrived. though this mischance had rather dampened my musical ardor, i did not leave off studying my rameau, and, by repeated efforts, was at length able to understand it, and to make some little attempts at composition, the success of which encouraged me to proceed. the count de bellegrade, son of the marquis of antremont, had returned from dresden after the death of king augustus. having long resided at paris, he was fond of music, and particularly that of rameau. his brother, the count of nangis, played on the violin; the countess la tour, their sister, sung tolerably: this rendered music the fashion at chambery, and a kind of public concert was established there, the direction of which was at first designed for me, but they soon discovered i was not competent to the undertaking, and it was otherwise arranged. notwithstanding this, i continued writing a number of little pieces, in my own way, and, among others, a cantata, which gained great approbation; it could not, indeed, be called a finished piece, but the airs were written in a style of novelty, and produced a good effect, which was not expected from me. these gentlemen could not believe that, reading music so indifferently, it was possible i should compose any that was passable, and made no doubt that i had taken to myself the credit of some other person's labors. monsieur de nangis, wishing to be assured of this, called on me one morning with a cantata of clerambault's which he had transposed as he said, to suit his voice, and to which another bass was necessary, the transposition having rendered that of clerambault impracticable. i answered, it required considerable labor, and could not be done on the spot. being convinced i only sought an excuse, he pressed me to write at least the bass to a recitative: i did so, not well, doubtless, because to attempt anything with success i must have both time and freedom, but i did it at least according to rule, and he being present, could not doubt but i understood the elements of composition. i did not, therefore, lose my scholars, though it hurt my pride that there should be a concert at chambery in which i was not necessary. about this time, peace being concluded, the french army repassed the alps. several officers came to visit madam de warrens, and among others the count de lautrec, colonel of the regiment of orleans, since plenipotentiary of geneva, and afterwards marshal of france, to whom she presented me. on her recommendation, he appeared to interest himself greatly in my behalf, promising a great deal, which he never remembered till the last year of his life, when i no longer stood in need of his assistance. the young marquis of sennecterre, whose father was then ambassador at turin, passed through chambery at the same time, and dined one day at m. de menthon's, when i happened to be among the guests. after dinner; the discourse turned on music, which the marquis understood extremely well. the opera of 'jephtha' was then new; he mentioned this piece, it was brought him, and he made me tremble by proposing to execute it between us. he opened the book at that celebrated double chorus, la terra, l'enfer, le ciel meme, tout tremble devant le seigneur! [the earth, and hell, and heaven itself, tremble before the lord!] he said, "how many parts will you take? i will do these six." i had not yet been accustomed to this trait of french vivacity, and though acquainted with divisions, could not comprehend how one man could undertake to perform six, or even two parts at the same time. nothing has cost me more trouble in music than to skip lightly from one part to another, and have the eye at once on a whole division. by the manner in which i evaded this trial, he must have been inclined to believe i did not understand music, and perhaps it was to satisfy himself in this particular that he proposed my noting a song for mademoiselle de menthon, in such a manner that i could not avoid it. he sang this song, and i wrote from his voice, without giving him much trouble to repeat it. when finished he read my performance, and said (which was very true) that it was very correctly noted. he had observed my embarrassment, and now seemed to enhance the merit of this little success. in reality, i then understood music very well, and only wanted that quickness at first sight which i possess in no one particular, and which is only to be acquired in this art by long and constant practice. be that as it may, i was fully sensible of his kindness in endeavoring to efface from the minds of others, and even from my own, the embarrassment i had experienced on this occasion. twelve or fifteen years afterwards, meeting this gentleman at several houses in paris, i was tempted to make him recollect this anecdote, and show him i still remembered it; but he had lost his sight since that time; i feared to give him pain by recalling to his memory how useful it formerly had been to him, and was therefore silent on that subject. i now touch on the moment that binds my past existence to the present, some friendships of that period, prolonged to the present time, being very dear to me, have frequently made me regret that happy obscurity, when those who called themselves my friends were really so; loved me for myself, through pure good will, and not from the vanity of being acquainted with a conspicuous character, perhaps for the secret purpose of finding more occasions to injure him. from this time i date my first acquaintance with my old friend gauffecourt, who, notwithstanding every effort to disunite us, has still remained so.--still remained so!--no, alas! i have just lost him!--but his affection terminated only with his life--death alone could put a period to our friendship. monsieur de gauffecourt was one of the most amiable men that ever existed; it was impossible to see him without affection, or to live with him without feeling a sincere attachment. in my life i never saw features more expressive of goodness and serenity, or that marked more feeling, more understanding, or inspired greater confidence. however reserved one might be, it was impossible even at first sight to avoid being as free with him as if he had been an acquaintance of twenty years; for myself, who find so much difficulty to be at ease among new faces, i was familiar with him in a moment. his manner, accent, and conversation, perfectly suited his features: the sound of his voice was clear, full and musical; it was an agreeable and expressive bass, which satisfied the ear, and sounded full upon the heart. it was impossible to possess a more equal and pleasing vivacity, or more real and unaffected gracefulness, more natural talents, or cultivated with greater taste; join to all these good qualities an affectionate heart, but loving rather too diffusively, and bestowing his favors with too little caution; serving his friends with zeal, or rather making himself the friend of every one he could serve, yet contriving very dexterously to manage his own affairs, while warmly pursuing the interests of others. gauffecourt was the son of a clock-maker, and would have been a clock-maker himself had not his person and desert called him to a superior situation. he became acquainted with m. de la closure, the french resident at geneva, who conceived a friendship for him, and procured him some connections at paris, which were useful, and through whose influence he obtained the privilege of furnishing the salts of valais, which was worth twenty thousand livres a year. this very amply satisfied his wishes with respect to fortune, but with regard to women he was more difficult; he had to provide for his own happiness, and did what he supposed most conducive to it. what renders his character most remarkable, and does him the greatest honor, is, that though connected with all conditions, he was universally esteemed and sought after without being envied or hated by any one, and i really believe he passed through life without a single enemy.--happy man! he went every year to the baths of aix, where the best company from the neighboring countries resorted, and being on terms of friendship with all the nobility of savoy, came from aix to chambery to see the young count de bellegarde and his father the marquis of antremont. it was here madam de warrens introduced me to him, and this acquaintance, which appeared at that time to end in nothing, after many years had elapsed, was renewed on an occasion which i should relate, when it became a real friendship. i apprehend i am sufficiently authorized in speaking of a man to whom i was so firmly attached, but i had no personal interest in what concerned him; he was so truly amiable, and born with so many natural good qualities that, for the honor of human nature, i should think it necessary to preserve his memory. this man, estimable as he certainly was, had, like other mortals, some failings, as will be seen hereafter; perhaps had it not been so, he would have been less amiable, since, to render him as interesting as possible, it was necessary he should sometimes act in such a manner as to require a small portion of indulgence. another connection of the same time, that is not yet extinguished, and continues to flatter me with the idea of temporal happiness, which it is so difficult to obliterate from the human heart, is monsieur de conzie, a savoyard gentleman, then young and amiable, who had a fancy to learn music, or rather to be acquainted with the person who taught it. with great understanding and taste for polite acquirements, m. de conzie possessed a mildness of disposition which rendered him extremely attractive, and my temper being somewhat similar, when it found a counterpart, our friendship was soon formed. the seeds of literature and philosophy, which began to ferment in my brain, and only waited for culture and emulation to spring up, found in him exactly what was wanting to render them prolific. m. de conzie had no great inclination to music, and even this was useful to me, for the hours destined for lessons were passed anyhow rather than musically; we breakfasted, chatted, and read new publications, but not a word of music. the correspondence between voltaire and the prince royal of prussia, then made a noise in the world, and these celebrated men were frequently the subject of our conversation, one of whom recently seated on a throne, already indicated what he would prove himself hereafter, while the other, as much disgraced as he is now admired, made us sincerely lament the misfortunes that seemed to pursue him, and which are so frequently the appendage of superior talents. the prince of prussia had not been happy in his youth, and it appeared that voltaire was formed never to be so. the interest we took in both parties extended to all that concerned them, and nothing that voltaire wrote escaped us. the inclination i felt for these performances inspired me with a desire to write elegantly, and caused me to endeavor to imitate the colorings of that author, with whom i was so much enchanted. some time after, his philosophical letters (though certainly not his best work) greatly augmented my fondness for study; it was a rising inclination, which, from that time, has never been extinguished. but the moment was not yet arrived when i should give into it entirely; my rambling disposition (rather contracted than eradicated) being kept alive by our manner of living at madam de warrens, which was too unsettled for one of my solitary temper. the crowd of strangers who daily swarmed about her from all parts, and the certainty i was in that these people sought only to dupe her, each in his particular mode, rendered home disagreeable. since i had succeeded anet in the confidence of his mistress, i had strictly examined her circumstances, and saw their evil tendency with horror. i had remonstrated a hundred times, prayed, argued, conjured, but all to no purpose. i had thrown myself at her feet, and strongly represented the catastrophe that threatened her, had earnestly entreated that she would reform her expenses, and begin with myself, representing that it was better to suffer something while she was yet young, than by multiplying her debts and creditors, expose her old age to vexation and misery. sensible of the sincerity of my zeal, she was frequently affected, and would then make the finest promises in the world: but only let an artful schemer arrive, and in an instant all her good resolutions were forgotten. after a thousand proofs of the inefficacy of my remonstrances, what remained but to turn away my eyes from the ruin i could not prevent; and fly myself from the door i could not guard! i made therefore little journeys to geneva and lyons, which diverted my mind in some measure from this secret uneasiness, though it increased the cause by these additional expenses. i can truly aver that i should have acquiesed with pleasure in every retrenchment, had madam de warrens really profited by it, but being persuaded that what i might refuse myself would be distributed among a set of interested villains, i took advantage of her easiness to partake with them, and, like the dog returning from the shambles, carried off a portion of that morsel which i could not protect. pretences were not wanting for all these journeys; even madam de warrens would alone have supplied me with more than were necessary, having plenty of connections, negotiations, affairs, and commissions, which she wished to have executed by some trusty hand. in these cases she usually applied to me; i was always willing to go, and consequently found occasions enough to furnish out a rambling kind of life. these excursions procured me some good connections, which have since been agreeable or useful to me. among others, i met at lyons, with m. perrichon, whose friendship i accuse myself with not having sufficiently cultivated, considering the kindness he had for me; and that of the good parisot, which i shall speak of in its place, at grenoble, that of madam deybens and madam la presidente de bardonanche, a woman of great understanding, and who would have entertained a friendship for me had it been in my power to have seen her oftener; at geneva, that of m. de closure, the french resident, who often spoke to me of my mother, the remembrance of whom neither death nor time had erased from his heart; likewise those of the two barillots, the father, who was very amiable, a good companion, and one of the most worthy men i ever met, calling me his grandson. during the troubles of the republic, these two citizens took contrary sides, the son siding with the people, the father with the magistrates. when they took up arms in , i was at geneva, and saw the father and son quit the same house armed, the one going to the townhouse, the other to his quarters, almost certain to meet face to face in the course of two hours, and prepared to give or receive death from each other. this unnatural sight made so lively an impression on me, that i solemnly vowed never to interfere in any civil war, nor assist in deciding our internal dispute by arms, either personally or by my influence, should i ever enter into my rights as a citizen. i can bring proofs of having kept this oath on a very delicate occasion, and it will be confessed (at least i should suppose so) that this moderation was of some worth. but i had not yet arrived at that fermentation of patriotism which the first sight of geneva in arms has since excited in my heart, as may be conjectured by a very grave fact that will not tell to my advantage, which i forgot to put in its proper place, but which ought not to be omitted. my uncle bernard died at carolina, where he had been employed some years in the building of charles town, which he had formed the plan of. my poor cousin, too, died in the prussian service; thus my aunt lost, nearly at the same period, her son and husband. these losses reanimated in some measure her affection for the nearest relative she had remaining, which was myself. when i went to geneva, i reckoned her house my home, and amused myself with rummaging and turning over the books and papers my uncle had left. among them i found some curious ones, and some letters which they certainly little thought of. my aunt, who set no store by these dusty papers, would willingly have given the whole to me, but i contented myself with two or three books, with notes written by the minister bernard, my grandfather, and among the rest, the posthumous works of rohault in quarto, the margins of which were full of excellent commentaries, which gave me an inclination to the mathematics. this book remained among those of madam de warrens, and i have since lamented that i did not preserve it. to these i added five or six memorials in manuscript, and a printed one, composed by the famous micheli ducret, a man of considerable talents, being both learned and enlightened, but too much, perhaps, inclined to sedition, for which he was cruelly treated by the magistrates of geneva, and lately died in the fortress of arberg, where he had been confined many years, for being, as it was said, concerned in the conspiracy of berne. this memorial was a judicious critique on the extensive but ridiculous plan of fortification, which had been adopted at geneva, though censured by every person of judgment in the art, who was unacquainted with the secret motives of the council, in the execution of this magnificent enterprise. monsieur de micheli, who had been excluded from the committee of fortification for having condemned this plan, thought that, as a citizen, and a member of the two hundred, he might give his advice, at large, and therefore, did so in this memorial, which he was imprudent enough to have printed, though he never published it, having only those copies struck off which were meant for the two hundred, and which were all intercepted at the post-house by order of the senate. [the grand council of geneva in december, , pronounced this paper highly disrespectful to the councils, and injurious to the committee of fortification.] i found this memorial among my uncle's papers, with the answer he had been ordered to make to it, and took both. this was soon after i had left my place at the survey, and i yet remained on good terms with the counsellor de coccelli, who had the management of it. some time after, the director of the custom-house entreated me to stand godfather to his child, with madam coccelli, who was to be godmother: proud of being placed on such terms of equality with the counsellor, i wished to assume importance, and show myself worthy of that honor. full of this idea, i thought i could do nothing better than show him micheli's memorial, which was really a scarce piece, and would prove i was connected with people of consequence in geneva, who were intrusted with the secrets of the state, yet by a kind of reserve which i should find it difficult to account for, i did not show him my uncle's answer, perhaps, because it was manuscript, and nothing less than print was worthy to approach the counsellor. he understood, however, so well the importance of this paper, which i had the folly to put into his hands, that i could never after get it into my possession, and being convinced that every effort for that purpose would be ineffectual, i made a merit of my forbearance, transforming the theft into a present. i made no doubt that this writing (more curious, however, than useful) answered his purpose at the court of turin, where probably he took care to be reimbursed in some way or other for the expense which the acquisition of it might be supposed to have cost him. happily, of all future contingencies, the least probable, is, that ever the king of sardina should besiege geneva, but as that event is not absolutely impossible, i shall ever reproach my foolish vanity with having been the means of pointing out the greatest defects of that city to its most ancient enemy. i passed three or four years in this manner, between music, magestry, projects, and journeys, floating incessantly from one object to another, and wishing to fix though i knew not on what, but insensibly inclining towards study. i was acquainted with men of letters, i had heard them speak of literature, and sometimes mingled in the conversation, yet rather adopted the jargon of books, than the knowledge they contained. in my excursions to geneva, i frequently called on my good old friend monsieur simon, who greatly promoted my rising emulation by fresh news from the republic of letters, extracted from baillet or colomies. i frequently saw too, at chambery, a dominican professor of physic, a good kind of friar, whose name i have forgotten, who often made little chemical experiments which greatly amused me. in imitation of him, i attempted to make some sympathetic ink, and having for that purpose more than half filled a bottle with quicklime, orpiment, and water, the effervescence immediately became extremely violent; i ran to unstop the bottle, but had not time to effect it, for, during the attempt, it burst in my face like a bomb, and i swallowed so much of the orpiment and lime, that it nearly cost me my life. i remained blind for six weeks, and by the event of this experiment learned to meddle no more with experimental chemistry while the elements were unknown to me. this adventure happened very unluckily for my health, which, for some time past, had been visibly on the decline. this was rather extraordinary, as i was guilty of no kind of excess; nor could it have been expected from my make, for my chest, being well formed and rather capacious, seemed to give my lungs full liberty to play; yet i was short breathed, felt a very sensible oppression, sighed involuntarily, had palpitations of the heart, and spitting of blood, accompanied with a lingering fever, which i have never since entirely overcome. how is it possible to fall into such a state in the flower of one's age, without any inward decay, or without having done anything to destroy health? it is sometimes said, "the sword wears the scabbard," this was truly the case with me: the violence of my passions both kept me alive and hastened my dissolution. what passions? will be asked: mere nothings: the most trivial objects in nature, but which affected me as forcibly as if the acquisition of a helen, or the throne of the universe were at stake. my senses, for instance, were at ease with one woman, but my heart never was, and the necessities of love consumed me in the very bosom of happiness. i had a tender, respected and lovely friend, but i sighed for a mistress; my prolific fancy painted her as such, and gave her a thousand forms, for had i conceived that my endearments had been lavished on madam de warrens, they would not have been less tender, though infinitely more tranquil. but is it possible for man to taste, in their utmost extent, the delights of love? i cannot tell, but i am persuaded my frail existence would have sunk under the weight of them. i was, therefore, dying for love without an object, and this state, perhaps, is, of all others, the most dangerous. i was likewise uneasy, tormented at the bad state of poor madam de warrens' circumstances, and the imprudence of her conduct, which could not fail to bring them, in a short time, to total ruin. my tortured imagination (which ever paints misfortunes in the extremity) continually beheld this in its utmost excess, and in all the horror of its consequences. i already saw myself forced by want to quit her--to whom i had consecrated my future life, and without whom i could not hope for happiness: thus was my soul continually agitated, and hopes and fears devoured me alternately. music was a passion less turbulent, but not less consuming, from the ardor with which i attached myself to it, by the obstinate study of the obscure books of rameau; by an invincible resolution to charge my memory with rules it could not contain; by continual application, and by long and immense compilations which i frequently passed whole nights in copying: but why dwell on these particularly, while every folly that took possession of my wandering brain, the most transient ideas of a single day, a journey, a concert, a supper, a walk, a novel to read, a play to see, things in the world the least premeditated in my pleasures or occupation became for me the most violent passions, which by their ridiculous impetuosity conveyed the most serious torments; even the imaginary misfortunes of cleveland, read with avidity and frequent interruption, have, i am persuaded, disordered me more than my own. there was a genevese, named bagueret, who had been employed under peter the great, of the court of russia, one of the most worthless, senseless fellows i ever met with; full of projects as foolish as himself, which were to rain down millions on those who took part in them. this man, having come to chambery on account of some suit depending before the senate, immediately got acquainted with madam de warrens, and with great reason on his side, since for those imaginary treasures that cost him nothing, and which he bestowed with the utmost prodigality, he gained, in exchange, the unfortunate crown pieces one by one out of her pocket. i did not like him, and he plainly perceived this, for with me it is not a very difficult discovery, nor did he spare any sort of meanness to gain my good will, and among other things proposed teaching me to play at chess, which game he understood something of. i made an attempt, though almost against my inclination, and after several efforts, having learned the march, my progress was so rapid, that before the end of the first sitting i gave him the rook, which in the beginning he had given me. nothing more was necessary; behold me fascinated with chess! i buy a board, with the rest of the apparatus, and shutting myself up in my chamber, pass whole days and nights in studying all the varieties of the game, being determined by playing alone, without end or relaxation, to drive them into my head, right or wrong. after incredible efforts, during two or three months passed in this curious employment, i go to the coffee-house, thin, sallow, and almost stupid; i seat myself, and again attack m. bagueret: he beats me, once, twice, twenty times; so many combinations were fermenting in my head, and my imagination was so stupefied, that all appeared confusion. i tried to exercise myself with phitidor's or stamina's book of instructions, but i was still equally perplexed, and, after having exhausted myself with fatigue, was further to seek than ever, and whether i abandoned my chess for a time, or resolved to surmount every difficulty by unremitted practice, it was the same thing. i could never advance one step beyond the improvement of the first sitting, nay, i am convinced that had i studied it a thousand ages, i should have ended by being able to give bagueret the rook and nothing more. it will be said my time was well employed, and not a little of it passed in this occupation, nor did i quit my first essay till unable to persist in it, for on leaving my apartment i had the appearance of a corpse, and had i continued this course much longer i should certainly have been one. any one will allow that it would have been extraordinary, especially in the ardor of youth, that such a head should suffer the body to enjoy continued health; the alteration of mine had an effect on my temper, moderating the ardor of my chimerical fancies, for as i grew weaker they became more tranquil, and i even lost, in some measure, my rage for travelling. i was not seized with heaviness, but melancholy; vapors succeeded passions, languor became sorrow: i wept and sighed without cause, and felt my life ebbing away before i had enjoyed it. i only trembled to think of the situation in which i should leave my dear madam de warrens; and i can truly say, that quitting her, and leaving her in these melancholy circumstances, was my only concern. at length i fell quite ill, and was nursed by her as never mother nursed a child. the care she took of me was of real utility to her affairs, since it diverted her mind from schemes, and kept projectors at a distance. how pleasing would death have been at that time, when, if i had not tasted many of the pleasures of life, i had felt but few of its misfortunes. my tranquil soul would have taken her flight, without having experienced those cruel ideas of the injustice of mankind which embitters both life and death. i should have enjoyed the sweet consolation that i still survived in the dearer part of myself: in the situation i then was, it could hardly be called death; and had i been divested of my uneasiness on her account, it would have appeared but a gentle sleep; yet even these disquietudes had such an affectionate and tender turn, that their bitterness was tempered by a pleasing sensibility. i said to her, "you are the depository of my whole being, act so that i may be happy." two or three times, when my disorder was most violent, i crept to her apartment to give her my advice respecting her future conduct; and i dare affirm these admonitions were both wise and equitable, in which the interest i took in her future concerns was strongly marked. as if tears had been both nourishment and medicine, i found myself the better for those i shed with her, while seated on her bed-side, and holding her hands between mine. the hours crept insensibly away in these nocturnal discourses; i returned to my chamber better than i had quitted it, being content and calmed by the promises she made, and the hopes with which she had inspired me: i slept on them with my heart at peace, and fully resigned to the dispensations of providence. god grant, that after having had so many reasons to hate life, after being agitated with so many storms, after it has even become a burden, that death, which must terminate all, may be no more terrible than it would have been at that moment! by inconceivable care and vigilance, she saved my life; and i am convinced she alone could have done this. i have little faith in the skill of physicians, but depend greatly on the assistance of real friends, and am persuaded that being easy in those particulars on which our happiness depends, is more salutary than any other application. if there is a sensation in life peculiarly delightful, we experienced it in being restored to each other; our mutual attachment did not increase, for that was impossible, but it became, i know not how, more exquisitely tender, fresh softness being added to its former simplicity. i became in a manner her work; we got into the habit, though without design, of being continually with each other, and enjoying, in some measure, our whole existence together, feeling reciprocally that we were not only necessary, but entirely sufficient for each other's happiness. accustomed to think of no subject foreign to ourselves, our happiness and all our desires were confined to that pleasing and singular union, which, perhaps, had no equal, which is not, as i have before observed, love, but a sentiment inexpressibly more intimate, neither depending on the senses, age, nor figure, but an assemblage of every endearing sensation that composes our rational existence and which can cease only with our being. how was it that this delightful crisis did not secure our mutual felicity for the remainder of her life and mine? i have the consoling conviction that it was not my fault; nay, i am persuaded, she did not wilfully destroy it; the invincible peculiarity of my disposition was doomed soon to regain its empire; but this fatal return was not suddenly accomplished, there was, thank heaven, a short but precious interval, that did not conclude by my fault, and which i cannot reproach myself with having employed amiss. though recovered from my dangerous illness, i did not regain my strength; my stomach was weak, some remains of the fever kept me in a languishing condition, and the only inclination i was sensible of, was to end my days near one so truly dear to me; to confirm her in those good resolutions she had formed; to convince her in what consisted the real charms of a happy life, and, as far as depended on me, to render hers so; but i foresaw that in a gloomy, melancholy house, the continual solitude of our tete-a-tetes would at length become too dull and monotonous: a remedy presented itself: madam de warrens had prescribed milk for me, and insisted that i should take it in the country; i consented, provided she would accompany me; nothing more was necessary to gain her compliance, and whither we should go was all that remained to be determined on. our garden (which i have before mentioned) was not properly in the country, being surrounded by houses and other gardens, and possessing none of those attractions so desirable in a rural retreat; besides, after the death of anet, we had given up this place from economical principles, feeling no longer a desire to rear plants, and other views making us not regret the loss of that little retreat. improving the distaste i found she began to imbibe for the town, i proposed to abandon it entirely, and settle ourselves in an agreeable solitude, in some small house, distant enough from the city to avoid the perpetual intrusion of her hangers-on. she followed my advice, and this plan, which her good angel and mine suggested, might fully have secured our happiness and tranquility till death had divided us--but this was not the state we were appointed to; madam de warrens was destined to endure all the sorrows of indigence and poverty, after having passed the former part of her life in abundance, that she might learn to quit it with the less regret; and myself, by an assemblage of misfortunes of all kinds, was to become a striking example to those who, inspired with a love of justice and the public good, and trusting too implicitly to their own innocence, shall openly dare to assert truth to mankind, unsupported by cabals, or without having previously formed parties to protect them. an unhappy fear furnished some objections to our plan: she did not dare to quit her ill-contrived house, for fear of displeasing the proprietor. "your proposed retirement is charming," said she, "and much to my taste, but we are necessitated to remain here, for, on quitting this dungeon, i hazard losing the very means of life, and when these fail us in the woods, we must again return to seek them in the city. that we may have the least possible cause for being reduced to this necessity, let us not leave this house entirely, but pay a small pension to the count of saint-laurent, that he may continue mine. let us seek some little habitation, far enough from the town to be at peace, yet near enough to return when it may appear convenient." this mode was finally adopted; and after some small search, we fixed at charmettes, on an estate belonging to m. de conzie, at a very small distance from chambery; but as retired and solitary as if it had been a hundred leagues off. the spot we had concluded on was a valley between two tolerably high hills, which ran north and south; at the bottom, among the trees and pebbles, ran a rivulet, and above the declivity, on either side, were scattered a number of houses, forming altogether a beautiful retreat for those who love a peaceful romantic asylum. after having examined two or three of these houses, we chose that which we thought the most pleasing, which was the property of a gentleman of the army, called m. noiret. this house was in good condition, before it a garden, forming a terrace; below that on the declivity an orchard, and on the ascent, behind the house, a vineyard: a little wood of chestnut trees opposite; a fountain just by, and higher up the hill, meadows for the cattle; in short, all that could be thought necessary for the country retirement we proposed to establish. to the best of my remembrance, we took possession of it toward the latter end of the summer of . i was delighted on going to sleep there--"oh!" said i, to this dear friend, embracing her with tears of tenderness and delight, "this is the abode of happiness and innocence; if we do not find them here together it will be in vain to seek them elsewhere." transcriber's note: inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. obvious typographical errors have been corrected. italic text is denoted by _underscores_. on page , "corrival" should possibly be "co-rival". on page , "que ne fut rien" should possibly be "qui ne fut rien" on page , the phrase "with a strange, most ponderous, yet delicate expression in the big, dull-glowing black eyes and it" possibly contains a typo. the stones of paris in history and letters [illustration: molière] the stones of paris in history and letters by benjamin ellis martin and charlotte m. martin in two volumes vol. i _illustrated_ new york charles scribner's sons mdcccxcix copyright, , by charles scribner's sons trow directory printing and bookbinding company new york to w. c. brownell in cordial tribute to his "french traits" contents page three time-worn staircases the scholars' quarter of the middle ages molière and his friends from voltaire to beaumarchais the paris of the revolution list of illustrations _from drawings by john fulleylove, esq. the portraits from photographs by messrs. braun, clément et cie._ molière (from the portrait by mignard in the musée condé, at chantilly) frontispiece page the so-called hôtel de la reine blanche (from a photograph of the commission du vieux paris) facing balcony of the hôtel de lauzun-pimodan, on Île saint-louis "jean-sans-peur," duc de bourgogne (from a painting by an unknown artist, at chantilly) facing the tower of "jean-sans-peur" the church of saint-séverin facing rue hautefeuille, a survivor of the scholars' quarter the interior of saint-julien-le-pauvre facing pierre de ronsard (from a drawing by an unknown artist, in a private collection) facing balcony over the entrance of the cour du dragon clément marot (from the portrait by porbus le jeune, in a private collection) facing rené descartes (from the portrait by franz hals, in the musée du louvre) facing the stage door of molière's second theatre in paris the stamp of the comédie française the molière fountain facing the door of corneille's last dwelling (from a drawing by robert delafontaine, by permission of m. victorien sardou) facing pierre corneille (from the portrait by charles lebrun) facing rue visconti. on the right is the hôtel de ranes, and in the distance is no. facing la fontaine (from the portrait by rigaud-y-ros) facing boileau-despréaux (from the portrait by largillière) facing voltaire (from the statue by houdon in the foyer of the comédie française) facing the hôtel lambert the seventeenth-century buildings on quai malaquais, with the institute and the statue of voltaire facing charlotte corday (from the copy by baudry of the only authentic portrait, painted in her prison) facing the refectory of the cordeliers facing the carré d'atalante in the tuileries gardens the girlhood home of madame roland facing no. quai conti monogram from the former entrance of the cour du commerce, believed to be the initials of the owner, one girardot (from a drawing by robert delafontaine, by permission of m. victorien sardou) introductory this book has been written for those who seek in paris something more than a city of shows or a huge bazaar, something better than the _cabaret_ wherein françois i. found entertainment, and yet not quite--still in hugo's phrase--the library that charles v. esteemed it. there are many lovers of this beautiful capital of a great people, who, knowing well her unconcealed attractions, would search out her records and traditions in stone, hidden and hard to find. this legitimate curiosity grows more eager with the increasing difficulties of gratifying it in that ancient paris that is vanishing day by day; and, in its bewilderment, it may be glad to find congenial guidance in these pages. in them, no attempt is made to destroy that which is new in order to reconstruct what was old. in telling the stories of those monuments of past ages that are visible and tangible, reference is made only to so much of their perished approaches and neighbors as shall suffice for full realization of the significance of all that we are to see. this significance is given mainly by the former dwellers within these walls. we shall concern ourselves with the human document, illustrated by its surroundings. the student of history can find no more suggestive relics of mediæval paris than the still existing towers and fragments of the wall of philippe-auguste, which shall be shown to him; for us, these stones must be made to speak, not so essentially of their mighty builder as of the common people, who moved about within that enclosure and gave it character. in like manner, the walls, which have sheltered soldiers, statesmen, preachers, teachers, workers in art and letters, illustrious men and women of all sorts and conditions, will take on the personality of these impressive presences. when we stand beneath the roof of that favorite personage in history, that spoiled child of romance, who happens to be dear to each one of us, we are brought into touch with him as with a living fellow-creature. the streets of paris are alive with these sympathetic companions, who become abiding friends, as we stroll with them; and allow none of the ache, confessed to be felt in such scenes, despite her reasoning, by madame de sévigné. nor do they invite, here, any critical review of their work in life, but consent to scrutiny of their lineaments alone, and to an appreciation of their personal impress on their contemporaries and on us. so that essays on themes, historic, literary, artistic, can find no place in this record. indeed, labor and time have been expended "in hindering it from being ... swollen out of shape by superfluous details, defaced with dilettanti antiquarianisms, nugatory tag-rags, and, in short, turned away from its real uses, instead of furthered toward them." in this sense, at least, the authors can say in montaigne's words, "_ceci est un livre de bonne foy_." in this presentation of people and places it has been difficult, sometimes impossible, to keep due sequence both of chronology and topography. just as mr. theodore andrea cook found in the various _châteaux_ of his admirable "old touraine," so each spot we shall visit in paris "has some particular event, some especial visitor, whose importance overshadows every other memory connected with the place." with that event or that visitor we must needs busy ourselves, without immediate regard to other dates or other personages. again, to keep in sight some conspicuous figure, as he goes, we must leave on one side certain memorable scenes, to which we shall come back. each plan has been pursued in turn, as has seemed desirable, for the sake of the clearness and accuracy, which have been considered above all else. the whole value of such records as are here presented depends on the preliminary researches. in the doing of this, thousands of books and pamphlets and articles have been read, hundreds of people have been questioned, scores of miles have been tramped. oldest archives and maps have been consulted, newest newspaper clippings have not been disregarded. nothing has been thought too heavy or too light that would help to give a characteristic line or a touch of native color. a third volume would be needed to enumerate the authorities called on and compared. nor has any statement of any one of these authorities been accepted without ample investigation; and every assertion has been subjected to all the proof that it was possible to procure. those countless errors have been run to earth which have been started so often by the carelessness of an early writer, and ever since kept alive by lazy copiers and random compilers. these processes of sifting are necessarily omitted for lack of space, and the wrought-out results alone are shown. if the authors dare not hope that they have avoided errors on their own part, they may hope for indulgent correction of such as may have crept in, for all their vigilance. it is easier, to-day, to put one's hand on the paris of the sixteenth century than on that of the eighteenth century. in those remoter days changes were slow to come, and those older stones have been left often untouched. a curious instance of that aforetime leisureliness is seen in the working of the _ordonnance_ issued on may , , by henri ii. for the clearing away of certain encroachments made on the streets by buildings and by business, notably on rue de la ferronerie; that street being one of those used "for our way from our royal _château_ of the louvre to our _château_ of the tournelles." it was fifty-six years later, to the very day, that the stabbing of henri iv. was made easy to ravaillac, by the stoppage of the king's carriage in the blockade of that narrow street, its obstructions not yet swept out, in absolute disregard of the edict. from the death of the royal mason, charles v., who gave a new face and a new figure to his paris, to the coming of henri iv., who had in him the makings of a kingly constructor, but who was hindered by the necessary destruction of his wars, there were two centuries of steady growth of the town outward, on all sides, with only slight alterations of its interior quarters. many of these were transformed, many new quarters were created, by louis xiii., thus realizing his father's frustrated plans. richelieu was able to widen some streets, and colbert tried to carry on the work, but louis xiv. had no liking for his capital, and no money to waste for its bettering. his stage-subject's civic pride was unduly swollen, when he said: "_À cette époque, la grande ville du roi henri n'était pas ce qu'elle est aujourd'hui._" at the beginning of the eighteenth century we find paris divided into twenty quarters, in none of which was there any numbering of the houses. the streets then got their names from their mansions of the nobility, from their vast monasteries and convents, from their special industries and shops. these latter names survive in our paris as they survive in modern london. the high-swinging street lanterns, that came into use in , served for directions to the neighboring houses, as did the private lanterns hung outside the better dwellings. toward the middle of that century the city almanacs began a casual numbering of the houses in their lists, and soon this was found to be such a convenience that the householders painted numbers on or beside their doors. not before was there any organized or official numbering, and this was speedily brought to naught during the revolution, either because it was too simple or because it was already established. to this day, the first symptom of a local or national upheaval, and the latest sign of its ending, are the ladder and paint-pot in the streets of paris. names that recall to the popular eye recently discredited celebrities or humiliating events, are brushed out, and the newest favorites of the populace are painted in. the forty-eight sections into which the revolution divided the city changed many street names, of section, and renumbered all the houses. each lunatic section, quite sure of its sanity, made this new numbering of its own dwellings with a cheerful and aggressive disregard of the adjoining sections; beginning arbitrarily at a point within its boundary, going straight along through its streets, and ending at the farthest house on the edge of its limits. so, a house might be no. of its section, and its next-door neighbor might be no. of the section alongside. in a street that ran through several sections there would be more than one house of the same number, each belonging to a different section. "encore un tableau de paris" was published in by one henrion, who complains that he passed three numbers in rue saint-denis before he came to the that he wanted. the decree of february , , gave back to the streets many of their former names, and ordered the numbering, admirably uniform and intelligible, still in use--even numbers on one side of the street, odd numbers on the other side, both beginning at the eastern end of the streets that run parallel with the seine, and at the river end of the streets going north and south. for the topographer all these changes have brought incoherence to the records, have paralyzed research, and crippled accuracy. in addition, during the latter half of the nineteenth century, many old streets have been curtailed or lengthened, carried along into new streets, or entirely suppressed and built over. indeed, it is substantially the nineteenth century that has given us the paris that we best know; begun by the great emperor, it was continued by the crown on top of the cotton night-cap of louis-philippe, and admirably elaborated, albeit to the tune of the cynical fiddling of the second empire. the republic of our day still wields the pick-axe, and demolition and reconstruction have been going on ruthlessly. such of these changes as are useful and guiltless are now intelligently watched; such of them as are needlessly destructive may be stopped in part by the admirable _commission du vieux paris_. the members of this significant body, which was organized in december, , are picked men from the municipal council, from the official committees of parisian inscriptions, and of historic works, from private associations and private citizens, all earnest and enthusiastic for the preservation of their city's monuments that are memorable for architectural worth or historic suggestion. where they are unable to save to the sight what is ancient and picturesque, they save to the memory by records, drawings, and photographs. the "procès verbal" of this commission, issued monthly, contains its illustrated reports, discussions, and correspondence, and promises to become an historic document of inestimable value. the words _rue_ and _place_, as well as their attendant names, have been retained in the french, as the only escape from the confusion of a double translation, first here, and then back to the original by the sight-seer. the definite article, that usually precedes these words, has been suppressed, in all cases, because it seems an awkward and needless reiteration. nor are french men and french women disguised under translated titles. if macaulay had been consistent in his misguided briticism that turned louis into lewis, and had carried out that scheme to its logical end in every case, he would have given us a ludicrous nomenclature. "bottin" is used in these pages as it is used in paris, to designate the city directory: which was issued, first, in a tiny volume, in , by the publisher bottin, and has kept his name with its enormous growth through the century. the word _hôtel_ has here solely its original significance of a town house of the noble or the wealthy. in the sense of our modern usage of the word it had no place in old paris. already in the seventeenth century there were _auberges_ for common wayfarers, and here and there an _hôtellerie_ for the traveller of better class. during the absences of the owners of grand city mansions, their _maîtres-d'hôtel_ were allowed to let them to accredited visitors to the capital, who brought their own retinue and demanded only shelter. when they came with no train, so that service had to be supplied, it was "charged in the bill," and that objectionable item, thus instituted, has been handed down to shock us in the _hôtel-garni_ of our time. with the emigration of the nobility, their stewards and _chefs_ lost place and pay, and found both once more in the public hotels they then started. no _hôtels-garnis_ can be found in paris of earlier date than the revolution. in their explorations into the libraries, bureaus, museums, and streets of paris, the authors have met with countless kindnesses. the unlettered _concierge_ who guards an historic house is proud of its traditions, or, if ignorant of them, as may chance, will listen to the tale with a courtesy that simulates sympathy. the exceptions to this general amenity have been few and ludicrous, and mostly the outcome of exasperation caused by the ceaseless questioning of foreigners. the _concierge_ of châteaubriand's last home, in rue du bac, considers a flourish of the wet broom, with which he is washing his court, a fitting rejoinder to the inquiring visitor. that visitor will find balzac's passy residence as impossible of entrance now as it was to his creditors. the unique inner court of the hôtel de beauvais must be seen from the outer vestibule, admission being refused by a surly _concierge_ under orders from an ungenerous owner. the urbanity of the noble tenant of the mansion built over the grave of adrienne lecouvreur is unequal to the task of answering civil inquiries sent in stamped envelopes. all these are but shadows in the pervading sunshine of parisian good-breeding. in making this acknowledgment to the many who must necessarily remain unnamed, the authors wish to record their recognition of the sympathetic counsel of mlle. blanche taylor, of paris, and of george h. birch, esq., curator of the soane museum, london. cordial thanks are especially given to the officials of the hôtel de ville, in the bureau of the conservation du plan de paris, to m. charles sellier of the musée carnavalet, to m. monval, librarian of the comédie française, to m. g. lenôtre, and to m. victorien sardou, for unmeasured aid of all sorts, prompted by a disinterestedness that welcomes the importunate fellow-worker, and makes him forget that he is a stranger and a foreigner. three time-worn staircases three time-worn staircases we are to see a paris unknown to the every-day dweller there, who is content to tread, in wearied idleness, his swarming yet empty boulevards; a paris unseen by the hurried visitor, anxious to go his round of dutiful sight-seeing. this paris is far away from the crowd, bustling in pursuit of pleasure, and hustling in pursuit of leisure; out of sound of the teasing clatter of cab-wheels, and the tormenting toot of tram-horns, and the petulant snapping of whips; out of sight of to-day's pretentious structures and pompous monuments. to find this paris we must explore remote quarters, lose ourselves in untrodden streets, coast along the alluring curves of the quays, cruise for sequestered islands behind the multitudinous streams of traffic. we shall not push ahead just to get somewhere, nor restlessly "rush in to peer and praise." we shall learn to _flâner_, not without object, but with art and conscience; to saunter, in the sense of that word, humorously derived by thoreau from _sainte-terre_, and so transform ourselves into pilgrims to the spots sacred in history and legend, in art and literature. in a word, if you go with us, you are to become sentimental prowlers. in this guise, we shall not know the taste of parisine, a delectable poison, more subtle than nicotine or strychnine, in the belief of nestor roqueplan, that modern voltaire of the boulevards. and we shall not share "the unwholesome passion" for his paris, to which françois coppée owns himself a victim. nor, on the other hand, shall we find "an insipid pleasure" in this adventure, as did voltaire. yet even he confesses, elsewhere, that one would "rather have details about racine and despréaux, bossuet and descartes, than about the battle of steinkerk. there is nothing left but the names of the men who led battalions and squadrons. there is no return to the human race for one hundred engagements, but the great men i have spoken of prepared pure and lasting pleasures for mortals still unborn." it is in this spirit that we start, sure of seeking an unworn sentiment, and of finding an undraggled delight, in the scenes which have inspired, and have been inspired by, famous men and women. their days, their ways, they themselves as they moved and worked, are made alive for us once more by their surroundings. where these have been disturbed by improvements, "more fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea," we get curious suggestions from some forgotten name cut in the stone of a street corner, from a chance-saved sign, a neglected _tourelle_, or a bit of battered carving. and where the modern despoiler has wreaked himself at his worst--as with the paris of marot, rabelais, palissy--we may rub the magic ring of the archæologist, which brings instant reconstruction. so that we shall seem to be walking in a vast gallery, where, in the words of cicero, at each step we tread on a memory. "for, indeed," as it is well put by john ruskin, "the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, or in its gold. its glory is in its _age_, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity." these stone and brick vestiges of the people of old paris are to be sought in its byways, narrow and winding; or hidden behind those broad boulevards, that have newly opened up its distant quarters, on the north or on the south. sometimes these monuments have been brought into full view across the grassed or gravelled spaces of recent creation, so showing their complete and unmarred glory for the first time in all the ages. thus we may now look on notre-dame and the sainte-chapelle, in dreamy surrender to their bedimmed beauty, that persuades us that paris can hold nothing in reserve more reverend in comely old age. yet, almost within touch of these two, stands a gray tower, another sturdy survivor of the centuries. between the northern side of notre-dame and the river-bank, a happy chance has spared some few of the streets, though fewer of the structures, of this earliest paris of Île de la cité. this region recalls to us, by its street-names in part, and partly by its buildings, its former connection with the cathedral. in rue des chantres it lodged its choristers, and rue du cloître-notre-dame records the site of the clerical settlement, beloved by boileau, wherein dwelt its higher officials. rue chanoinesse has its significance, too, and we will stop before the wide frontage of differing ages, whose two entrances, nos. and , open into the large courts of two mansions, now thrown into one. this interior court was a garden until of late years, and while grass and flowers are gone forever, it keeps its ancient well in the centre and its stone steps that mounted to the _salons_. those _salons_, and the large court, and the smaller courts beyond--all these courts now roofed over with glass--are piled high with every known shape of household furniture and utensil in metal; notably with the iron garden-chairs and tables, dear to the french. for this vast enclosure is the storage _dépôt_ of a famous house-furnishing firm, and is one more instance of the many in paris of a grand old mansion and its dependencies given over to trade. by the courtesy of those in charge, we may pass within the spacious stone entrance arch of no. , and pick our way through the ordered confusion, past the admirable inner façade of the main fabric, with its stately steps and portal and its windows above, topped by tiny hoods, to a distant corner; where, in the gloom, we make out the base of a square tower and the foot of a corkscrew staircase. we mount it, spirally and slowly. the well-worn stone steps are narrow, and the turn of the spiral is sharp, for this tower was built when homes were fortresses, when space was precious, and when hundreds huddled within walls that will hardly hold one thriving establishment of our day. in this steep ascent, we get scant assistance from our hold on the rude hand-rail, roughly grooved in the great central column--one solid tree-trunk, embedded in the ground, stretching to the top of the stairs. experts assure us that this tree was fully five hundred years old, when it was cut down to be made the shaft of this stairway, nearly five hundred years ago. for this stone tower is evidently of late fifteenth-century construction. the mediæval towers were round, whether built upon their own foundations or rebuilt from roman towers; and they gave way to square towers when battering-rams gave way to guns, in the fifteenth century. yet this pile of masonry is known as "_la tour de dagobert_," and with no wish to discredit this legend, cherished by the dwellers in this quarter, we may quote brantôme concerning certain local traditions of the tour de nesle: "_je ne puis dire si çela soit vrai, mais le vulgaire de paris l'affirme._" we can say, with certainty, that this tower was never seen by dagobert, for, long before this tree had sprouted from the ground, he lived in the old palace, the home of the early kings, at the other end of the island. there he flourished, for the ten years between and , in coarse splendor and coarser conviviality, his palace packed with barbaric gold and silver, with crude wall paintings and curious hangings. for this monarch made much of the arts of his day, whenever he found leisure from his fighting and his drinking. because of his love of luxury, a century of cyclopædias has "curved a contumelious lip" at his "corrupt court." on the other hand, he has been styled "saint dagobert" by writers unduly moved to emotion by his gifts to the churches at saint-denis, rheims, tours; and by his friendship for certain bishops. but rome, mindful of sundry other churches plundered and destroyed by him, has not assented to this saintship. we may accept his apt popular epithet, "_le bon_," which meant, in those bellicose days, only merry or jovial; an easy virtue not to be denied by priggish biographers to this genial ruffian. by turns, he devoted himself to the flowing bowl in his palace there, and to building religious edifices all over the face of france. and he has accentuated the supremacy of the church over all the warriors and the rulers of his day, in the soaring majesty of the two towers that dominate the buried outlines of his favorite church of saint-martin at tours, solid and lasting in their isolation. there the man is brought almost into touch with us, while here only his name is recalled by this tower, which he never saw. the shadow-land of ancient french history, into which we have made this little journey, is not darker than this narrow staircase, as we creep dizzily upward, losing count of steps, stopping to take breath at the infrequent windows, round-topped at first, then square and small. it is with surprise that we realize, stepping out on the tower-roof, that our standing-place is only five floors from the ground; and yet from this modest height, overtopped by the ordinary apartment house of paris, we find an outlook that is unequalled even by that from notre-dame's towers. for, as we come out from the sheltering hood of our stair-way top, the great cathedral itself lies before us, like some beautiful living creature outstretched at rest. words are impertinent in face of the tranquil strength of its bulk and the exquisite delicacy of its lines, and we find refuge in the affectionate phrase of mr. henry james, "the dear old thing!" beyond the cathedral square, over the bronze charlemagne on his bronze horse, glints the untravelled narrower arm of the seine; we turn our heads and look at its broader surface, all astir with little fidgetty _bateaux-mouches_ and big, sedate barges. at both banks are anchored huge wash-houses and bathing establishments. from this island-centre all paris spreads away to its low encircling slopes, to the brim of the shallow bowl in which it lies. in sharp contrast with all that newness, our old tower stands hemmed about by a medley of roofs of all shapes and all ages; their red tiles of past style, here and there, agreeably mellowing the dull dominant blue of the paris slate. on these roofs below jut out dormers, armed with odd wheels and chains for lifting odd burdens; here on one side is an outer staircase that starts in vague shadow, and ends nowhere, it would seem; far down glimmers the opaque gray of the glass-covered courts at our feet. a little toward the north--where was an entrance to this court, in old days, from a gateway on the river-bank--is the roof that sheltered racine, along with the legal gentry of the hôtel des ursins. and all about us, below, lies the little that is left of _la cité_, the swept and set-in-order leavings of that ancient network of narrow streets, winding passages, blind alleys, all walled about by tall, scowling houses, leaning unwillingly against one another to save themselves from falling. this was the whole of gallic lutetia, the centre of roman lutetia, the heart of mediæval paris, the "alsatia" of modern paris; surviving almost to our time, when the second empire let light and air into its pestilent corners. every foot of this ground has its history. down there, villon, sneaking from the university precincts, stole and starved and sang; there quasimodo, climbing down from his tower, foraged for his scant supplies; there sue's impossibly dark villany and equally impossible virtue found fitting stage-setting; there, françois, honest and engaging thief, slipped narrowly through the snares that encompassed even vagabonds, in the suspicious days and nights of the terror. the nineteenth century, cutting its clean way through this sinister quarter, cutting away with impartial spade the round dozen churches and the hundreds of houses that made their parishes, all clustered close about the cathedral and the palace, has happily left untouched this gray tower, built when or for what no one knows. it is a part of all that it has seen, in its sightless way, through the changing centuries of steady growth and of transient mutilation of its town. it has seen its own island and the lesser islands up-stream gradually alter their shapes; this island of the city lengthening itself, by reaching out for the two low-shored grassy eyots down-stream, where now is place dauphine and where sits henri iv. on his horse. the narrow channel between, that gave access to the water-gate of the old palace, has been filled in, so making one island of the three, and rue de harlay-au-palais covers the joining line. so the two islands on the east--Île notre-dame and Île aux vaches--have united their shores to make Île saint-louis. the third island, most easterly of all--Île des javiaux of earliest times, known later as Île louvier--has been glued to the northern bank of the mainland, by the earthing-in of the thin arm of the river, along the line of present boulevard morland, and quai henri iv. and the two great islands as we know them--the permanent outcome of all these topographical transformations--have been chained to each other and to both banks, by numerous beautiful bridges. our tower raised its head in time to see the gradual wearing away of the mighty roman aqueduct, that brought water to the palais des thermes of the roman rulers--whose immense _frigidarium_ is safe and sound within the enclosure of the cluny museum--from the bièvre, away off on the southern outskirts. this aqueduct started at the point where later was built the village of arceuil--named from the mediæval, or late, latin _arculi_--where was quarried the best stone that builded old paris; and curved with the valley of the bièvre like a huge railway viaduct, leaving that stream when it bent in its course to the seine near the salpêtrière, and entering the town along the easterly line of rue saint-jacques, and so straight away to the baths. this tower well remembers the new aqueduct, constructed massively on the ruins of the roman, between and , from rungis, still farther south, to the luxembourg palace. imperial and royal baths must have pure water, while wells and rivers must perforce content the townspeople. they had their aqueduct at last, however, laid, still along the top of these others, during the second empire. it is worth the little trip by rail to arceuil to see the huge arches that climb along the valley carrying these piled-up conduits. our old tower has seen the baby town creep, from its cradle on the shore, up that southern slope to where on its summit it found the tomb of its patron, sainte geneviève--one tower of her abbey still shows gray above the garden-walls of lycée henri iv.--and thence, its strength so grown as to burst its girdle of restraining wall, it strode far afield. roman and christian settlements, with all their greenery--palace, abbey, and school, each set within its spacious gardens--gradually gave place to these serried shining roofs we see, here and there pierced by church spires and punctuated by domes. and on the northern bank, our tower has seen the rising tide of the centuries swallow up the broad marshes along the shore and the wide woodlands behind; bearing down roman villa and temple, christian nunnery and monastery, washing away each successive breakwater of wall, until it surged over the crest of the encircling hills, now crowned by the imposing basilica of the sacred heart on montmartre. it may have been here in time to look down on the stately procession escorting the little ten-year-old henry iv., the new king of england, from the palace to the cathedral; wherein was celebrated the service by which one english cardinal and two french bishops tried to consecrate him king of france. it saw, when the ceremony was ended, the turbulent mob of common french folk crowding about the boy-king and his english escort as they returned, and ignominiously hustling them into the palace. not many years later, on april , , it possibly saw the french soldiery march into place de grève, over the bridge and through the streets behind, from their captured gate of saint-jacques; and not many days thereafter, the english soldiery hurrying along behind the northern wall from the bastille to the louvre, and there taking boat for their sail to rouen; the while the parisian populace, mad with joy on that wall, welcomed the incoming friend and cursed the outgoing foe. our tower has watched, from its own excellent point of view, the three successive fires in and about the palace, in , , and . between them, these fires carried away the constructions of louis xii., the vast salle des pas-perdus, the ancient donjon, the spires and turrets and steep roofs that swarmed about the sainte-chapelle, whose slender height seems to spring more airily from earth to sky by that clearance. only that chapel, the salle-des-gardes, the corner tower on the quay, the kitchens of saint-louis behind it, and the round-capped towers of the conciergerie, are left of the original palace. the present outer casing of this tour de l'horloge is a restoration of that existing in , but the thirteenth-century fabric remains, and the foundations are far earlier, in the view of the late viollet-le-duc. its clock dates from , having been twice restored, and its bell has sounded, as far as our tower, the passing of many historic hours. it rang menacingly an hour later than that of saint-germain-l'auxerrois, which had been advanced by the queen-mother's eagerness, on saint bartholomew's night. it was _en carillon_ all of friday, june , , for the peace procured by henri iv. between spain and savoy; and the birth of his son was saluted by its joyous chimes, at two o'clock of the afternoon of friday, september , . nearly two years later--on friday, june , --our tower stared in consternation, out over the end of the island, at the gallant henry treading jauntily and safely across the uncompleted arches of the pont-neuf, from shore to shore. the new bridge was a wonder, and in attempts to climb along its skeleton, many over-curious citizens had tumbled into the river; "but not one of them a king," laughed their king, after his successful stepping over. the bridge was built slowly, and was at last ready for traffic on february , , and has stood so strong and stable ever since, that it has passed into a proverb as the common comparison for a frenchman's robust health. it is the only bridge between the islands and either bank that has so stood, and this tower has seen each of the others wrecked by fire or flood. the tall wooden piles, on which the mediæval bridgeways were built, slowly rotted, until they were carried away by the fierce current. and fire found its frequent quarry in the tall houses that lined either side of the roadway, shops on the lower floor, and tenants above. thus our tower doubtless heard, on friday, october , , the wrenching and groaning of the huge wooden piles of pont notre-dame--its first pile driven down by temporarily sane charles vi.--as they bent and broke and tumbled into the seine, with their burden of roadway and of buildings; whereby so thick a cloud of dust rose up from the water, that rescue of the inmates was almost impossible. among the few saved, on that calamitous holiday of saint-crespin and saint-crespinien, was a baby found floating down-stream in its cradle, unwet and unharmed. so, too, pont aux meuniers and all its houses and mills fell in fragments into the stream on december , . it was a wooden bridge, connecting the island end of pont au change diagonally with the shore of the mainland. it is reported that the dwellers on the bridge were rich men, many of them slayers and plunderers of the huguenots on the festival of saint bartholomew. so it was said that the weak hand of city supervision, neglecting the bridge, was aided by the finger of god, pushing it down! the petit-pont dropped into the seine no less than six times between the years and . the earliest roman bridge, it had carried more traffic than any later bridge, and had been ruined and reconstructed time and again, until stone took the place of wood for its arches and road-way and houses. but the wooden scaffoldings used for the new construction were left below, and were the means of sacrificing it to an old woman's superstition. on april , , she launched a _sébile_--a wooden bowl--carrying a bit of blessed bread and a lighted taper, in the belief that this holy raft would stop over, and point out, the spot where lay the body of her drowned son. the taper failed in its sacred mission, and set fire to a barge loaded with hay, and this drifted against the timbers under the arches, and soon the entire bridge went up in flames. when again rebuilt, no houses were allowed upon it. with the falling of all those bridges and all that they held, the river-bed grew thick with every sort of object, common and costly. coins from many mints found their way there, not only through fire and flood, but because the money-changers, warily established on the bridges, dropped many an illicit piece from their convenient windows into the river, rather than let themselves be caught in passing counterfeits. this water museum has been dragged from time to time, and the treasures have gone to enrich various collections, notably that of m. victorien sardou. with all helpless paris, our tower watched the old hôtel-dieu--on the island's southern bank, where now is the green open space between petit-pont and pont au double--burning away for eleven days in , and caught glimpses of the rescued patients, carried across place du parvis to hastily improvised wards in the nave of notre-dame. unscathed by fire, unmutilated by man, unwearied by watching, "dagobert's tower" stands, penned in by the high old buildings that shoulder it all around. hidden behind them, it is unseen and forgotten. the only glimpses to be got of its gray bulk are, one from the neighboring tower of the cathedral, and another from the deck of a river-boat as it glides under pont d'arcole; a glimpse to be caught quickly, amid the quick-changing views of the ever-varied perspective of the island's towers and buttresses, pinnacles and domes. far away from the island and its river, over the edge of the southern slope, behind the distant, dreary, outer boulevards, we find another ancient staircase. it is within the vast structure known as "_la maison dîte de saint louis_," commonly called the "_hôtel de la reine blanche_." the modern boulevard, which gets its name from the astronomer, philosopher, and politician, arago, has made a clean sweep through this historic quarter, but it has spared this mansion and the legend, which makes it the suburban dwelling of blanche of castile. hereabout was all country then, and a favorite summer resort of the wealthy citizens, whose modest cottages and showy villas clustered along the banks of the bièvre; a free and wilful stream in the early years of the thirteenth century, often in revolt and sometimes misleading the sedate seine into escapades, to the disquiet of these _faubourgs_. from its gardens, portly meadows smiled townward to mont-sainte-geneviève, crowded with its schools, and to the convent gardens, snuggling close under the shelter of the southern wall of philippe-auguste. to-day, all this quarter is made malodorous by its many tanneries and dye-works; they have enslaved the tiny bièvre and stained it to a dirty reddish brown; so that it crawls, slimy and sluggish and ashamed, between their surly walls and beneath bedraggled bridges, glad to sink into the seine, under the orleans railway station. its gardens and meadows are covered by square miles of stone, and the line of the old wall is hidden behind and under modern streets. and this so-called country home of queen blanche, become plain no. rue des gobelins, yet refuses, in its mediæval dignity, to regard itself as a mere number in a street, and withdraws behind its wall, its shoulder aslant, to express its royal unconcern for the straight lines of city surveyors. these have not yet stolen all its old-time character from the remaining section of the street, nor spoiled such of its old-time façades as are left. this one at no. demands our especial scrutiny, by its significant portal and windows, and by the belief that it was originally joined in its rear to no. , the two forming one immense structure of the same style of architecture. when was its date, who was its builder, what was its use, are undisclosed, so far, and we may follow our own fancies, as we enter through the narrow gateway into the front court of "queen blanche's house." its main fabric on the ground floor, with its low arched window, insists that it is contemporary with the clever woman and capable queen, to whom legend, wider than merely local, brings home this building. yet its upper windows, and the dormers of the wing, and the slope of the roof, suggest a late fifteenth or an early sixteenth century origin; and the cornice-moulding is so well worked out that it speaks plainly of a much later date than the mediæval fortress-home. in a _tourelle_ at either end is a grand spiral staircase, as in dagobert's tower, and, like that, these turn on huge central oak trunks. here, however, the steps are less abrupt; the grooving of the hand-rail, while it testifies to the stroke of the axe, is less rude; and daylight is welcomed by wider windows. each of the three floors, that lie between the two staircase turrets, is made up of one vast hall, with no traces of division walls. whether or no a gobelin once made usage of this building, as has been claimed, it has now come into a tanner's service, and his workmen tread its stairs and halls, giving a living touch of our workaday world to these walls of dead feudalism. [illustration: the so-called hôtel de la reine blanche. (from a photograph of the commission du vieux paris.)] it was in that blanche of castile was brought to france, a girl of twelve, for her marriage with little louis, of the same ripe age. his father, philippe-auguste, was a mighty builder, and paris flourished under him, her "second founder." in the intervals between crusades against infidels and wars with christians, he founded colleges and gave other aid to the university on this bank; he pushed on with his strong hand the building of notre-dame and of the old hôtel-dieu on the island; he removed his residence from the ancient palace, there, to the louvre on the northern bank, constructed by him to that end--his huge foundation-walls, with some few capitals and mouldings, may be seen deep down in the substructures of the present louvre--he shut in the unfenced cemetery of the innocents from the merry-makers who profaned it; he roofed and walled-in the open markets in the fields hard by that burial-ground; and he paved the streets of the _cité_. to meet this last outlay, he was lavish with the money of the citizens, notably of gérard de poissy, who was moved to donate one-half of his entire fortune by the sight of the king, "sparing neither pains nor expense in beautifying the town." sparing himself no pains for the bettering of his beloved capital, philippe-auguste spared no expense to its worthy burghers, and in their purses he found the funds for his great wall. this he planned and began, toward the close of the twelfth century, when at home for awhile from the warfaring, during which he had captured the "saucy château-gaillard" of his former fellow-crusader, richard the lion-hearted. around the early lutetia on the island, with the river for its moat, there had been a gallo-roman wall, well known to us all; and there was a later wall, concerning which none of us know much. we may learn no more than that it was a work of louis vi., "_le gros_," early in the twelfth century, and that it enclosed the city's small suburbs on both banks of the mainland. where this wall abutted on the two bridge-heads that gave access to the island, louis vi. converted the wooden towers--already placed there for the protection of these approaches by charles ii., "_le chauve_," in the ninth century--into great gateways and small citadels, all of stone. they were massive, grim, sinister structures, and when their service as fortresses was finished, they were used for prisons; both equally infamous in cruelty and horror. the petit châtelet was a donjon tower, and guarded the southern approach to the island by way of the ancient main-road of the gaul and the roman, known later as the voie du midi, and later again as the route d'orléans, and now as rue saint-jacques. this _châtelet_ stood at the head of petit-pont, on the ground where quais saint-michel and montebello meet now, and was not demolished until late in the eighteenth century. the grand châtelet ended the northern wall where it met pont au change, and its gloomy walls, and conical towers flanking a frowning portal, were pick-axed away only in . it had held no prisoners since necker induced louis xvi. to institute, in la force and other jails, what were grotesquely entitled "model prisons." on the building that faces the northern side of place du châtelet you will find an elaborate tablet holding the plan of the dreary fortress and the appalling prison. when we stroll about the open space that its destruction has left, and that bears the bad old name, we need not lament its loss. then came the wall of philippe-auguste, grandly planned to enclose the closely knit island _cité_ and its straggling suburbs on either bank, with all their gardens, vineyards, and fields far out; and solidly constructed, with nearly thirty feet of squared-stone height, and nearly ten feet of cemented rubble between the strong side faces. its heavy parapet was battlemented, numerous round towers bulged from its outer side, the frequent gates had stern flanking towers, and the four ends on both river-banks were guarded by enormous towers, really small fortresses. the westernmost tower on this southern shore--with which section of the wall, built slowly from to , we are now concerned--was the tour de nesle, and its site is shown by a tablet on the quay-front of the eastern wing of the institute. alongside was the important porte de nesle. thence the wall went southwesterly, behind the line made by the present rues mazarine and monsieur-le-prince; then, by its great curve just north of rue des fossés-saint-jacques, it safeguarded the tomb and the abbey of sainte geneviève, and so bent sharply around toward the northeast, within the line of present rues thouin, du cardinal-lemoine, and des fossés-saint-bernard, to the easternmost tower on quai de la tournelle, and its river-gate, porte saint-bernard. that gate, standing until the end of the eighteenth century, had been titillated into a triumphal arch for louis xiv., in whose time this quay was a swell promenade and drive. it still retains one of its grand mansions, the hôtel clermont-tonnerre, at no. on the quay, with a well-preserved portal. of the stately sweep of this wall we may get suggestive glimpses by the various tablets, that show the sites of the tennis courts made later on its outer side, and that mark the places of the gates; such as the tablet at no. rue dauphine. the street and gate of that name date from , when henri iv. constructed them as the southern outlet from his pont-neuf, and named them in honor of the first _dauphin_ born to france since catherine de' medici's puny sons. this porte dauphine took the place, and very nearly the site, of the original porte de buci, which stood over the western end of our rue saint-andré-des-arts, and was done away with in the cutting of rue dauphine. there was a gate, cut a few years after the completion of the wall, opening into the present triangular space made by the meeting of rue de l'École-de-médecine and boulevard saint-germain, and this gate bore this latter name. of the original gates, that next beyond porte de buci was porte saint-michel, a small postern that stood almost in the centre of the meeting-place of boulevard saint-michel and rues monsieur-le-prince and soufflot. next came the important porte saint-jacques, mounting guard over the street now of that name, nearly where it crosses the southern side of new rue soufflot, named in honor of the architect of the panthéon. on that southwest corner is a tablet with a plan of the gate. it was a gate well watched by friends within, and foes without, coming up by this easy road. dunois gained it, more by seduction than force, and entered with his french troops, driving the english before him, on the morning of friday, april , ; and henry of navarre failed to gain it by force from the league, on the night of september , . stand in front of nos. and of widened rue saint-jacques, and you are on the spot where he tried to scale that gate, again and again. more than suggestions of the wall itself may be got by actual sight of sections that survive, despite the assertions of authorities that no stone is left. at the end of impasse de nevers, within a locked gate, you may see a presumable bit. in the court that lies behind nos. and rue guénégaud is a stable, and deep in the shadow of that stable lurks a round tower of philippe-auguste, massive and unmarred. at no. cour du commerce a locksmith has his shop, and he hangs his keys and iron scraps on nails driven with difficulty between the tightly fitted blocks of another round tower. turn the corner into cour de rohan--a corruption of rouen, whose archbishop had his town-house here--and you shall find a narrow iron stairway, that mounts the end of the sliced-off wall, and that carries you to a tiny garden, wherein small schoolgirls play on the very top of that wall. down at the end of cour de rohan is an ancient well, dating from the day when this court lay within the grounds of the hôtel de navarre, the property of louis of orleans before he became louis xii. in style it was closely akin to the hôtel de cluny, and it is a sorrow that it is lost to us. its entrance was at the present nos. and of rue saint-andré-des-arts, and the very ancient walls in the rear court of the latter house may have belonged to the hôtel de navarre. when louis sold this property, one portion was bought by dr. coictier, who had amassed wealth as the physician of louis xi., and this well was long known by his name. it has lost its metal-work, which was as fine as that of the well once owned by tristan l'hermite, coictier's crony, and now placed in the court of the cluny museum. continuing along the course of the great wall, we find a longer section, whereon houses have been built, and another garden. at the end of the hallway of no. rue descartes is a narrow stairway, by which we mount to the row of cottages on top of the wall, and beyond them is a small domain containing trees and bushes and flower-beds, and all alive with fowls. still farther, in a vacant lot in rue clovis, which has cut deep through the hill, a broken end of the wall hangs high above us on the crest, showing both solid faces and the rubble between. its outer face forms the rear of the court at no. rue du cardinal-lemoine. still another section can be seen in the inner court of no. rue d'arras, its great square stones serving as foundation for high houses. and this is the last we shall see of this southern half of the wall of philippe-auguste. when that monarch lay dying at mantes, he found comfort in the thought that he was leaving his paris safe in the competent hands of his daughter-in-law--whose beauty, sense, and spirit had won him early--rather than in the gentle hold of his son, misnamed "_le_ _lion_." he lived, as louis viii., only three years, and "_la reine blanche_" (the widowed queens of france wore white for mourning, until anne of brittany put on black for her first husband, charles viii.) became the sole protector of her twelve-year-old son, on whom she so doted as to be jealous of the wife she had herself found for him. she ruled him and his hitherto unruly nobles, and cemented his kingdom, fractured by local jealousies. he is known to history as saint louis, fit to sit alongside marcus aurelius, in the equal conscience they put into their kingly duties. voltaire himself ceases to sneer in the presence of this monarch's unselfish devotion to his people, and gives him praise as unstinted as any on record. his paris, the paris of his mother and his grandfather, was made up of _la cité_ on the island, under the jurisdiction of the bishop; the northern suburb, _outre-grand-pont_ or _la ville_, governed by the _prévôt des marchands_; the southern suburb, _outre-petit-pont_ or _l'université_, appertaining to the "_recteur_"; all ruled by the _prévôt_ of paris, appointed by and accountable to the king alone. hugo's "little old lady between her two promising daughters" holds good to-day, when the daughters are strapping wenches, and have not yet got their growth. in all three sections, the priest and the soldier--twin foes of light and life in all times and in all lands--had their own way. they cumbered the ground with their fortresses and their monasteries, all bestowed within spacious enclosures; so walling-in for their favored dwellers, and walling-out from the common herd outside, the air and sun, green sights, and pleasant scents. there were no open spaces for the people of mediæval days. indeed, there were no "people," in our meaning of that word. the stage direction, "enter populace," expresses their state. there were peasants in the fields, toilers in the towns, vassals, all of them--villains, legally--allowed to live by the soldier, that they might pay for his fighting, and serve as food for his steel; sheep let graze by the priest, to be sheared for the church and to be burned at the stake. this populace looked on at these burnings, at the cutting out of tongues and slicing off of ears and hacking away of hands by their lords, in dumb terror and docile submission. more than death or mutilation, did they dread the ban of the church and the lash of its menacing bell. their only diversion was made by royal processions, by church festivals, by public executions. so went on the dreary round of centuries, in a dull colorless terror, until it was time for the coming of the short, sharp terror dyed red. then the white terror, that came with the restoration, benumbed the land for awhile, and the tricolored effrontery of the second empire held it in grip. against all royalist and imperial reaction, the lesser revolutions of the nineteenth century have kept alive the essential spirit of the great revolution of , inherited by them, and handed down to the present republic, that the assured ultimate issue may be fought out under its tricolor. france, the splendid creature, once more almost throttled by priest and soldier, has saved herself by the courage of a national conscience, such as has not been matched by any land in any crisis. they who by the grace of god and the stupidity of man owned and ordered these human cattle of the darkest ages, had their homes within this new, strong town-wall; in fat monasteries, secluded behind garden and vineyard; in grim citadels, whose central keep and lesser towers and staircase turrets, stables and outer structures, were grouped about a great court, that swarmed with men-at-arms, grooms, and hangers-on. and so, endless walls scowled on the wayfarer through the town's lanes, narrow, winding, unpaved, filthy. on a hot summer day, philippe-auguste stood at his open window in the old palace, and the odor of mud came offensively to the royal nostrils; soon the main city streets were paved. when a king's son happened to be unhorsed by a peripatetic pig nosing for garbage, a royal edict forbade the presence of swine in the streets; the only exceptions being the precious dozen of the abbey of petit-saint-antoine. there were no side-paths, and they who went afoot were pushed to the wall and splashed with mud, by the mules and palfreys of those who could ride. they rode, the man in front, his lady behind, _en croupe_. open trenches, in the middle of the roadway, served for drainage, naked and shameless; the graveyards were unfenced amid huddled hovels; and the constant disease and frequent epidemics that came from all this foulness were fathered on a convenient providence! this solution of the illiterate and imbecile could not be accepted by the shining lights of science, who showed that the plague of the middle of the sixteenth century came from maleficent comets, their tails toward the orient, or from malign conjunctions of mars, saturn, and jupiter. ambroise paré, the most enlightened man of his day, had the courage to suggest that there were human and natural causes at work, in addition to the divine will. and the common-sense faculty of medicine, toward the close of the sixteenth century, indicted the drains and cesspools as the principal origin of all maladies then prevalent. the only street-lighting was that given fitfully by the forlorn lanterns of the patrol, or by the torches of varlets escorting their masters, on foot or on horse. now and then, a hole was burned in the mediæval night by a cresset on a church tower or porch, or shot out from a _cabaret's_ fire through an opened door. when tallow candles got cheaper, they were put into horn lanterns, and swung, at wide intervals, high above the traffic. there, wind or rain put an untimely end to their infrequent flicker, or a "thief in the candle" guttered and killed it, or a thief in the street stoned it dead, for the snug plying of his trade. the town, none too safe in daylight, was not at all safe by night, and the darkness was long and dreary, and every honest man and woman went to bed early after the sunset angelus. country roads were risky, too, and those who were unable to travel in force, or in the train of a noble, travelled not at all; so that the common citizen passed his entire existence within the confines of his compact parish. nor could he see much of his paris or of his seine; he looked along the streets on stone walls on either side, and along the quays at timbered buildings on the banks. these rose sheer from the river-brink, and from both sides of every bridge, barring all outlook from the roadway between; their gables gave on the river, and from their windows could be seen only a little square of water, enclosed between the buildings on both banks and on the neighboring bridge. so that the wistful burgher could get glimpses of his river only from the beach by the hôtel de ville, or from the occasional ports crowded with boats discharging cargo. these cargoes were sold in shops on ground floors, and the tenants were thick on the upper floors, of dwellings mostly made of timber and plaster, their high-fronted gables looking on the street. this was the custom in all towns in the middle ages, and it is a striking change that has, in our day, turned all buildings so that their former side has come to the front. the old paris streets, in which shops and houses shouldered together compactly, already dark and narrow enough, were further narrowed and darkened by projecting upper floors, and by encroaching shop-signs, swinging, in all shapes and sizes, from over the doorways. each shop sold its specialty, and the wares of all of them slopped over on the roadway. their owners bawled the merits and prices of these wares in a way to shock a certain irritable guillaume de villeneuve, who complains in querulous verse, "they do not cease to bray from morning until night." with all its growth in coming years, the city's squalor grew apace with its splendor, and when voltaire's candide came in, by way of porte saint-marcel here on the southern side, in the time of louis xv., he imagined himself in the dirtiest and ugliest of westphalian villages. for all its filth and all its discomfort, this mediæval paris--portrayed, as it appeared three hundred years later, in the painful detail and inaccurate erudition of hugo's "notre-dame de paris"--was a picturesque town, its buildings giving those varied and unexpected groupings that make an architectural picture; their roofs were tiled in many colors, their sky-lines were wanton in their irregularity, and were punctuated by pointed turrets and by cone-shaped tower-tops; and over beyond the tall town walls, broken by battlements and sentry-boxes, whirled a grotesque coronet of windmill sails. turning from this attractive "_maison de la reine blanche_," from this quarter where her son louis learned to ride and to tilt, and glancing behind at the famous tapestry works, the gobelins, of whose founder and director we shall have a word to say later, we follow the avenue of that name to rue du fer-à-moulin. this little street, named for a sign that swung there in the twelfth century, is most commonplace until it opens out into a small, shabby square, that holds a few discouraged trees, and is faced by a stolid building whose wide, low-browed archway gives access to the court of the _boulangerie générale des hôpitaux et hospices_. this was the courtyard of the villa of scipio sardini, whose name alone is kept alive by this place scipion--all that is left of his gardens and vineyards. yet his was a notable name, in the days when this wily tuscan was "_écuyer du roi henri ii._," and in those roaring days of swift fortunes for sharp italian financiers, under the queen-mother, catherine de' medici. this man amassed scandalous riches, and built his villa, mentioned by sauval as one of the richest of that time, here amid the country mansions that dotted this southern declivity. of this villa only one wing still stands, and it is with unlooked-for delight that we find this admirable specimen of sixteenth-century architecture, of a style distinct from that of any other specimen in paris. the façade, that is left in the court of the _boulangerie_, is made up of an arcade of six semi-circular arches on heavy stone pillars, a story above of plum-colored brick cut into panels by gray stone, its square-headed windows encased with the same squared stone, and an attic holding two dormers with pointed hoods. set in the broad band between the two lower floors, were six medallions, one over the centre of each arch; of these six, only four remain. these contain the heads of warriors and of women, boldly or delicately carved, and wonderfully preserved; yet time has eaten away the terra-cotta, wind and wet have dulled the enamel that brightened them. the buildings about this court and behind this unique façade are commonplace and need not detain us. it was in that the general hospital took the villa and enlarged it; in , to escape the plague, the prisoners of the conciergerie were installed here; and it has served as the bakery for the civil hospitals of paris for many years. we go our way toward our third staircase, not by the stupidly straight line of rue monge, but by vagrant curves that bring us to the prison of sainte-pélagie, soon to disappear, and to the roman amphitheatre just below, happily rescued forever. here, in rue cardinal-lemoine, we slip under the stupid frontage of no. to the court within, where we are faced by the _hôtel_ of charles lebrun. we mount the stone steps that lead up to a wide hall, and so go through to a farther court, now unfortunately roofed over. this court was his garden, and this is the stately garden-front that was the true façade, rather than that toward the street; for this noble mansion--the work of the architect germain boffrand, pupil and friend of hardouin mansart--was built after the fashion of that time, which shut out, by high walls, all that was within from sight of the man in the street, and kept the best for those who had entry to the stiff, formal gardens of that day. pupil of poussin, _protégé_ of fouquet, friend of colbert, lebrun was the favorite court painter and decorator, and the most characteristic exponent of the art of his day; his sumptuous style suiting equally françois i.'s fontainebleau, and louis xiv.'s versailles. he aided colbert in the founding of the royal academy of painting and sculpture, and in the purchase by the state of the gobelins. this factory took its name from the famous dyer who came from rheims, and tinted the clear bièvre with his splendid scarlet, says rabelais; so that it took the name of _la rivière des gobelins_, of which ronsard sings. the statesman and the artist in concert built up the great factory of tapestries and of furniture, such as were suitable for royal use. made director of the gobelins and chancellor of the academy, and making himself the approved painter of the time to his fellow-painters and to the buying public, lebrun's fortune grew to the possession of this costly estate, which extended far away beyond modern rue monge. the death of colbert--whose superb tomb in saint-eustache is the work of his surviving friend--left him to the hatred of louvois, who pushed mignard, molière's friend, into preferment. and lebrun, genuine and honest artist, died of sheer despondency, in his official apartment on the first floor of the factory, facing the chapel. his rooms have been cut up and given over to various usages, and no trace can be found in the gobelins of its first director. his body rests in his parish church, a few steps farther on, through ancient rue saint-victor, now curtailed and mutilated. along its line, before we come to the square tower of saint-nicolas-du-chardonnet, we skirt the dirty yellow and drab wall of the famous seminary alongside the church, and bearing its name. its entrance is at no. rue de pontoise, and among the many famous pupils who have gone in and out since calvin was a student here, we may mention only ernest renan. in , the director of the school being the accomplished dupanloup, this boy of fifteen came fresh from brittany to his studies here. we shall follow him to his later and larger schools, in other pages. when jean "le moine," the son of a picardy peasant, came to sit in a cardinal's chair, and was sent to paris as legate by pope boniface viii., he established a great college in the year . for it he bought the chapel, the dwellings, and the cemetery of the augustins that were all in fields of thistles. so came the name "_du chardonnet_" to the church now built on the ruins of lemoine's chapel, in the later years of the seventeenth century. lebrun decorated one of its chapels for the burial of his mother, and his own tomb is there near hers. some of his work still shows on the ceiling; and in an adjacent chapel, in odd proximity, once hung a canvas from the brush of mignard. in striking contrast, the busts of the two men face each other in the louvre; that of mignard is alert with intelligence in face and poise of head, while lebrun's suggests a somewhat slow-witted earnestness. from this short stay in the realm of louis the unreal, we go to the island that bears the name of the louis who was called a saint, but who was a very real man. all the streets along here that take us to the river, as far easterly as the one that bears the name of cardinal lemoine, were cut through the grounds of his college and of the bernadins, an ancient foundation alongside. of the buildings of this vast monastery, the refectory remains, behind the wall on the western side of rue de poissy. this characteristic specimen of thirteenth-century architecture, but little spoiled by modern additions, is used for the _caserne_ of the sapeurs-pompiers. here, at the foot of the street on the river-bank on our right, is the great space where boulevard saint-germain comes down to the quay, and where the old wall came down to its great tower on the shore. on our left, as we cross broad pont de la tournelle, we get an impressive view of notre-dame. and now we find ourselves in a provincial town, seemingly far removed from our paris in miles and in years, by its isolation and tranquillity and old-world atmosphere. its long, lazy main street is named after the royal saint, and its quays keep the titles of royal princes, bourbon, orléans, anjou. a great royal minister, maximilien de béthune, gives his name to another quay, and his great master gives his to the new boulevard crossing it. henry often crossed his faithful sully, but they were at one in the orders issued, in the year before the king's murder, for the sweeping away of the woodyards, that made this island the storehouse of the town's timber, and for the construction of these streets and buildings. the works planned by henri iv. were carried out by marie de' medici and louis xiii. a concession was given for the laying out of streets and for the buildings on this island, and for the construction of a new stone bridge to the marais, to the three associates, marie, le regrettier, poultier, who gave their names to the bridge and to two of the streets. there was already a small chapel in the centre, the scene of the first preaching of the first crusade, and this chapel has been enlarged to the present old-time parish church. just within its entrance is the _bénitier_, filled with water from the mouth of a marble cherub who wears a pretty marble "bang." it came from the carmelites of chaillot, in souvenir of "sister louise." the sites on the island's banks, newly opened in the early years of louis xiii.'s reign, were in demand at once for the mansions of the wealthy, and a precocious city started up. corneille's _menteur_, new to paris and the island, rhapsodizes in one of his captivating flights, this time without lying: "_j'y croyais ce matin voir une île enchantée, je la laissai déserte et la trouve habitée; quelque amphion nouveau, sans l'aide des maçons, en superbes palais à changé ses buissons._" we shall come hither again, in company with voltaire to one of these palaces, with balzac to another. in these high old houses in these old streets dwelt old families, served by old retainers devoted to their mistresses, who hugged their firesides like contented tabby-cats. they had no welcome for intruders into their "ville-saint-louis" from the swell quarters on the other side of the river, and it used to be said that "_l'habitant du marais est étranger dans l'Île_." [illustration: balcony of hôtel de lauzan-pimodan on Île de saint-louis.] pont louis-philippe--an absurdly modern issue from this ancient quarter--carries us to the quay of the hôtel de ville, and we may turn to look in at saint-gervais, its precious window as brilliant as on the day it was finished by jean cousin. passing in front of the imperious statue of Étienne marcel, staring at the river that was his grave, we cross place de l'hôtel-de-ville, once place de grève, when it had in the centre its stone cross reached by high steps, and its busy gallows close at hand. we forget its horrid memories in the sight of the new hôtel de ville, of no memories, good or bad, to dash our delight in this most nearly perfect of modern structures; perfect in design, execution, and material, a consummate scheme carried out to the last exquisite detail by architects, sculptors, and decorators, all masters of their crafts. our direct road takes us through the halles, their huge iron and glass structures the lineal descendants of those heavy stone halles, started in the twelfth century here in the fields, when the small market on the island no longer sufficed. their square, dumpy pillars, and those on which the houses all about were once supported, survive only in the few left from the seventeenth-century rebuilding, now on the north side of rue de la ferronerie. standing in that arcade, we look out on the spot where ravaillac waited for the coming of henri iv. the wretched fanatic, worked on by whom we shall never know, had found paris crowded for the queen's coronation, and had hunted up a room in the "three pigeons," an inn of rue saint-honoré, opposite the church of saint-roch. here or in another tavern, while prowling, he stole the knife. the narrow street was widened a little by richelieu, and few of its ancient buildings are left. returning through this arcade, once the entrance to the cemetery of the innocents, to rue des innocents just behind, you will find many of the old _charniers_ absolutely unchanged. they form the low-ceilinged ground floor of nearly all these buildings between rue saint-denis and rue de la lingerie. perhaps the most characteristic specimen is that one used for a _remise de voitures à bras_, a phrase of the finest french for a push-cart shed! and under no. of this street of the innocents, you may explore two of the cemetery vaults in perfect preservation. they are come to less lugubrious usage now, and serve as a club-room for the teamsters who bring supplies to the markets over-night, and for the market attendants who wait for them. their wagons unloaded, here they pass the night until daylight shall bring customers, drinking and singing after their harmless fashion, happily ignorant or careless of the once grisly service of these caves. the attendants in the _cabaret_ on the entrance floor, tired as they are by day, will courteously show the cellars, one beneath the other. one must stoop to pass under the heavily vaulted low arches, and the small chambers are overcrowded with a cottage piano and with rough benches and tables; these latter cut, beyond even the unhallowed industry of schoolboys, with initials and names of the frequenters of the club, who have scarred the walls in the same vigorous style. the demure _dame du comptoir_ above assures you that you will be welcomed between midnight and dawn, but bids you bring no prejudices along, for the guests are not apt, in their song and chatter, to "_chercher la délicatesse_"! the church of the innocents, built by louis "_le gros_" early in the twelfth century, had on its corner at rues saint-denis and aux fers--this latter now widened into rue berger--a most ancient fountain, dating from . this fountain was built anew in , from a design of the abbé de clagny, not of pierre lescot as is claimed, and was decorated by jean goujon. just before the revolution ( - ), when church and charnel-houses and cemetery were swept away, this fountain was removed to the centre of the markets--the centre, too, of the old cemetery--and has been placed, since then, in the middle of this dainty little square which greets us as we emerge from our _cabaret_. to the three arches it owned, when backed by the church corner, a fourth has been added to make a square, and the original naiads of goujon have been increased in number. their fine flowing lines lift up and lend distinction to this best bit of renaissance remaining in paris. and here we are struck by the ingenuity shown by making the water in motion a signal feature of the decoration--another instance of this engaging characteristic of french fountains. a few steps farther north take us to rue Étienne marcel, cutting its ruthless course through all that should be sacred, in a fashion that would gladden the sturdy provost. for all its destructive instincts, it yet has spared to us this memorable bit of petrified history, the tower of "_jean-sans-peur_." at no. , on the northern side of this broad and noisy street, amid modern structures, its base below the level of the pavement, stands the last remaining fragment of the hôtel de bourgogne; which, under its earlier name in older annals as the hôtel d'artois, carries us back again to the thirteenth century, for this was the palace-fortress built by the younger brother of saint louis, robert, count of artois. he it was who fell, in his "senseless ardor," on the disastrous field of massouah, in ; when the pious king and his devoted captains were made captive by the sultan of egypt, and released with heavy fines, so ending that sixth crusade. the hôtel d'artois was a princely domain, reaching southward from the wall of philippe-auguste to rue mauconseil, a road much longer then, and extending from present rue saint-denis to rue montorgueil, the two streets that bounded the property east and west. some of its structures backed against the wall, some of them rested upon its broken top. for the grounds and gardens enclosed within this northern _enceinte_--completed between and --stretched to its base, leaving no room for a road on its inner side. because of this plan, and because this wall crumbled gradually, its broken sections being surrounded and surmounted by crowding houses, no broad boulevards were laid out over its line--as was done with its immediate successor, the wall of charles v.--and it is not easy to trace it through modern streets and under modern structures. the only fragment left is the tower in the court of the mont-de-piété, entered from rue des francs-bourgeois, and it is of build less solid than those we have seen on the southern bank. in the pavement of the first court is traced the line of the wall up to this tower. with this exception, we can indicate only the sites of the towers and the course of the wall. the huge tour barbeau was at the easternmost river end, on quai des célestins, nearly at the foot of our rue des jardins-saint-paul. it commanded port saint-paul, chief landing-place of river boatmen, and guarded the pôterne des barrés. that name was also given to the small street--now rue de l'ave maria--that led from this postern-gate. they owe that name indirectly to saint louis. returning from the holy land, he had brought six monks from mount carmel, and housed them on the quay, called now after their successors, the célestins. the black robes, striped white, of these six monks, made them known popularly as "_les barrés_." our wall ran straight away from this waterside gate, parallel with and a little to the west of present rue des jardins, then a country road on its outer edge, to porte baudoyer, afterward porte saint-antoine, standing across the space where meet rues saint-antoine and de rivoli. this was the strongest for defence of all the gates, holding the entrance to the town, by way of the roman and later the royal road from the eastern provinces. from this point the wall took a great curve beyond the bounds of the built-up portions of the town. the pôterne barbette, its next gate, in rue vieille-du-temple, just south of its crossing by rue des francs-bourgeois, lost its old name in this name taken from the hôtel barbette, built a century later, outside the wall here. next came the gate in rue du temple, nearly half way between our rues de braque and rambuteau. through this gate passed the knights templar to and from their great fortified domain beyond. the pôterne beaubourg, in the street of that name, was a minor gateway, having no especial history beyond that contained in the derivation of its name, "_beaubourg_," from a particularly rich settlement, just hereabout. next we come to two most important gates, saint-martin and saint-denis, across those two streets, that guarded the approaches by the great roads from senlis and soissons, and the heart of the land, old Île de france, and from all the northern provinces. between the saint-denis gate and that at rue montorgueil, lay the property of the comte d'artois, and he cut, for his royal convenience, a postern in the wall that formed his northern boundary. from this point our wall went in another wide curve to the river-bank, within the lines of old rues plâtrière and grenelle, the two now widened into modern rue jean-jacques-rousseau. the country road that is now rue montmartre was guarded by a gate, opened a few years after the completion of the wall, and its site shown by a tablet in the wall of no. of that street. a small gate was cut at the meeting of present rues coquillière and jean-jacques-rousseau. nearly opposite the end of this latter street, where rue saint-honoré passes in front of the oratoire, was the last public gate on the mainland. thence the course was straight away to the river shore, as you may see by the diagram set in lighter stone in the pavement of the court of the louvre. these stones mark also the huge round of the donjon of the old louvre, on whose eastern or town side the wall passed to the river-side tour-qui-fait-le-coin. this tower was of the shape and size of the opposite tour de nesle, which we have already seen at the point where the southern wall came down to the shore; and between the two towers, a great chain was slung across the seine to prevent approach by river pirates. pont des arts is almost directly over the dip of that chain. so, too, the river was protected at the eastern ends of the wall; the barbeau tower was linked to the solitary tower on Île notre-dame, and that again across the other arm of the seine, to the immense tower on quai de la tournelle. this island tour loriaux rose from the banks of a natural moat made by the river's narrow channel between Île notre-dame and Île aux vaches, and this bank was afterward further protected by a slight curtain of wall across the island, with a tower at either end. four centuries later, when this island wall and its towers had long since crumbled away, that moat was filled up--rue poulletier, the modernized poultier, lies over its course--and the two small islands became large Île saint-louis. and now, we have seen _la cité_, _la ville_, _l'université_, all girdled about by philippe-auguste's great wall. the city could spread no farther than its river-banks; the university was content to abide within its bounds, even as late as the wars of the league; the town began speedily to outgrow its limits, and within two centuries it had so developed that the capacious range of a new wall, that of charles v., was needed to enclose its bustling quarters. that story shall come in a later chapter. one hundred years after the death of robert of artois, his estate passed, by marriage, to the first house of burgundy, whose name it took, and when that house became extinct, in the days of jean "_le bon_," second valois king of france, it came, along with the broad acres and opulent towns of that duchy, into his hands, by way of some distant kinship. this generous and not over-shrewd monarch did not care to retain these much-needed revenues, and gave them, with the resuscitated title of burgundy, to his younger son, "recalling again to memory the excellent and praiseworthy services of our right dearly beloved son philip, the fourth of our sons, who freely exposed himself to death with us, and, all wounded as he was, remained unwavering and fearless at the battle of poictiers." from that field philip carried away his future title, "_le hardi_." by this act of grateful recognition, rare in kings, were laid the foundations of a house that was to grow as great as the throne itself, to perplex france within, and to bring trouble from without, throughout long calamitous years. this first duke philip seems to have had the hardihood to do right in those wrong-doing days, for he remained a sufficiently loyal subject of his brother charles v., and later a faithful guardian, as one of the "_sires de la fleur-de-lis_," of his nephew, the eleven-year-old charles vi. he married margaret, heiress of the count of flanders, and widow of philippe de rouvre, last of the old line of burgundy, and she brought, to this new house of burgundy, the fat, flat meadows and the turbulent towns of the lowlands, and also the hôtel de flandres in the capital, where now stands the general post-office in rue jean-jacques-rousseau. duke philip, dying in , bequeathed to his eldest son, john, nick-named "_jean-sans-peur_," not only a goodly share of his immense possessions, but also the pickings of a "very pretty quarrel" with louis de valois, duc d'orléans. this quarrel was tenderly nursed by john, who, as the head of a powerful independent house, and the leader of a redoubtable faction, felt himself to be more important than the royal younger brother. ambitious and unscrupulous, calculating and impetuous, he created the rôle on his stage, played with transient success by philippe-Égalité, four hundred years later. he rode at the head of a brilliant train and posed for the applause of the populace. he walked arm in arm with the public executioner, capeluche, and when done with him, handed him over to the gallows. finding himself grown so great, he schemed for sole control of the state. the one man in his way was louis of orleans, the mad king's only brother, the lover of the queen, and her accomplice in plundering and wasting the country's revenues. he was handsome and elegant, open in speech and open of hand, bewitching all men and women whom he cared to win. "_qui veult, peut_," was his braggart device, loud on the walls of the rooms of viollet-le-duc's reconstructed pierrefonds, whose original was built by louis. in its court you may see the man himself in frémiet's superb bronze, erect and alert on his horse. the horse's hoofs trample the flowers, as his rider trod down all sweet decencies in his stride through life. he was an insolent profligate, quick to tell when he had kissed. in his long gallery of portraits of the women who, his swagger suggested, had yielded to his allurements, he hung, with unseemly taste, those of his lovely italian wife, valentine visconti, and of the duchess of burgundy, his cousin's wife; both of them honest women. for this boast, john hated him; he hated him, as did his other unlettered compeers, for his learning and eloquence and patronage of poetry and the arts; he hated him as did the common people, who prayed "jesus christ in heaven, send thou someone to deliver us from orleans." [illustration: "jean-sans-peur," duc de bourgogne. (from a painting by an unknown artist, at chantilly.)] at last "_jean-sans-peur_" mustered his courage and his assassins to deliver himself and france. isabelle of bavaria had left her crazed husband in desolate hôtel saint-paul, and carried her unclean court to hôtel barbette--we shall see more of these residences in another chapter--where she sat at supper, with her husband's brother, on the night of november , . it was eight in the evening, dark for the short days of that "black winter," the bitterest known in france for centuries. an urgent messenger, shown in to orleans at table, begged him to hasten to the king at saint-paul. the duke sauntered out, humming an air, mounted his mule and started on his way, still musical; four varlets with torches ahead, two 'squires behind. only a few steps on, as he passed the shadowed entrance of a court, armed men--many more than his escort--sprang upon him and cut him down with axes. he called out that he was the duke of orleans. "so much the better!" they shouted, and battered him to death on the ground; then they rode off through the night, unmolested by the terrified attendants. the master and paymaster of the gang, who was watching, from a doorway hard by, to see that his money was honestly earned, went off on his way. a devious way it turned out to be, for, having admitted his complicity to the council, in his high and mighty fashion, he found himself safer in flight than in his guarded topmost room of this tower before us. he galloped away to his frontier of flanders, cutting each bridge that he crossed. it was ten years before he could return, and then he came at the head of his burgundian forces, and bought the keys of porte de buci, stolen by its keeper's son from under his father's pillow. entering paris on the night of saturday, may , , on the following day, the burgundians began those massacres which lasted as long as there were armagnacs to kill, and which polluted paris streets with corpses. within a year, john, lured to a meeting with the dauphin, afterward charles vii., went to the bridge at montereau, with the infinite precautions always taken by this fearless man, and there he was murdered with no less treachery, if with less butchery, than he gave to his killing of louis of orleans. valentine visconti, widow of orleans, had not lived to see this retribution. her appeal to the king for the punishment of the assassin was answered by pleasant phrases, and soon after, in one of his sane intervals, was further answered by the royal pardon to burgundy, for that "out of faith and loyalty to us, he has caused to be put out of the world our brother of orleans." she had counted on the king's remembering that, in the early years of his madness, hers had been the only face he knew and the only voice that soothed him. she crept away to blois with her children, and with dunois, her husband's son but not her own. the others were not of the age nor of the stuff to harbor revenge, and to him she said: "you were stolen from me, and it is _you_ who are fit to avenge your father." these are fiery words from a rarely gentle yet courageous woman, grown vindictive out of her constancy to a worthless man. she is the one pure creature, pathetic and undefiled, in all this welter of perfidy and brutality. "she shines in the black wreck of things," in carlyle's words concerning another "noble white vision, with its high queenly face, its soft proud eyes," of a later day. there, at blois, she died within the year. it would carry us too far from this tower to follow the course of the feud between the heirs of these two houses. "philip the good, duke of burgundy, luxembourg, and brabant, earl of holland and zealand, lord of friesland, count of flanders, artois, and hainault, lord of salins and macklyn," was a high and puissant prince, and versatile withal. "he could fight as well as any king going, and he could lie as well as any, except the king of france. he was a mighty hunter, and could read and write. his tastes were wide and ardent. he loved jewels like a woman, and gorgeous apparel. he dearly loved maids-of-honor, and, indeed, paintings generally, in proof of which he ennobled jan van eyck.... in short, he relished all rarities, except the humdrum virtues." charles of orleans, son of louis, was of another kidney. spirited at the start, this prince was spoiled by his training, "like such other lords as i have seen educated in this country," says comines; "for these were taught nothing but to play the jackanapes with finery and fine words." young charles d'orléans took his earliest lessons in rhyme, and he rhymed through life, through his twenty-five years of captivity in england, until he was old charles, the pallid figure-head of a petty, babbling, versifying court. and the quarrel between the two houses came to nothing beyond the trifle of general misery for france. it was only when burgundy came into collision with the crafty dauphin of france, the rebellious son of charles vii., who had fled from his father's court and taken refuge with duke philip the good, that this great house began to fail in power. when that dauphin, become louis xi., made royal entry into paris, this hôtel de bourgogne showed all its old bravery. from its great court, through its great gate on rue saint-denis, into the space behind the town gate of that name, duke philip rode forth on the last day of august, , at his side his son--then comte de charolais, known later as charles "_le téméraire_"--to head the glittering array of nobles, aglow with silken draperies and jewels, their horses' housings sweeping the ground, who await the new king. few of them are quite sure "how they stand" with him, and they hardly know how to greet him as he enters, but they take the customary oaths when they get to notre-dame, and thence escort him to the old palace on the island. there they feasted and their royal master pretended to be jolly, all the while speculating on the speedy snuffing-out of these flashing satellites. on the morrow he took up his residence in the hôtel des tournelles, almost deserted within, and altogether without. for the populace crowded about this hôtel de bourgogne, all eyes and ears for the sight and the story of its splendors. its tapestries were the richest ever seen by parisians, its silver such as few princes owned, its table lavish and ungrudging. the duke's robes and jewels were so wonderful that the cheering mob ran after him, as he passed along the streets, with his attendant train of nobles and his body-guard of archers. with his death died all the pomp and show of this palace. his son, charles the bold, wasted no time in paris from the fighting, for which he had an incurable itch, but no genius. he kept this deserted house in charge of a _concierge_ for his daughter mary, "the richest heiress in christendom," who was promised to five suitors at once, and who married maximilian of austria at last. their grandson, the emperor charles v., in one of the many bargains made and unmade between him and françois i.--the one the direct descendant of louis of orleans and the other the direct descendant of john of burgundy--gave up to the french crown all that burgundy owned in france, one portion of it in paris being this hôtel de bourgogne. by now this once most strongly fortified and best defended fortress-home in all the town was fallen into sad decay, its spacious courts the playground of stray children, its great halls and roomy chambers a refuge for tramps and rascals. so françois, casting about for any scheme to bring in money, and greedy to keep alive the tradition, handed down from hugh capet, that gave to his crown all the ground on which paris was built, sold at auction this old rookery, along with other royal buildings and land in the city, in the year . this _hôtel_ was put up in thirteen lots, this tower and its dependencies, burgundian additions of the first years of the fifteenth century, being numbered , , , , , , and while all the other structures were demolished, these were kept entire by the purchaser, whose name has not come down to us. they may have been "bid in" by the state, for they reappear as crown property of louis xiii.; and he gave "what was left of the donjon of the hôtel d'artois" to the monks of sainte-catherine du val-des-Écoliers, in exchange for a tract of their land on the northern side of rue saint-antoine, just west of place royale. by this barter it would seem that he intended to carry out one of his father's cherished schemes, to be spoken of in a later chapter. in this donjon the good monks established "storehouses" for the poor, a phrase that may be modernized into "soup-kitchens." these were under the control of a certain "père vincent," who has been canonized since as saint vincent de paul. this peasant's son had grown up into a tender-hearted priest, bountiful to the poor with the crowns he adroitly wheedled from the rich. for he had guile as well as loving-kindness, he was a wily and a jocular shepherd to his aristocratic flock, he became the pet confessor of princesses and the spiritual monitor of louis xiii. so zealous was he in his schemes for the relief of suffering men and women, and signally of children, that parliament expostulated, in fear that his asylums and refuges would fill paris with worthless vagrants and illegitimate children. his is an exemplary and honored figure in the roman church, and his name still clings to this tower; local legend, by a curious twisting of tradition, making him its builder! while its buyer, at the auction, is unknown to us, we do know to whom was knocked down one lot, that holds records of deeper concern to us than all the ground hereabout, thick as it is with historic footprints. the plot on the southeasterly corner of the property, fronting on rue mauconseil, was purchased by a band of players for a rental in perpetuity. the parliament of paris had not recognized the king's claim to all these ownerships, and would not give assent to some of the sales; and this perpetual lease was not confirmed by that body without long delay. we may let the players wait for this official warranty while we see who they are, whence they come, and what they play. it was a religious fraternity, calling itself "_la confrérie de la passion de notre seigneur, jésus-christ_," and it had been formed, during the closing years of the fourteenth century, mainly from out of more ancient companies. the most ancient and reputable of these was "_la basoche_," recruited from the law clerks of the palais de justice, players and playwrights both. this troupe had enjoyed a long, popular existence before it received legal existence from philippe "_le bel_," early in that same fourteenth century. from its ranks, reinforced by outsiders--among them, soon after , a bachelor of the university, françois villon--were enlisted the members of "_les enfants sans souci_." other ribald mummers called themselves "_les sots_." men from all these bands brought their farcical grossness to mitigate the pietistic grossness of our _confrérie_, and this fraternity soon grew so strong as to get letters-patent from charles vi., granting it permission for publicly performing passion-plays and mysteries, and for promenading the streets in costume. then the privileged troupe hired the hall of trinity hospital and turned it into a rude theatre, the first in paris, the mediæval stage having been of bare boards on trestles, under the sky or under canvas. on the site of this earliest of french theatres are the queen's fountain, placed in on the northeast corner of rues saint-denis and grenéta, and the buildings numbered in the latter and in the former street. there, in , the _confrères_ began the work that is called play, and there they remained until . then, during the construction of the new house, they took temporary quarters in the hôtel de flandres, not yet cut up by its purchaser at the royal sale, and settled finally, in , in the théâtre de l'hôtel de bourgogne. by then an edict of françois i. had banished from the stage all personations of jesus christ and of all holy characters; such other plays being permitted as were "profane and honest, offensive and injurious to no one." the name "mystery" does not suggest something occult and recondite, even although the greek word, from which it is wrongly derived, sometimes refers to religious services; it carries back, rather, to the latin word signifying a service or an office. the plays called "mysteries" and "moralities" were given at first in mediæval latin, or, as time went on, in the vernacular, with interludes in the same latin, which may be labelled christian or late latin. they were rudimentary essays in dramatic art, uncouth and grotesque, in tone with that "twilight of the mind, peopled with childish phantoms." hugo's description of the "_très belle moralité, le bon jugement de madame la vierge_," by pierre gringoire, played in the great hall of the palais de justice, is too long and labored to quote here; well worth quoting is the short and vivid sketch, by charles reade, of the "morality" witnessed in puerile delight by the audience, among whom sat gérard, the father of erasmus, at rotterdam, in the same brave days of louis xi. of france and philip the good of burgundy. he shows us the clumsy machinery bringing divine personages, too sacred to name, direct from heaven down on the boards, that they might talk sophistry at their ease with the cardinal virtues, the nine muses, and the seven deadly sins; all present in human shape, and all much alike. this dreary stuff was then enlivened by the entrance of the prince of the powers of air, an imp following him and buffeting him with a bladder, and at each thwack the crowd roared in ecstasy. so, to-day, the equally intelligent london populace finds joy in the wooden staff of the british punch. when the vices had vented obscenity and the virtues twaddle, the celestials with the nine muses went gingerly back to heaven on the one cloud allowed by the property-man, and worked up and down by two "supes" at a winch, in full sight of everybody. then the bottomless pit opened and flamed in the centre of the stage, and into it the vices were pushed by the virtues and the stage-carpenters, who all, with beelzebub, danced about it merrily to sound of fife and tabor. and the curtain falls on the first act. "this entertainment was writ by the bishop of ghent for the diffusion of religious sentiments by the aid of the senses, and was an average specimen of theatrical exhibitions, so long as they were in the hands of the clergy; but, in course of time, the laity conducted plays, and so the theatre, we learn from the pulpit, has become profane." the dulness of moralities and mysteries was relieved by the farces, spiced and not nice, of the "_sots_" and the "basoche" on their boards. they made fun of earthly dignitaries, ridiculing even kings. thus they represented louis xii., in his orleans thirst for money--never yet quenched in that family--drinking liquid gold from a vase. their easy-going monarch took no offence, avowing that he preferred that his court should laugh at his parsimony, rather than that his subjects should weep for his prodigalities. to win applause, in his rôle of "_le père du peuple_," he encouraged the "powerful, disorderly, but popular theatre," and he patronized pierre gringoire, whose plays drew the populace to the booths about the halles. the poet and playwright, widower of hugo's happily short-lived esmeralda, had been again married and put in good case by the whimsical toleration of louis xi., if we may accept the dates of théodore de banville's charming little play. that monarch, easily the first comedian of his time, allowed no rivals on the mimic stage, and it languished during his reign. nor did it flourish under françois i., whose brutal vices must not be made fun of. henri iv., fearless even of mirth, which may be deadly, not only gave smiling countenance to this theatre, but gave his presence at times; thus we read that, with queen and court, he sat through "_une plaisante farce_" on the evening of january , . the renaissance enriched the french stage, along with all forms of art, bringing translations through the italian of the classic drama. the theatre of the hôtel de bourgogne became la comédie italienne, and its records recall famous names, on the boards and in the audience, throughout long and honorable years. the troupe was not free from jealousies, and did not escape secessions, notably that of , when the heavy old men of the historic house cut adrift the light comedians and the young tragedians, who had been recruited within a few years, mainly from the country. those who remained devoted themselves to the "legitimate drama," yet found place for approved modern work, such as that of young racine. the seceders betook themselves to buildings on the east side of rue de renard, just north of rue de la verrerie, convenient to the crowded quarter of la grève; but removed shortly to the theatre constructed for them from a tennis-court in rue vieille-du-temple, in the heart of the populous marais. you shall go there, a little later, to see the classic dramas of a young man from rouen, named corneille. these players called themselves "_les comédiens du marais_," and by had permission from louis xiii. to take the title of "_la troupe royale_." a few years later, perhaps as early as , all the paris of players and playgoers began to talk about a strolling troupe in the southern provinces and about their manager, one poquelin de molière. how he brought his comedies and his company to the capital; how he put them both up in rivalry with the two old stock houses; how he won his way against all their opposition, and much other antagonism--this is told in our chapter on molière. in the cutting up of the ancient domain of robert of artois, after the royal sale, a short street was run north and south through the grounds, and named françois, since feminized into rue française. it lay between the tower, whose lower wall may be seen in the rear of the court of no. , and the theatre buildings, which covered the sites of present nos. and of this street and extended over the ground that now makes rue Étienne marcel. the main entrance of the theatre was about where now hangs the big gilt key on the northern side of that fragment of rue mauconseil, still left after its curtailment by many recent cuttings. gone now is every vestige of the theatre and every stone of the hôtel de bourgogne, except this tower of "_jean-sans-peur_." [illustration: the tower of "jean-sans-peur."] by happy chance, or through pious care, this precious fragment has survived the centuries that looked with unconcern on things of the past, and has come into the safe keeping of our relic-loving age. it is an authentic document from the archives of the earliest architecture of the fifteenth century, convincing in its proof of the strength for defence of ducal homes in that day. its massive stones are scrupulously shaped and fitted, the grim faces of its quadrangular walls are softened by wide ogival windows, its top is crowned all around by a deep cornice. above, the former corbelled machiolations, heavy yet elegant, are debased into water-spouts, and a new roof has been added. only the southern and eastern sides of the oblong are wholly disengaged, the other faces being mostly shut in by crowding buildings. on the angle behind is a _tourelle_ supported by corbels, and in the ogival door is a tympanum, in whose carvings we make out a plane and a plumb-line. this was the device of john of burgundy, worn on his liveries, painted and carved everywhere. louis of orleans had chosen a bunch of knotted fagots as his emblem, with the motto "_je l'ennuie_;" and burgundy's arrogant retort was the plane that cut through all that was not in plumb-line with his measurements, and the motto in flemish "_ik houd_," meaning "_je le tiens_." the great hall within has been partitioned off into small rooms, fit for the workingmen and their families formerly installed here; so that its ancient aspect of amplitude and dignity is somewhat marred. we "must make believe very much," to see either the sinner john mustering here his assassins, who file out through that door to their rendezvous with orléans, or the saint vincent gathering here his herd of hungry children. happily, the grand stairway, on one side, is unmutilated, and it serves to bring home to us the ample magnificence of these burgundian dukes. dagobert's stair crawls, through twisting darkness, within its tower; blanche's stair modestly suggests a venture toward ease and elegance in life; here we mount the stairway of a feudal _château_, broad and easy and stately, fitting frame for bejewelled courtiers and iron-clad men-at-arms. its one hundred and thirty-eight steps, each a single stone, turn spaciously about the central column, which does not reach to the tower top. its upper section is carved into a stone pot, from which springs a stone oak-tree to the centre of the vaulted ceiling of the broad platform that ends the stairway, the ribs of the vaulting outlined by carved branches and foliage. on each floor below, a large chamber, deserted and dreary, opens on the landing-place; from this upper stage a narrow staircase leads, through the thickness of the wall and up through the _tourelle_ on the angle, to the tiny chamber occupied by john of burgundy, tradition tells us. here in his bedroom, that was an arsenal, at the top of his impregnable tower, the fearless one found safety and sleep. we peep out from his one small window, and far down we see the swarming length of rue Étienne marcel, and hear the low pervasive murmur of paris all astir, accented by the shrill cries of the boys from the adjoining school, at play in the courtyard of our tower. their voices chase back to their shadowy haunts all these companions of our stroll through the ages, and call us down to our own time and to our paris of to-day. the scholars' quarter of the middle ages [illustration: the church of saint-séverin.] the scholars' quarter of the middle ages on that river-bank of the city-island which is called quai aux fleurs, you will find a modern house numbered ; and you will read, in the gold letters of the weather-stained stone slab set in the front wall, that here, in , dwelt héloise and abelard. their ideal heads are carved over the two entrance doors. this is the site of the pleasant residence occupied by canon fulbert, looking across its own garden and the beach to the river--one of the dwellings in the cloisters that were set apart for the clergy and clerks of the cathedral, and of the many parish churches clustering about it. the chapter of notre-dame owned nearly all this end of the island eastwardly from the boundaries of the old palace, and had built up this clerical village of about three dozen small houses, each within its garden and clump of acacias, all sequestered and quiet. you may see one of these houses, still owned by the cathedral, and happily left unchanged, at no. rue massillon. its low two stories and tiled roof on the court keep their old-time look, and within is a good staircase, with a wooden railing of the days before wrought iron came into use. boileau-despréaux has mounted this staircase, for he certainly visited this abode of the abbé ménage, who had literary and scientific _salons_ here, on wednesday evenings. boileau himself lived in these cloisters for many years, and here he died; and here had died philibert delorme and pierre lescot. these and many another, not connected with the church, sought this quarter for its quiet. it was quiet enough, shut in as it was by its own walls, that made of it a _cité_ inside the city of the island. the two gates at the western ends of present rues du cloître-notre-dame and chanoinesse, with two others on the shore, were safely closed and barred at nightfall, against all intrusion of the profane and noisy world without. so greedy for quiet had the dwellers grown, that they would not permit the bridge--the pont-rouge, the seventeenth-century predecessor of pont saint-louis--to step straight out from saint louis's island to their own, lest the speed of traffic should perturb them; they made it turn at an angle, until it set its twisted foot on the retired spot where now rues des ursins and des chantres meet in a small open space. the southern shore by the side of the cathedral was given up to the archbishop's palace and garden; and the piece of waste land, behind the cathedral and outside the wall, known as le terrain, was in banked up into the quay at the end of the present pretty garden. all around the northern and eastern sides of the original notre-dame, stretched the gothic arched cloisters, and in them the church taught what little it thought fit its scholars should learn. here, toward the end of the eleventh century, pierre abelard was an eager pupil of guillaume de champeaux; and early in the next century, here and in the gardens of saint-geneviève, he was a honey-tongued teacher. he lodged in the house of canon fulbert, in whose niece of seventeen--less than half his own age--he found an ardent learner, not alone in theology. here, on this spot, she taught herself that devotion to the poor-spirited lover who was so bold-spirited a thinker; a devotion, that, outlasting his life by the twenty years of her longer life, found expression in her dying wish, put into verse by alexander pope: "may one kind grave unite each hapless name, and graft my love immortal on thy fame." he died at the priory of saint-marcel near châlons, whose prior sent the body, at her request, to héloise, then abbess of the convent at nogent-sur-seine, and famed as a miracle of erudition and piety. she was buried in the grave she there dug for him, and in , when her convent was destroyed, leaving no stone, the tomb and its contents were removed to the museum of french monuments in paris, and in they were placed in père-lachaise. we willingly lose sight of abelard's sorry story in face of his splendid powers. these came into play at a period of mental and spiritual awakening, brought about by unwonted light from all quarters of the sky. theological questions filled the air; asked, not only by priests and clerks, but by the silly crowd and by wistful children, and by gray-headed men sitting on school benches. the crusades, failing in material conquest, had won the holy land of eastern learning; and constantinople, lost later to the christian world, gave to it fleeing greek scholars, carrying precious manuscripts, byzantine logic and physics, all through europe. pious soldiers, coming home with wealth; stay-at-home churchmen, who had amassed riches; royalty, anxious to placate rome--all these built colleges, founded scholarships, endowed chairs, subsidized teachers. from the cloisters on the island--the cradle of the university, as the palace at the other end of the island was the cradle of the town--from the new cathedral that abelard had not seen, the schools stepped over to the mainland on the south. there, on the shore, were built the college of the four nations, and the school of medicine, alongside that annex of the old hôtel-dieu, which was reached by the little bridge, that went only the other day, and that led from the central structure on the island. from this shore the scholars' quarter spread up the slope to the summit of mont-sainte-geneviève. there teachers and scholars met in the cloisters of the great abbey, that had grown up around the tomb of the patron saint of paris, where now stands the panthéon. of the huge basilica, its foundations laid by clovis--who had paid for a victory by his baptism into christianity--there is left the tower, rising, aged and estranged, above the younger structures of the lycée henri iv. its foundations under ground are of clovis, its lower portion is of eleventh-century rebuilding, its upper portion of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. the plan of his cloisters, and some of its stones, are kept in the arches of the college court, to which one enters from no. rue clovis. and, in the street named for his wife, clotilde, you may see the massive side wall of the abbey refectory, now the college chapel. around about the southern side of the abbey, and around the schools on the slope below, that were the beginning of the university, philippe-auguste threw the protecting arm of his great wall. within its clasp lay the _pays latin_, wherein that tongue was used exclusively in those schools. this language, sacred to so-called learning and unknown to the vulgar, seemed a fit vehicle for the lame science of the doctor, and the crippled dialectics of the theologian, both always in arms against the "new learning." it was not until the close of henri iv.'s reign, that it was thought worth while to use the french language in the classes. all through the middle ages, this university was a world-centre for its teaching, and through all the ages it has been "that prolific soil in which no seeds, which have once been committed to it, are ever permitted to perish." while _la cité_ was the seat of a militant church, and _la ville_ the gathering-place of thronging merchants, this hill-side swarmed with students, and their officials were put to it to house them properly and keep them orderly. they got on as best they might, ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-clad, often begging, always roistering, in the streets. by day the sedate burghers of the other quarters trembled for their ducats and their daughters, and found peace only when night brought the locking of the gate of the petit-châtelet, and the shutting up in their own district of the turbulent students. turbulent still, the students of our day, of every land and all tongues--except latin--stream through the streets of the latin quarter, intent on study, or on pleasure bent. only the revolution has ever thinned their ranks, what time the legislative assembly nearly wrecked the parent university, with all its offspring throughout france. napoleon rescued them all, and by his legislation of and , the university has been builded solidly on the foundations of the state. the ancient scholars' quarter, unlighted and undrained and unhealthful, is almost all gone; its narrow, tortuous streets are nearly all widened or wiped out; open spaces and gardens give it larger lungs; its dark, damp, mouldy colleges have made way for grandiose structures of the latest sanitation. yet the gray walls of the annex of the hôtel-dieu still gloom down on the narrow street; the fifteenth-century school of medicine, its vast hall perverted to base uses, is hidden behind the entrance of no. rue de la bucherie; and above the buildings on the west side of rue de l'hôtel-colbert rises the rotunda of its later amphitheatre. rue galande retains many of its houses of the time of charles ix., when these gables on the street were erected. except for the superb façade at no. rue de la parcheminerie--a municipal residence dating from about the middle of the eighteenth century--that venerable street remains absolutely unaltered since its very first days, when the parchment-makers took it for their own. some of their parchment seems to be still on sale in its shop windows. in the ancient house no. rue boutebrie you will find as perfect a specimen of a mediæval staircase, its wooden rail admirably carved, as is left in paris. and the street of the mountain of sainte-geneviève still winds, stonily steep, up the slope. [illustration: rue hautefeuille, a survivor of the scholars' quarter.] nothing of rue du fouarre, as it was known to rabelais and dante, is left but its name in the broadened curtailment of this most ancient street. that name comes from the old french word meaning "forage," and was given to it at the time when the wealthier students bought near there and brought into it the trusses of hay and straw, which they spread on the floor for seats during the lectures, the reader himself being seated on a rude dais at the end of the hall. the forage market is still held, not far away, in place maubert. and the churches of saint-julien-le-pauvre and of saint-séverin are unchanged, except by age, since those days when their bells were the only timekeepers for lecturers and lectured; giving signal, throughout the day, for the divisions of the classes, until vespers told that the working-day was done. the schools opened with the early mass at saint-julien-le-pauvre, then the chapel adjoining the hôtel-dieu, now an exquisite relic of simple twelfth-century gothic. still older had been saint-séverin, a chapel of the earliest years of the monarchy, destroyed by the normans when they camped just here in , besieging the island city and making their onslaught on the wooden tower that guarded the abutment of the petit-pont on the mainland. the twelve heroes, who held that tower against the norman horde, are commemorated by the tablet in the wall of place du petit-pont. saint-séverin was rebuilt in the thirteenth century, and its vast burial-ground on the south covered by the buildings and the street of la parcheminerie. so that of the university seen by dante, we can be sure only of the body of saint-séverin--its tower was built in --and of saint-julien-le-pauvre, and the buildings that are glued to it. [illustration: the interior of saint-julien-le-pauvre.] dante's bronze figure looks pensively down from the terrace of the collége de france on all the noise and the newness of modern rue des Écoles. the date of his short stay in paris cannot be fixed, but it was certainly after his exile from florence, therefore not earlier than , and probably not later than , his own years being a little less, or a little more, than forty. there can be no doubt as to his having visited paris, for boccaccio, his admirer and biographer, records the fact; told him perhaps by the elder boccaccio, who lived in the capital--where his famous son was born--and who probably met the expatriated poet there. and in the tenth canto of "_paradiso_," we find these words in longfellow's translation: "it is the light eternal of sigieri, who, reading lectures in the street of straw, did syllogize individious verities." this closing line, meaning that sigier of brabant had the courage to speak truths that were unpopular, explains why he was dante's favorite lecturer. in balzac's pretty fragment of romance, in which the great frenchman makes so vivid the presence of the great italian, the home of the latter is in one of the small houses on the extreme eastern end of the city island--such as the modest dwelling in which died boileau-despréaux, four centuries later. from there, balzac has dante ferried over to quai de la tournelle, and so stroll to his lectures. but dante's home was really in that same street of straw, to which he had come from his quarters away south on the banks of the bièvre, too far away from the schools. he had taken up his abode in that rural suburb, on first coming to paris, as did many men of letters, of that time and of later times, who were drawn to the pleasant, quiet country without the walls. there was one among these men to whose home, tradition tells us, dante was fond of finding his way, after he had come to live in the narrow town street. the grave figure goes sedately up rue saint-jacques, always the great southern thoroughfare, passing the ancient chapel of the martyrs, saint-benoît-le-bétourné, and the home and shelter for poor students in theology, started by the earnest confessor of saint louis, robert de sorbon. the foundations of his little chapel, built in , were unearthed in during the digging for the new sorbonne; and its walls are outlined in white stone in the gray pavement of the new court. not a stone remains of the old sorbonne, not a stone of the rebuilt sorbonne of richelieu, except his chapel and his tomb; well worth a visit for the exquisite beauty of its detail. but the soul of the historic foundation lives on, younger than ever to-day, in its seventh century of youth. through porte saint-jacques, dante passes to the dwelling, just beyond, of jean de meung, its site now marked by a tablet in the wall of the house no. rue saint-jacques. no doubt it was a sufficiently grand mansion in its own grounds, for it was the home of the well-to-do parents of the poet, whose lameness gave him the popular nickname of "_clopinel_," preferred by him to the name by which he is best known, which came from his natal town. in this home, a few years earlier, he had finished his completion of "le roman de la rose," one of the earliest of french poems, a biting satire on women and priests, begun by guillaume de lorris. "_clopinel_" carried on the unfinished work to such perfection, that he is commonly looked on as the sole author. dante admired the work as fully as did chaucer, who has left a translation into english of a portion:--so admirable a version that it moved eustace deschamps to enthusiasm in his ballad to "_le grand translateur, noble geoffroi chaucer_." and dante liked the workman as well, his equal in genius, many of their contemporaries believed; and we shall not aggrieve history, if we insist on seeing the grim-visaged florentine and the light-hearted gaul over a bottle of _petit vin de vouvray or de chinon_--for the vineyards of this southern slope of paris had been rooted up by the builder early in the twelfth century--in the low-browed living-room, discussing poetry and politics, the schism in the church, the quarrel between the french king and his spiritual father of rome. behind us in rue saint-jacques, beneath the new sorbonne, we have left the site of the chapel of saint-benoît-le-bétourné. the entrance to its cloisters and gardens was opposite rue du cimetière-saint-benoît, a short street, now widened, that retains a few of its ancient houses, the cemetery at its farther end being entirely builded over. this entrance-gate is standing in the gardens of the cluny museum, and we see it as it was first seen by the boy françois villon, and last seen when he fled under it, after killing a priest in the cloisters. he got his name from the worthy canon of saint-benoît, guillaume de villon, who took in the waif and gave him a roof and food, and tried to give him morals; and it is by his name that the poet is known in history rather than by the other names, real or assumed, that he bore during his shifty life. he lived here with his "more than father," as the young scamp came to own that the canon had been; whose house in the cloister gardens, named "_la porte rouge_," was not far from the house of the canon pierre de vaucel, with whose niece françois got into his first scrape. loving her then, he libelled her later in his verse. full of scrapes of all sorts were his thirty short years of life--he was born in the year of the burning of joan the maid, and he slips out of sight and of record in --and it needed all his nimble wits to keep his toes from dangling above ground and his neck from swinging in a noose. they did not keep him from poverty and hunger and prison. parliament, nearly hanging him, banished him instead from paris, and the footsore cockney figure is seen tramping through poitou, berri, bourbonnais. louis xi. finds him in a cell at meung and, sympathizing with rascality that was not political, sets him free and on foot again; so playing providence to this starveling poet as he did to gringoire. and from meung, françois villon steals out of history, leaving to us his "small" and "large testament," a few odes and sonnets, with bits of wholly exquisite song. no french poet before him had put _himself_ into his verse, and it is this flavor of personality that gives its chiefest charm to his work. we are won by the graceless vagabond, who casts up and tells off his entire existence of merriment and misery, in the words of mr. henley's superb translation: "booze and the blowens cop the lot." he seems to be owning to it, this slight, alert figure of bronze in square monge, as he faces the meeting-place of wide modern streets. the spaciousness of it all puzzles him, who prowled about the darkest purlieus, and haunted the uncleanest _cabarets_, of the old university quarter. he is struck suddenly quiescent in his swagger; his face, slightly bent down, shows the poet dashed with the reprobate; his expression and attitude speak of struggling shame and shamelessness. his right hand holds a manuscript to his breast, his left hand clasps the dagger in his belt. behind, on the ground, lie the mandolin of the poet-singer and the shackles of the convict. it is a delightfully expressive statue of françois villon, by his own election one of the "_enfants sans souci_," and by predestination a child of grievous cares. from square monge it is but a step to the tablet that marks the place of porte saint-victor, on the northern side of the remnant left of the street of that name. it is but a step in the other direction to the tablet on the wall of no. rue descartes, which shows the site of porte saint-marcel, sometimes called the porte bordée. through either of these gates of the great wall one might pass to the home of a poet, a hundred years after villon had gone from sight; like him, born to true poetry, but unlike him who was born to rags, pierre de ronsard was born to the purple. he was a gentleman of noble lineage, he had been educated at the famous collége de navarre, the college at that period of henri iii. and of the duke of guise, _le balafré_--its site and its prestige since taken by the École polytechnique--he had entered the court of the duke of orleans as a page, he had gone to scotland as one of the escort of madeleine of france, on her marriage with james v. he was counted among the personal friends of mary stuart and of charles ix., and by him was selected always as a partner in tennis. that king visited ronsard here, and so, too, did his brother henri iii. tasso found his way here, while in paris in , in the train of cardinal louis d'este. it seems that nothing in all france was to tasso's taste, except the windmills on montmartre; easily in view, at that day, from the louvre, at whose windows he watched the ceaseless whirling of their sails, which mitigated his boredom. twenty years earlier, rabelais was fond of ferrying across the river, from his home in rue des jardins-saint-paul, to prowl about his once familiar haunts in this quarter, and to drop in on ronsard and baïf, the leaders of the school of "learned poets." they lived in rue des fossés-saint-victor, the street formed over the outer ditch of the wall, now named rue du cardinal-lemoine. their house and grounds, just at the corner of present rue des boulangers, have been cut through and away by the piercing of rue monge. here, ronsard looked across the meadows to the seine, while he strolled in the gardens, book in hand, eager "to gather roses while it is called to-day," in the words of mr. andrew lang's version of the "prince of poets." for ronsard's deafness, which had cut short his adroit diplomatic career, had given him quicker vision for all beauty; and his verse, greek and latin and french, trips to the music made in him by the sights and scents of summer, by roses and by women, by the memories of "shadow-loves and shadow-lips." and, still rhyming, this most splendid of that constellation--those singers, attuned to stately measure, called the pleiades--died in the year , soon after his sixtieth birthday. [illustration: pierre de ronsard. (from a drawing by an unknown artist, in a private collection.)] from here we go straight away over the hill of sainte-geneviève and through porte saint-michel--nearly at the meeting-place of rues soufflot and monsieur-le-prince and boulevard saint-germain--to the house, also in the fields outside the wall, where dwelt clément marot, a poet who sang pleasantly of the graces of life, too, but who had a more serious strain deep down. the "_cheval d'airan_"--so was the house named--was a gift to the poet from françois i. "for his good, continuous, and faithful services." these services consisted chiefly in the writing of roundelays and verses, in which "he had a turn of his own," says sainte-beuve; a turn of grace and of good breeding, and no passion that should startle the king's sister, good marguerite of navarre, who had made him her groom of the chamber. he had been a prisoner at pavia with the king, and his life had been spent in the camp and the court. at ferrara, in , he had met his fellow-countryman calvin, and returned to paris to prove his strengthened convictions in the new heresies by those translations of the psalms, which carried comfort to calvin and to luther, and which have given to their writer his permanent place in french literature. during this period he lived in this grand mansion, the site of which is exactly covered by the houses no. rue de tournon and no. rue de condé. and from here marot went into exile, along with the well-to-do huguenots, who clung together in this quarter outside the wall. "_nous autres l'appelons la petite genève_," said d'aubigné, and that appellation held for a long time. its centre was the short, narrow lane in the marshes, named later rue des marais-saint-germain, and now rue visconti, wherein the persecuted sect had their hidden place of worship. on its corner with the present rue de seine was the home of jean cousin, that gentleman-worker in stained glass--the sole handicraft allowed to men of birth--who has left for our joy that exquisite window in the church of saint-gervais. at the western end of the lane was the residence built for himself by baptiste du cerceau, son of the illustrious jacques androuët, and as stanch as was his father for the faith. his great mansion took up the whole end of the block, on the ground covered now by the equally large building that makes rue jacob, rue bonaparte, and and rue visconti. a portion of this latter structure may be of the sixteenth century. baptiste du cerceau, a huguenot by birth and bringing-up, had yet joined henri iii.'s famous "forty-five," in , when he was only twenty years old. for ten years he served that king as soldier and architect, and then, rather than attend mass or conform against his convictions, he left king and court and home in . he came back with henri iv. as royal architect, to find that his elegant residence had fallen into ruin. [illustration: balcony over the entrance of the cour du dragon.] when bernard palissy, released from his dungeon in bordeaux, came to paris, he was made "worker in earth and inventor of rustic figulines," for the new abode in the tile fields, beyond the louvre, that was planned for the queen-mother, catherine de' medici. "bernard of the tuileries," as he was known, in order to be near his work, lodged on the northern side of rue saint-honoré, just east of present rue de castiglione. later he removed to rue du dragon, nearly opposite the little street now named in his honor, and so became one of the colony of "_la petite genève_." here he worked as he worked always in his passion for perfection in ornamental pottery, giving to it all "my affection for pursuing in the track of enamels," in his own quaint words. for his single-mindedness in praising his creator, and in making worthy images of his creations, he was looked on as a "_huguenot opiniâtre_," and hated by the powers of the church and state, who, failing to burn him, because of the mercy of the duke of mayenne, cast him into the bastille. with all paris hungry, during the siege of the league by henry of navarre, the prisoners took their turn, and this old man renewed the experience of his youth, when he had starved himself for his beloved enamels. and so, at the age of eighty, in the year of the stabbing by jacques clément of the most christian king, henri iii., bernard palissy died in his cell "naturally," the report said. a medallion of the great potter may be seen over the entrance of a house in rue du dragon, and his statue stands in the little garden of saint-germain-des-prés, not far away. he is in his workman's garb, gazing down at a platter on which he has stamped his genius in clay. we have seen john calvin, fresh from picardy, a student at the collége du cardinal-lemoine, in rue saint-victor, and this is his only residence in paris known to us. appointed curé of pont l'evêque, at the age of sixteen, he was induced by a daring relative to read the bible, and the ultimate result was calvinism, as it has been interpreted by his bigoted disciples. the immediate result was his persecution by the sorbonne, and his flight to ferrara, about the year . there he met with welcome and protection, as did many a political fugitive of the time, from renée, the reigning duchess, as kindly a creature as was her father, louis xii. of france. but her goodwill could not prevail against the ill-will of the church, and calvin was forced to find his way finally to switzerland, to live there for thirty useful years. marot, who was with calvin in ferrara, went back to paris, still countenanced at court; but no favor of king or king's sister could save a sinner who would eat meat during lent; and in marot was forced to flee to italy, and died in turin in . he lives less in his special verse than in his general influence, along with rabelais and montaigne, in the formation of french letters. these three cleansed that language into literature, by purging it of the old gallic chaos and clumsiness of form. so the church made a desert, and called it peace, and "little geneva" was at last laid waste, and those leaders, who escaped the cell and the stake, were made refugees, because they had been insurgents against enslaved thought. but they left behind them him who has been styled the "martyr of the renaissance," Étienne dolet. here, in place maubert, this bronze figure on the high pedestal, which he somehow makes serve as a protestant pulpit, looks all the martyr, with his long, stubborn neck, his stiff spine of unbending conviction, his entire attitude of aggressive devotion to principle. in life he was so strong and so genuine that he made friends almost as many as enemies. that glorious woman, marguerite of navarre--whose absurd devotion to her brother francis is only a lovable flaw in her otherwise faultless nature--stood by dolet as she stood by so many men who had the courage to study and think and speak. she saved him from execution, when he had killed a man in self-defence at lyons, and she should have been allowed to sit at table with the friends who gave him a little dinner in the _pays latin_ to celebrate his escape. among those about the board were marot, rabelais, erasmus, melancthon, tradition says, and says no more. we are told nothing about the speechmakers, and we can only guess that they were terribly in earnest. dolet was soon again in arrest for printing books forbidden by the church; his trial resulted in an acquittal. soon again he was arrested for importing the forbidden literature, and escaped from prison. rearrested, he was speedily convicted, and on august , , he was burned in place maubert, on the spot where they have put his statue. [illustration: clément marot. (from the portrait by porbus le jeune, in a private collection.)] it was during one of his visits in later life to paris that erasmus came to be among these _convives_; perhaps at the time he was considering, before declining, the offer of françois i. to make him the head of the great collége royal, planned--and no more than planned--by the king on the site of the hôtel de nesle, where mazarin afterward placed his college of the four nations, now the seat of the institute. many years before this visit, some time between and , erasmus had lived in paris, a poor and unhappy student in the collége montaigu. it had earned the nickname of "_collége des haricots_," because of the lenten fare lavished on its inmates--beans, stale eggs, spoiled fish, and that monotony broken by frequent fasts. erasmus had a catholic conscience, as he owns, but a lutheran stomach withal, and this semi-starvation, with the filth and fleas in the rooms, sickened him and drove him home to cleanly and well-fed flanders. from this college, he says in his "colloquia," "i carried nothing but a body infected with disease, and a plentiful supply of vermin." a few years later young rabelais suffered similar horrors at the same college, and has cursed its memories through grangousier's capable lips. this "galley for slaves" was indeed used as a prison during the revolution, and was torn down in , to give place to the bibliothèque sainte-geneviève. from place maubert we walk up rue monge--named from the great _savant_ of the first empire--and down to the seventeenth century, to where, on the corner of rue rollin, we find the tablet that records the scene of blaise pascal's death in . he lived and died in the house of his sister, in the fields just beyond porte saint-marcel. thirty-one years before, he had left auvergne for paris, a precocious lad of eight, already so skilled in mathematics and geometry that he produced his famous treatises while still in his teens, and at the age of twenty-three was known for his abilities throughout europe. no man dying, as he did, not yet forty years of age, has left so distinct and permanent an impress on contemporary, and on later, thought. he gained the honor of being hated by the church, and the jesuits named him "_porte d'enfer_." his only answer was the philosophic question, "how can i _prove_ that i am not the gate of hell?" this many-sided genius invented the first calculating machine and the first omnibus. the line was started on march , , and ran from the palace of the luxembourg to the bastille. its route was probably by rue de la harpe--almost all gone under boulevard saint-michel--across petit-pont and the island and pont notre-dame, to place de grève, and thence by rues françois-miron and saint-antoine, to the gate and the prison at the end. it was long a matter of dispute between the towers of saint-jacques-de-la-boucherie and saint-jacques-du-haut-pas--this latter much nearer his home--as to which one had been selected by pascal for the experiments he made, to prove his theory of atmospheric pressure, and to refute the theory of his opponents. within a few years this question has been answered by an old painting, found in a curiosity shop, which represents pascal, barometer in hand, standing on the top of saint-jacques-de-la-boucherie, beside the statue of the chimæra, that has been carried to the cluny museum. this figure alone would fix the spot, but, in addition, the picture gives a view of old paris that could be seen only from this point of view. this elegant isolated tower--all that is left of a church dating from the beginnings of christian construction, and destroyed during the revolution--was itself erected late in the fifteenth and early in the sixteenth century, and shows the last effort of mediæval gothic in paris. it is now used as a weather observatory. pascal's statue, by cavelier, has been placed under the great vaulted arch that forms its base, and all about, in the little park, are instruments for taking and recording all sorts of atmospheric changes. it may have been while driving between this tower and his sister's house, that pascal's carriage was overturned on pont-neuf, and he narrowly escaped death by falling or by drowning. from that day he gave up his service to science, and gave himself up solely to the service of god. into his "thoughts" he put all his depth of reflection and his intensity of feeling, all his force and finish of phrase. yet, always behind this christian philosopher, we are conscious of the man of feeling, who owns that he could be drawn down from his high meditations, and could be drawn up from his profound melancholy, by "_un peu de bon temps, un bon mot, une louange, une caresse_." his body was laid in the abbey church of sainte-geneviève, and was removed, on the destruction of that edifice in , to its successor in tradition and sentiment, saint-Étienne-du-mont. it rests at the base of one of the outer pillars of the lady chapel, opposite the spot of racine's final sepulture. the two tablets from their original tombs have been set in the pillars of the first chapel on the southern side of the choir, just behind the exquisite rood-screen. when aged rue rollin was quite young it was christened rue neuve-saint-Étienne, and it was bordered by cottages standing in their own gardens, looking down the slope across the town to the river, this being the highest street on the hill-side. its length has been lessened by rue monge, and that portion left to the east of the new street is now rue de navarre. rue monge was cut through the crest of the hill, so that one must mount by stone steps to the old level of the western end of rue neuve-saint-Étienne, named anew in honor of the scholar and historian, who has given his name also to the great college, since removed from this quarter to boulevard rochechouart, away off on the northern heights. charles rollin was an earnest student, an unusually youthful rector of the university, and principal of the college of beauvais in , and a writer of history and _belles-lettres_ of great charm but little weight. he was, withal, an honest soul, somewhat naïve, of simple tastes and of quiet life. so he came to this secluded quarter, when a little over seventy, and here he died in . his cottage is numbered in the street, and is occupied by the school of sainte-geneviève, whose demure maidens do no violence to his tranquil garden in which they stroll. for their use a small pavilion has been built in the rear of the garden, but there is no other change. the two latin lines, inscribed by him in praise of his rural home within the town, remain on an inner wall of his cottage at your left as you enter. fifty years later another writer found a quiet home in this same street. hidden behind the heavy outer door of no. , a roomy mansion built in by a country-loving subject of louis xiii., is a tablet that tells of the residence here, from to , of jacques-henri bernardin de saint-pierre. a man of finer qualities and subtler charm than rollin, his work is of no greater weight in our modern eyes, for with all the refinement of imagination and the charm of description that made his pen "a magic wand" to sainte-beuve, his emotional optimism grows monotonous, and his exuberant sensibility flows over into sentimentality. in the court of his house is an ancient well, and behind lies a lovable little garden, with a rare iron rail and gateway. this traveller in many lands, this adorer of nature, took keen delight in his outlook, from his third-story windows, over this garden and the gardens beyond, to the seine. here in he wrote "studies from nature," an instantaneous success, surpassed only by the success of "paul and virginia," published in . possibly no book has ever had such a vogue. it was after reading this work, in italy, that the young bonaparte wrote to bernardin: "your pen is a painter's brush." yet his reading of the manuscript, before its publication, in the _salon_ of madame necker, had merely bored his hearers, and the humiliated author had fled from their yawns to this congenial solitude. the narrow street has suffered slight change since those days, or since those earlier days, when rené descartes found a temporary home, probably on the site of present no. , a house built since his day here. that was between , when he first came from brittany, and , when he went to the netherlands. but there can be found no trace of the stay in this street, nor of the secluded home in the faubourg saint-germain, of the founder of cartesian philosophy--the first movement in the direction of modern philosophy--the father of modern physiology, as huxley claims, and of modern psychology, as its students allow. his wandering life, in search always of truth, ended in , at the court of christina of sweden. his body was brought back to france by the ambassador of louis xiv., and placed in the old church of sainte-geneviève. in , the convention decreed its removal to the recently completed and secularized panthéon, and from there it was carried for safe keeping, along with so many others, to the museum of french monuments. in it found final resting-place in saint-germain-des-prés, in the third chapel on the southern side of the choir. the man himself lives for us on the wonderful canvas of franz hals in the gallery of the louvre. [illustration: rené descartes. (from the portrait by franz hals, in the musée du louvre.)] the paris of the north bank has its slope, that looks across the seine to this southern slope, and that has come to be its scholarly quarter. the high land away behind the lowlands stretching along the northern bank was taken early by the romans for their villas, and then by nobles for their _châteaux_, and then by the _bourgeoisie_ for their cottages. as _la ville_ grew, its citizens gave all their thought to honest industry and to the honest struggle for personal and municipal rights, so that none was left for literature. when its time came, the town had spread up and over these northern heights, and men of letters and of the arts were attracted by their open spaces and ample outlook. so large a colony of these workers had settled there, early in the nineteenth century, that some among them gave to their hill-side the name of "_la nouvelle athènes_." its vogue has gone on growing, and it is crowded with the memories of dead pen-workers, and with the presence of living pen-workers. so, too, are the suburbs toward the west, and this scholars' quarter on the southern bank, which is barely touched on in this book, given so greatly as it is to history, archæology, architecture, and other arts. all this wide-spread district awaits the diligent pen that has given us "the literary landmarks of london," to give us, as completely and accurately, "the literary landmarks of paris." moliÈre and his friends moliÈre and his friends in the early years of the seventeenth century there stood a low, wide, timbered house on the eastern corner of rues saint-honoré and des vieilles-Étuves. to the dwellers in that crowded quarter of the halles it was known as "_la maison des singes_," because of the carved wooden tree on its angle, in the branches of which wooden monkeys shook down wooden fruit to an old wooden monkey at its foot. this house, that dated from the thirteenth century surely, and that may have been a part of queen blanche's paris, was torn down only in , and a slice of its site has been cut off by rue sauval, the widened and renamed rue des vieilles-Étuves. the modern building on that corner, numbered rue saint-honoré, is so narrow as to have only one window on each of its three floors facing that street. around the first story, above the butcher's shop on the entrance floor, runs a balcony with great gilt letters on its rail, that read "_maison de molière_." high up on its front wall is a small tablet, whose legend, deciphered with difficulty from the street, claims this spot for the birthplace of molière. this is a veracious record. the exact date of the birth of the eldest son of jacques poquelin and marie cressé, his wife, is unknown, but it was presumably very early in january, , for, on the fifteenth of that month, the baby was baptized "jean poquelin," in his father's parish church of saint-eustache--a new church not quite completed then. the name "baptiste" was, seemingly, added a little later by his parents. on this corner the boy lived for eleven years; here his mother died, ten years after his birth, and here his father soon married again; he removed, in , to a house he had inherited, the ground floor of which he made his shop of upholstery and of similar stuffs, the family residing above. it was no. rue de la tonnellerie, under the pillars of the halles, possibly, but not certainly, on the site of the present no. rue du pont-neuf. in a niche, cut in the front wall of this modern building, has been placed a bust of molière and an inscription asserting that this was his birthspot, a local legend that harms no one, and comforts at least the _locataire_. hereabout, certainly, the boy played, running forward and back across the market. on its northern side, near the public pillory, was another house owned by his father, on the old corner of rue de la réale, and its site is now covered by the pavement of modern rue rambuteau. it is pleasant to picture the lad in this ancient quarter, as we walk through those few of its streets unchanged to this day, notably that bit of rue de la ferronerie, so narrow that it blocked the carriage of henri iv., a few years before, and brought him within easy reach of the knife of ravaillac as he sprang on the wheel. françois coppée, not yet an old man, readily recalls the square squat columns of the old halles, and, all about, the solid houses supported by pillars like the arcades of place des vosges; all just as when young poquelin played about them. plays, as well as play, already attracted him; he loved to look at the marionettes and the queer side-shows of the outdoor fairs held about the halles; and his grandfather, louis cressé, an ardent playgoer, often took him to laugh at the funny fellows who frolicked on the trestles of the pont-neuf, and at the rollicking farces in the théâtre du marais. no doubt he saw, too, the tragedies of the theatre of the hôtel de bourgogne, and this observant boy may well have anticipated the younger crébillon's opinion, that french tragedy of that day was the most absolute farce yet invented by the human mind. for this was a little while before the coming of corneille with true tragedy. this son of the king's upholsterer cared nothing for his father's trade, and not much for books. he learned, early, that his eyes were meant for seeing, and he not only saw everything, but he remembered and reflected; showing signs already of that bent which gave warrant, in later life, for boileau's epithet, "molière the contemplator." he was sent, in , being then fourteen years old, to the collége de clermont, named a little later, and still named, lycée louis-le-grand. rebuilt during the second empire, it stands on its old site behind the collége de france, in widened rue saint-jacques. here, during his course of five years, he was sufficiently diligent in such studies as happened to please him; and was prominent in the plays, acted by the scholars at each prize-giving. he made many friendships with boys who became famous men; with one, just leaving school as he came, who especially stood his friend in after life--the youthful prince de conti, younger brother of the great condé. and this elder brother became, years after, the friend and protector of the young actor-playwright, just as he was of some others of that famous group, racine, la fontaine, boileau. all these, along with all men eminent in any way, were welcomed to his grand seat at chantilly, and were frequent guests at his great town-house, whose _salon_ was a rival to that of the hôtel de rambouillet. his mansion, with its grounds, occupied the whole of that triangular space bounded now by rues de vaugirard, de condé, and monsieur-le-prince. at the northern point of that triangle, nearly on the ground now covered by the second théâtre français, the odéon, stood the prince's private theatre; wherein molière, by invitation, played the rôles of author, actor, manager. molière's customary rôle in this great house was that of friend of the host, who wrote to him: "come to me at any hour you please; you have but to announce your name; you visit can never be ill-timed." jean-baptiste poquelin betook himself early to the boards for which he was born, from which he could not be kept by his course at college or at law. he studied law fitfully for a while; sufficiently, withal, to lay up a stock of legal technicalities and procedure, which he employed with precision in many of his plays. so, too, he took in, no doubt unconsciously, details of his father's business; and his references, in his stage-talk, to hangings, furniture, and costumes, are frequent and exact. the father, unable to journey with the king to narbonne in the spring of , as his official duties demanded, had his son appointed to the place, and the young man, accompanying the court and playing _tapissier_ on this journey, saw, it is said, the execution of cinq-mars and de thou. in the provinces at this time, or it may have been in paris earlier, he met, became intimate with, and soon after joined, a troupe of strolling players, made up of joseph béjart, his two sisters madeleine and geneviève, and other young parisians. this troupe was touring in languedoc early in , and was rather strong in its talent and fortunate in its takings; in no way akin to that shabby set of barnstormers satirized by scarron in his "roman comique." we cannot fix the date of poquelin's _début_ in the company, but we know that--with the unhallowed ambition of the born and predestined comedian--he began in tragedy, and that he was greeted by his rural audiences with hootings, punctuated by the pelting of fried potatoes, then sold at the theatre door. and we know that the troupe came north to rouen in the autumn of , playing a night or two in the natal town of corneille. it is a plausible and a pleasing fancy that sees the glory of french dramatic art of that day, at home on a visit to his mother, receiving free tickets for the show, with the respects of the young recruit to the stage, the glory of french dramatic art at no distant day. the troupe had gone to rouen and to other provincial towns only while awaiting the construction of their theatre in the capital, contracted for during the summer. at last, on the evening of december , , it raised its first curtain to the parisian public, under the brave, or the bumptious, title of "l'illustre théâtre." to trace, from his first step on paris boards, the successive sites of molière's theatres is a delightful task, in natural continuation of that begun in an earlier chapter, where those theatres in existence before his time were pointed out. in england, we know, stage-players were "strollers and vagabonds" by statute; not allowed to play within london's walls. all their early theatres were outside the city limits. the globe, the summer theatre of shakespeare and his "fellows"--"whereon was prepared scaffolds for beholders to stand upon"--was across the thames, on bankside, southwark. so, too, were the hope, the rose, the swan. the curtain was in shoreditch, davenant's theatre in lincoln's inn fields, and the blackfriars theatre on ludgate hill, just without the old wall. the early playhouses of paris were built--but for another reason--on the outer side of the town wall of philippe-auguste, and their seemingly unaccountable situations are easily accounted for by following on either bank the course of that wall, already plainly mapped out in preceding pages. this magnificent wall of a magnificent monarch had lost much of its old significance for defence with the coming of gunpowder, and a new use was found for it, in gentler games than war, as the town outgrew its encircling limits. in the middle ages, tennis--the oldest ball-game known--was a favorite sport of kings and of those about them. it was called _le jeu de paume_, being played with the hand until the invention of the racket; the players standing in the ditch outside the wall, against which the ball was thrown. beyond the ditch was built the court for onlookers, the common folk standing on its floor, their betters seated in the gallery. when the game lost its vogue, these courts were easily and cheaply turned into the rude theatres of that day, with abundant space for actors and spectators; those of low degree crowding on foot in the body of the building, those who paid a little more seated in the galleries, those of high degree on stools and benches at the side of the stage, and even on the stage itself. this encroachment on the stage, within sight of the audience, grew to such an abuse that it was done away with in , and the scene was left solely to the players. where a tablet is let into the wall of the present nos. and rue mazarine, then named the fossé-de-nesle--the ancient outer ditch of the old wall--a roomy playhouse had been contrived from a former tennis-court owned by arnold mestayer, a solid citizen of the town, captain of the hundred musketeers of henri iv.'s day. this was the theatre taken by the béjart troupe and named "l'illustre théâtre." here young poquelin made his first bow to paris. the building stood on the sites of the present nos. , , and rue mazarine, its only entrance for spectators reached by an alley that ran along the line between nos. and , and so through to rue de seine, to where the buildings extended over the ground now covered by nos. and . these latter houses are claimed by local legend for molière's residence, and it may well be that the rear part of the theatre served as sleeping-quarters for the troupe. the interior of no. is of very ancient construction, its front being of later date. in the wall between it and no. --a low wooden structure, possibly a portion of the original fabric--is hidden the well that served first the tennis-players and then the stage-players. there is no longer any communication between these houses in rue de seine and those in rue mazarine. these latter were built in , when the street was widened, that portion of the old theatre having been demolished a few years earlier. it was in june, , that the name molière first appears, signed--it is his earliest signature in existence--among the rest of the company, to a contract with a dancing man for the theatre. how he came to select this name is not known, nor was it known to any of his young comrades; for he always refused to give his reasons. what is known, is that it was a name of weight even then, proving that, within the first six months of the theatre's existence, his business ability had made him its controlling spirit. but his abilities as manager and as actor could not bring success to the theatre. foreign and civil wars made the state poor; wide-spread financial troubles made the people poor; that cruelly cold winter froze out the public. "_nul animal vivant n'entra dans notre salle_," are the bitterly true words, put into the mouth of the young actor-manager, by an unknown writer of a scurrilous verse. he and the troupe were liberated from their lease within the year, and, early in , they migrated over the river to the _jeu de paume de la croix-noire_. on either end of the long, low building at no. quai des célestins is a tablet; the western one showing where stood the tour barbeau that ended the wall on this river-bank; that at the eastern end marking the site of this theatre, just without the wall. it had an entrance on the quay-front for the boatmen and other water-side patrons, another in rue des barrés for its patrons coming by coach. molière lodged in the house--probably a portion of the theatre--at the corner of the quay and of rue des jardins-saint-paul--that country lane wherein had died rabelais, nearly a century earlier. little rue des barrés, already seen taking its name from the barred or striped gowns of the monks who settled there, is now rue de l'ave-maria, and at its number you will find the stage entrance of this theatre, hardly changed since it was first trodden by the players from over the river. there is the low and narrow door, one of its jambs bent with the weight of the more modern structure above, and beyond is the short alleyway, equally narrow, by which they passed to the stage. at its inner end, where it opens into a small court, is the stone rim of a well, half hidden in the wall. it is the well provided in each tennis-court for the players, and handed on, with the court itself, for the use of the actors. molière has leaned over this well-curb to wash away his rouge and wrinkles. it is an indisputable and attractive witness of his early days. in saint-germain-l'auxerrois, where he knelt at the altar for his marriage and stood at the font with his son; in saint-eustache, where he carried his second son for baptism; in saint-roch, where he wrote his name as godfather of a friend's daughter--within these vast and dim aisles, his bodily presence is vaguely shadowed forth; _here_ we can touch the man. [illustration: stage door of molière's second theatre in paris.] what sort of plays were presented at this house we do not know, the only record that remains referring to the production of "artaxerxes" by one mignon. whatever they played, neither the rough men of the quay and of port saint-paul, nor the _bourgeoisie_ of the marais, nor the fine folk of place royale, crowded into the new theatre. during this disastrous season, the troupe received royal commands to play at fontainebleau before the king and court, and later, by invitation of the duc de l'Éperon, at his splendid mansion in rue de la plâtrière--that mansion in which lived and died la fontaine, half a century later. neither these fashionable flights, nor the royal and noble patronage accorded to the troupe, could save it from failure and final bankruptcy. molière, the responsible manager, was arrested for the theatre's poor little debt for candles and lights. he was locked up for a night or two in the dismal prison of the grand châtelet, once the fortress of louis "le gros," torn down only in , on whose site now sparkles the fountain of place du châtelet. from this lock-up, having petitioned for release to m. d'aubray, civil lieutenant of the town and father of the marquise de brinvilliers, molière was released by the quickly tendered purse of léonard aubry, "royal paver and street sweeper," who, when filling in the fossé-de-nesle and laying out over it the present rue mazarine a year before, had made fast friends with the young actor. "for his good service in ransoming the said poquelin," the entire troupe bound itself to make aubry whole for his debt. now they cross the river again to their former faubourg saint-germain, taking for their house the _jeu de paume de la croix-blanche_, outside the wall on the south side of the present rue de buci, between the _carrefour_ at its eastern end and rue grégoire-de-tours. here they played, still playing against disaster, from the end of to the end of , and then they fled from paris, fairly beaten, and betook themselves to the southern provinces. we cannot follow their wanderings, nor record their ups and downs, during the twelve years of their absence. in the old play-bills we find the names of béjart _aîné_ and of his brother louis, of their sisters madeleine and geneviève. toward the end of their touring they added to the family, though not to the boards, armande, who had been brought up in languedoc, and who was claimed by them to be their very young sister, and by others to be the unacknowledged daughter of madeleine. molière, the leader and manager of the troupe from the day they started, was then only twenty-five years of age, not yet owning or knowing his full powers. these he gained during that twelve years' hard schooling and rude apprenticeship, so that he came back to the capital, in , master of his craft, with a load of literary luggage such as no french tourist has carried, before or since. under princely patronage, won in the provinces, his troupe appeared before louis xiv., the queen-mother, and the entire court, on october , , in a theatre improvised in the salle des gardes of the old louvre, now known as the salle des caryatides. the pieces on that opening night were corneille's "nicomède" and the manager's "le docteur amoureux." in november, the "_troupe de monsieur_"--that title permitted by the king's brother--was given possession of the theatre in the palace of the petit-bourbon. it stood between the old louvre, with which it was connected by a long gallery, and the church of saint-germain-l'auxerrois, and was torn down in to make place for the new colonnade that forms the present eastern face of the louvre. the dainty jardin de l'infante covers the site of the stage, just at the corner of the egyptian gallery. in this hall molière's company played for two years, on alternate nights with the italian comedians, presenting, along with old standard french pieces--for authors in vogue held aloof--his provincial successes, as well as new plays and ballets invented by him for the delectation of the _grand monarque_. from this time his remaining fifteen years of life were filled with work; his brain and his pen were relentlessly employed; honors and wealth came plentifully to him, happiness hardly at all. while at this theatre molière lived just around the corner on quai de l'École, now quai du louvre, in a house that was torn away in for the widening of present rue du louvre. many of the buildings left on the quay are of the date and appearance of this, his last bachelor home. driven from the petit-bourbon by its hurried demolition in , molière was granted the use and the privileges of the _salle_ of the former palais-cardinal, partly gone to ruin and needing large expenditure to make it good. it had been arranged by richelieu, just before his death, for the presentation of his "mirame." for the great cardinal and great minister thought that he was a great dramatist too, and in his vanity saw himself the centre of the mimic stage, as he really was of the world-stage he managed. he is made by bulwer to say, with historic truth: "of my ministry i am not vain; but of my muse, i own it." his theatre in his residence--willed at his death to the king, and thenceforward known as the palais-royal--was therefore the only structure in paris designed especially and solely for playhouse purposes. it stood on the western corner of rues saint-honoré and de valois, as a tablet there tells us. during the repairs molière took his troupe to various _châteaux_ about paris, returning to open this theatre on january , . this removal was the last he made, and this house was the scene of his most striking successes. it is not out of place here to follow his troupe for a while after his death, and so complete our record of those early theatres. his widow, succeeding to the control of the company, was, within three months, compelled to give up the cardinal's house to lulli, the most popular musician of that day, and a scheming fellow withal. the unscrupulous florentine induced the king to grant him this salle des spectacles for the production of his music. the opera held the house until fire destroyed it in , when a new "academy of music" was constructed on the eastern corner of the same streets; this, also, was burned in . above the tablet recording these dates on this eastern-corner wall is a fine old sun-dial, such as is rarely seen in paris, and seldom noticed now. the widow molière, being dispossessed, found a theatre in rue mazarine, just beyond her husband's first theatre, "in the tennis-court where hangs a bottle for a sign." for it had been the _jeu de paume de la bouteille_, and now became the théâtre guénégaud, being exactly opposite the end of that street. within the structure at no. rue mazarine may be seen the heavy beams of the front portion of its fabric, where was the entrance for the public. the space behind, now used for a workshop, with huge pillars around its four sides, served for the audience, and the stage was built farther beyond. on the court of this house, and on the contiguous court of no. rue de seine, stood a large building, whose first floor was taken by madame molière, and in its rear wall she cut a door to give access to her stage. the entrance for the performers was in the little passage du pont-neuf, and under it there are remains of the foundations of the theatre. here, in may, , the widow took the name of madame guérin on her marriage with a comedian of her company. and we feel as little regret as she seems to have felt for her loss of an illustrious name. in the words of a derisive verse of the time: "_elle avoit un mari d'esprit, qu'elle aimoit peu; elle prend un de chair, qu'elle aime davantage._" [illustration: comÉdie franÇaise ] this was the first theatre to present to the general public "lyric dramas set to music," brought first to france by mazarin for his private stage in the small hall of the palais-royal, where they were presented as "_comédies en musique, avec machines à la mode d'italie_." they bored everybody, the fashion for opera not yet being set. on october , , by letters-patent from royalty, the troupe of the théâtre guénégaud was united to that of the hôtel de bourgogne, and to the combined companies was granted the name of comédie française, the first assumption of that now time-honored title. the theatre became so successful that the jansenists in the collége mazarin--the present institute--made an uproar because they were annoyed by the traffic and the turmoil in the narrow street, and succeeded in driving away the playhouse in . after a long search, the comédie française found new quarters in the _jeu de paume de l'Étoile_, built along the outer edge of the street made over the ditch of the wall, named rue des fossés-saint-germain, now rue de l'ancienne-comédie. at its present no. , set in the original front wall of the theatre, between the second and third stories, a tablet marks the site; above it is a bas-relief, showing a minerva reclining on a slab. she traces on paper, with her right hand, that which is reflected in the mirror of truth, held in her left hand. at the rear of the court stands the old fabric that held the stage. since those boards were removed to other walls--the story shall be told in a later chapter--the building has had various usages. it now serves as a storehouse for wall-paper. during the empire it was taken for his studio by the artist antoine-jean gros, the successor of david and the forerunner of géricault; so standing for the transition from the classic to the romantic school. it is not true that he killed himself in this studio. he went out from it, when maddened by the art critics, and drowned himself in the seine in the summer of . it was a great bill with which the comédie française opened this house on the night of april , , for it was made up of two masterpieces, racine's "phèdre" and molière's "le médecin malgré lui." a vast and enthusiastic audience thronged, with joyous clatter, through narrow rues mazarine and dauphine, coming from the river. the café procope, recently opened just opposite the theatre, was crowded after the performance, the drinkers of coffee not quite sure that they liked the new beverage. and so, at the top of their triumphs, we leave the players with whom we have vagabondized so long and so sympathetically. molière, at the height of his career, had married armande béjart, he being forty years of age, she "aged twenty years or thereabout," in the words of the marriage contract, signed january , . no one knows now, very few knew then, whether the bride was the sister or the daughter of madeleine béjart, molière's friend and comrade for many years, who doubled her rôle of versatile actress with that of provident cashier of the company. she was devoted to armande, whom she had taken to her home from the girl's early schooling in languedoc, and over whom she watched in the _coulisses_. she fought against the marriage, which she saw was a mistake, finally accepted it, and at her own death in left all her handsome savings to the wife of molière. in the cast of the "École des maris," first produced in , appears the name of armande béjart, and, three months after the marriage, "mlle. molière"--so were known the wives of the _bourgeoisie_, "madame" being reserved for _grandes-dames_--played the small part of Élise put for her by the author into his "critique de l'École des femmes." henceforward she was registered as one of the troupe, the manager receiving two portions of the receipts for his and her united shares. she was a pleasing actress, never more than mediocre, except in those parts, in his own plays, fitted to her and drilled into her by her husband. she had an attractive presence on the boards, without much beauty, without any brains. her voice was exquisite, opulent in tones that seemed to suggest the heart she did not own. for she was born with an endowment of adroit coquetry, and she developed her gift. she was flighty and frivolous, evasive and obstinate, fond of pleasures not always innocent. her spendthrift ways hurt molière's thrifty spirit, her coquetry hurt his love, her caprices hurt his honor. his infatuation, a madness closely allied to his genius, brought to him a fleeting happiness, followed by almost unbroken torments of love, jealousy, forgiveness. in his home he found none of the rest nor comfort nor sympathy so much needed, after his prodigious work in composing, drill-work in rehearsing, and public work in performing at his theatre, and at versailles and fontainebleau. he got no consolation from his wife for the sneers of venomous rivals, enraged by his supremacy, and for the stabs of the great world, eager to avenge his keen puncturing of its pretence and its priggishness. and while he writhed in private, he made fun in public of his immitigable grief, and portrayed on the stage the betrayed and bamboozled husband--at once tragic and absurd--that he believed himself to be. these eleven years of home-sorrows shortened his life. on the very day of his fatal attack, he said to the flippant minx, armande: "i could believe myself happy when pleasure and pain equally filled my life; but, to-day, broken with grief, unable to count on one moment of brightness or of ease, i must give up the game. i can hold out no longer against the distress and despair that leave me not one instant of respite." the church ceremony of their marriage had taken place on february , , at saint-germain-l'auxerrois, as its register testifies. he had already left his bachelor quarters on quai de l'École, and had taken an apartment in a large house situated on the small open space opposite the entrance of the palais-royal, the germ of the present _place_ of that name. his windows looked out toward his theatre, and on the two streets at whose junction the house stood--saint-thomas-du-louvre and saint-honoré. the first-named street, near its end on quai du louvre, held the hôtel de rambouillet, which was a reconstruction of the old hôtel de pisani, made in , after the plan and under the eye of the marquise de rambouillet. she is known in history, as she was known in the _salons_ of her day, by her sobriquet of "arthénice"--an anagram coined by malherbe from her name catherine. hither came all that was brilliant in paris, and much that pretended to be brilliant; and from here went out the grotesque affectations of the _précieuses ridicules_. the mansion--one of the grandest of that period--having passed into other hands, was used as a vauxhall d'hiver in , as a theatre in , and was partly burned in . the remaining portion, which served as stables for louis-philippe, was wiped away, along with all that end of the old street, by the second empire, to make space for the alignment of the wings of the louvre. the buildings of the ministry of finance cover a portion of the street, and the site of molière's residence, in the middle of the present place du palais-royal, is trodden, almost every day of the year, by the feet of american women, hurrying to and from the museum of the louvre or the great shop of the same name. after a short stay in their first home, molière and his wife set up housekeeping in rue de richelieu. it is not known if it was in the house of his later domicile and death. their cook here was the famous la forêt, to whom, it is said, molière read his new plays, trying their effect on the ordinary auditor, such as made up the bulk of the audiences of that time. servants were commonly called la forêt then, and the real name of this cook was renée vannier. within a year, domestic dissensions came to abide in the household, and it was moved back to its first home, where madeleine had remained, and now made one of the _ménage_. to it came a new inmate in february, , a boy, baptized at saint-germain-l'auxerrois, having the great monarch for a godfather, and for a godmother henrietta of england, wife of the king's brother, philippe d'orléans, and poisoned by him or his creatures a few years later, it is believed. these royal sponsors were represented at the christening by distinguished state servants, the whole affair giving ample proof of this player's position at the time. a little later, we have hints that the small family was living farther east in rue saint-honoré, at the corner of rue d'orléans, still near his theatre, in a house swept away when that street was widened into rue du louvre. from this house was buried, in november, , the child louis, the burial-service being held at saint-eustache, their parish church, molière's baptismal church, his mother's burial church. here, too, in the following year, august, , he brought to the font his newly born daughter, esprit-madeleine. in october of this same year he took a long lease of an apartment in their former house on the corner of rue saint-thomas-du-louvre, and there they stayed for seven years, removing once more, and for the last time, in october, , to rue de richelieu. where now stands no. of that street, rené baudelet, tailor to the queen by title, had taken a house only recently builded, and from him molière rented nearly every floor. his lease was for a term of six years, and he lived only four and a half months after coming here. the first floor was set apart for his wife, whose ostentatious furnishing, including a bed fit for a queen, is itemized in the inventory made after her husband's death. he took for his apartment the whole second floor, spaciously planned and sumptuously furnished; for he, too, was lavish in his expenditure and loved costly surroundings. his plate was superb, his wardrobe rich, his collection of dramatic books and manuscripts complete and precious. his bedroom, wherein he died, was on the rear of the house, and its windows looked over the garden of the palais-royal, to which he had access from his terrace below, and thence by steps down to a gate in the garden wall. thus he could get to his theatre by way of those trim paths of richelieu's planning, as well as by going along the street and around the corner. you must bear in mind that the galleries of the palais-royal, with their shops, were not constructed until , and that rues de valois and montpensier were not yet cut; so that the garden reached, on either side, to the backs of the houses that fronted on rues de richelieu and des bons-enfants. many of the occupants had, like molière, their private doors in the garden wall, with access by stone steps. one of these staircases is still left, and may be seen in rue de valois, descending from the rear of the hôtel de la chancellerie d'orléans, whose doric entrance-court is at no. rue des bons-enfants. the house now numbered rue de richelieu and rue montpensier was erected soon after , when the walls that had harbored molière were torn down to prevent them from tumbling down. the present building has an admirable circular staircase climbing to an open lantern in the roof. the houses on either side, numbered _bis_ and rue montpensier, retain their original features of a central body with projecting wings, and so serve to show us a likeness of molière's dwelling. their front windows look out now on the grand fountain of the younger visconti's design, erected to molière's memory in , at the junction of rue de richelieu and old rue traversière, now named rue molière. this fountain, flowing full and free always, as flowed the inspiration of his muse, is surmounted by an admirable seated statue of the player-poet by seurre, the figures of serious and of light comedy, standing at his feet on either side, being of pradier's design. and in rue de richelieu, a little farther south, at the present nos. and _bis_--once one grand mansion, still intact, though divided--lived his friend mignard, and here he died in . the painter and the player had met at avignon in - , and grew to be life-long friends, with equal admiration of the other's art. indeed, molière considered that he honored raphael and michael angelo, when he named them "_ces mignards de leur âge_." certainly no such vivid portrait of molière has come down to us as that on the canvas of this artist, now in the gallery at chantilly. it shows us not the comedian, but the man in the maturity of his strength and beauty. his blond _perruque_, such as was worn then by all gallants, such as made his alceste sneer, softens the features marked strongly even so early in life, but having none of the hard lines cut deeper by worry and weariness. the mouth is large and frank, the eyes glow with a humorous melancholy, the expression is eloquent of his wistful tenderness. [illustration: the molière fountain.] early in we find molière leasing a little cottage, or part of a cottage, at auteuil, for a retreat at times. he needed its pure air for his failing health, its quiet for his work, and its distance from the disquiet of his home with armande and madeleine. he had laid by money; and his earnings, with his pension from the king--who had permitted to the troupe the title of "his majesty's comedians"--gave him a handsome income. he was not without shrewdness as a man of affairs, and not without tact as a courtier. success, in its worst worldly sense, could come only through royal favor in that day, and no man, whatever his manliness, seemed ashamed to stoop to flatter. racine, la fontaine, the sterling boileau, the antiquely upright corneille, were tarred, thickly or thinly, with the same brush. auteuil was then a tranquil village, far away from the town's turmoil, and brought near enough for its dwellers by the silent and swift river. now it is a bustling suburb of the city, and the site of molière's cottage and grounds is covered by a block of commonplace modern dwellings on the corner of rue théophile gautier and rue d'auteuil, and is marked by a tablet in the front wall of no. of the latter street. it has been claimed that this is a mistaken localization, and that it is nearly opposite this spot that we must look for his garden and a fragment of his villa, still saved. the conscientious pilgrim may not fail to take that look, and will ring at the iron gate of no. rue théophile gautier. it is the gate of the ancient _hôtel_ of choiseul-praslin, a name of unhappy memory in the annals of swell assassins. the ducal wearer of the title, during the reign of louis-philippe, stabbed his wife to death in their town-house in the champs Élysées, and poisoned himself in his cell to save his condemnation by his fellow-peers of france. the ancient family mansion has been taken by "_les dominicaines_," who have devoted themselves for centuries to the education of young girls, and have placed here the institution of saint thomas of aquinas. a white-robed sister graciously gives permission to enter, and leads the visitor across the spacious court, through the stately rooms and halls--all intact in their old-fashioned harmony of proportion and decoration--into the garden that stretches far along rue de rémusat, and that once spread away down the slope to the seine. here, amid the magnificent cedar trees, centuries old, stands a mutilated pavilion of red brick and white stone or stucco, showing only its unbroken porch with pillars and a fragment of the fabric, cut raggedly away a few feet behind, to make room for a new structure. over the central door are small figures in bas-relief, and in the pediment above one reads, "_ici fut la maison de molière._" it would be a comfort to be able to accept this legend; the fact that prevents is that the pavilion was erected only in by the owner of the garden, to keep alive the associations of molière with this quarter! it is in his garden, behind the wall that holds the tablet, that we may see the player-poet as he rests in the frequent free hours, and days withal, that came in the actor's busy life then. here he walks, alone or with his chosen cronies: rohault, his sympathetic physician; boileau, a frequent visitor; chapelle, who had a room in the cottage, the quondam schoolfellow and the man of rare gifts; a pleasing minor-poet, fond of fun, fonder of wine, friendly even to rudeness, but beloved by all the others, whom he teased and ridiculed, and yet counselled shrewdly. he sympathized with, albeit his sceptic spirit could not quite fraternize with, the sensitive vibrating nature of molière, that brought, along with acutest enjoyment, the keenest suffering. in this day-and-night companionship, craving consolation for his betossed soul, molière gave voice to his sorrows, bewailing his wife's frailties and the torments they brought to him--to him, "born to tenderness," as he truly put it, but unable to plant any root of tenderness in her shallow nature--loving her in spite of reason, living with her, but not as her husband, suffering ceaselessly. this garden often saw gayer scenes of good-fellowship and feasting, and once a historic frolic, when the _convives_, flushed with wine, ran down the slope to the river, bent on plunging in to cool their blood, and were kept dry and undrowned by molière's steadier head and hand. his _ménage_ was modest, and his wife seldom came out from their town apartment, but his daughter was brought often for a visit from her boarding-school near by in auteuil. he was beloved by all his neighbors, to whom he was known less by his public repute than by his constant kindly acts among them. it was not the actor-manager, but the "_tapissier valet-de-chambre du roi_," then residing in auteuil, who signed the register of the parish church, as god-father of a village boy on march , ; just as he had signed, in the same capacity, the register of saint-roch on september , , at the christening of a friend's daughter, jeanne catherine toutbel. these signatures were destroyed when all the ancient church registers, then stored in the hôtel de ville, were burned by the commune. on the night of friday, february , , while personating his _malade imaginaire_--its fourth performance--molière was struck down by a genuine malady. he pulled through the play, and, as the curtain went down at last, he was nearly strangled by a spasm of coughing that broke a blood-vessel. careful hands carried him around to his bedroom on the second floor of no. , where in a few days--too few, his years being a little more than fifty--death set him free from suffering. this fatal crisis was the culmination of a long series of recurrent paroxysms, coming from his fevered life and his fiery soul, that "o'er informed the tenement of clay," in dryden's phrase. and his heart had been crushed by the death of his second boy, pierre-jean-baptiste-armand, in october of the previous year. then, on the physical side, he had been subjected throughout long years to constant exposure to draughts on the stage, and to sudden changes within and without the theatre, most trying to so delicate a frame. his watchful friend, boileau, had often urged him to leave the stage before he should break down. moreover, it distressed boileau that the greatest genius of his time, as he considered molière, should have to paint his face, put on a false mustache, get into a bag and be beaten with sticks, in his ludicrous rôle of comic valet. but all pleading was thrown away. the invalid maintained that nothing but his own management, his own plays, and his own playing, kept his theatre alive and his company from starvation; and so he held on to the end, dying literally in harness. his wife appeared too late on the last scene, the priest who was summoned could not come in time, and the dying eyes were closed by two stranger nuns, lodging for the time in the house. the arm-chair, in which sat the _malade imaginaire_ on the last night of his professional life, is treasured among the relics of the théâtre français. it is a massive piece of oak furniture, with solid square arms and legs; the roomy back lets down, and is held at any required angle by an iron ratchet; there are iron pegs in front for the little shelf, used by the sick man for his bottles and books. the brown leather covering is time-worn and stitched in spots. it is a most attractive relic, this simple piece of stage property. its exact copy as to shape, size, and color is used on the boards of the théâtre français in the performances of "le malade imaginaire." and, with equal reverence, they kept for many years in the ancient village of pézénas, in languedoc--where the strolling troupe wintered in - , playing in the adjacent hamlets and in the _châteaux_ of the _seigneurie_ about--the big wooden arm-chair belonging to the barber gély, and almost daily through that winter occupied by molière. upon it he was wont to sit, in a corner, contemplating all who came and went, making secret notes on the tablets he carried always for constant records of the human document. it has descended to a gentleman in paris, by whom it is cherished. the _curé_ of saint-eustache, the parish church, refused its sacrament for the burial of the author of "tartufe." "to get by prayer a little earth," in boileau's words, the widow had to plead with the king; and it was only his order that wrung permission from the archbishop of paris for those "maimed rites" that we all know. they were accorded, not to the player, but, as the burial register reads, to the "_tapissier valet-de-chambre du roi_." carried to his grave by night, he was followed by a great concourse of unhired mourners, of every rank and condition; and to the poor among them, money was distributed by the widow. the grave--in which was placed the french terence and plautus in one, to use la fontaine's happy phrase--was dug in that portion of the cemetery of the chapel of saint-joseph, belonging to saint-eustache, that was styled consecrated by the priesthood. this cemetery going out of use, the ground, which lay on the right of the old road to montmartre, was given to a market. this, in its turn, was cleared away between and , and on the site of the cemetery are the buildings numbered and rue montmartre, and rue saint-joseph. over the grave, as she thought, the widow erected a great tombstone, under which, tradition says, molière did not lie. tradition lies, doubtless, and armande's belated grief and posthumous devotion probably displayed themselves on the right spot. the stone was cracked--going to bits soon after--by a fire built on it during the terrible winter a few years later, when the poor of paris were warmed by great out-of-door fires. the exact spot of sepulture could not be fixed in , when the more sober revolutionary sections were anxious to save the remains of their really great men from the desecrations of the patriots, to whom no ground was consecrate, nor any memories sacred. then, in the words of the official document, "the bones which seemed to be those of molière" were exhumed, and carried for safe keeping to the museum of french monuments begun by alexandre lenoir in , in the convent of the petits-augustins. its site is now mostly covered by the court of the beaux-arts in rue bonaparte. those same supposed bones of molière were transferred, early in the present century, to the cemetery of père-lachaise, where they now lie in a stone sarcophagus. by their side rest the supposed bones of la fontaine, removed from the same ground to the same museum at the same time; la fontaine having really been buried, twenty-two years after molière's burial, in the cemetery of the innocents, a half-mile from that of saint-joseph! our ignorance as to whether these be molière's bones, under the monument in père-lachaise, is matched by our unacquaintance with the facts of his life. and we know almost as little of molière the man, as we know of the man called shakespeare--the only names in the modern drama which can be coupled. we have no specimens of the actual manuscript, and few specimens of the handwriting, of either. the comédie française has a priceless signature of molière given by dumas _fils_, and there are others, it is believed, on legal documents in notaries' offices, but no one knows how to get at them. his portraiture by pen, too, would have been lost to us, but for an old lady who has left a detailed and vivid description of "monsieur molière." this madame poisson was the daughter of du croissy, whose name appears in the troupe's early play-bills; and the wife of paul poisson, also an actor with molière, and with his widow. madame poisson died in , aged ninety-eight, so that she was an observant and intelligent girl of fifteen at the time of molière's death. in her recollections, written in , she says that he was neither stout nor thin; in stature he was rather tall than short, his carriage noble, his leg very fine, his walk measured, his air most serious; the nose large, the mouth wide, the lips full, his complexion dark, his eyebrows black and heavy, "and the varied movements he gave them"--and, she might have added, his whole facial flexibility--"made him master of immense comic expression." "his air most serious," she says; it was more than that, as is proven by hints of his companions, and shown by strokes in the surviving portraits. all these go to assure us of his essential melancholy. not only did he carry about with him the traditional dejection of the comic actor, but he was by character and by habit contemplative--observant of human nature--as well as introspective--peering into his own nature. the man who does this necessarily grows sad. molière's sadness was mitigated by a humor of equal depth, a conjunction rare in the latin races, and found at its best only in him and in cervantes. this set him to writing and acting farces; and into them he put sentiment for the first time on the french stage. there is a gravity behind his buffoonery, and a secret sympathy with his butts. so, when he came to write comedy--that hard and merciless exposure of our common human nature, turned inside out for scorn--he left place for pity in his ridicule, and there is no cruelty in his laughter. his wholly sweet spirit could not be soured by the injustices and insolences that came into his life. if there was a bitter taste in his mouth, his lips were all honey. "_ce rire amer_," marked by boileau in the actor's alceste, was only his stage assumption for that character. the inborn good-heartedness that made his comedy gracious and unhostile, made his relations with men and women always kindly and generous. you see that sympathy with humanity in mignard's portrait, and in the bust in the foyer of the comédie française, made by houdon from other portraits and from descriptions. under the projecting brow of the observer are the eyes of the contemplator, shrewd and speculative, and withal infinitely sorrowful, with the sadness of the man who knew how to suffer acutely, mostly in silence and in patience; and this is the face of the man who made all france laugh! * * * * * pierre corneille stands in bronze on the bridge of his natal town, rouen, where he stood in the flesh of his twenty-eight years, among other citizens who went to welcome louis xiii. and his ruler, richelieu, on their visit in . the young advocate by profession and poet by predilection presented his verses in greeting and in honor of the king, and was soon after enrolled one of the small and select band of the cardinal's poets. with the cardinal's commission and a play or two, already written when only twenty-three, he made his way to paris. for nearly thirty years, the years of his dramatic triumphs, corneille lived alternately in paris and in rouen, until his mother's death, in , left him free to make his home in the capital. in that year he settled in rooms in the hôtel de guise, now the musée des archives, whose ducal owner was a patron of the théâtre du marais, close at hand. at his death, in or about , corneille sent in a rhymed petition for rooms in the louvre, where lodging was granted to men of letters not too well-to-do. his claim was refused, and he took an apartment in rue de cléry during that same year. it was a workman's quarter, and none of its houses were very grand, but that of corneille is spoken of as one of the better sort, with its own _porte-cochère_. pierre's younger brother, thomas, came to live in the same house. and from this time on, the two brothers were never parted in their lives. they had married sisters, and the two families dwelt in quiet happiness under the common roof. this house in rue de cléry cannot be fixed. it may be one of the poor dwellings still standing in that old street, or it may no longer exist. it is the house famous in anecdotal history for owning the trap-door in the floor between the working-rooms of the brothers, which pierre--at loss for an adequate rhyme--would lift up, and call to thomas, writing in his room below, to give him the wished-for word. this dull street formed the background of a touching picture, when, in , corneille's son was brought home, wounded, from the siege of douai. the straw from the litter was scattered about the street as the father helped them lift his boy to carry him into the house, and corneille was summoned to the châtelet, for breaking police regulations with regard to the care of thoroughfares; he appeared, pleaded his own cause, and was cast in damages! here in , corneille and molière, in collaboration, wrote the "tragedy-ballet 'psyche'"; this work in common cementing a friendship already begun between the two men, and now made firmer for the two years of molière's life on from this date. the play was begun and finished in a fortnight, to meet the usual urgency of the king in his amusements. molière planned the piece and its spectacular effects, and wrote the prologue, the first act, and the first scenes of the second and third acts; corneille's share being the rest of the rhymed dialogue and the songs. it was set to music by lulli--"the incomparable monsieur lulli," as he was called by molière--whose generous laudation of the musician was not lessened by his estimate of the man. for lulli was not an honest man, and he prospered at the expense of his fellows. his magnificent home was built by money borrowed from molière, whose widow was repaid as we have seen. lulli's _hôtel_ is still in perfect condition as to its exterior, at the corner of rues des petits-champs and sainte-anne. this latter front is the finer, with its pilasters and composite capitals, its masks carved in the keystones of the low _entresol_ windows, and the musical instruments placed above the middle window of the first grand floor. they make a pretty picture, not without a touch of the pathetic--and m. gèrôme has put it on canvas--as they sit side by side, planning and plotting their play: molière at the top of his career, busy, prosperous, applauded; corneille past his prime and his popularity, beginning to bend with age and to break in spirit. he had, by now, fallen on evil days, which saw him "satiated with glory, and famished for money," in his words to boileau. richelieu may not have done much for him, but he had been at least a power in his patronage, and his death, in , had left the old poet with no friend at court, albeit the new minister, mazarin, had put him on the pension list. his triumphs with "le cid" and "les horaces" had not saved him from--nor helped him bear--the dire failures of "attila" and of "agésilas." poetry had proved a poor trade, royalty had forgotten him, colbert's economies had left his pension in arrears along with many others, and finally, after colbert's death, the new minister, louvois, had suppressed it entirely. against the earlier default he had made patient and whimsical protest in verse; each official year of delay had been officially lengthened to fifteen months; and corneille's muse was made to hope that each of the king's remaining years of reign might be lengthened to an equal limit! the contrast between the two figures--the king of french tragedy shabby in paris streets, the king of french people resplendent at versailles--is sharply drawn by théophile gautier in his superb verses, read at corneille's birthday fête at the comédie française, on june , . gautier had not been able to find any motive for the lines, which he had promised to prepare for arsène houssaye, the director, until hugo gave him this cue. the faithful, generous boileau--the man called "stingy," because of his exactness, which yet enabled him always to aid others--offered to surrender his own well-secured and promptly-paid pension in favor of his old friend; a transfer not allowed by the authorities, and the king sent a sum of money, at length, to corneille. it came two days before the poet's death, when he might have quoted, "i have no time to spend it!" there is extant a letter from an old rouen friend of his who, visiting paris in , describes a walk he took with corneille, then aged seventy-three. in rue de la parcheminerie--that ancient street on the left bank of the seine, which we have already found to be less spoiled by modern improvements than are its neighbors--corneille sat down on a plank by a cobbler's stall, to have one of his worn shoes patched. that cobbler's stall, or its direct descendant, may be seen in that street, to-day. corneille counted his coppers and found just enough to pay the cobbler's paltry charge; refusing to accept any coin from the proffered purse of his friend, who, then and there, wept in pity for such a plight for such a man. [illustration: the door of corneille's last dwelling. (from a drawing by robert delafontaine, by permission of m. victorien sardou.)] age and poverty took up their abode with him--as well as his more welcome comrade, the constant thomas--in his next dwelling. we cannot be sure when they left rue de cléry, and we find them first in rue d'argenteuil in november, , the year of colbert's death. that old road from the village of argenteuil had become, and still remains, a city street absolutely without character or temperament of its own; it has not the merit even of being ignoble. and the corneille house at no. , as it was seen just before its destruction, was a gloomy and forbidding building. it had two entrances--as has the grandiose structure now standing on its site--one in rue d'argenteuil, on which front is a tablet marking this historic scene of the poet's death, and the other in rue de l'Évêque. that street was wiped out of existence by the cutting of avenue de l'opéra in - , which necessitated the demolition of this dreary old house. its most attractive relic is now in the possession of m. victorien sardou, at his country house, at marly-le-roi, in the _porte-cochère_, with its knocker. every guest there is proud to put his hand on the veritable knocker lifted so often by corneille's hand. that hand had lost its fire and force by this time, and the poet's last months were wretched enough in these vast and desolate rooms on the second floor, so vast and desolate that he was unable to keep his poor septuagenarian bones warm within them. here came death to him on sunday, october , . they buried him in his parish church, saint-roch, a short step from his home; and on the western pillar within the entrance a tablet to his memory was placed in . the church was so short a step, that, feeble and forlorn as he was, he had found his way there early of mornings during these last years. and in his earlier years, when living in rue de cléry, he had often hurried there, drawn by the strong and splendid bossuet, whose abode was either in rue sainte-anne hard by, or in the then new mansion still standing in place des victoires. here in the church, as we stand between corneille's tablet and bossuet's pulpit, the contrast is brought home to us of the two forms of eloquence that most touch men: that of this preacher burning with ancient hebraic fire, and that of this dramatist glowing with the white-heat of classicism. after the burial, the bereft thomas removed to rooms in cul-de-sac des jacobins, only a little way from his last home with pierre. this blind alley has now been cut through to the market of saint-honoré, and become a short commonplace street, named saint-hyacinthe. twenty years the younger of the two, thomas was, during his life, and has been in his after-renown, unduly overshadowed by his imperishable brother. he had a rare gift of versification, and a certain skill in the putting together of plays. of them he constructed a goodly lot, some few of them in collaboration. his "timocrate," played for eighty consecutive nights at the théâtre du marais, was the most popular success on the boards of the seventeenth century. his knack in pleasing the public taste was as much his own as was his mastery of managers, by which he got larger royalties than any playwright of his day. he was a competent craftsman, too, in more weighty fabrications, and turned out, from his factory, translations and dictionaries, which have joined his plays in everlasting limbo. all the early theatrical productions of pierre corneille were originally put on the stage of the théâtre du marais, which had been started by seceders from the theatre of the hôtel de bourgogne, as has been told in our first chapter. after a temporary lodgment in the quarter of the hôtel de ville, it was soon permanently housed in the recast tennis-court of the "_hôtel salé_." there it remained until , when le camus bought the place and turned the theatre into stables. where stands modern no. in the widened rue vieille-du-temple was the public entrance of the theatre. the "_hôtel salé_," the work of lepautre, is still in perfect condition behind the houses of rue vieille-du-temple. its principal portal is at rue thorigny, , with a side entrance in rue saint-gervais-des-coutures. known at first as the hôtel juigné, it was popularly renamed, in the seventeenth century, the "_hôtel salé_," because its rapacious owner, aubray de fontenay, had amassed his wealth by farming out the salt tax--that most exacting and irritating of the many taxes of that time. through a lordly arch in rue thorigny, we pass into the grand court, and find facing us the dignified façade, its imposing pediment carved with figures and flowers. within is a stately hall, made the more stately by the placing at one end of a noble chimney-piece, a copy of one at versailles. in the centre a superb staircase rises, wide and easy, through a sculptured cage, to the first floor; its old wrought-iron railing is of an exquisite pattern; nothing in all paris is nearer perfection than this staircase, its railing, and its balustrade. in the rooms above, kept with reverence by the bronze-maker who occupies them, admirable panelling and carvings are found. the façade on the gardens--now shrunk from their former spaciousness to a small court--is most impressive, with ancient wrought-iron balconies; in its pediment, two vigilant dogs watch the hands that move no more on the great clock-face between them. the théâtre du marais had been established here by the famous turlupin, made immortal in boileau's verse, who, with his two comic _confrères_--baker's boys, like the brothers coquelin of our day--kept his audiences in a roar with his modern french farces _farcied_ with old gaulish grossness. it was he who invented the comic valet--badgered and beaten, always lying and always funny--who was subsequently elaborated into the immortal sganerelle by molière. he, while a boy, had sat in this theatre, watching turlupin; and when he had grown into a manager, he is said to have bought some of the stage copies of these farces, when turlupin's death disbanded his troupe. these "_comédiens du marais_" were regarded with a certain condescension not unmingled with disdain by their stately _confrères_ left at the hôtel de bourgogne, who were shocked when richelieu, becoming bored by their dreary traditional proprieties, sent for turlupin and his troupe to give a specimen of their acting in his palace. and the great cardinal actually laughed, a rare indulgence he allowed himself, and told the king's comedians that he wished they might play to as good effect! still, the théâtre du marais was not entirely given over to farce, for it alternated with the tragedy of the then famous hardy; and mondory, the best tragedian of the day, was at one time the head of the troupe. mondory had brought back from a provincial tour, in , the manuscript of "mélite," by a young lawyer of rouen, named corneille. this piece was weak, but it was not a failure. and so, when the author came to town, his tragedies were played at this theatre and drew crowds to the house. there they first saw the true tragic muse herself on the french boards. those rough, coarse boards of that early theatre he planed and polished, with conscience and with craft, and made them fit for her queenly feet; and through her lips he breathed, in sublime tirades, his own elevation of soul, to the inspiration of that shabby scene. for the first time in the french drama, he put skill into the plot, art into the intrigue, taste into the wit; in a word, he gave to dramatic verse "good sense"--"the only aim of poetry," boileau claimed--and showed the meaning and the value of "reason" on the stage; and for the doing of this racine revered him. as to corneille's personality, we are told by fontenelle--his nephew, a man of slight value, a better talker than writer, an unmoved man, who prided himself on never laughing and never crying--that his uncle had rather an agreeable countenance, with very marked features, a large nose, a handsome mouth, eyes full of fire, and an animated expression. others who saw corneille say that he looked like a shopkeeper; and that as to his manner, he seemed simple and timid, and as to his talk, he _was_ dull and tiresome. his enunciation was not distinct, so that in reading his own verses--he could not recite them--he was forcible but not graceful. guizot puts it curtly and cruelly, when he writes that corneille was destitute of all that distinguishes a man from his equals; that his appearance was common, his conversation dull, his language incorrect, his timidity ungainly, his judgment untrustworthy. it was well said, in his day, that to know the greatness of corneille, he must be read, or be seen in his work on the stage. he has said so in the verse that confesses his own defects: "_j'ai la plume féconde et la bouche stérile, et l'on peut rarement m'écouter sans ennui, que quand je me produis par la bouche d'autrui._" in truth, we must agree with guizot, that the grand old roman was irrevocably doomed to pass unnoticed in a crowd. and he was content that this should be. for he had his own pride, expressed in his words: "_je sais ce que je vaux._" he made no clamor when georges de scudéry was proclaimed his superior by the popular voice, which is always the voice of the foolish. and when that shallow charlatan sneered at him in print, he left to boileau the castigation that was so thoroughly given. his friends had to drive him to the defence of his "cid" in the academy, to which he had been elected in . his position with regard to the "cid" was peculiar and embarrassing; it was richelieu, the jealous playwright, who attacked the successful tragedy, and it was richelieu, the all-potent patron, who was to be answered and put in the wrong. the skirmish being ended, with honor to corneille, he retired into his congenial obscurity and his beloved solitude. and there the world left him, alone with his good little brother thomas, both contented in their comradeship. for in private life he was easy to get on with, always full of friendliness, always ready of access to those he loved, and, for all his brusque humor and his external rudeness, he was a good husband, father, brother. he shrank from the worldly and successful racine, who reverenced him; and he was shy of the society of other pen-workers who would have made a companion of him. his independent soul was not softened by any adroitness or tact; he was clumsy in his candor, and not at home in courtier-land; there was not one fibre of the flunky in his simple, sincere, self-respecting frame; and when forced to play that unwonted rôle, he found his back not limber enough for bowing, his knees not sufficiently supple to cringe. [illustration: pierre corneille. (from the portrait by charles lebrun.)] and in what light he was looked upon by the lazy pensioned lackeys of the court, who hardly knew his face, and not at all his worth, is shown by this extract from one of their manuscript chronicles: "_jeudi, le octobre, . on apprit à chambord la mort du bonhomme corneille._" * * * * * jean racine came to paris, from his native la ferté-milon in the old duchy of valois--by way of a school at beauvais, and another near port-royal--in , a youth of nineteen, to study in the collége d'harcourt. that famous school was in the midst of the scholars' quarter, in that part of narrow, winding rue de la harpe which is now widened into boulevard saint-michel. on the site of the ancient college, direct heir of its functions and its fame, stands the lycée saint-louis. the buildings that give on the playground behind, seem to belong to the original college, and to have been refaced. like boileau-despréaux, three years his senior here, the new student preferred poetry to the studies commonly styled serious, and his course in theology led neither to preaching nor to practising. he was a wide and eager reader in all directions, and developed an early and ardent enthusiasm for the greeks and the latins. as early as he had made himself known by his ode in celebration of the marriage of louis xiv.; while he remained unknown as the author of an unaccepted and unplayed drama in verse, sent to the théâtre du marais. racine's paris homes were all in or near the "_pays latin_," for he preserves its ancient appellation in his letters. on leaving college, in - , he took up quarters with his uncle nicolas vitart, steward and intendant of the duchesse de chevreuse, and secretary of her son the duc de luynes. vitart lived in the hôtel de luynes, a grand mansion that faced quai des grands-augustins, and stretched far back along rue gît-le-coeur. it was torn down in . la fontaine had lodgings, during his frequent visits to paris at this period, a little farther west on quai des grands-augustins, and he and racine, despite the eighteen years' difference of age, became close companions. la fontaine made his young friend acquainted with the _cabarets_ of the quarter, and racine studied them not unwillingly. just then, too, racine doubtless met molière, recently come into the management of the theatre of the palais-royal. an original edition of "les précieuses ridicules," played a while before this time at the hôtel du petit-bourbon, bears on its title-page "_privilège au sr. de luyne_." this was guillaume de luyne, bookseller and publisher in the salle des merciers of the palais de justice; and at his place, a resort for book-loving loungers, we may well believe that the actor-manager made acquaintance with the young poet, coming from his home with the duc de luynes, within sight across the narrow arm of the river. not as a poet was he known in this ducal house, but as assistant to his uncle, and the probable successor of that uncle, who tried to train him to his future duties. among these duties, just then, was the construction of the new hôtel de luynes for the duchesse de chevreuse. this is the lady who plays so prominent a rôle in dumas's authentic history of "the three musketeers." the _hôtel_ that was then built for her stands, somewhat shorn of its original grandeur, at no. boulevard saint-germain, and you may look to-day on the walls constructed under the eye of jean racine, acting as his uncle's overseer. this uncle was none too rigid of rule, nor was the household, from the duchess down, unduly ascetic of habit; and young racine, "nothing loath," spent his days and eke his nights in somewhat festive fashion. his anxious country relatives at length induced him to leave the wicked town, and in november, , he went to live at uzés, near nîmes, in languedoc. here he was housed with another uncle, of another kidney; a canon of the local cathedral, able to offer church work and to promise church preferment to the coy young cleric. racine was bored by it all, and mitigated his boredom, during the two years he remained, only by flirting and by stringing rhymes. the ladies were left behind, and the verses were carried to the capital, on his return in november, . he showed some of them, first to colbert and then to molière, who received the verse with scant praise, but accepted, paid for, and played "la thébaïde"--a work of promise, but of no more than promise, of the future master hand. it was at this period, about , that racine, of his own wish, first met boileau, who had criticised in a kindly fashion some of the younger poet's verses. thus was begun that friendship which was to last unmarred so many years, and to be broken only by racine's death. with corneille, too, racine made acquaintance, in , and submitted to him his "alexandre." he was greatly pleased by the praise of the author of the "cid"; praise freely given to the poetry of the play, but along with it came the set-off that no talent for tragedy was shown in the piece. it was not long before the elder poet had to own his error, and it is a sorrow to record his growing discontent with the younger man's triumphs. racine believed then and always, that corneille was easily his master as a tragic dramatist; a belief shared with him by us of to-day, who find corneille's tragedies as impressive, his comedies as spirited, as ever, on the boards of the comédie française; while racine's tragic muse seems to have outlived her day on those boards, and to have grown aged and out of date, along with the social surroundings amid which she queened it. racine's reverence for his elder and his better never wore away, and on corneille's death--when, to his place in the academy, his lesser brother thomas was admitted--it fell to racine, elected in , to give the customary welcome to the new academician, and to pay the customary tribute to his great forerunner. he paid it in words and in spirit of loyal admiration, and no nobler eulogy of a corrival has been spoken by any man. on his return to town, in , racine had found his uncle-crony vitart living in the new hôtel de luynes, and in order to be near him he took lodging in rue de grenelle. it was doubtless at the eastern end of that street, not far from the croix-rouge--a step from boileau in rue du vieux-colombier, and not far from la fontaine on quai malaquais. here he stayed for four years, and in he removed to the hôtel des ursins. this name had belonged to a grand old mansion on the north bank of Île de la cité, presented by the city of paris to jean juvénal des ursins, _prévôt des marchands_ under charles vi. in the old prints, we see its two towers rising sheer from the river, and behind them its vast buildings and spacious grounds extending far away south on the island. according to edouard fournier, a painstaking topographer, all this structure was demolished toward the end of the eighteenth century, and over its site and through its grounds were cut the three streets bearing its name of des ursins--haute, milieu, basse. other authorities claim that portions of the hotel still stand there, among them that portion in which racine lived; his rooms having remained unaltered up to . the street is narrow and dark, all its buildings are of ancient aspect, and on its south side is a row of antiquated houses that plainly date back to racine's day and even earlier. it is in one of these that we may establish his lodgings. the house at no. , commonly and erroneously pointed out as his residence, is of huge bulk, extending through to rue chanoinesse on the south. no. would seem to be still more ancient. no. is simply one wing of the dark stone structure, of which no. forms the other wing and the central body, massive and gloomy, set back from the street behind a shallow court, between these wings. in the low wall of this court, under a great arch, a small forbidding door shuts on the pavement, and behind, in a recess, is an open stairway leading to the floor above. no. was undoubtedly once a portion of the same fabric. all these street windows are heavily barred and sightless. these three houses evidently formed one entire structure at first, and this was either an outlying portion of the hôtel des ursins, or a separate building, erected after the demolition of that _hôtel_, and taking the old name. in either case, there can be no doubt that these are the walls that harbored racine. the tenants of his day were mostly men of the law who had their offices and residential chambers here, by reason of their proximity to the palais de justice. with these inmates racine was certainly acquainted--the magistrates, the advocates, the clerks, of whom he makes knowing sport in his delightful little comedy, "les plaideurs." it was played at versailles, "by royal command," before king and court in . this was not its original production, however; it had had its first night for the paris public a month earlier, and had failed; possibly because it had not yet received royal approval. molière, one of the audience on that first night, was a more competent critic of its quality, and his finding was that "those who mocked merited to be mocked in turn, for they did not know good comedy when they saw it." this verdict gives striking proof of his innate loyalty to a comrade in trade, for he and the author were estranged just then, not by any fault of molière, and he had the right to feel wronged, and by this unasked praise he proved himself to be the more manly of the two. the piece was an immediate success at versailles. the _roi soleil_ beamed, the courtiers smiled, the crowd laughed. the players, unexpectedly exultant, climbed into their coaches as soon as they were free, and drove into town and to racine, with their good news. this whole quiet street was awakened by their shouts of congratulation, windows were thrown open by the alarmed burghers, and when they learned what it meant, they all joined in the jubilation. racine lived here from to , and these ten years were years of unceasing output and of unbroken success. beginning with his production of "andromaque" in the first-named year, he went, through successive stage triumphs, to "phèdre," his greatest and his last play for the public stage, produced on new year's day of , at the hôtel de bourgogne. it was on these boards that almost all his plays were first given. then, at the age of thirty-seven, at the top of his fame, in the plenitude of his powers, he suddenly ceased to write for the stage. this dis-service to dramatic literature was brought about by his forthcoming marriage, by his disgust with the malice of his rivals, by his weariness of the assaults of his enemies, by his somewhat sudden and showy submission to the church--that sleepless assailant of player and playwright. he hints at the attitude of the godly in his preface to "phèdre," assuring them that they will have to own--however, in other respects, they may or may not esteem this tragedy--that it castigates vice and punishes badness as had no previous play of his. doubtless he was hardened in this decision, already made, by the hurt he had from the reception of this play in contrast with the reception of a poorer play for which his own title was stolen, which was produced within three nights of his piece, and was acclaimed by the cabal that damned the original. nor was it only his rivals and enemies who decried him. "_racine et le café passeront_," was la harpe's contemptuous coupling of the playwright with the new and dubious drink, just then on its trial in paris. his _mot_ has been mothered on madame de sévigné, for she, too, took neither to racine nor to coffee. and a century later it pleased madame de staël to prove, to her own gratification, that his tragedies had already gone into the limbo of out-worn things. racine's whole life--never notably sedate hitherto, with its frequent escapades and its one grand passion--was turned into a new current by his love match with catherine de romenet. on his marriage in june, --among the _témoins_ present were boileau-despréaux and uncle vitart, this latter then living in the same house with his nephew--racine ranged himself on the side of order and of domestic days and nights. he gave proof of a genuine devotedness to his wife; a good wife, if you will, yet hardly a companion for him in his work at home and in the world outside. it is told of her, that she never saw one of his pieces played, nor heard one read; and louis, their youngest son, says that his mother did not know what a verse was. the earliest home of the new couple was on Île saint-louis. neither the house nor its street is to be identified to-day, but both may surely be seen, so slight are the changes even now since that provincial village, in the heart of paris, was built up from an island wash-house and wood-yard under the impulse of the plans prepared for henri iv., by his right hand, sully. and in this parish church, saint-louis-en-l'Île--a provincial church quite at home here--we find racine holding at the font his first child, jean-baptiste, in . two years later he moved again, and from early in to the end of we find him at no. rue de l'eperon, on the corner of rue saint-andré-des-arts. here his family grew in number, and the names of three of his daughters, marie-catherine, anne, and Élisabeth--all born in this house--appeared on the baptismal register of his parish church, saint-andré-des-arts. this was the church of the christening of françois-marie arouet, a few years later. the place saint-andré-des-arts, laid out in , now covers the site of that very ancient church, sold as national domain in , and demolished soon after. this residence of racine was left intact until within a few years, when it was replaced by the lycée fénelon, a government school for girls. there they read their "racine," or such portions as are permitted to the young person, not knowing nor caring that on that spot the author once lived. from here he removed, at the beginning of the year , to no. rue des maçons. that street is now named champollion, and the present number of his house cannot be fixed. it still stands on the western side of the street, about half way up between rue des Écoles and place de la sorbonne; for none of these houses have been rebuilt, and the street itself is as secluded and as quiet as when racine walked through it. here were born his daughters jeanne and madeleine, both baptized in the parish church of saint-séverin--a venerable sanctuary, still in use and quite unaltered, except that it has lost its cloisters. and in this home in rue des maçons he brought to life two plays finer than any of their forerunners, yet, unlike them, not intended for public performance. "esther" was written in to please madame de maintenon, and was performed several times by the girls at her school of saint-cyr; first before king and court, later before friends of the court and those who had sufficient influence to obtain the eagerly sought invitation. "athalie," written for similar semi-public production, two years later, failed to make any impression, when played at versailles by the same girls of saint-cyr. after two performances, without scenery or costumes, it was staged no more, and had no sale when published by the author. yet boileau told him that it was his best work, and voltaire said that it was nearer perfection than any work of man. indeed, "athalie," in its grandeur and its simplicity, may easily outrank any production of the french pen during the seventeenth century. and, as literature, these two plays are almost perfect specimens of racine's almost perfect art and diction; of that art, wherein he was so exquisite a craftsman; of that diction, so rich, so daring, so pliable, so passionate, yet restrained, refined, judicious. in may, , we learn by a letter to boileau, racine was still in rue des maçons, but he must have left it shortly after, for in november of this year he brought to be christened, in saint-sulpice, his youngest child, louis. this is the son who has left us an admirable biography of his father, and some mediocre poems--"la religion" and "la grâce" being those by which he is best known. so that saint-sulpice was, already in november, , the church of his new parish; and the house to which he had removed in that parish, wherein the boy was born, stands, quite unchanged to-day, in rue visconti. that street was then named rue des marais-saint-germain, having begun life as a country lane cut through the low marshy lands along the southern shore. it extends only from rue de seine to rue bonaparte, then named rue des petits-augustins. near its western end, at the present number , the marquis de ranes had erected a grand mansion; and this, on his death in , was let out in apartments. it is asserted that it is the house of whose second floor racine became a tenant. within the great concave archway that frames the wide entrance door is set a tablet, containing the names of racine, of la champmeslé, of lecouvreur, and of clairon, all of whom are claimed to have been inhabitants of this house. that tablet has carried conviction during the half-century since it was cut and set, about , but its word is to be doubted, and many of us believe that the more ancient mansion at no. of the street was racine's home. local tradition makes the only proof at present, and the matter cannot be absolutely decided until the lease shall be found in that parisian notary's office where it is now filed away and forgotten. we know that mlle. lecouvreur lived in the house formerly tenanted by racine, and that she speaks of it as being nearly at the middle of the street, and this fact points rather to no. than to no. . and we know that mlle. clairon had tried for a long time to secure an apartment in the house honored by memories of the great dramatist and the great actress; for whose sake she was willing to pay the then enormous rental of francs. but the tablet's claim to la champmeslé as a tenant is an undue and unpardonable excess of zeal. whatever racine may have done years before in his infatuation for that bewitching woman, he did not bring her into his own dwelling! [illustration: rue visconti. on the right is the hôtel de ranes, and in the distance is no. .] she had come from rouen, a young actress looking for work, along with her husband, a petty actor and patcher-up of plays; for whose sake she was admitted to the théâtre du marais. how she made use of this chance is told by a line in a letter of madame de sévigné, who had seen her play atalide in "bajazet," and pronounced "_ma belle fille_"--so she brevets her son's lady-love--as "the most miraculously good _comédienne_ that i have ever seen." it was on the boards of the hôtel de bourgogne that she showed herself to be also the finest _tragédienne_ of her time. she shone most in "bajazet," and in others of racine's plays, creating her rôles under his admiring eye and under his devoted training. he himself declaimed verse marvellously well, and had in him the making of a consummate comedian, or a preacher, as you please. la champmeslé was not beautiful or clever, but her stature was noble, her carriage glorious, her voice bewitching, her charm irresistible. and la fontaine sang praises of her _esprit_, and this was indeed fitting at his age then. she lived somewhere in this quarter, when playing in the troupe of the widow molière at the théâtre guénégaud. when she retired from those boards, she found a home with her self-effacing husband in auteuil, and there died in . the first floor in the right wing of the court of both and is said to be the residence of adrienne lecouvreur. she had appeared in at the comédie française, in rue de l'ancienne-comédie, and had won her place at once. the choice spirits of the court, of the great world, of the greater world of literature, were glad to meet in fellowship around her generous and joyous table. among them she found excuse for an occasional caprice, but her deepest and most lasting passion was given to the superb adventurer, maurice de saxe. his quarters, when home from the wars--for which her pawned jewels furnished him forth--were only a step down rue bonaparte from her house, on quai malaquais. they were at no. , the most ancient mansion left on the quay, with the exception of no. , hid behind the wing of the institute. he died at chambord on november , , and at this house, may , , there was an auction of his effects. there came a time when the meetings of these two needed greater secrecy, and he removed to rue de colombier, now named rue jacob. the houses on the north side of this ancient street had--and some of them still have--gardens running back to the gardens of the houses on the south side of rue visconti. these little gardens had, in the dividing fence, gates easily opened by night, for others besides adrienne and maurice, as local legend whispers. scribe has put their story on the stage, where it is a tradition that the actress was actually poisoned by a great lady, for the sake of the fascinating lover. he stood by her bedside, with voltaire and the physician, when she was dying in , at the early age of thirty-eight, in one of the rooms on this first floor over the court. voltaire had had no sneers, but only praise for the actress, and smiles for the woman whose kind heart had brought her to his bedside, when he was ill, where she read to him the last book out, the translation of the "arabian nights." he was stirred to stinging invective of the churlish priest of saint-sulpice, who denied her church-burial. in the same verse he commends that good man, monsieur de laubinière, who gave her body hasty and unhallowed interment. he came, by night, with two coaches and three men, and drove with the poor body along the river-bank, turning up rue de bourgogne to a spot behind the vast wood-yards that then lined the river-front. there, in a hole they dug, they hid her. the fine old mansion at no. rue de grenelle, next to the southeast corner of rue de bourgogne, covers her grave. in its garret, thrown into one corner and almost forgotten, is a marble tablet, long and narrow, once set in a wall on this site, to mark the spot so long ignored--as its inscription says--where lies an actress of admirable _esprit_, of good heart, and of a talent sublime in its simplicity. and it recites the efforts of a true friendship, which got at last only this little bit of earth for her grave. yet a few years further on, the same wing on the court of this dingy old house sparkled with the splendid personality of hippolyte clairon, who outshines all other stars of the french stage, unless it be rachel. here she lived the life of one of those prodigal princesses, in whose rôles she loved to dazzle on the boards of the comédie française, where she first appeared in . it was her public and not her private performances that shocked the sensitive church into a threat of future terrors for her. when, in the course of a theatrical quarrel, she refused to play, she was sent to prison, being one of "his majesty's servants," disobedient and punishable. she preferred possible purgatory to present imprisonment, and went back to her duty. to this house again came voltaire, as her visitor this time, along with diderot and marmontel and many such men. garrick came, too, when in paris--came quietly, less eager to proclaim his ardent admiration for the woman than his public and professional acclamation of the actress in the theatre. her parts all played, she left the stage when a little past forty, and, sinking slowly into age and poverty and misery, she died at the age of eighty in . all these flashing fireworks are dimmed and put to shame by the gentle glow and the steadfast flame of the wood-fire on racine's home hearthstone. it lights up the gloomy, mean street, even as we stand here. he was, in truth, an admirable husband and father, and it is this side of the man that we prefer to regard, rather than that side turned toward other men. of them he was, through his over-much ambition, easily jealous, and, being sensitive and suspicious as well, and given to a biting raillery, he alienated his friends. boileau alone was too big of soul to allow any estrangement. these two were friends for almost forty years, in which not one clouded day is known. the letters between them--those from to are still preserved--show the depth of racine's manly and delicate feeling for his friend, then "in his great solitude at auteuil." they had been appointed royal historiographers soon after racine's marriage in , and, in that office, travelled together a good deal, in the ghent campaign of and again with the army in other fields. they worked together on their notes later, and gathered great store of material; but the result amounted to nothing, and they were posthumously lucky in that their unfinished manuscript was finally burned by accident in . whether with boileau in camp, or alone in the luxembourg campaign of --boileau being too ill to go--or at namur in , or with the king and court at fontainebleau, marly, versailles, in these royal residences where he had his own rooms, wherever he was, racine never seemed to cease thinking of his home, that home in rue des maçons when he first went away, and for the last seven years of his life in rue visconti. when absent from home he wrote to his children frequently, and when here he corresponded constantly with his son, who was with the french embassy at the hague. to him he gave domestic details and "trivial fond records" of what his mother was doing, of the colds of the younger ones, and of the doings of the daughter in a convent at melun. he sends to this son two new hats and eleven and a half _louis d'or_, and begs him to be careful of the hats and to spend the money slowly. yet he was fond of court life, and, an adroit courtier, he knew how to sing royal prowess in the field and royal splendor in the palace. he had a way of carrying himself that gave seeming height to his slight stature. his noble and open expression, his fine wit, his dexterous address, his notable gifts as a reader to the king at his bedside, made him a favorite in that resplendent circle. and he was all the more unduly dejected when the _roi soleil_ cooled and no longer smiled on him; he was killed when madame de maintenon--"goody scarron," "old piety," "the hag," "the hussy," "that old woman," are the usual pet epithets for her of delicious duchesse d'orléans--who had liked and had befriended him, saw the policy of showing him her cold shoulder, as she had shown it to fénelon. from this shock, racine, being already broken physically by age and illness, seemed unable to rally. as he sank gradually to the grave he made sedulous provision for his family, dictating, toward the last, a letter begging for a continuance of his pension to his widow, which, it is gladly noted, was afterward done. he urged, also, the claim of boileau to royal favor: "we must not be separated," he said to his amanuensis; "begin your letter again, and let boileau know that i have been his friend to my death." his death came on april , . his body lay one night in the choir of saint-sulpice, his parish church, and then it was carried for burial to the abbey of port-royal. on the destruction of that institution, his remains were brought back to paris, in , and placed near those of pascal, at the entrance of the lady-chapel of saint-Étienne-du-mont. racine's epitaph, in latin, by boileau, the friend of so many men who were not always friendly with one another, is cut in a stone set in the first pillar of the southern aisle of the choir. * * * * * jean de la fontaine began to come to paris, making occasional excursions from his native château-thierry, in champagne, toward , he being then over thirty years of age. a little later, when under the protection and in the pay of the great fouquet, his visits to the capital were more frequent and more prolonged. he commonly found lodgings on quai des grands-augustins, just around the corner from young racine, and the two men were much together during the years and . la fontaine made his home permanently in the capital after , when he arrived there in the train of the duchesse de bouillon, born anne mancini, youngest and liveliest of mazarin's many dashing nieces. her marriage with the duc de bouillon had made her the feudal lady of château-thierry, and if she were not compelled to claim, in this case, her privilege as _châtelaine_ over her appanage, it was because there was ampler mandate for the impressionable poet in the caprice of a wilful woman. incidentally, in this flitting, he left behind his provincial wife. he had taken her to wife in , mainly to please his father, and soon, to please her and himself, they had agreed on a separation. they met scarcely any more after his definite departure. there is a tradition that he chatted, once in a _salon_ somewhere, with a bright young man by whom he found himself attracted, and concerning whom he made inquiry of the bystanders, who informed him that it was his son. tradition does not record any attempt on his part to improve his acquaintance with the young stranger, or to show further interest in his welfare. he did not entirely desert his country home, for the duchess carried him along on her autumnal visits to château-thierry. he took advantage of each chance thus given him to realize something upon his patrimony, that he might meet the always pressing claims on his always overspent income. he writes to racine during one of these visits, in : "my affairs occupy me as much as they're worth it, and that's not at all; and the leisure i thus get is given to laziness." he almost anticipated in regard to himself the racy saying of the oxford don of our day of another professor: "such time as he can save from the adornment of his person he devotes to the neglect of his duties." but la fontaine neglected not only his duties all through life, but, more than all else, did he neglect the care of his dress. a portion of the income he was always anticipating came from his salary at one time, as gentleman in the _suite_ of the dowager duchesse d'orléans, that post giving him quarters in the luxembourg. these quarters and his salary went from him with her death. for several years after coming to town with the duchesse de bouillon he had a home in the duke's town-house on quai malaquais. this quay had been built upon the river-front soon after the death, in , of marguerite de valois, henri iv.'s divorced wife. the streets leading from quais malaquais and voltaire, and those behind, parallel with the quays, were cut through her grounds and through the fields farther west. this was the beginning of the faubourg saint-germain. to save the long detour, to and from the new suburb, around by way of pont-neuf, a wooden bridge was built in along the line of the ferry, that had hitherto served for traffic between the shore in front of the louvre and the southern shore, at the end of the road that is now rue du bac. the pont royal has replaced that wooden bridge. one of the buildings that began this river-front remains unmutilated at the corner of quai malaquais and rue de seine, and is characteristic of the architecture of that period in its walls and roofs and windows clustering about the court. it was the many years' dwelling of the elder visconti, and his death-place in . the house at no. was erected early in the nineteenth century, on the site of buzot's residence, as shall be told in a later chapter. in it humboldt lived from to . the associations of no. have already been suggested. the largest builder on the quay was cardinal mazarin, whose college, to which he gave his own name, and to which the public gave the name collége des quatre-nations, is now the palais de l'institut. he paid for it with money wrung from wretched france, as he so paid for the grand _hôtel_ he erected for another niece, anne marie martinozzi, widow of that prince de conti who was molière's school friend. on the ground that it covered was built, in - , the wing of the beaux-arts at nos. and quai malaquais. that school has also taken possession of the hôtel de bouillon of the cardinal's other niece, almost alongside. it had been the property of the rich and vulgar money-king bazinière, whom we shall meet again, and he had sold it to the duc de bouillon. the pretty wife of this very near-sighted husband had the house re-decorated, and filled it with a marvellous collection of furniture, paintings, _bric-à-brac_. she filled it, also, by her open table twice a day, with thick-coming guests, some of whom were worth knowing. the _hôtel_ came by inheritance in to m. de chimay, who stipulated, in making it over to the beaux-arts, in , that its seventeenth-century façade should be preserved, and by this agreement we have here, at no. quai malaquais, an admirable specimen of the competence of the elder, the great mansart. it is higher than he left it, by reason of the wide, sloping roof, with many skylights toward the north, placed there for the studios within, but its two well-proportioned wings remain unchanged, and between them the court, where la fontaine was wont to sit or stroll, has been laid out as a garden. while living here he brought out the first collection of his "contes" in , and of his "fables" in . his "les amours de psyché," written in , begins with a charming description of the meetings in boileau's rooms of the famous group of comrades. from this home he went to the home of madame de la sablière, with whom, about , he had formed a friendship which lasted unbroken until her death. this tender and steadfast companionship made the truest happiness of la fontaine's life. for twenty years an inmate of her household, a member of her family, he was petted and cared for as he craved. in her declining years she had to be away from home attending to her charitable work--for she followed the fashion of turning _dévote_ as age advanced--and then he suffered in unaccustomed loneliness. his tongue spoke of her with the same constant admiration and gratitude that is left on record by his pen, and at her death he was completely crushed. when he was invited by madame de la sablière and her poet-husband to share their home, they were living at their country-place, "_la folie rambouillet_," not to be mistaken for the hôtel de rambouillet. sablière's _hôtel_, built by his father, a wealthy banker, was in the suburb of reuilly, on the bercy road, north of the seine, not far from picpus. the reuilly station and the freight-houses of the vincennes railway now cover the site of this splendid mansion and its extensive grounds. here monsieur de la sablière died in , and his widow, taking la fontaine along, removed to her town-house. this stood on the ground now occupied by the buildings in rue saint-honoré, nearly opposite rue de la sourdière. in the court of no. are bits of carving that may have come down from the original mansion. here they dwelt untroubled until death took her away in . it is related that la fontaine, leaving this house after the funeral, benumbed and bewildered by the blow, met monsieur d'hervart. "i was going," said that gentleman, "to offer you a home with me." "i was going to ask it," was the reply. and in this new abode he dwelt until his death, two years later. berthélemy d'hervart, a man of great wealth, had purchased, in , the hôtel de l'Éperon, a mansion erected on the site of burgundy's hôtel de flandre. m. d'hervart had enlarged and decorated his new abode, employing for the interior frescoes the painter mignard, molière's friend. the actor and his troupe had played here, by invitation, nearly fifty years before la fontaine's coming. it stood in old rue plâtrière, now widened out, entirely rebuilt, and renamed rue jean-jacques-rousseau; and on the wall of the central post-office that faces that street, you will find a tablet stating that on this site died jean de la fontaine on april , . madame d'hervart was a young and lovely woman, and as devoted to the old poet as had been madame de la sablière. she went so far as to try to regulate his dress, his expenditure, and his morals. congratulated one day on the splendor of his coat, la fontaine found to his surprise and delight that his hostess had substituted it--when, he had not noticed--for the shabby old garment that he had been wearing for years. she and her husband held sacred, always, the room in which la fontaine died, showing it to their friends as a place worthy of reverence. he was buried in the cemetery of saints-innocents, now all built over except its very centre, which is kept as a small park about the attractive fountain of saints-innocents. the patriots of the revolution, slaying so briskly their men of birth, paused awhile to bring from their graves what was left of their men of brains. misled by inaccurate rumor, they left la fontaine's remains in their own burial-ground, and removed what they believed to be his bones from the graveyard of saint-joseph, where he had not been buried, along with the bones they believed to be those of molière, who _had_ been buried there. these casual and dubious remains were kept in safety in the convent of petits-augustins in present rue bonaparte, until, in the early years of the nineteenth century, they were removed for final sepulture to père-lachaise. no literary man of his time--perhaps of any time--was so widely known and so well beloved as la fontaine. he attracted men, not only the best in his own guild, but the highest in the state and in affairs. men various in character, pursuits, station, were equally attached to him; the great condé was glad to receive him as a frequent guest at chantilly; the superfine sensualist, saint-Évremond, in exile in england, urged him to come to visit him and to meet waller. he nearly undertook the journey, less to see saint-Évremond and to know waller, than to follow his duchesse de bouillon, visiting her sister, the duchess of mazarin, in her chelsea home. it was at this time that ninon de lenclos wrote to saint-Évremond: "you wish la fontaine in england. we have little of his company in paris. his understanding is much impaired." racine, eighteen years his junior, looked up to la fontaine as a critic, a counsellor, and a friend, from their early days together in , through long years of intimacy, until he stood beside la fontaine's bed in his last illness. he even took an odd pleasure in finding that he and la fontaine's deserted country wife had sprung from the same provincial stock. molière first met la fontaine at vaux, the more than royal residence of fouquet, at the time of the royal visit in . la fontaine wrote a graceful bit of verse in praise of the author of "les fâcheux," played for the first time before king and court during these festivities, and the two men, absolutely opposed in essential qualities, were fast friends from that time on. "they make fun of the _bonhomme_," said the ungrudging player once, "and our clever fellows think they can efface him; but he'll efface us all yet." it is needless to say that la fontaine was beloved by boileau, the all-loving. that kindly ascetic was moved to attempt the amendment of his friend's laxity of life, and to this blameless end dragged him to prayers sometimes, where la fontaine was bored and would take up any book at hand to beguile the time. in this way he made acquaintance with the apocrypha, and became intensely interested in baruch, and asked boileau if he knew baruch, and urged him to read baruch, as a hitherto undiscovered genius. during his last illness, he told the attendant priest that he had been reading the new testament, and that he regarded it as a good, a very good book. in truth, his soul was the soul of a child, and, childlike, he lived in a world of his own--a world peopled with the animals and the plants and the inanimate objects, made alive by him and almost human. he loved them all, and painted them with swift, telling strokes of his facile pen. the acute taine points out that the brute creations of this poet are prototypes of every class and every profession of his country and his time. his dumb favorites attracted him especially by their unspoiled simplicity, for he loathed the artificial existence of his fellow-creatures. with "a sullen irony and a desperate resignation" he let himself be led into society, and he was bored beyond bearing by its high-heeled decorum. it is said that he cherished, all his life long, a speechless exasperation with the king, that incarnation of pomposity and pretence to his untamed gallic spirit. yet this malcontent had to put on the livery of his fellow-flunkies, and his dedication, to the dauphin, of his "fables," is as fulsome and servile as any specimen of sycophancy of that toad-eating age. yet, able to make trees and stones talk, he himself could not talk, la bruyère tells us; coloring his portraiture strongly, as was his way, and rendering la fontaine much too heavy and dull, with none of the skill in description with his tongue that he had with his pen. he may be likened to goldsmith, who "wrote like an angel and talked like poor poll." madame de sablière said to him: "_mon bon ami, que vous seriez bête, si vous n'aviez pas tant d'esprit!_" louis racine, owning to the lovable nature of the man, has to own, too, that he gave poor account of himself in society, and adds that his sisters, who in their youth had seen the poet frequently at their father's table in rue visconti, recalled him only as a man untidy in dress and stupid in talk. he gave this impression mainly because he was forever dreaming, even in company, and so seemed distant and dull; but, when drawn out of his dreams, no man could be more animated and more delightful. [illustration: la fontaine. (from the portrait by rigaud-y-ros.)] so he was found by congenial men, and so especially by approving women. these took to him on the spot, women of beauty and of wit, and women commonplace enough. to them all his prattle was captivating, devoid as it was of the grossness so conspicuous in his poems. he depended on women in every way all through his life; they catered to his daily needs, and they provided for his higher wants; they helped him in his money troubles, they helped him in all his troubles. and he requited each one's care with a genuine affection, not only at the time, but for all time, in the record he has left of his gratitude and his devotion to these ministering women. his verse is an unconscious chronicle of his loves, his caprices, his inconstancies, and his loyalties. nor did a woman need to be clever and cultivated to be bewitched by his inborn, simple sweetness. a matter-of-fact nurse, hired to attend him during an illness which came near being fatal, said to the attending priest: "surely, god could not have the courage to damn a man like that." this memory he has left is brought pleasantly home to the passer-by in rue de grenelle by the sign of a hotel, a quiet clerical house, frequented by churchmen and church-loving provincials visiting paris. the sign bears the name "_au bon la fontaine_," in striking proof of the permanent place in the common heart won by this lovable man. he was content to drift through life, his days spent, as he put it in his epitaph on "jean," one-half in doing nothing, the other half in sleeping. he had no library or study or workroom, like other pen-workers; he lived out of doors in the open air, and wandered vaguely, tasting blameless epicurean delights. some of us seem to see, always in going along cours la reine, that quaint figure, comical and pathetic, as he was seen by the duchesse de bouillon on a rainy morning, when she drove to versailles. he was standing under a tree on this wooded water-side, and on her return on that rainy evening he was standing under the same tree. he had dreamed away the long day there, not knowing or not caring that he was wet. he explained, once when he came late--inexcusably late--to a dinner, that he had been watching a procession of ants in a field, and had found that it was a funeral; he had accompanied the _cortége_ to the grave in the garden, and had then escorted the bereaved family back to its home, as bound by courtesy. this genuine poet, of dry, sly humor and of unequalled suppleness of phrase, was by nature a gentle, wild creature, and by habit a docile, domesticated pet, attaching himself to any amiable woman who was willing to give him a warm corner in her heart and her house. and how such women looked on him was prettily and wittily put by one of them: "he isn't a man, he is a _fablier_"--a natural product of her own sudden inspiration--"who blossoms out into fables as a tree blossoms out with leaves." * * * * * nicolas boileau began his acquaintance with molière by his tribute of four dainty verses to the author of "l'École des femmes," and the friendship thus formed was broken only by the death of molière, to whose memory boileau inserted his magnificent lines in the "epître à monsieur racine." it was boileau who criticised the early verse of young racine, so justly and so gently, that the two men were drawn together in an amity that was never marred. it was boileau who, after nearly forty years of finding him out by the distrustful racine, was acknowledged to be "noble and full of friendship." it was boileau who sang without cessation praises of racine to louis xiv., and who startled the nimble mediocrity of his majesty's mind by the assertion that molière was the rarest genius of the grand monarch's reign and realm. it was boileau who made, in his fondness for la fontaine, the unhappy and hopeless attempt to reform his friend's loose living, and in so doing nearly led to the undoing of la fontaine's goodwill for him. it was boileau, prompted by compassion for corneille's impoverished old age, who offered to surrender his own pension in favor of the distressed veteran of letters. it was boileau who found patru forced to sell his cherished books that he might get food, and it was boileau who bought them, on condition that patru should keep them and look after them for their new owner. it was boileau who tried to work a miracle in his comrade chapelle by weaning him from his wine-bibbing; and when chapelle found the lecture dry, and would listen to it only over a bottle or two, it was boileau who came out of the _cabaret_ the tipsier of the pair. it was boileau who was known to every man who knew him at all--and he was known to many men of merit and demerit--as a loyal, sincere, helpful, unselfish friend. it was of boileau that a perplexed woman in the great throng at his burial said, in the hearing of young louis racine: "he seems to have lots of friends, and yet somebody told me that he wrote bad things about everybody." those friends could have explained the puzzle. they mourned the indulgent comrade who was doubled with the stern satirist. the man, so rigid in morals and austere of life, was tolerant to the foibles of his friends, tender in their troubles, open-handed for their needs. the writer, so exacting in his standard and severe in his judgment, was cruel only with his pen. trained critic in verse, rather than inspired poet, boileau had an enthusiasm for good work in others equal to his intolerance of bad. he loathed the powdered and perfumed _minauderies_ of the drawing-room poetasters, and he loved the swift and sure stroke of molière's "_rare et fameux esprit_." it was in frank admiration that he demanded of his friend: "_enseigne-moi où tu trouves la rime!_" for this impeccable artist in words, who has left his profession of faith in the power of a word in its right place, had to reset and recast, file and polish, to get the perfection he craved. and so this bountiful admirer was easily an unsparing censor. sincere in letters as in life, he insisted on equal sincerity from his fellow-workers, and would not let them spare their toil or scamp their stint. he watched and warned them; his reproof and his approval brought out better work from them; and he may well be entitled the police president of parnassus of his country and his day. boileau's sturdy uprightness of spine stood him in good stead in that great court where all men grew sleek and servile, and where no pen-worker seemed able to escape becoming a courtier. his caustic audacity salted his sycophancy and made him a man apart from the herd of flatterers. his thrust was so suave, as well as sharp, that the spoiled monarch himself accepted admonition from that courageous cleverness. "i am having search made in every direction for monsieur arnauld," said louis, when eager in his pursuit of the jansenists. "your majesty is always fortunate; you will not find him," was boileau's quick retort, received with a smile by the king. when money was needed for dr. perrault's new eastern façade of the louvre and for its other alterations, the king naturally economized in the incomes of other men. the pensions of literary men--in many instances the sole source of their livelihood--were allowed to lapse; that of boileau was continued by an order that his name should be entered on the louvre pay-roll as "an architect paid for mason's work." his mordant reply to the questioning pay-clerk was: "yes, i am a mason." his masonry in the stately fabric of french literature stands unmarred to-day; coldly correct, it may be, yet elegant, faultless, consummate. nicolas boileau-despréaux was long believed to have been born in the country and to have played in the fields as a child, and so to have got his added name _des préaux_; but it is now made certain that the house of his birth, in , was in rue de jérusalem, a street that led to the sainte-chapelle, from about the middle of the present quai des orfèvres. the only field he knew lay at the foot of his father's garden at crosne, where the lad was sometimes taken. fields and gardens had never anything to say to this born cockney, and there is not a sniff of real country air in all his verse. the street of his birth was one of the narrow, dark streets of oldest paris, on Île de la cité; and the house, tall and thin, had its gable end on the court of the old palais de justice. the earliest air breathed by this baby was charged with satire, it would seem. for the room of his birth had been occupied, nearly half a century earlier, by jacques gillot, the brilliant canon of sainte-chapelle. in this room assembled in secret that clever band of talkers and writers, who planned and wrote "la ménippée"; the first really telling piece of french political satire, so telling, in its unbridled buffoonery, that it gave spirit to the arms that shattered the league, and helped to put henry of navarre on the throne of france. after his father's death, young nicolas kept his home with his elder brother jérôme, who had succeeded to the paternal mansion, and who gave the boy a sort of watch-tower, built above the garrets, in which he could hardly stand upright. the house, the court, the old palace, were long since swept away, and with them went all the melodramatic stage-setting of hugo's "notre-dame de paris" and sue's "mystères de paris." only the sainte-chapelle is left of the scenes of boileau's early years. he was sent for a while to collége d'harcourt, where young racine came a little later, and was then put to the study of law, the family trade; passing by way of beauvais college to the sorbonne. he is known to have pleaded in but one case, and then with credit to himself. still the law did not please him, any more than did the dry theology and the pedantic philosophy that he listened to on the benches of the sorbonne. he was enamoured early of poetry and romance, and soon affianced himself to the muse. this was his only betrothal, and he made no other marriage. he was born an old bachelor, and he soon sought bachelor quarters, driven by the children's racket from his nephew's house--also in the cour du palais--where he had found a home. this nephew and this house were well known to voltaire when a boy, as he tells us in his "Épître à boileau": "_chez ton neveu dongois je passai mon enfance, bon bourgeois, qui se crut un homme d'importance._" it is first in the year that we can place with certainty boileau's residence in rue du vieux-colombier, in that small apartment which fills a larger place in the annals of literary life than any domicile of that day, perhaps of any day. it was the gathering-place of that illustrious quartette-- "the goodliest fellowship of famous knights whereof this world holds record." molière comes from his rooms in rue saint-honoré, or from his theatre; crossing the seine by the pont-neuf, and passing along rues dauphine and de bucy, and through the marché saint-germain; moody from domestic dissensions, heavy-hearted with the recent loss of his first-born. once among his friends, he listens, as he always listened, talking but little. la fontaine saunters from the hôtel de bouillon, by way of rue des petits-augustins--now rue bonaparte--and of tortuous courts now straightened into streets. sitting at table, he is yet in his own land of dreams, until, stirred from his musing, his fine eyes brighten, and he chatters with a curious blending of simplicity and _finesse_. racine steps in from his lodging in rue de grenelle, hard by; the youngest of the four, he, unlike those other two, is seldom silent, and gives full play to his ironical raillery. next above him in age is the host; shrewd, brusque, incisive of speech and manner. so he shows in girardon's admirable bust in the louvre. the enormous wig then worn cannot becloud the bright alertness of his expression, or over-weigh the full lips that could sneer and the square chin, so resolute. these comrades talked of all sorts of things, and read to one another what each had written since they last met; read it for the sake of honest criticism from the rest, and with no other thought. for never were four men so absolutely without pose, without any pretence of earnestness, while immensely in earnest all the time. in "les amours de psyché," la fontaine assures us that they did not absolutely banish all serious discourse, but that they took care not to have too much of it, and preferred the darts of fun and nonsense that were feathered with friendly counsel. best of all, his fable makes plain that there were no cliques nor cabals, no envy nor malice, among the men that made this worshipful band. [illustration: boileau-despréaux. (from the portrait by largillière.)] their table served rather to sit around than to eat from, for their suppers were simple, and the flowing bowl was passed only when boisterous chapelle or other _bon-vivant_ dropped in. for others were invited at times, men of the world, the court, and the camp. and boileau was the common centre of these excentric stars, and when each, in his own special atmosphere of coolness, swayed from the others' vicinage, boileau alone let no alienation come between him and any one of them. for each, he was what racine had found him, "the best friend and the best man in the world." the house was near a noted _cabaret_, to which they sometimes resorted, at the saint-sulpice end of the street. the _cabaretier_ was the illustrious cresnet, made immortal in boileau's verse. for the poet was no prude, and enjoyed the pleasures of the table so far as his health permitted; and, a trained gastronomic artist, he knew how to order a choicely harmonized repast. his street is widened, his house is gone, and no one can fix the spot. yet the turmoil of that crowded thoroughfare of to-day is deadened for us by the mute voices of these men. we have noted boileau's camp-following with racine, in their rôles of royal historiographers--in and later--but he was not strong enough for these excursions, even though they were made a picnic for the court. he was never at home on a horse, and yet out of place in the mud, and he could not enjoy the laughter he caused in either attitude, before or after he was thrown; laughter that is recorded in the letters of madame de sévigné. it was probably because of molière's taking a country place at auteuil that boileau began to make frequent excursions to that quiet suburb about , and went to live in his tiny cottage there in . "he had acquired it," to use his biographer's words, "partly by his majesty's munificence, and partly by his own careful economy," so that he was opulent, for a poet. his purchase papers were made out by the notary arouet--voltaire's father--who drew up boileau's pension papers in , and who did much notarial work for the boileau family. the cottage stood exactly on the ground now covered by the rear wing of the hydropathic establishment, at no. rue boileau, auteuil. here he spent the spring and summer months of many a year, always alone, but with a hand-shake and a smile for his many visitors, men of birth as well as men of brains. hither voltaire certainly came, when a lad living with dongois, for he says, in his pleasant rhymed epistle to boileau: "_je vis le jardinier de ta maison d'auteuil._" to this same "_laborieux valet_," to this same "_antoine, gouverneur de mon jardin d'auteuil_," boileau wrote his letter in verse in . the widow racine came, too, for frequent outings with her children, who loved the garden and adored boileau, for the peaches he picked for them and the ninepins he played with them. louis racine, a sort of pupil of his, says that the old poet was nearly as skilful at this game as in versifying, and usually knocked over the entire nine with one ball. and when he went to town, no warmer welcome met the crusty old bachelor than in rue des marais-saint-germain, still the dwelling-place of racine's family. in great mansions, too, he had long been cordially received. he was a visitor at that of madame de guénégaud, which has given its site to the hôtel de la monnaie, and its name to the street alongside. he was fond of meeting kindred spirits and kindly hosts in the _hôtel_ of the great condé and his younger brother conti. he was one of the select set that sat about the table of lamoignon, every monday, at his home in the marais, to be visited by us later. and whenever old cardinal retz came to town, boileau hastened to the hôtel de lesdiguières, of which no stone stands in the street of its name. here the white-headed, worn-out old fighter, compelled to live in retirement, after the storms and scandals of his active life, was made at home by his admirable niece, madame de lesdiguières, and here he was encircled by admiring men and women. here, writes madame de sévigné, his other niece, who came often to sit with him, boileau presented to retz early copies of "le lutrin," and of "l'ars poétique." boileau could not live in the country in winter, and even in summer he had to go often into town to get the care of his trusted physician. for he was an invalid from boyhood, and all his life an uncomplaining sufferer. but he hurried back, whenever permitted, to the pure air and the congenial solitude of his small cottage, where three faithful servants cared for him; not as would have cared the wife, whom he ought to have had, all his friends said, and so, too, he thought sometimes. he grew lonely as life lengthened, and as he saw his cronies passing away, fast and faster, old corneille being the last of them to go. his winters in the great city were spent in lodgings on the island, in the cloisters of notre-dame. their quiet had always attracted him, as he avows in the verse that quivers with his nervous irritability, caused by the noises of the noisiest of towns. he cries, "does one go to bed to be kept awake?" indeed, he had rooms in the cloisters as early as , keeping them for town quarters, in the official residence of l'abbé de dreux, his old friend, a canon of notre-dame. to this address racine sent him a letter as late as . the ecclesiastical settlement within the cathedral cloisters, and its only remaining cottage, have been spoken of in an earlier chapter. the cloisters themselves survive only in the name of the street that has been cut through their former site. in we find boileau living with his confessor, the abbé lenoir, also a canon of the cathedral, who had the privilege of residing within the cloisters. this house stood exactly where now is the southern edge of the fountain behind notre-dame, above le terrain and the seine. his rooms were on the first floor, his bed in an alcove, and his windows looked out on the terrace over the river, as we learn by the amiable accuracy of the lawyer who drew up his will. here boileau lived through painful years of breaking bodily health, but with unbroken faculties. he yearned for his old home at auteuil, and yet he was too feeble to go so far. he had sold his cottage to a friend, under the condition that a room should be reserved always for his use. that use never came. one day toward the end, he summoned up strength to drive to the beloved place; but all was changed, he changed most of all, and he hurried home to his lonely quarters, where death found him at ten o'clock in the morning of march , . his devoted servants were requited for years of faithful service by handsome legacies, then the relatives were provided for, and no friend was forgotten. the remainder of his fortune went to the "_pauvres honteux_" of six small parishes in the city. a vast and reverent concourse of mourners of every rank followed his coffin to its first resting-place. this was in the lower chapel of the sainte-chapelle, as he had ordered; the church of his baptism, and of the burial of his mother and father. by a strange chance, his grave had been dug under that very reading-desk which had suggested to him the subject of his most striking production, the heroic-comic poem "le lutrin." early in the revolution his remains were removed, to save them from fortuitous profanation by the "patriots," to the museum of french monuments established in the convent of the petits-augustins, in the street of that name, now rue bonaparte. in his bones were finally placed in saint-germain-des-prés, where, in the chapel of saint-peter and saint-paul, they are at rest behind a black marble tablet carved with a ponderous latin inscription. from voltaire to beaumarchais [illustration: voltaire. (from the statue by houdon in the foyer of the comédie française.)] from voltaire to beaumarchais "_dans la cour du palais, je naquis ton voisin_," wrote voltaire to boileau, in one of those familiar rhymed letters that soften the austere rhetoric of the french verse of that day. the place of voltaire's birth, nearly sixty years after that of boileau, was in the same street of jerusalem, at its corner with the street of nazareth, and it was only thus as a baby that he came ever in touch with the holy land. on november , , the day after his birth, he was carried across the river to saint-andré-des-arts--no one knows why his baptism was not in the island church of the parish--and there christened françois-marie arouet. his earlier years were passed in the house of boileau's nephew dongois, whose airs of importance did not escape the keen infant eyes, as we have seen in the same letter in verse in our preceding chapter. then he was sent to lycée louis-le-grand, whither we have gone with young poquelin, seventy years earlier. the college stands in its new stone on its old site in widened rue saint-jacques. we hear of no break in the tranquil course of young arouet's studies, beyond the historic scene of his presentation to mlle. ninon de lenclos at her home in the marais, to which we shall go in a later chapter. this was in , when she owned to ninety years of age at least, and she was flattered by the visit of the youth of twelve, and by the verse he wrote for her birthday. dying in that year, she left a handsome sum to her juvenile admirer, to be spent for books. so, "_secondé de ninon, dont je fus légataire_," the lad was strengthened in his inclination for the career of literature he had already planned for himself, and in his disinclination for the legal career planned for him by his father. the elder arouet was a flourishing notary--among his clients was the boileau family--who considered his own the only profession really respectable. he placed his boy, the college days being done, with one maître alain, whose office was near place maubert, between rues de la bucherie and galande, a quarter crowded then with notaries and advocates, now all swept into limbo. but young arouet spent too many of his days and nights with the congenial comrades that met in the temple; "an advanced and dangerous" troop of swells and wits and pen-workers, light-heartedly bent on fun, amid the general gloom brought by marlborough's victories, and by madame de maintenon's persistence in making paris pious. father arouet sent his son away to the hague; the first of his many journeys, enforced and voluntary. when allowed to return in , he lost no time in hunting up his old associates; and soon, stronger hands than those of his father settled him in the bastille, in punishment for verse, not written by him, satirizing the regent and his daughter, duchesse de berri. there he spent his twenty-third year, utilizing his leisure to plan his "henriade," and to finish his "oedipe." when set free, he came out as voltaire. whether he took this new name from a small estate of his mother, or whether it was an anagram of _arouet fils_, is not worth the search; enough for us that it is the name of him, who was to become, as john morley rightly says, "the very eye of eighteenth-century illumination," and to whom we may apply his own words, used magnanimously of his famous contemporary, montesquieu; that humanity had lost its title-deeds, and he had recovered them. once again in the world, he produced his "oedipe" in , with an immediate and resounding success, which was not won by his succeeding plays between and . it was during this period that he spasmodically disappeared from paris, reappearing at brussels, utrecht, the hague; "_jouant à l'envoyé secret_," as was his mania then and in later years. during one of these flittings as an ambassador's ghost, he met rousseau, and they were close friends until the day when rousseau, showing to voltaire his "letter to posterity," was told that it would never reach its address! that gibe made them sworn enemies. in paris, during these years, voltaire had no settled home. we have seen him in the _salon_ of mlle. lecouvreur, in rue visconti, and we have seen him there, a sincere mourner at her death-bed. it has been told in an earlier chapter, how that fine creature had sat by voltaire's sick-bed, careless of her own danger from the small-pox, with which he was stricken in november, . he frequented many haunts of the witty and the wicked during these years, and a historic scene in one of these has been put on canvas by mr. orchardson. one evening in the year , voltaire was a saucy guest at the table of the duc de sully, descendant of henri iv.'s great minister, in the noble mansion in rue saint-antoine, to be visited by us later. on going out, he was waylaid and beaten by the lackeys of the chevalier de rohan-chabot, who desired to impress by cudgels the warning that, while princes are willing to be amused at the table where sit "only princes and poets," the poets must not presume on the privilege. in the painting, voltaire reappears in the room to the remaining guests, dishevelled and outraged. later he challenged rohan, whose reply came in an order of committal to the bastille. after two weeks in a cell, voltaire's request to go to england in exile was gladly accorded by the government. we all know well the voltaire of an older day, in his statues beside the institute and within that building, beside the panthéon, in square monge, and in the _foyer_ of the théâtre français. to see him at this younger day, we must turn into the court-yard of the mairie of the ninth arrondissement at no. rue drouot--an ancient and attractive family mansion. in the centre of the court is a modern bronze, showing "the ape of genius" at the age of twenty-five, a dapper creature with head perked up and that complacent smile so marked in all his portraits. this smirk may be due less to self-satisfaction than to that physical peculiarity, claimed by dr. oliver wendell holmes in his own case, which is caused by the congenital shortening of the levator muscles of the mouth. the statue's right hand rests jauntily on the hip, in the left hand is a book, and the left skirt of the long coat is blown back, showing the sword that was worn by young philosophers who would be young bloods. the pedestal holds two bas-reliefs; the youth in ninon's _salon_, the patriarch at ferney, and cut in it are his words: "if god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." during his years in england, voltaire made acquaintance with all the notable men of letters then living, and with william shakespeare in his works. in them he tolerantly found much merit, but always styled their author a barbarian. those barbarisms and savageries he civilized and smoothed to his pattern, for his "brutus" is an unconscious echo of "julius cæsar," his "zaïre" a shadow of "othello." he refused to call on wycherly "the gentleman," as wycherly insisted, but was glad to meet wycherly the playwright. nor did voltaire turn his back on men and women of fashion, but used them so cleverly as to enable him to carry home to france a small fortune, from the subscriptions to his english edition of the "henriade." he was shrewd in money matters, and a successful speculator for many years. we first hear of him again in paris in , getting army contracts and making money in queer ways. yet all through life his pen was always busy, and in this same year it is at work in a grand apartment of the hôtel lambert. this was the mansion of m. du châtelet, husband--officially only--of "_la sublime Émilie_," with whom voltaire had taken up his abode. the hôtel lambert remains unchanged at the eastern end of Île saint-louis, looking, from behind its high wall and its well-shaded garden, at its incomparable prospect. its entrance at no. rue saint-louis-en-l'Île opens on a grand court and an imposing façade. "this is a house made for a king, who would be a philosopher," wrote voltaire to his august correspondent frederick the great. he himself was neither king of this realm nor proved himself a philosopher in its grotesque squabbles. madame du châtelet was as frankly unfaithful to him as to her husband, who was frequently called in to reconcile the infuriated lovers. she was a woman of unusual abilities as well as of unusual indelicacies, with an itch for reading, research, and writing, her specialties being newton and mathematics. [illustration: the hôtel lambert.] in this queer couple found it to their comfort to quit paris, where voltaire was ceaselessly beset by the suspicions of the powers that regulated thought in france. they moved about much, to voltaire's discomfort, living sometimes at cirey, on the borders of champagne and lorraine, with or without the complaisant du châtelet; sometimes in a mansion taken by voltaire in paris. this stood on the corner of two streets no longer existing, rues du clos-georgeau and traversière-saint- honoré, at no. of the latter; and its site now lies under the roadway of new avenue de l'opéra. the cutting of this avenue has left unchanged only the northern end of rue traversière, and this has been renamed in honor of molière. to place voltaire's residence in the old mansion at the new number in this street, as a recent topographer has done, is an ingenuous flight of fancy. here voltaire went back to live after death had taken "_la sublime Émilie_" from him, from her other lover, and from her husband. this legal husband was less inconsolable than voltaire, whose almost incredible reproach to the third man in the case makes morality hold her hand before her face--peeping between the fingers, naturally--while immorality shakes with frank laughter. on the second floor of this house, voltaire remained, "_de moitié avec le marquis du châtelet_;" the first floor, which had been her own, being thenceforward closed to them both. here he tried to find companionship with his selfish and stolid niece, madame denis, and with his _protégé_ lekain. he transformed the garret into a private theatre, for the production of his plays, free from the royal or the popular censor; and for the training of lekain in the part of titus, in "brutus." that promising, and soon accepted, actor made his _début_ at the théâtre français in september, , and his patron was not among the audience. from this house, voltaire went frequently across the river to visit mlle. clairon in her apartment in rue visconti, so well known to him when tenanted by mlle. lecouvreur, twenty years earlier. and from this house, wherein he came to be too desolate and lonely, voltaire went forth from france in , to find a still more uncongenial home at potsdam. with his queer life there, and his absurd quarrels with frederick the great, this chronicle cannot concern itself. "_café à la voltaire_" is the legend you may read to-day on a pillar of the café procope, in rue de l'ancienne-comédie, directly opposite the old comédie française. we have seen the mixed delight and doubt with which coffee was first sipped by the parisians of the end of the seventeenth century, but it won its way, and in the sicilian procope opened this second paris _café_. it soon became the favorite resort by night of the playwrights and play-actors, and the swells among the audience, of the playhouse across the street. gradually the men of letters, living in and visiting the capital, made this _café_ their gathering-place of an afternoon; so that, on any day in the middle years of the eighteenth century, all the men best worth knowing might be found here. their names are lettered and their atrocious portraits painted on its inner walls. in the little room on the left, as you walk in on the ground floor, they treasure still, while these lines are written, voltaire's table. he sat here, near the stage that produced his plays, sipping his own special and abominable blend of coffee and chocolate. with him sat, among the many not so notable, diderot, d'alembert, marmontel, rousseau, with his young friend grimm--hardly yet at home in paris, not at all at home with its language--and piron, voltaire's pet enemy, who wrote his own epitaph: "_ci-gît piron, que ne fut rien, pas même académicien._" here, on an evening in , sat alain-rené le sage, awaiting in suspense the verdict on his "turcaret," brought out in the theatre opposite, after many heart-breaking delays; for the misguided author had convinced himself that his title to fame would be founded on this now-forgotten play, rather than on his never-to-be-neglected "gil blas"! during the revolution, while the café de la régence, which faces the present comédie française, was the pet resort of the royalist writers, this café procope was the gathering-place of the republican penmen; and they draped its walls in black, and wore mourning for three days, when word came across the water in of the death of benjamin franklin, the complete incarnation to them of true republicanism. toward the unlamented end of the second empire, a small group of young american students was to be found, of an evening, in the café procope, harmlessly mirthful over their beer. after a while, they were content to sit night after night in silence, all ears for the monologue at a neighboring table; a copious and resistless outburst of argument and invective, sprinkled with gallic anecdote and with _gros mots_, and broken by rabelaisian laughter, from a magnificent voice and an ample virility. they were told that the speaker was one léon gambetta, an obscure barrister, already under the suspicion of the police of the "lurking jail-bird," whom he helped drive from france, within a few years. the old house is to-day only a pallid spectre of its aforetime red-blooded self, and is nourished by nothing more solid than these uncompact memories. loving them and all his paris, its kindly proprietor tries to revitalize its inanimate atmosphere by his "_soirées littéraires et musicales_." in a room upstairs "ancient poems, ancient music, old-time song," are listened to by unprinted poets, unplayed dramatists, unhung painters. some of them read their still unpublished works. the _patron_ enjoys it all, and the waiters are the most depressed in all paris. denis diderot gives the effect in his work, as gambetta did in the flesh, of a living force of nature. when, at that same table, diderot opened the long-locked gate, the full and impetuous outflow swept all before it, submerged and breathless. in his personality, as vivid as that of mirabeau, we see a fiery soul, a stormy nature, a daring thinker, a prodigious worker. his head seemed encyclopædic to grimm, his life-long friend; and rousseau, first friend and later enemy, asserted that in centuries to come that head would be regarded with the reverence given to the heads of plato and of aristotle. voltaire could imagine no one subject beyond the reach of diderot's activity. arsène houssaye names him "the last man of the day of dreaming in religion and royalty, the first man of the day of the revolution." and john morley, looking at him from a greater distance than any of these, and with keener eyes, ranks him higher as a thinker than either rousseau or voltaire. as thinker, essayist, critic, cyclopædist, diderot is indeed the most striking figure of the eighteenth century. rugged, uncouth, headlong, we see him, "_en redingote de peluche grise éreintée_," in the philosophers' alley of the luxembourg garden, strolling with more energy than others give to striding. striking and strong he is in the exquisite bust by houdon in the louvre, yet with a refinement of expression and a delicacy of poise of the head that are very winning. this effect might have been gained by a fragonard working in the solid. here, under the trees where meet boulevard saint-germain and rues de rennes and bonaparte, it is the student whom we see in bronze, leaning forward in his chair, a quill pen in hand, his worn face bent and intent. this spot was selected for the statue because just there diderot resided for many years. his house was at no. rue taranne, on the corner of rue saint-benoît, and it was torn down when the former street was widened into the new boulevard. here, young diderot, refusing to return to the paternal home at lancres, when he left the collége d'harcourt--the school of boileau and racine--lived in a squalid room, during his early days of uncongenial toil in a lawyer's office and of all sorts of penwork that paid poorly--translations, sermons, catalogues, advertisements. here he was hungry and cold and unhappy; here, in , he married the pretty sewing-girl who lived in this same house with her mother, and who became a devoted and faithful wife to a trying husband. for her he had the only clean love of his not-too-clean life. from this garret he poured forth prose, his chosen form of expression, when poetry was the only vogue, and it is by his persistence, perhaps, that prose has come to the throne in france. and it was while living here that he originated the art-criticism of his country; clear and thorough, discriminating and enthusiastic. earlier notices of pictures had been as casual as the shows themselves; begun in , under colbert's protection and the younger mansart's direction, in a small pavilion on the site of the present théâtre français, having one entrance in rue de richelieu, another in the garden, into which the pictures often overflowed. when diderot wrote his notices for grimm, the exhibitions had permanent shelter in the halls of the louvre. in , still in this house, he published his "philosophic thoughts" and other essays that were at first attributed to voltaire, and that at last sent the real author to vincennes. there he was kept for three maddening months by an outraged "strumpetocracy" and a spiteful sorbonne, on its last legs of persecution for opinion. you may go to this prison by the same road his escort took, now named boulevard diderot, with unconscious topographic humor. to visit "great diderot in durance," grimm and rousseau came by this road; stopping, before taking the avenue de vincennes, at a farm-house on the edge of place du trône--now, place de la nation--where the sentimentalist quenched his thirst with milk. that was the day when rousseau picked up the paradox, from diderot, which he elaborated into his famous essay, showing the superiority of the savage man over the civilized man. there is as slight trace to be found of jean-jacques rousseau in the paris of to-day as in the minds of the men of to-day. we see him first, in , at the hôtel saint-quentin of our balzac chapter, carrying from there the uncomely servant, thérèse le vasseur. after this he appears fitfully in paris through many years. in he is in rue plâtrière--a street now widened and named for him--on the fourth floor of a wretched house opposite the present post-office. there he was found by bernardin de saint-pierre--as thin-skinned and touchy as rousseau, yet somehow the two kept friendly--with his repulsive thérèse, whom he had made his wife in . this preacher of the holiness of the domestic affections had sent their five children to the foundling hospital, according to his own statement, which is our only reason for doubting that he did it. bernardin found him, clad in an overcoat and a white _bonnet_, copying music; of which rousseau knew nothing, except by the intuition of genius. for those who wish, there are the pilgrimages to the hermitage at montmorenci, occupied by him in , and nearly forty years later by a man equally attractive, maximilien robespierre; and to ermenonville, the spot of rousseau's death in . it is easier to stroll to the panthéon, where, on one side, is a statue of the author of "le contrat social" and "Émile," which gives him a dignity that was not his in life. this tribute from the french nation was decreed by the national convention of _ brumaire, an ii_, and erected by the national assembly in . durable as its bronze this tribute was meant to be, at the time when he was deified by the nation; since then, his body and his memory have been "cast to the dogs; a deep-minded, even noble, yet wofully misarranged mortal." while acknowledging his impress on his generation as an interpreter of moral and religious sentiment, and without denying the claim of his admirers, that he is the father of modern democracy, we may own, too, to a plentiful lack of liking for the man. released and returned to his wife in rue taranne, diderot lost no time in beginning again that toil which was his life. with all his other work--"letters on the blind, for the use of those who can see," dramas now forgotten, an obscene novel that paid the debts of his mistress--he began and carried out his encyclopædia. "no sinecure is it!" says carlyle: "penetrating into all subjects and sciences, waiting and rummaging in all libraries, laboratories; nay, for many years fearlessly diving into all manner of workshops, unscrewing stocking-looms, and even working thereon (that the department of 'arts and trades' might be perfect); then seeking out contributors, and flattering them, quickening their laziness, getting payment for them, quarrelling with bookseller and printer, bearing all miscalculations, misfortunes, misdoings of so many fallible men on his single back." on top of all, he had to bear the spasmodic persecution of the government instigated by the church. the patient, gentle d'alembert, with his serenity, his clearness, and his method, helped diderot more than all the others. and so grew, in john morley's words, "that mountain of volumes, reared by the endeavor of stout hands and faithful," which, having done its work for truth and humanity, is now a deserted ruin. as he brought it to an end after thirty years of labor, diderot found himself grown old and worn, and the busiest brain and hand in france began to flag. by now, he stood next in succession to the king, voltaire. yet, for all the countless good pages he has written, it has been truly said that he did not write one great book. other urgent creditors, besides old age, harassed him, and he had to sell his collection of books. they were bought by the empress catharine of russia, at a handsome value, and she handsomely allowed him to retain them for her, and furthermore paid him a salary for their care. grimm urged on her, in one of his gossiping _feuilles_, that have given material for so much personal history, the propriety of housing her library and its librarian properly, and this was done in the grand mansion now no. rue de richelieu. we have come to this street with molière and with mignard, and there are other memories along this lower length, to which a chapter could be given. we can awaken only those that now belong to no. . here lived a couple named poisson, and on march , , they gave in marriage to charles guillaume le normand their daughter jeanne-antoinette, a girl of fifteen. that blossom ripened and rottened into la pompadour. the house is quite unchanged since that day. in a large rear room on its first floor, in the year , future chroniclers will be glad to note that moncure d. conway made an abbreviation of his noble life of thomas paine for its french translation. his working-room was in the midst of the scenes of paine's paris stay, but not one of them can be fixed with certainty. the house numbered of this street is occupied by the "_maison sterlin_," a factory of artistic metal-work in locks and bolts and fastenings for doors and windows. it is an attractive museum of fine iron and steel workmanship, ancient and modern. there, in a case, is preserved the superbly elaborate key of corneille's birth-house in rouen. the brothers bricard have had the reverent good taste to retain the late seventeenth-century interior of their establishment, and you may mount by the easy stairs, with their fine wrought-iron rail, to diderot's dining-room on the first floor, its panelling unaltered since his death there, on july , . he had enjoyed, for only twelve days, the grandest residence and the greatest ease his life had known. they had been made busy days, of course, spent in arranging his books and pictures. sitting here, eating hastily, he died suddenly and quietly, his elbows on the table. on august st his body was buried in the parish church of saint-roch, and the tablet marking the spot is near that commemorating corneille, who had been brought there exactly one hundred years before. this church is eloquent with the presence of these two, with the voice of bossuet--"the bible transfused into a man," in lamartine's phrase--and with the ping of bonaparte's bullets on its porch; yet there is a presence within, less clamorous but not less impressive than any of these. in the fourth chapel, on your left as you enter, is a bronze bust of a man, up to which a boy and a girl look from the two corners of the pedestal. this is the monument of charles michel, abbé de l'Épée, placed above his grave in the chapel where he held services at times, and the boy and girl stand for the countless deaf-and-dumb children to whom he gave speech and hearing. the son of a royal architect, with every prospect of preferment in the church, with some success as a winning preacher, his liberal views turned him from this career. his interest in two deaf-mute sisters led him to his life-work. there were others in england, and there was the good pereira in spain, who had studied and invented before him, but it is to this gentle-hearted frenchman that the world of the deaf and dumb owes most for its rescue from its inborn bondage. he gave to them all he had, and all he was; for their sake he went ill-clad always, cold in winter, hungry often. he had but little private aid, and no official aid at all. he alone, with his modest income, and with the little house left him by his father, started his school of instruction for deaf-mutes in . the house was at no. rue des moulins, a retired street leading north from rue saint-honoré, and so named because near its line were the mills of the butte de saint-roch--where we are to find the head-quarters of joan the maid. one of these mills may be seen to-day, re-erected and in perfect preservation, at crony-sur-ourcq, near meaux, and above its doorway is the image of the patron-saint, to whom the mill was dedicated in the fifteenth century. this quarter of the town had become, during the reign of louis xiv., the centre of a select suburb of small, elegant mansions, tenanted by many illustrious men. on the rear of his lot the good _abbé_ built a small chapel, and in it and in the house he passed nearly thirty years of self-sacrifice, ended only by his death on december , . when the avenue de l'opéra was cut in - , his street was shortened and his establishment was razed. at the nearest available spot, on the wall of no. rue thérèse, two tablets have been placed, the one that fixes the site, the other recording the decree of the constituent assembly of july, , by which the abbé de l'Épée was placed on the roll of those french citizens who merit well the recognition of humanity and of his country. and, in , amid all its troubled labors, the assembly founded the institution national des sourds-muets of paris, on the base of his humble school. the big and beneficent institution is in rue saint-jacques, at its intersection with the street named in his honor. and it is an honor to the parisians that they thus keep alive the memory of their great men, so that, in a walk through their streets, we run down a catalogue of all who are memorable in french history. in the vast court-yard, at that corner, under a glorious elm-tree, is a colossal statue of the _abbé_, standing with a youth to whom he talks with his fingers. it is the work of a deaf-mute, félix martin, well named, for he is most happy in this work. like the abbé de l'Épée, and for as many years--almost thirty of his half-voluntary, half-enforced exile--voltaire had devoted himself in his own way to the bettering of humanity, crippled mentally and spiritually. he had given vision to the blind, hearing to the deaf, voice to the speechless. he took in the outcast, and cherished the orphan. with his inherent pity for the oppressed, and his deep-rooted indignation with all cruelty, he had made himself the advocate of the unjustly condemned; and none among his brilliant pages will live longer than his impassioned pleadings for the rehabilitation of the illegally executed jean calas. and now he comes back from ferney, through all the length of france, in a triumphal progress without parallel, welcomed everywhere by exultant worshippers. at four in the afternoon of february , , his coach appears just where his statue now stands at the end of quai malaquais, then quai des théatins. he wears a large, loose cloak of crimson velvet, edged with a small gold cord, and a cap of sable and velvet, and he is "smothered in roses." his driver makes his way slowly along the quay, through the acclaiming crowd, to the home of "_la bonne et belle_," the girl he had rescued from a convent and adopted, now the happy wife of the marquis de villette. their eighteenth-century mansion stands on the corner of rue de beaune and present quai voltaire, unaltered in its simple stateliness. here voltaire is visited by all paris that was allowed to get to him. mlle. clairon is one of the first, on her knees at the bedside of her old friend, exhausted by his triumph. she is no longer young, and shows that she owns to fifty-five years, by her retired life at the present numbers and rue du bac. there she has her books and her sewing and her spendthrift comte valbelle d'oraison, who lives on her. [illustration: the seventeenth-century buildings on quai malaquais, with the institute and the statue of voltaire.] d'alembert and benjamin franklin are among his visitors, and the dethroned du barry, and thirty _chefs_, each set on the appointment of cook for the master. he goes to the academy, then installed in the louvre, and to the comédie française, temporarily housed in the tuileries, the odéon not being ready. there his "irène," finished just before leaving switzerland, is produced, and at the performance on the evening of march th he is crowned in his box, his bust is crowned on the beflowered stage, and the palms and laurels and plaudits leave him breath only to murmur: "my friends, do you really want to kill me with joy?" that was the last seen of him by the public. he had come to paris, he said, "to drink seine water"; and either that beverage poisoned him, or the cup of flattery he emptied so often. one month after that supreme night, on may , , at a little after eleven at night, he died in that corner apartment on the first floor. for thirty years after it was unoccupied and its windows were kept closed. almost his last words, as he remembered what the church had meant to him, and what it might mean for him, were: "i don't want to be thrown into the roadway like that poor lecouvreur." that fate was spared his wasted frame by the quickness of his nephew, the abbé mignot. here, at the entrance-gate in rue de beaune, this honest man placed his uncle's body, hardly cold, in his travelling carriage, and with it drove hastily, and with no needless stops, to scellières in champagne. there he gave out the laudable lie of a death on the journey, and procured immediate interment in the nave of his church, under all due rites. the grave was hardly covered before orders from the bishop of troyes arrived, forbidding the burial. the trick would have tickled the adroit old man. his body was allowed to rest for thirteen years, and then it was brought back in honor to paris. a great concourse had assembled, only two weeks earlier, at the place where the bastille had been, hoping to hoot at the royal family haled back from varennes. now, on july , , a greater concourse was stationed here, to look with silent reverence on this _cortége_, headed by beaumarchais, all the famous men of france carrying the pall or joining in the procession. they entered by the vincennes road, passed along the boulevards, crossed pont royal to stop before this mansion, and went thence to the panthéon. there his remains lay once more in peace, until the bourbons "de-panthéonized" both voltaire and rousseau. benjamin franklin had come to visit voltaire here on the quay, by way of the seine from passy, in which retired suburb he was then living. the traces he has left in the capital are to be found in two inscriptions and a tradition. we know that he had rooms, during a part of the year , in rue de penthièvre, and his name, carved in the pediment of the stately façade of the house numbered in that street, is a record of his residence in it or on its site. there is another claimant to his tenancy for a portion of this same year. the american who happens to go to or through passy, on a fourth of july, will have opportune greeting from the stars and stripes, draped over the doorway of the old-fashioned building, more a cottage than a mansion, now numbered rue franklin. its owners do this each year, they tell you, in honor of the great american who occupied the cottage in . their claim is the more credible, inasmuch as the street has been given his name since his day there, when it was rue basse. in the following year he went farther afield, and for nine years he remained in a villa in the large garden, now covered by the ugly École des frères de la doctrine chrétienne, at the corner of rues raynouard and singer. the historical society of passy and auteuil has placed a tablet in this corner wall, recording franklin's residence at this spot from to . his friend, m. ray de chaumont, occupied only a portion of his hôtel de valentinois, and gave up the remaining portion to franklin for his residence and his office, eager to show his sympathy for the colonies and his fondness for their envoy. only john adams, when he came, was shocked in all his scrupulosity to find an american agent living rent-free! in this garden he put up the first lightning-conductor in france, and in this house he negotiated the treaty that gave the crown's aid to the colonies and made possible their independence. to this spot came the crowd to catch a glimpse of the homely-clad figure, and men of science and letters to learn from him, and ladies from the court to caress him. and it may have been here that he made answer to the enamoured _marquise_, in words that have never been topped for the ready wit of a gallant old gentleman. the _cortége_ that accompanied voltaire's remains to the panthéon was headed, it has been said, by beaumarchais; fittingly so, for beaumarchais was then heir-presumptive to the dramatic crown, and his "figaro" had already begun to laugh the nobility from out of france. louis xvi. saw clearly, for once, when he said: "if i consent to the production of the 'marriage of figaro,' the bastille will go." he did consent, and it was played to an immense house on april , , in the comédie française, now the odéon. that night the old order had its last laugh, and it rang strangely and sadly. yet in this comedy, that killed by ridicule--the most potent weapon in france--once played a queen that was, and once a queen that was to be. on august , , on the stage of the little trianon at versailles, the comte d'artois--brother to louis xiv., later to be charles x.--appeared as the barber, to the rosina of marie antoinette. and, in the summer of , during the consulate, when malmaison was the scene of gayeties, a theatre was constructed in the garden, and on its boards, hortense (soon after queen of holland) made a success as rosina. playwriting was merely a digression in the diversified career of this man of various aptitudes, whose ups and downs we have no excuse for dwelling on, as we trace him through paris streets. there is no tablet to mark his birth, on january , , in the house of his father, caron, the watchmaker of rue saint-denis, opposite the old cemetery of the innocents, nearly at rue de la ferronerie. pierre-augustin caron he was christened, and it was in his soaring years that he added "de beaumarchais." this quarter is notable in that it was the scene of the birth and boyhood of four famous dramatists--of molière, as we have seen, and of regnard, as we shall see; of beaumarchais and of eugène scribe. to record this latest birth, on december , , a tablet is set in the wall of no. rue saint-denis, at the corner of rue de la reynie, only a few steps south of the caron house. it is a plain, old-style house of four stories and a garret, and has become a shop for chocolates and sweets. it has on its sign, "_au chat noir_"; black cats are carved wherever they will cling on its front and side, and a huge, wooden, black cat rides on the cart that carries the chocolate. beaumarchais had a residence at no. rue de condé in , and at the hôtel de hollande, rue vielle-du-temple , in . we shall go there later. on the wall of the house, no. boulevard beaumarchais, a tablet marks the site of his great mansion and its spacious gardens. these covered the entire triangle enclosed by rues amelot, daval, and roquette. he had found the money for this colossal outlay, not in his plays, but in all sorts of mercantile transactions, some of them seemingly shabby. it is claimed that he lost large sums in supplying, as the unavowed agent of the crown, war equipment to the struggling american colonies. his palace went up in sight of the bastille, then going down. the parisians came in crowds to see his grounds, with their grottoes, statues, and lake; and he entertained all the swelldom of france. there, one day in , the mob from the too-near faubourg saint-antoine came uninvited, and raided house and grounds for hidden arms and ammunition, not to be found. the owner went to the abbaye prison and thence into exile and poverty. returning in , he spent his last years in a hopeless attempt to gather up remnants of his broken fortunes, a big remnant being the debt neglected and rejected by the american congress. the romance of this "lost million" cannot be told here. beaumarchais died in this house in , and was buried in the garden. when the ground was taken for the saint-martin canal in , his remains were removed to père-lachaise. the grave is as near that of scribe as were their birthplaces. his name was given to the old boulevard saint-antoine in , and in his statue was placed in that wide space in rue saint-antoine that faces rue des tournelles. the pedestal is good, and worthy of a more convincing statue of this man of strong character and of contrasting qualities. and at the washington head-quarters at newburgh-on-hudson, and at the various collections of revolutionary relics in the united states, you will find cannon that came from french arsenals, and that, it was hinted, left commissions in the hands of caron de beaumarchais. the paris of the revolution [illustration: charlotte corday. (from the copy by baudry of the only authentic portrait, painted in her prison.)] the paris of the revolution it is no part of the province of this book to reconstruct the paris of the revolution, nor is there room for such reconstruction, now that m. g. lenôtre has given us his exhaustive and admirable "paris révolutionnaire." despite the destruction of so much that was worth saving of that period, there yet remain many spots for our seeing. the cyclone of those years had two centres, and one of them is fairly well preserved. it is the cour du commerce, to which we have already come in search of the tower and wall of philippe-auguste. outside that wall, close to the porte de buci, there had been a tennis-court, which was extended, in , into a narrow passage, with small dwellings on each side. the old entrance of the tennis-court was kept for the northern entrance of the new passage, and it still remains under the large house, no. rue saint-andré-des-arts. the southern entrance of the passage was in the western end of rue des cordeliers, now rue de l'École-de-médecine. in , exactly one hundred years after the construction of this cour du commerce, its southern half and its southern entrance were cut away by modern boulevard saint-germain, on the northern side of which a new entrance to the court was made. at the same time the houses on the northern side of rue de l'École-de-médecine were demolished, and replaced by the triangular space that holds the statues of danton and paul broca among its trees. those houses faced, across the street, whose narrowness is marked by the two curbstones, the houses, of the same age and the same style, that are left on the southern side of this section of the modern boulevard. one of the houses then destroyed had been inhabited by georges-jacques danton. it stood over the entrance of the court, and his statue--a bronze of his own vigor and audacity--has been placed exactly on the spot of that entrance, exactly under his dwelling-place. the pediment of this entrance-door is now in the grounds of m. victorien sardou, at marly-le-roi. danton's apartment, on the first floor above the _entresol_, had two _salons_ and a bedroom looking out on rue des cordeliers, while the dining-room and working-room had windows on the cour du commerce. here in he had his wholesome, peaceful home, with his wife and their son; and to them there sometimes came his mother, or one of his sisters, for a visit. in the _entresol_ below lived camille desmoulins and his wife in . the two young women were close friends, and m. jules claretie has given us a pretty picture of them together, in terrified suspense on that raging august th. lucile desmoulins knew, on the next day, that the mob had at least broken the windows of the tuileries, for someone had brought her the sponges and brushes of the queen! and on the th, danton carried his wife from here to the grand _hôtel_ in place vendôme, the official residence of the new minister of justice. his short life in office being ended by his election to the convention in the autumn of that year, he returned to this apartment; to which, three months after the death of his first wife in that same year, he brought a youthful bride. and here, on march , , he was arrested. before his own terrible tribunal his reply, to the customary formal questions as to his abode, was: "my dwelling-place will soon be in annihilation, and my name will live in the panthéon of history." he spoke prophetically. the clouds of a century of calumny have only lately been blown away, and we can, at last, see clearly the heroic figure of this truest son of france; a "mirabeau of the _sans-culottes_," a primitive man, unspoiled and strong, joyous in his strength, ardent yet steadfast, keen-eyed for shams, doing when others were talking, scornful of phrasemongers, and so genuine beside the petty schemers about him that they could not afford to let him live. lucie-simplice-camille-benoist desmoulins had, in his queer and not unlovable composition, a craving for a hero and a clinging to a strong nature. his first idol was mirabeau. that colossus had died on april , , and desmoulins had been one of the leaders in the historic funeral procession that filled the street and filed out from it four miles in length. mont-blanc was then the street's name, and for a few days it was called rue mirabeau, but soon took its present name, chaussée-d'antin, from the gardens of the hôtel d'antin, through which it was cut. the present no. , with a new front, but otherwise unchanged, is the house of mirabeau's death, in the front room of its second floor. mirabeau's worthy successor in camille's worship was danton, near whom he lived, as we have seen, and with whom he went as secretary to the ministry of justice. after leaving office, camille and his wife are found in his former bachelor home in place du théâtre-français, now place de l'odéon. the corner house there, that proclaims itself by a tablet to have been his residence, is in the wrong; and that tablet belongs by right to the house on the opposite corner, no. place de l'odéon and no. rue crébillon. from his end windows in this latter street, when he had lived there as a bachelor, camille could look slantwise to the windows of an apartment at no. rue de condé, and he looked often, attracted by a young girl at home there with her parents. there is still the balcony on the front, on which lucile duplessis ventured forth, a little later, to blow kisses across the street. at the religious portion of their marriage, in saint-sulpice on december , , the _témoins_ of the groom were brisson, pétion, robespierre. the last-named had been camille's schoolfellow and crony at lycée louis-le-grand, and remained his friend as long as it seemed worth while. the wedding party went back to this apartment--on the second floor above the _entresol_--for the _dîner de noces_. everything on and about the table--it is still shown at vervins, a village just beyond laon--was in good taste, we may be sure, for desmoulins was a dainty person, for all his tears over marat; his desk, at which he wrote the fiery denunciations of "le vieux cordelier," had room always for flowers. it was here that he was arrested, to go--not so bravely as he might--to prison, and then to execution with danton, on april , . his lucile went to the scaffold on the th of the same month, convicted of having conspired against the republic by wandering about the gardens of the luxembourg, trying to get a glimpse of her husband's face behind his prison window. to us he is not more visible in this garden than he was to her, but in the garden of the palais-royal he leaps up, "a flame of fire," on july , , showing the parisians the way they went to the bastille on the th. in the same section with danton and desmoulins, and equally vivid with them in his individuality, we find jean-paul marat. his apartment, where lived with him and his mistress, simonne evrard, his two sisters, albertine and catherine--all three at one in their devotion to his loathsome body--was in a house a little easterly from danton's, on the same northern side of rue de l'École-de-médecine. it was at this house that marie-anne-charlotte corday d'armans, on july , , presented herself as "_l'ange de l'assassination_," in lamartine's swelling phrase. she had driven across the river, from the hôtel de la providence. in our dumas chapter we shall try to find her unpretending inn, and shall find only its site. in the musée grévin, in paris, you may see the _baignoire_ in which marat sat when he received charlotte corday and her knife--a common kitchen-knife, bought by her on the day before at a shop in the palais-royal. the bath is shaped like a great copper shoe, and on its narrow top, through which his head came, was a shelf for his papers. the printing-office of marat's "l'ami du peuple," succeeded in by his "journal de la république française," was in that noisiest corner of paris, the cour du commerce. it was in that end of the long building of two low stories and attic, numbered and , now occupied by a lithographer. after marat's death, and that of his journal, the widow brissot opened a modest stationer's shop and reading-room in the former printing-office, we are told by m. sardou. it is an error that places the printing-office at the present no. of the court, in the building which extended then through to no. rue de l'ancienne-comédie. these two lots do, indeed, join in their rear, but marat has no association with either. in rue de l'ancienne-comédie, certainly, the "friend of the people" had storage room in the cellar and an office on an upper floor, but it was in one of the tall houses on the western side of the street, just north of the old theatre. the only claim to our attention of no. cour du commerce--a squalid tavern which aspires to the title of "_la maison boileau_"--comes from the presence of sainte-beuve. the great critic is said to have rented a room, under his pen-name of "joseph delorme," for a long time in this then cleanly _hôtel-garni_, for the ostensible purpose of working in quiet, free from the importunate solicitors of all sorts who intruded on his home in rue du mont-parnasse, no. . marat's death was frantically lamented by the rabble, that was quite unable to recognize the man's undeniable abilities and attainments, and that had made him its idolized leader because of his atrocious taste in saying in print exactly what he meant. they carried his body to the nave of the church, and later to its temporary tomb in the garden, of the cordeliers, a step from his house. in the intervals of smiling hours spent in watching heads fall into the basket, in new place de la révolution, they crowded here to weep about his bedraped and beflowered bier. the remains were then placed, with due honors, in the panthéon. then, within two years, the same voices that had glorified him shrieked that his body and his memory should be swept into the sewer. it was the voice of the people--the voice of deity, in all ages and in all lands, it is noisily asserted. when the franciscan monks, who were called cordeliers because of their knotted cord about the waist, came to paris early in the thirteenth century, they were given a goodly tract of ground just within the saint-germain gate, stretching, in rough outlines, from rues antoine-dubois and monsieur-le-prince nearly to boulevards saint-germain and saint-michel. the church they built there was consecrated by the sainted louis ix. in , and when burned, in , was rebuilt mainly by the accursed henri iii. new chapels and cloisters were added in , and there were many other structures pertaining to the order within these boundaries. of all these, only the refectory remains to our day. the site of the church, once the largest in paris, is covered by place de l'École-de-médecine and by a portion of the school; something of the shape and some of the stones of the old cloisters are preserved in the arched court of the clinique; bits of the old walls separate the new laboratories, and another bit, with its strong, bull-nosed moulding, may be seen in the grounds of the water-works behind no. rue racine, this street having been cut through the monks' precincts, so separating the infirmary, to which this wall belonged, and that stretched nearly to the rear walls of lycée saint-louis, from the greater portion of "_le grand couvent de l'observance de saint françois_." turn in at the gateway in the corner of place de l'École-de-médecine, and the refectory stands before you, a venerable fabric of anne of brittany's building, with sixteenth and seventeenth century adornments, all in admirable preservation. the great hall, filled with the valuable collection of the musée dupuytren, attracts us as a relic of ancient architecture, and as the last existing witness of the revolutionary nights of the cordeliers club. that club had its hall just across the garden alongside the refectory, in one of the buildings of the cloisters, which, with the church, had been given over to various uses and industries. hence the name of the club, enrolled under the leadership of danton, on whom the men of his section looked as the incarnation of the revolution. to him robespierre and his republic were shams, and to his club the club of the jacobins was at first distinctly reactionary. it took but little time, in those fast-moving days, for the cordeliers, in their turn, to be suspected for their unpatriotic moderation! [illustration: the refectory of the cordeliers.] we must not leave our cour du commerce, without a glance at the small building on the northern corner of its entrance from rue de l'ancienne-comédie. it was here that the first guillotine was set up for experiments on sheep, by dr. antoine louis, secretary of the academy of surgeons, and the head of a committee appointed by the national assembly on october , . on that day a clause in the new penal code made death by decapitation the only method of execution, and the committee had powers to construct the apparatus, which was to supersede sanson's sword. it was not a new invention, for the mediæval executioners of germany and scotland had toyed with "the maiden," but for centuries she had lost her vogue. on december , , dr. joseph-ignace guillotin had tried to impress on the assembly the need of humane modes of execution, and had dwelt on the comfort of decapitation by his apparatus until he was laughed down. that grim body could find mirth only in a really funny subject like the cutting off of heads! after two years and more, the machine, perfected by dr. louis, and popularly known as "_la louisette_," was tried on a malefactor in the place de grève on april , . three days later the little lady received her official title, "_la guillotine_." dr. guillotin had made his model and his experiments at his residence, still standing, with no external changes, at no. rue croix-des-petits-champs. it was already a most ancient mansion when he came here to live, and perhaps to remain until his death--in bed--in . it had been known as the hôtel de bretagne, and it is rich in personal history. to its shelter came catherine de lorraine, the young widow of the duc de montpensier, the "lame little devil" whom henri iii. longed to burn alive, for her abuse of him after the murder of her brother guise. within its walls, anne of austria's treasurer, the rich and vulgar bertrand de la bazinière--whom we have met on quai malaquais--hoarded the plunder which he would not, or dared not, spend. louis xiv. gave him, later, lodgings in the bastille, in that tower named bazinière always after. in this same hôtel de bretagne, henrietta of france, widowed queen of england, made her temporary home in the winter of , near her daughter, lately installed as "madame," wife of the king's brother, in the palais-royal. returning from england in , this unhappy queen went to the last refuge of her troubled life in the convent she had founded on the heights of chaillot. from that farther window of the first story on the right of the court, the comte de maulevrier, colbert's nephew, threw himself down to his death on the pavement on good friday, . in time the stately mansion became a _hôtel-garni_, was appropriated as national domain in the revolution, and sold in a lottery. "_la guillotine_," having proved the sharpness of her tooth, was speedily promoted from place de grève to a larger stage in place de la réunion, now place du carrousel, and thence in may, --that she might not be under the windows of the convention--to place de la révolution, formerly place de louis xv., at present place de la concorde. this wide space, just beyond the moat of the tuileries gardens, had in its centre, where now is the obelisk of luxor, a statue of the late "well-beloved," then altogether-detested, king for whom the place had been named; and a little to the east of that point the scaffold was set up. lamartine puts it on the site of the southern fountain, for the effect he gets of the flowing of water and of blood; this is one of his magniloquent phrases, which scorn exactness. on january , , for the execution of louis xvi., the guillotine was removed to a spot just westward of the centre, that it might be well protected by the troops deploying about the western side of the _place_, and into the champs Élysées and cours la reine. for a while in , the guillotine was transferred to the present place de la nation--where we shall find it in a later chapter--to come back to place de la révolution in time to greet robespierre and his friends. standing here, we are near the other centre of revolutionary paris, made so by the club of the jacobins, that met first in the refectory, later in the church of the monastery from which it took its name. the site of these buildings is covered by the little marché saint-honoré and by the space about. the club of the more moderate men, headed by bailly and lafayette, had its quarters in the monastery of the feuillants, which gave its name to the club, and which extended along the south side of rue saint-honoré, eastwardly from rue de castiglione; this street being then the narrow passage des feuillants, leading from rue saint-honoré to the royal gardens, and to the much-trodden terrasse on the northern side of those gardens facing the manège. this building had been erected for the equestrian education of the youth who afterward became louis xv., and was converted into a hall for the sitting of the assembly, after that body had been crowded for about three weeks, on coming to paris from versailles, into the inadequate hall of the archbishop's palace, on the southern shore of the city island, alongside notre-dame. the convention took over the manège from the assembly, and there remained until may, , when it removed to the more commodious quarters, and more befitting surroundings, of the tuileries. the old riding-school, whose site is marked by a tablet on the railing of the garden opposite no. rue de rivoli, was swept away by the cutting of the western end of that street, under the consulate in . when maximilien robespierre came up from arras--where he had resigned his functions in the criminal court, because of his conscientious objections to capital punishment--he found squalid quarters, suiting his purse--which remained empty all through life--in rue saintonge. that street, named for a province of old france, remains almost as he saw it, one of the few paris streets that retain their original buildings and ancient atmosphere. the high and sombre house, wherein he lodged from october, , to july, , is quite unaltered, save for its number, which was then and is now . from here, robespierre was snatched away, suddenly and without premeditation on his part, and planted in the bosom of the duplay family. they had worshipped him from afar, and when, from their windows, they saw him surrounded by the acclaiming crowd, on the day after the so-called massacres of the champ-de-mars of july , , the peaceful carpenter ran out and dragged the shrinking great man into his court-yard for temporary shelter. the house was then no. rue saint-honoré. if any reader wishes to decide for himself whether the modern no. is built on the site of the duplay house, of which no stone is left, as m. ernest hamel asserts; or whether the present tall structure there is an elevation on the walls of the old house, every stone of which is left, as m. sardou insists; he must study the pamphlets issued by these earnest and erudite controversialists. there is nothing more delightful in topographical sparring. the authors of this book can give no aid to the solicitous student; for they have read all that has been written concerning the subject, they have explored the house, and they have settled in silence in the opposing camps! in the duplay household, to which he brought misery then and afterward, robespierre was worshipped during life and deified after death. to that misguided family, "this cat's head, with the prominent cheekbones, seamed by small-pox; his bilious complexion; his green eyes rimmed with red, behind blue spectacles; his harsh voice; his dry, pedantic, snappish, imperious language; his disdainful carriage; his convulsive gestures--all this was effaced, recast, and transformed into the gentle figure of an apostle and a martyr to his faith for the salvation of men." from their house, it was but a step to the sittings of the assembly. it was but a few steps farther to the garden of the tuileries and to the "_fête de l'Être suprême_," planned by him, when he had induced the convention to decree the existence of god and of an immortal soul in man. he cast himself for the rôle of high priest of heaven, and headed the procession on june , , clad in a blue velvet coat, a white waistcoat, yellow breeches and top-boots; carrying in his hand flowers and wheat-ears. he addressed the crowd, in "the scraggiest prophetic discourse ever uttered by man," and they had games, and burned in effigy atheism and selfishness and vice! such of the stage-setting of this farce as was constructed in stone remains intact to-day, for our wonder at such childishness, and our admiration of the architectural perfection of the out-of-door arena. from this duplay house, robespierre used to go on his solitary strolls, accompanied only by his dogs, in the woods of monceaux and montmorenci, where he picked wild-flowers. from this house he went to his last appearance in the convention on the _ thermidor_, and past it he was carted to the scaffold, on the following day, july , . he had followed danton within a few months, as danton had predicted. they were of the same age at the time of their death, each having thirty-five years; the younger robespierre was thirty-two, saint-just was twenty-six, desmoulins thirty-four, when their heads fell. mirabeau died at the age of forty-two, marat was forty-nine when stabbed. not one of the conspicuous leaders of the revolution and of the terror had come to fifty years! [illustration: the carré d'atalante in the tuileries gardens.] when the tumbrils and their burdens did not go along the quays to place de la révolution, they went through rue saint-honoré, that being the only thoroughfare on that side of the river. from the conciergerie they crossed pont au change, and made their way by narrow and devious turnings to the eastern end of rue saint-honoré, and through its length to rue du chemin-du-rempart--now rue royale--and so to the scaffold. short rue saint-florentin was then rue de l'orangerie, and was crowded by sightseers hurrying to the _place_. those of the victims not already confined in the conciergerie were sent to the condemned cells there, for the night between sentence and execution. the trustworthy history of the prisons of paris during the revolution remains to be written, and there is wealth of material for it. there were many smaller prisons not commonly known, and of the larger ones that we do know, there are several, quite unchanged to-day, well worth unofficial inspection. the salpêtrière, filling a vast space south of the jardin des plantes, was built for the manufacture of saltpetre, by louis xiii.; and, by his son, was converted into a branch, for women, of the general hospital. a portion of its buildings was set apart for young women of bad character, and here manon lescaut was imprisoned. the great establishment is now known as the hôpital de la salpêtrière, and is famous for its treatment of women afflicted with nervous maladies, and with insanity. the present hospice de la maternité was also perverted to prison usages during the revolution. its formal cloisters and steep tiled roofs cluster about its old-time square, but its ancient gardens, and their great trees, are almost all buried beneath new masonry. the façade of the chapel, the work of lepautre, is no longer used as the entrance, and may be seen over the wall on boulevard de port-royal. another prison was that of saint-lazare, first a lazar-house and then a convent, whose weather-worn roofs and dormers show above the wall on rue du faubourg-saint-denis. on the dingy yellow plaster of the arched entrance-gate one may read, in thick black letters: "_maison d'arrêt et de correction._" unaltered, too, is the prison in the grounds of the carmelites, to be visited later in company with dumas; and the luxembourg, that was reserved for choice captives. the prison of the abbey of saint-germain was swept away by the boulevard of that name. its main entrance for wheeled vehicles was through rue sainte-marguerite, the short section left of that street being now named gozlin. of the other buildings of the abbey, there remain only the church itself, the bishop's palace behind in rue de l'abbaye, and the presbytery glued to the southern side of the church-porch. its windows saw the massacres of the priests and the prisoners, which took place on the steps of the church and in its front court. when you walk from those steps across the open _place_, to take the tram for fontenay-aux-roses, you step above soil that was soaked with blood in the early days of september, . some few of the abbey prisoners were slaughtered in the garden, of which a portion remains on the south side of the church, where the statue of bernard palissy, by barrias, stands now. in other chapters, the destruction of the grand-and the petit-châtelet has been noted. la force has gone, and sainte-pélagie is soon to go. and the conciergerie has been altered, almost beyond recognition, as to its entrances and its courts and its cells. only the cour des femmes remains at all as it was in those days. there are three victims of the terror who have had the unstinted pity of later generations, and who have happily left traces of their presence on paris brick and mortar. the last of these three to die was andré-marie de chénier, and we will go first to his dwelling. it is an oddly shaped house, no. rue de cléry--corneille's street for many years--at its junction with rue beauregard; and a tablet in its wall tells of de chénier's residence there. born in constantinople in , of a french father--a man of genius in mercantile affairs--and a greek mother, the boy was brought to paris with his younger brother, joseph-marie, in . they lived with their mother in various streets in the marais, before settling in this final home. here madame de chénier, a poet and artist in spirit, filled the rooms with the poets and artists and _savants_ of the time, the friends of her gifted sons. hither came david, gross of body, his active mind busied with schemes for his annual exhibitions of paintings, the continuation of those begun by colbert, and the progenitor of the present _salons_; alfieri, the poet and splendid adventurer; lavoisier, absorbed in chemical discovery. here in his earlier years, and later, when he hurried home from the french embassy in london on the outbreak of the revolution, andré de chénier produced the verse that revived the love of nature, dead in france since ronsard, and brought a lyric freshness to poetry that shamed the dry artificialities so long in vogue. that poetry was the forerunner of the romantic movement. in his tranquil soul, he hoped for the pacific triumph of liberty and equality, and his delicate spirit abhorred the excesses of the party with whose principles he sympathized. he was taken into custody at passy, early in , while visiting a lady, against whose arrest he had struggled, locked up in saint-lazare for months, convicted, and sent to the conciergerie. he was guillotined in place de la nation on july , , only the day before robespierre's fall, and was one of the last and noblest sacrifices to the terror. we shall look on his burial-place in our later rambles. müller has made andré de chénier the central figure of his "roll-call," now in the louvre. he sits looking toward us with eyes that see visions, and his expression seems full of the thought to which he gave utterance when led out to execution: "i have done nothing for posterity, and yet," tapping his forehead, "i had something here!" in this little house was surrounded by a great crowd of citizens come to bury louis de chénier, the father. the section of brutus guarded the bier, draped with blue set with silver stars, to suggest the immortality of the soul! and they gave every honor they could invent to the "_pompe funèbre d'un citoyen vertueux_," whose worthy son they had beheaded. joseph-marie de chénier lived for many years under suspicion of having given his assent if not his aid to his brother's death, albeit the mother always asserted that he had tried to save andré. joseph was a fiery patriot, and a man of genius withal. he wrote the words of the "chant du départ" which, set to music by méhul, proved almost as stirring as the "marseillaise" to the pulses of the patriots. music was one of the potent intoxicants of the time, and the revolution was played and sung along to the strains of these two airs, and of "Ça ira" and the "carmagnole." the classic style, which had hitherto prevailed, gave way before the paltry sentimentality and the tinkling bombast of the music adored by the mob. david planned processions marching to patriotic airs, and shallow operas were performed in the streets. yet rouget-de-l'isle, the captain of engineers who had given them the "marseillaise," was cashiered and put into a cell; being freed, he was left to starve, and no aid came to him from the empire or the bourbons, naturally enough. louis-philippe's government found him in sad straits, in that poor house no. of the poor passage saulnier, and ordered a small pension to be paid to him during his life. his death came in . joseph-marie de chénier was a playwright, also, and in he had created a sensation by his "charles ix.," produced at the comédie française, now the odéon. in the part of the king, wonderfully made up and costumed, talma won his first notable triumph. "this play," cried danton from the pit, "will kill royalty as 'figaro' killed the nobility." joseph-marie lived, not too reputably, but very busily, until january , ; a fussy politician, a member of the convention, of the council of five hundred, and of the institute, section of the french tongue and literature, always detested by his associates, by the emperor, and by the common people. when the place dauphine of henri iv. was finished, the new industry of the spectacle-makers established itself in the same buildings we see to-day, and gave to the place the name of quai des lunettes. later came the engravers, who found all the light they needed in these rooms, open on three sides. among them was a master-engraver, one phlipon, bringing his daughter, marie-jeanne--her pet name being manon--from the house of her birth, in , in rue de la lanterne, now widened into rue de la cité. it is not known whether the site of that house is under the hôtel-dieu or the marché-aux-fleurs. their new home stood, and still stands, on the corner of the northern quay, and is now numbered place dauphine and quai de l'horloge. the small window of the second floor lights the child's alcove bedroom, where this "daughter of the seine"--so madame roland dubs herself in her "memoirs"--looked out on the river, and up at the sky, from over pont au change to beyond the heights of chaillot, when she could lift her eyes from her plutarch, and her thoughts from the altar she was planning to raise to rousseau. it must be owned that this all too-serious girl was a prig; a creature over-fed for its size, the word has been happily defined. at the age of eleven, she was sent to the school of the "_dames de la congrégation_," in the augustinian convent in rue neuve-saint-etienne. it has been told how that ancient street was cut in half by rue monge. in its eastern section, now named rue de navarre, was manon's school, directly above the roman amphitheatre, discovered only of late years in the course of excavations in this quarter. the portion that is left of this impressive relic is in good preservation and in good keeping. her school-days done, the girl spent several years in this house before us, until her mother's death, and her father's tipsiness, sent her back to her convent for a few months. then, having refused the many suitors who had thronged about her in her own home, she found the philosopher she wanted for a husband in jean-marie roland de la platrière, a man much older than she; lank, angular, yellow, bald, "rather respectable than seductive," in the words of the girl-friend who had introduced him. but manon phlipon doubtless idealized this wooden formalist who adored her, as she idealized herself and all her surroundings, including the people, who turned and rent her at the last. she gave to her husband duty and loyalty, and it was not until she counted herself dead to earth and its temptations, in her cell at sainte-pélagie, that she addressed her last farewell to him, whom "i dare not name, one whom the most terrible of passions has not kept from respecting the barriers of virtue." this farewell was meant for françois-léonard-nicolas buzot, girondist member of the assembly and later of the convention. he remained unnamed and unknown, until his name and their secret were told by a bundle of old letters, found on a book-stall on quai voltaire in . she had met him first when her husband came from lyons, with petitions to the assembly, in february, , and took rooms at the hôtel britannique, in rue guénégaud. her _salon_ soon became the gathering-place of the girondists, where those austere men, who considered themselves the sole salvation of france, were austerely regaled with a bowl of sugar and a _carafe_ of water. their hostess could not bother with frivolities, she, who in her deadly earnestness, renounced the theatre and pictures, and all the foolish graces of life! the hôtel britannique was the house now numbered rue guénégaud, a wide-fronted, many-windowed mansion of the eighteenth century. its stone steps within are well worn, its iron rail is good, its second floor--the roland apartment--still shows traces of the ancient decorations. [illustration: the girlhood home of madame roland.] buzot lived at no. quai malaquais, an ancient mansion now replaced by the modern structure between the seventeenth-century houses numbered and . for when the convention outlawed the girondists, and buzot fled, it was decreed that his dwelling should be levelled to the ground, and on its site should be placed a notice: "_là fut la maison du roi buzot._" so that it would seem that his colleagues of the convention had found him an insufferably superior person. leaving this apartment on his appointment to office in , roland took his wife to the gorgeous _salons_ of the ministry of the interior, in the _hôtel_ built by leveau for the comte de lionne, and beautified later by calonne. it occupied the site of the present annex of the bank of france just off rue des petits-champs, between rues marsollier and dalayrac. here, during his two terms of office in and , roland had the aid of his wife's pen, as well as the allurements of her personal influence, in the cause to which she had devoted herself. the masculine strength of her pen was weakened, it is true, by too sharp a feminine point, and she embittered the court, the cordeliers, the jacobins, all equally against her and her party. for "this woman who was a great man," in louis blanc's true words, was as essentially womanly as was marie antoinette; and these two most gracious and pathetic figures of their time were yet unconscious workers for evil to france. the queen made impassable the breach between the throne and the people; madame roland hastened on the terror. and each of them was doing exactly what she thought it right to do! on january , , two days after the king's death, roland left office forever and removed to a house in rue de la harpe, opposite the church of saint-cosme. that church stood on the triangle made by the meeting of rues de l'École-de-médecine and racine with boulevard saint-germain. on the eastern side of that boulevard, once the eastern side of rue de la harpe, where it meets modern rue des Écoles, stood the roland house. the students and studentesses, who sip their coffee and beer on the pavement of vachette's, are on the scene of madame roland's arrest, on the night between may st and june st. on the former day, seeing the end so near, roland had fled. his wife was taken to the prison of the abbaye, and given the cell which was to be tenanted, six weeks later, by charlotte corday. released on june d and returned to her home in rue de la harpe, she was re-arrested on the th and locked up in sainte-pélagie. it was an old prison, long kept for the detention of "_femmes et filles, dont la conduite est onéreuse_," and its character had not been bettered by the character of the female prisoners sent there by the terror. this high-minded woman, subjected to infamous sights and sounds, preserved her serenity and fortitude in a way to extort the "stupefied admiration" of her fellow-prisoners, as one of these has testified. it was only in her cell that the great heart gave way. there she found solace, during her four months' confinement, with thomson's "seasons," "done into choice french," with shaftesbury and an english dictionary, with tacitus, and her girlhood companion, plutarch. and here she busied herself with her "memoirs," "writing under the axe," in her own phrase. in the solitude of her cell, indeed, she was sometimes disturbed by the unseemly laughter of the ladies of the comédie française, at supper with the prison-governor in an adjacent cell. we shall see, later, how these ladies came to be here. more acceptable sounds might have come almost to her ears; that of the hymn-singing or of the maiden laughter of the girls in her old convent, only a few steps away. the prison-register contains her description, probably as accurate as matter-of-fact: "height, five feet; hair and eyebrows, dark chestnut; brown eyes; medium nose; ordinary mouth; oval face, round chin, high forehead." from sainte-pélagie she went to the conciergerie on november st, the day after the guillotining of the girondists, and thence in eight days to her own death. it has been told, by every writer, that she could look over at her girlhood home, as her tumbril crossed pont au change. it has not been told, so plainly as it deserves, that her famous utterance on the platform was made fine for historic purposes, as was done with cambronne's magnificent monosyllable at waterloo. she really said: "_o liberté, comme on t'a jouée!_" with these words, natural and spontaneous and without pose, she is, indeed, "beautiful, amazonian, graceful to the eye, more so to the mind." within a few days of her death died her husband and her lover. roland, on hearing of her execution, in his hiding-place near rouen, thrust his cane-sword into his breast; buzot, wandering and starving in the fields, was found half-eaten by wolves. she had confided her daughter eudora and her "memoirs" to the loyal friend bosc, who hid the manuscript in the forest of montmorenci, and in published it for the daughter's benefit. the original is said to be in existence, on coarse gray paper, stained with her tears. sainte-beuve speaks of them as "delicious and indispensable memories," deserving a place "beside the most sublime and eloquent effusions of a brave yet tender philosophy." when he praises that style, clearer and more concise than that of madame de staël, "that other daughter of rousseau," he does not say all; he might have added that, like rousseau, she occasionally speaks of matters not quite convenient to hear. it is difficult to refrain from undue admiration and pity, to remain temperate and modest, when one dwells on the character and qualities, the blameless life and the ignominious death, of marie-jean-antoine- nicolas caritat, marquis de condorcet. we may look up at his thoughtful face in bronze on quai conti, alongside the mint, where he lived in the _entresol_ of the just completed building, when appointed director of the hôtel de la monnaie by his old friend turgot, in . we may look upon the house in rue servandoni where he hid, and from which he escaped to his death. his other paris homes have no existence now. his college of navarre--oldest of all those in the university--has been made over into the École polytechnique; and the house he built for himself in rue chantereine, which was afterward owned by josephine beauharnais, has long since disappeared. when only twenty-two years of age he wrote his famous essay on the integral calculus, when twenty-six he was elected to the academy of sciences. made perpetual secretary of that body in , it came in the course of his duties to deliver eulogies on pascal, d'alembert, buffon, and franklin, and others of the great guild of science. these are more than perfunctory official utterances, they are of an eloquence that shows his lovable character as well as his scientific authority. he contributed largely to diderot's encyclopædia, and put forth many astronomical, mathematical, and theological treatises during his busy life. he wrote earnestly in favor of the independence of the american colonies, and was one of the earliest advocates of the people's cause in france. but he was much more than a man of science and of letters; he was a man with a great soul, "the seneca of the modern school," says lamartine; the most kindly and tolerant friend of humanity, and protector of its rights, since socrates. he believed in the indefinite perfectibility of the human race, and he wrote his last essay, proving its progress upward, while hiding in a garret from those not yet quite perfect fellow-beings, who were howling for his head! he was beloved by benjamin franklin and by thomas paine. members of the convention together, he and paine prepared the new constitution of , in which political document they found no place for theological dogma. robespierre prevented the adoption of this constitution, having taken god under his own protection. condorcet made uncompromising criticism, and was put on the list of those to be suspected and got rid of. too broad to ally himself with the girondists, he was yet proscribed with them, on june , . his friends had forced him to go into hiding, until he might escape. they had asked madame vernet--widow of the painter claude-joseph, mother of carle, grandmother of horace--to give shelter to one of the proscribed, and she had asked only if he were an honest man. this loyal woman concealed him in her garret for nearly one year, and would have kept him longer, but that he feared for her safety, and for that of his wife and daughter, who might be tracked in their visits to him by night. he had finished his "esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain," full of hope for humanity, with no word of reproach or repining, and then he wrote his last words: "advice of one proscribed, to his daughter." this is to be read to-day for its lofty spirit. he gives her the names of certain good men who will befriend her, and among them is benjamin franklin bache, the son of our franklin's daughter sally, who had been in paris with his grandfather. then, this letter finished, early on the morning of april , , he left it on his table and slipped out, unseen by the good widow vernet, from the three-storied plaster-fronted house now no. of rue servandoni, and still unaltered, as is almost the entire street. through it he hurried to rue de vaugirard, where he stood undecided for a moment, the prison of the luxembourg on his left, and the prison of the carmelites on his right, both full of his friends. and on the walls, all about, were placards with big-lettered warning that death was the penalty for harboring the proscribed. here at the corner, he ran against one sarret, cousin of madame vernet, who went with him, showing the way through narrow streets to the barrière du maine, which was behind the present station of mont-parnasse. safely out of the town, the two men took the road to fontenay-aux-roses, and at night sarret turned back. condorcet lost his way, and wandered about the fields for two days, sleeping in the quarries of clamart, until driven by hunger into a wretched inn. demanding an omelet, he was asked how many eggs he would have; the ignorant-learned man ordered a dozen, too many for the working-man he was personating, and suspicions were aroused. the villagers bound and dragged him to the nearest guardhouse at bourg-la-reine. he died in his cell that night, april , , by poison, it is believed. for he wore a ring containing poison; the same sort of poison, it is said, that was carried by napoleon, with which he tried--or pretended to try--to kill himself at fontainebleau. in the modern village of bourg-la-reine, five and a half miles from paris, the principal square bears the name of condorcet, and holds his bust in marble. "_la veuve condorcet_" appears in the paris _bottin_ every year until , when she died. she had been imprisoned on the identification of her husband's body, but was released after robespierre's death. she passed the duplay house every day during those years, going to her little shop at rue saint-honoré. there she had set up a linen business on the ground floor, and above, she painted portraits in a small way. she was a woman of rare beauty and of fine mind, with all womanly graces and all womanly courage. married in , and much younger than her husband, timorous before his real age and his seeming austerity, she had grown up to him, and had learned to love that "volcano covered with snow," as his friend d'alembert had said he was. she had a pretty gift with her pen, and her translation into french of adam smith's "theory of moral sentiments" is still extant. her little _salon_ came to be greatly frequented in her beautiful old age. condorcet's famous fellow-worker in science, antoine-laurent lavoisier, was guillotined in may, , the two men having the same number of years, fifty-one. he was condemned, not for being a chemist, albeit his enlightened judges were of the opinion that "the republic has no need of chemists," but because he had filled, with justice and honesty, his office of farmer-general under royalty. their contemporaries of nearly equal age, gaspard monge and claude-louis berthollet, escaped the guillotine, and were among the _savants_ in the train of general bonaparte in his italian and egyptian campaigns. after many years of useful labors, they died peacefully under the restoration. pierre-simon laplace, of almost equal years with these four, lived to a greater age, and received higher honors from the emperor and the bourbons. coming from his birth-place in calvados in , his first paris home to be found is in rue des noyers; one side of which ancient street now forms that southern section of boulevard saint-germain opposite rue des anglais, its battered houses seeming to shrink back from the publicity thrust upon them. in that one now numbered in the boulevard, formerly no. rue des noyers, alfred de musset was born in ; and in the same row lived laplace in . in we find him in rue mazarine, and in in rue louis-le-grand, and this latter residence represents his only desertion of the university side of the seine. he returned to that bank when placed by the consuls in the senate, and made his home in at no. rue des grands-augustins, and in the following year at no. rue christine. these stately mansions of that period, only a step apart, remain as he left them. when laplace was made chancellor of the senate, in , his official residence was in the luxembourg, and there it continued until , the year of the restoration. his private residence, from to , was at no. rue de tournon, a house still standing in all its senatorial respectability. he gave this up, and again took up his quarters in the luxembourg, when made a count of the empire and vice-president of the senate. from the medician palace, which appears in the _bottin_ of those years as simple no. rue de vaugirard, laplace removed to no. of that street, when the returned bourbons made him a peer of france. this house, near rue d'assas--named for the chevalier nicolas d'assas, the heroic captain of the regiment of auvergne during the seven years' war--is unaltered since his time. his last change of abode was made in , to rue du bac, , where he died in . it is a mansion of old-fashioned dignity, with a large court in front and a larger garden behind, and is now numbered . the growing importance of his successive dwellings, every one of which may be visited to-day, mark his growth in importance as a man of state. the growth of the man of science is represented by his colossal "la mécanique céleste," which first appeared in , and was continued by successive volumes until its completion in . its title, rather than his titles, should be inscribed on his monument. a little later than these famous _confrères_, georges cuvier appears in paris--in hugo's half-truth--"with one eye on the book of genesis and the other on nature, endeavoring to please bigoted reaction by reconciling fossils with texts, and making the mastodons support moses." his first home, at the present rue de seine, is a fine old-fashioned mansion. he removed to the opposite side of that street in , and there remained until , his house being now replaced by the new and characterless structure at no. . full of character, however, is his official residence as professor in the jardin des plantes, which took again its ancient title of jardin du roi during the restoration. "_la maison de cuvier_" is a charming old building near the garden-entrance in rue cuvier, and within is the bust of this most gifted teacher of his time. his genuine devotion to science and his tolerance for all policies carried him through the several changes of government during his life. he completed the napoleonic conquest of italy and holland by his introduction of the french methods of education, perfected by him. the bourbons made him baron and chancellor of the university, and the orleans king elevated him to the peerage of france. he died in . paul-françois-jean-nicolas, comte de barras--soldier, adventurer, a power in the convention, the power of the directory, practically dictator for a while--has added to the hilarity of the sceptical student of history by his "memoirs," kept concealed since his death, in , until their publication within a few years. splendidly mendacious in these pages as he was in life, barras posed always as the man on horseback of _his " vendémiaire_." on that day, unwittingly yet actually, he put into the saddle--where he stayed--his young friend buonaparte, whose qualities he had discovered at the siege of toulon. this artillery officer, while planting his batteries to cover every approach to the tuileries, where cowered the frightened convention, took personal command of the guns that faced saint-roch. the front of that church still shows the scars of the bullets that stopped the rush of the sections in that direction. this battery was placed at the rue saint-honoré end of the narrow lane leading from that street to the gardens of the tuileries--there being then no rue de rivoli, you will bear in mind. this lane was known as rue du dauphin, because of the royal son who had used it, going between the tuileries and the church; after that day, it was popularly called rue du -vendémiaire, until it received its official appellation of rue saint-roch, when widened and aligned in . at this time there were only two houses in the street, near its southern end, and one of them was a _hôtel-garni_, in which young buonaparte caught a short sleep on that night of october , . the oldest structure in rue saint-roch to-day is that with the two numbers and , and it is known to have been already a _hôtel-garni_ in the first years of the nineteenth century, when it was refaced. so that it is well within belief that we have found here buonaparte's head-quarters for that one night. let us now, crossing the river, get on the ground of positive proof, safe from doubts or conjectures. the duchesse d'abrantès, wife of that adorable ruffian, andoche junot, made a duke in by the emperor, writes in her "memoirs": "to this day, whenever i pass along quai conti, i cannot help looking up at the garret windows at the left angle of the house, on the third floor. that was napoleon's chamber, when he paid us a visit; and a neat little room it was. my brother used to occupy the one next it." madame junot had been mlle. laure permon, whose father, an army contractor, had brought his family to paris early in , and leased for his residence the hôtel sillery, formerly the petit hôtel guénégaud. madame permon, a corsican lady, had been an early friend of madame buonaparte, and had rocked young buonaparte in his cradle; so that he was called by his first name in her family, as her daughter shows in this quotation. finding him at the École royale militaire in paris, she invited him to her house for frequent visits, once for a week's stay, whenever permission could be got from the school authorities. he was a lank, cadaverous, dishevelled lad, solitary, taciturn, and morose; brooding over the poverty that had forced him to seek an unpaid-for scholarship, and not readily making friends with the more fortunate albert permon. yet he came often, and was nowhere so content as in this house before us. it stands far back from the front of the quay, half-hidden between the institute and the mint, and is numbered quai conti, and its entrance is on the side at no. impasse conti. its upper portion is now occupied by a club of american art students. constructed by mansart, its rooms are of admirable loftiness and proportion, and retain much of their sixteenth-century decoration. here in this _salon_ after dinner, young buonaparte would storm about the "indecent luxury" of his schoolmates, or sit listening to madame permon, soothed by her reminiscent prattle about corsica and his mother, to whom he always referred as madame letitia. here he first showed himself to the daughters in his new sub-lieutenant's uniform, before joining his regiment on october , , and they laughed at his thin legs in their big boots. [illustration: no. quai conti.] the École supérieure de guerre, commonly called the "École militaire," remains nearly as when constructed under louis xv., but it is impossible to fix on the room allotted to this student during his year there--a small, bare room, with an iron cot, one wooden chair, and a wash-stand with drawers. the chapel, now unused, remains just as it was when he received his confirmation in it. he arrived at this school, from his preparatory school at brienne, on the evening of october , , one of a troop of five lads in the charge of a priest. they had disembarked, late that afternoon, at port saint-paul, from the huge, clumsy boat that brought freight and passengers, twice a week, from burgundy and the aube down the seine. the priest gave the lads a simple dinner near their landing-place, and led them across the river and along the southern quays--where the penniless young buonaparte bought a "gil-blas" from a stall, and a comrade in funds paid for it--and, stopping for prayers at saint-germain-des-prés, he handed them over to the school authorities. from that moment every hour of young buonaparte's year in paris can be accounted for. and no foundation can be discovered or invented for the fable, mendaciously upheld by the tablet, placed by the second empire in the hallway of no. quai conti, which claims a garret in that tall, up-climbing, old house as his lodging at that time or at any later time. this flimsy legend need no longer be listened to. not far away, however, is a garret that did harbor the sub-lieutenant in the autumn of . it is to m. lenôtre that we owe this delightful find. arriving in paris from corsica, after exactly two years of absence, buonaparte took room no. , on the third floor of the hôtel de cherbourg, rue du four-saint-honoré. that street is now rue vauvilliers, its eastern side taken up by the halles, and its present no. , on the western side, is the former _hôtel-garni_, quite unchanged as to its fabric. here he was always writing in his room, going out only for the frugal meals that cost him a few _sous_, and here he had his first amorous adventure, recited by him in cynical detail under the date: "_jeudi novembre , à paris, hôtel de cherbourg, rue du four-saint-honoré._" on august , , buonaparte saw the mob carry and sack the tuileries. he was in disgrace with the army authorities, having practically deserted to corsica, and he had come back for reinstatement and a job. in his saint-helena "memorial," he says that he was then lodging at the hôtel de metz in rue du mail. this is evidently the same lodging placed by many writers in rue d'aboukir, for many of the large houses that fronted on the first-named street extended through to the latter, as shall be shown later. the hotel is gone, and the great mercantile establishment at no. rue du mail covers its site. gone, too, is the shabbily furnished little villa in rue chantereine, where he first called on josephine de beauharnais, where he married that faded coquette--dropping the _u_ from his name then, in march, --and whence he went to his _ brumaire_. the court-yard, filled with resplendent officers on that morning, is now divided between the two courts numbered and rue de la victoire; that name having been officially granted to the street, on his return from his italian campaign in . the villa, kept by the emperor, and lent at times to some favorite general, was not entirely torn down until . its site is now covered by the houses nos. and . rue chantereine was, in those days, almost a country road, bordered by small villas; two of them were associated with napoleon bonaparte. in one of them, mlle. eléonora dennelle gave birth, on december , , to a boy, who grew up into a startling likeness of the emperor, as to face and figure, but who inherited from him only the half-madness of genius. he lived through the empire, the restoration, the second republic, the second empire, and into the republic that has come to stay, dying on april , . to another modest dwelling in this same street, there came the loving and devoted polish lady, madame walewski, who had thrown herself into the emperor's arms, when she was full of faith in his intent to liberate her native land. their son, alexandre walewski, born in , was a brilliant figure in paris, where he came to reside after the fall of warsaw. a gifted soldier, diplomat, and writer, he died in . so, of the roofs that sheltered the boyhood of napoleon, three still remain. of those loftier roofs that sheltered his manhood, there are also three still to be seen. in the paris _bottin_ of the first year of the nineteenth century, the name of napoleon bonaparte appears as a member of the institute, section of mechanism, living in the palace of the luxembourg. in his address is changed to the palace of the tuileries, and he is qualified "emperor of the french;" enlarging that title in to "emperor of the french and king." the tuileries are swept away, and saint-cloud has left only a scar. the luxembourg remains, and so, too, the palais de l'Élysée, where he resided for a while, and the _château_ of malmaison has been restored and refurnished in the style of josephine, as near as may be, and filled with souvenirs of her and of her husband. her body lies, with that of her daughter hortense, in the church of the nearest village, reuil, and his remains rest under the dome of the invalides--his last roof. there is a curious letter, said to be still in existence, written by young buonaparte to talma, asking for the loan of a few francs, to be repaid "out of the first kingdom i conquer." he goes on to say that he has found nothing to do, that barras promises much and does little, and that the writer is at the end of his resources and his patience. this letter was evidently written at that poverty-stricken period between and , when he was idly tramping paris streets with junot, the lovable and generous comrade from toulon; or with bourrienne, now met first since their school-days at brienne, who was to become the emperor's patient confidential secretary. at that period talma had fought his way to his own throne. intimate as he had been with mirabeau, danton, desmoulins, joseph-marie de chénier and david, he had, also, made friends with the corsican officer, either during these years of the letter or probably earlier. he made him free of the stage of the théâtre français, and lent him books. his friendship passed on to the general, the consul, and the emperor, and it was gossipped that he had taught bonaparte to dress and walk and play napoleon. talma always denied this, avowing that the other man was, by nature and training, the greater actor! joseph-françois talma used to say that he first heard of a theatre, from seeing and asking about the old théâtre de l'hôtel de bourgogne, whose entrance was in rue mauconseil, opposite the place of his birth, on january , . as he grew up he learned a good deal more about the theatre, for he went early and often. he was only fifteen when he was one of the audience in the théâtre français, on that night of the crowning of voltaire, and one of the crowd that tried to unharness the horses, and drag the old man from the tuileries to his house on the quay. by day the lad was learning dentistry, his father's profession--it was then a trade--and the two went to london to practice. for a while young talma got experience in that specialty from the jaws of the sailor-men at greenwich, and got gayer and more congenial experience in amateur theatricals in town. they returned to paris, and the father's sign, "_m. talma, dentiste_," was hung by the doorway of no. rue jean-jacques-rousseau, next to the corner of rue saint-honoré. from the house that was there before the present modern structure, young talma went across the river to the comédie française, on the night of november , , and made his _début_ as seide in "mahomet." in our chapter on molière, we left the comédie française, on its opening night in , at the house in rue de l'ancienne-comédie. there it remained for nearly a century, until forced, by overflowing houses, to find a larger hall. while this was in course of construction the company removed, in , to the salle des machines in the tuileries, already transformed into a theatre by the regent for his ballets. here the troupe played until the completion of the new theatre in . that new comédie française is now the second théâtre français, the odéon, the second largest hall in paris. it was burned in and again in . in it took the title of théâtre national; in , théâtre de l'Égalité was the newest name forced upon the unwilling comedians, who were, as always with that profession, fond of swelldom and favorites of princes. the house being in the very centre of the cordeliers quarter, in _la section marat_, there was always constant friction between players and audience, and by this had so exasperated the ruling powers--the _sans-culottes_--that nearly the whole troupe was sent to prison, charged with having insulted the patriots on the boards, and with having given "proofs of marked incivism." the ladies of the company, aristocrats by strength of their sex, occupied cells in sainte-pélagie, where we have already listened to their merriment. they escaped trial through the destruction of their _dossiers_ by a humane member of the committee of safety, and the _ thermidor_ set them free. talma had already left the troupe in april, , driven away, with two or three friends, by dissensions and jealousies. they went over to the new house which had been constructed, in , at a corner of the palais-royal, by enterprising contractors with influential politicians between them. it was called at first théâtre français de la rue de richelieu, and, in , théâtre de la république. on talma's desertion of the old house, there began a legal process against him, exactly like that instituted by the same comédie française against m. coquelin, a century later, when the theatre had for its lawyer the grandson of its advocate of ; and the decision of the two tribunals was the same in effect. talma stayed at the theatre in the palais-royal, to which he drew the discerning public, and, after ten years of rivalry, the two troupes joined hands on those boards, and so the comédie française came to the present "house of molière." it would seem that talma was a shrewd man of business, and drew money in his private rôle of landlord. he owned the house in which mirabeau died, in rue de la chaussée-d'antin, and always referred to the great tribune as "_mon ancien locataire, mirabeau_." just beyond, in rue chantereine, talma was attracted by the small villa built by the architect ledoux, for condorcet, it is said. perhaps the actor had seen, in that street, an even more plausible actor, giuseppe balsamo by name, calling himself the count cagliostro. he had established himself in one of the villas in this street, on coming to paris to ply his trade, toward . and in the wonder-working mesmer had set up his machinery and masqueraded as a magician in a house in the same street. benjamin franklin went there, one of a government commission sent to investigate the miracles. in his new residence in rue chantereine, talma welcomed his friends among the revolutionary leaders, and gave them _bouillon_ in the kitchen, when he came home from the theatre at night. in he sold the villa to josephine de beauharnais, and he always said that her first payment was made to him from moneys sent to her, by her husband, from italy. it is not known whether talma owned, or leased, an apartment in no. quai voltaire, where he lived from until . the house, now no. , one of the ancient stately structures facing the quay, is somewhat narrower than its neighbors. during the ten years between and he had an apartment at no. rue de seine; possibly in that pavilion in the court which was built by marguerite de valois for her residence, and which has been heightened by having two new floors slipped between the lower and top stories, leaving these latter and the façade much as she built them. his home, from to , at no. rue de rivoli, is replaced by the new structures at the western end of that street, which is entirely renumbered. after two more changes on the northern bank, he finally settled at no. rue de la tour-des-dames. until there was still to be seen the tower of the windmill owned by the "_dames de montmartre_," which gave its name to this street. at its number , a small _hôtel_, circular-fronted and most coquettish, lived mlle. mars, it is believed, and here she was the victim of the earliest recorded theft of an actress's jewels. the simple and stately house, of a low curtain between two wings, with two stories and a mansard roof, bearing the number , is the scene of talma's last years and of his death, on october , . his final appearance had been on june th of that year, in his marvellous personation of charles vi. at this house we shall see dumas visit the old actor, who had seen voltaire! dumas says that talma spared nothing in his aim at accuracy, historic and archæologic, when creating a new rôle or mounting a new play. indeed, we know that talma was the first great realist in costume and scenery, as we know that he first brought the statues of tragedy down to human proportions and gave them life-blood. dumas dwells especially on the voice of the great tragedian--a voice that was glorious and sincere, and in anguish was a sob. there is a glowing portrait of talma from the pen of chateaubriand, in which he makes plain that the tragedian, while he was, himself, his century and ancient centuries in one, had been profoundly affected by the terrible scenes of the terror which he had witnessed; and it was that baleful inspiration that sent the concentrated passion of patriotism leaping in torrents from his heart. "his grace--not an ordinary grace--seized one like fate. black ambition, remorse, jealousy, sadness of soul, bodily agony, human grief, the madness sent by the gods and by adversity--_that_ was what he knew. just his coming on the scene, just the sound of his voice, were overpoweringly tragic. suffering and contemplation mingled on his brow, breathed in his postures, his gestures, his walk, his motionlessness." thomas carlyle seems strangely placed in the stalls of the théâtre français, yet he sat there, at the end of his twelve-days' visit to paris in . "on the night before leaving," he writes, "i found that i ought to visit one theatre, and by happy accident came upon talma playing there. a heavy, shortish, numb-footed man, face like a warming-pan for size, and with a strange, most ponderous, yet delicate expression in the big, dull-glowing black eyes and it. incomparably the best actor i ever saw. play was 'oedipe'; place the théâtre français." [illustration: monogram from former entrance of the cour du commerce, believed to be the initials of the owner, one girardot.] the confessions of jean jacques rousseau (in books) privately printed for the members of the aldus society london, book xi. although eloisa, which for a long time had been in the press, did not yet, at the end of the year, , appear, the work already began to make a great noise. madam de luxembourg had spoken of it at court, and madam de houdetot at paris. the latter had obtained from me permission for saint lambert to read the manuscript to the king of poland, who had been delighted with it. duclos, to whom i had also given the perusal of the work, had spoken of it at the academy. all paris was impatient to see the novel; the booksellers of the rue saint jacques, and that of the palais royal, were beset with people who came to inquire when it was to be published. it was at length brought out, and the success it had, answered, contrary to custom, to the impatience with which it had been expected. the dauphiness, who was one of the first who read it, spoke of it to, m. de luxembourg as a ravishing performance. the opinions of men of letters differed from each other, but in those of any other class approbation was general, especially with the women, who became so intoxicated with the book and the author, that there was not one in high life with whom i might not have succeeded had i undertaken to do it. of this i have such proofs as i will not commit to paper, and which without the aid of experience, authorized my opinion. it is singular that the book should have succeeded better in france than in the rest of europe, although the french, both men and women, are severely treated in it. contrary to my expectation it was least successful in switzerland, and most so in paris. do friendship, love and virtue reign in this capital more than elsewhere? certainly not; but there reigns in it an exquisite sensibility which transports the heart to their image, and makes us cherish in others the pure, tender and virtuous sentiments we no longer possess. corruption is everywhere the same; virtue and morality no longer exist in europe; but if the least love of them still remains, it is in paris that this will be found.--[i wrote this in .] in the midst of so many prejudices and feigned passions, the real sentiments of nature are not to be distinguished from others, unless we well know to analyze the human heart. a very nice discrimination, not to be acquired except by the education of the world, is necessary to feel the finesses of the heart, if i dare use the expression, with which this work abounds. i do not hesitate to place the fourth part of it upon an equality with the princess of cleves; nor to assert that had these two works been read nowhere but in the provinces, their merit would never have been discovered. it must not, therefore, be considered as a matter of astonishment, that the greatest success of my work was at court. it abounds with lively but veiled touches of the pencil, which could not but give pleasure there, because the persons who frequent it are more accustomed than others to discover them. a distinction must, however, be made. the work is by no means proper for the species of men of wit who have nothing but cunning, who possess no other kind of discernment than that which penetrates evil, and see nothing where good only is to be found. if, for instance, eloisa had been published in a certain country, i am convinced it would not have been read through by a single person, and the work would have been stifled in its birth. i have collected most of the letters written to me on the subject of this publication, and deposited them, tied up together, in the hands of madam de nadillac. should this collection ever be given to the world, very singular things will be seen, and an opposition of opinion, which shows what it is to have to do with the public. the thing least kept in view, and which will ever distinguish it from every other work, is the simplicity of the subject and the continuation of the interest, which, confined to three persons, is kept up throughout six volumes, without episode, romantic adventure, or anything malicious either in the persons or actions. diderot complimented richardson on the prodigious variety of his portraits and the multiplicity of his persons. in fact, richardson has the merit of having well characterized them all; but with respect to their number, he has that in common with the most insipid writers of novels who attempt to make up for the sterility of their ideas by multiplying persons and adventures. it is easy to awaken the attention by incessantly presenting unheard of adventures and new faces, which pass before the imagination as the figures in a magic lanthorn do before the eye; but to keep up that attention to the same objects, and without the aid of the wonderful, is certainly more difficult; and if, everything else being equal, the simplicity of the subject adds to the beauty of the work, the novels of richardson, superior in so many other respects, cannot in this be compared to mine. i know it is already forgotten, and the cause of its being so; but it will be taken up again. all my fear was that, by an extreme simplicity, the narrative would be fatiguing, and that it was not sufficiently interesting to engage the attention throughout the whole. i was relieved from this apprehension by a circumstance which alone was more flattering to my pride than all the compliments made me upon the work. it appeared at the beginning of the carnival; a hawker carried it to the princess of talmont--[it was not the princess, but some other lady, whose name i do not know.]--on the evening of a ball night at the opera. after supper the princess dressed herself for the ball, and until the hour of going there, took up the new novel. at midnight she ordered the horses to be put into the carriage, and continued to read. the servant returned to tell her the horses were put to; she made no answer. her people perceiving she forgot herself, came to tell her it was two o'clock. "there is yet no hurry," replied the princess, still reading on. some time afterwards, her watch having stopped, she rang to know the hour. she was told it was four o'clock. "that being the case," she said, "it is too late to go to the ball; let the horses be taken off." she undressed herself and passed the rest of the night in reading. ever since i came to the knowledge of this circumstance, i have had a constant desire to see the lady, not only to know from herself whether or not what i have related be exactly true, but because i have always thought it impossible to be interested in so lively a manner in the happiness of julia, without having that sixth and moral sense with which so few hearts are endowed, and without which no person whatever can understand the sentiments of mine. what rendered the women so favorable to me was, their being persuaded that i had written my own history, and was myself the hero of the romance. this opinion was so firmly established, that madam de polignac wrote to madam de verdelin, begging she would prevail upon me to show her the portrait of julia. everybody thought it was impossible so strongly to express sentiments without having felt them, or thus to describe the transports of love, unless immediately from the feelings of the heart. this was true, and i certainly wrote the novel during the time my imagination was inflamed to ecstasy; but they who thought real objects necessary to this effect were deceived, and far from conceiving to what a degree i can at will produce it for imaginary beings. without madam d'houdetot, and the recollection of a few circumstances in my youth, the amours i have felt and described would have been with fairy nymphs. i was unwilling either to confirm or destroy an error which was advantageous to me. the reader may see in the preface a dialogue, which i had printed separately, in what manner i left the public in suspense. rigorous people say, i ought to have explicity declared the truth. for my part i see no reason for this, nor anything that could oblige me to it, and am of opinion there would have been more folly than candor in the declaration without necessity. much about the same time the 'paix perpetuelle' made its appearance, of this i had the year before given the manuscript to a certain m. de bastide, the author of a journal called le monde, into which he would at all events cram all my manuscripts. he was known to m. duclos, and came in his name to beg i would help him to fill the monde. he had heard speak of eloisa, and would have me put this into his journal; he was also desirous of making the same use of emilius; he would have asked me for the social contract for the same purpose, had he suspected it to be written. at length, fatigued with his importunities, i resolved upon letting him have the paix perpetuelle, which i gave him for twelve louis. our agreement was, that he should print it in his journal; but as soon as he became the proprietor of the manuscript, he thought proper to print it separately, with a few retrenchments, which the censor required him to make. what would have happened had i joined to the work my opinion of it, which fortunately i did not communicate to m. de bastide, nor was it comprehended in our agreement? this remains still in manuscript amongst my papers. if ever it be made public, the world will see how much the pleasantries and self-sufficient manner of m. de voltaire on the subject must have made me, who was so well acquainted with the short-sightedness of this poor man in political matters, of which he took it into his head to speak, shake my sides with laughter. in the midst of my success with the women and the public, i felt i lost ground at the hotel de luxembourg, not with the marechal, whose goodness to me seemed daily to increase, but with his lady. since i had had nothing more to read to her, the door of her apartment was not so frequently open to me, and during her stay at montmorency, although i regularly presented myself, i seldom saw her except at table. my place even there was not distinctly marked out as usual. as she no longer offered me that by her side, and spoke to me but seldom, not having on my part much to say to her, i was well satisfied with another, where i was more at my ease, especially in the evening; for i mechanically contracted the habit of placing myself nearer and nearer to the marechal. apropos of the evening: i recollect having said i did not sup at the castle, and this was true, at the beginning of my acquaintance there; but as m. de luxembourg did not dine, nor even sit down to table, it happened that i was for several months, and already very familiar in the family, without ever having eaten with him. this he had the goodness to remark, upon which i determined to sup there from time to time, when the company was not numerous; i did so, and found the suppers very agreeable, as the dinners were taken almost standing; whereas the former were long, everybody remaining seated with pleasure after a long walk; and very good and agreeable, because m. de luxembourg loved good eating, and the honors of them were done in a charming manner by madam de marechale. without this explanation it would be difficult to understand the end of a letter from m. de luxembourg, in which he says he recollects our walks with the greatest pleasure; especially, adds he, when in the evening we entered the court and did not find there the traces of carriages. the rake being every morning drawn over the gravel to efface the marks left by the coach wheels, i judged by the number of ruts of that of the persons who had arrived in the afternoon. this year, , completed the heavy losses this good man had suffered since i had had the honor of being known to him. as if it had been ordained that the evils prepared for me by destiny should begin by the man to whom i was most attached, and who was the most worthy of esteem. the first year he lost his sister, the duchess of villeroy; the second, his daughter, the princess of robeck; the third, he lost in the duke of montmorency his only son; and in the comte de luxembourg, his grandson, the last two supporters of the branch of which he was, and of his name. he supported all these losses with apparent courage, but his heart incessantly bled in secret during the rest of his life, and his health was ever after upon the decline. the unexpected and tragical death of his son must have afflicted him the more, as it happened immediately after the king had granted him for his child, and given him the promise for his grandson, the reversion of the commission he himself then held of the captain of the gardes de corps. he had the mortification to see the last, a most promising young man, perish by degrees from the blind confidence of the mother in the physician, who giving the unhappy youth medicines for food, suffered him to die of inanition. alas! had my advice been taken, the grandfather and the grandson would both still have been alive. what did not i say and write to the marechal, what remonstrances did i make to madam de montmorency, upon the more than severe regimen, which, upon the faith of physicians, she made her son observe! madam de luxembourg, who thought as i did, would not usurp the authority of the mother; m. de luxembourg, a man of mild and easy character, did not like to contradict her. madam de montmorency had in borden a confidence to which her son at length became a victim. how delighted was the poor creature when he could obtain permission to come to mont louis with madam de boufflers, to ask theresa for some victuals for his famished stomach! how did i secretly deplore the miseries of greatness in seeing this only heir to a immense fortune, a great name, and so many dignified titles, devour with the greediness of a beggar a wretched morsel of bread! at length, notwithstanding all i could say and do, the physician triumphed, and the child died of hunger. the same confidence in quacks, which destroyed the grandson, hastened the dissolution of the grandfather, and to this he added the pusillanimity of wishing to dissimulate the infirmities of age. m. de luxembourg had at intervals a pain in the great toe; he was seized with it at montmorency, which deprived him of sleep, and brought on slight fever. i had courage enough to pronounce the word gout. madam de luxembourg gave me a reprimand. the surgeon, valet de chambre of the marechal, maintained it was not the gout, and dressed the suffering part with beaume tranquille. unfortunately the pain subsided, and when it returned the same remedy was had recourse to. the constitution of the marechal was weakened, and his disorder increased, as did his remedies in the same proportion. madam de luxembourg, who at length perceived the primary disorder to be the gout, objected to the dangerous manner of treating it. things were afterwards concealed from her, and m. de luxembourg in a few years lost his life in consequence of his obstinate adherence to what he imagined to be a method of cure. but let me not anticipate misfortune: how many others have i to relate before i come to this! it is singular with what fatality everything i could say and do seemed of a nature to displease madam de luxembourg, even when i had it most at heart to preserve her friendship. the repeated afflictions which fell upon m. de luxembourg still attached me to him the more, and consequently to madam de luxembourg; for they always seemed to me to be so sincerely united, that the sentiments in favor of the one necessarily extended to the other. the marechal grew old. his assiduity at court, the cares this brought on, continually hunting, fatigue, and especially that of the service during the quarter he was in waiting, required the vigor of a young man, and i did not perceive anything that could support his in that course of life; since, besides after his death, his dignities were to be dispersed and his name extinct, it was by no means necessary for him to continue a laborious life of which the principal object had been to dispose the prince favorably to his children. one day when we three were together, and he complained of the fatigues of the court, as a man who had been discouraged by his losses, i took the liberty to speak of retirement, and to give him the advice cyneas gave to pyrrhus. he sighed, and returned no positive answer. but the moment madam de luxembourg found me alone she reprimanded me severely for what i had said, at which she seemed to be alarmed. she made a remark of which i so strongly felt the justness that i determined never again to touch upon the subject: this was, that the long habit of living at court made that life necessary, that it was become a matter of amusement for m. de luxembourg, and that the retirement i proposed to him would be less a relaxation from care than an exile, in which inactivity, weariness and melancholy would soon put an end to his existence. although she must have perceived i was convinced, and ought to have relied upon the promise i made her, and which i faithfully kept, she still seemed to doubt of it; and i recollect that the conversations i afterwards had with the marechal were less frequent and almost always interrupted. whilst my stupidity and awkwardness injured me in her opinion, persons whom she frequently saw and most loved, were far from being disposed to aid me in gaining what i had lost. the abbe de boufflers especially, a young man as lofty as it was possible for a man to be, never seemed well disposed towards me; and besides his being the only person of the society of madam de luxembourg who never showed me the least attention, i thought i perceived i lost something with her every time he came to the castle. it is true that without his wishing this to be the case, his presence alone was sufficient to produce the effect; so much did his graceful and elegant manner render still more dull my stupid propositi. during the first two years he seldom came to montmorency, and by the indulgence of madam de luxembourg i had tolerably supported myself, but as soon as his visits began to be regular i was irretrievably lost. i wished to take refuge under his wing, and gain his friendship; but the same awkwardness which made it necessary i should please him prevented me from succeeding in the attempt i made to do it, and what i did with that intention entirely lost me with madam de luxembourg, without being of the least service to me with the abbe. with his understanding he might have succeeded in anything, but the impossibility of applying himself, and his turn for dissipation, prevented his acquiring a perfect knowledge of any subject. his talents are however various, and this is sufficient for the circles in which he wishes to distinguish himself. he writes light poetry and fashionable letters, strums on the cithern, and pretends to draw with crayon. he took it into his head to attempt the portrait of madam de luxembourg; the sketch he produced was horrid. she said it did not in the least resemble her and this was true. the traitorous abbe consulted me, and i like a fool and a liar, said there was a likeness. i wished to flatter the abbe, but i did not please the lady who noted down what i had said, and the abbe, having obtained what he wanted, laughed at me in his turn. i perceived by the ill success of this my late beginning the necessity of making another attempt to flatter 'invita minerva'. my talent was that of telling men useful but severe truths with energy and courage; to this it was necessary to confine myself. not only i was not born to flatter, but i knew not how to commend. the awkwardness of the manner in which i have sometimes bestowed eulogium has done me more harm than the severity of my censure. of this i have to adduce one terrible instance, the consequences of which have not only fixed my fate for the rest of my life, but will perhaps decide on my reputation throughout all posterity. during the residence of m. de luxembourg at montmorency, m. de choiseul sometimes came to supper at the castle. he arrived there one day after i had left it. my name was mentioned, and m. de luxembourg related to him what had happened at venice between me and m. de montaigu. m. de choiseul said it was a pity i had quitted that track, and that if i chose to enter it again he would most willingly give me employment. m. de luxembourg told me what had passed. of this i was the more sensible as i was not accustomed to be spoiled by ministers, and had i been in a better state of health it is not certain that i should not have been guilty of a new folly. ambition never had power over my mind except during the short intervals in which every other passion left me at liberty; but one of these intervals would have been sufficient to determine me. this good intention of m. de choiseul gained him my attachment and increased the esteem which, in consequence of some operations in his administration, i had conceived for his talents; and the family compact in particular had appeared to me to evince a statesman of the first order. he moreover gained ground in my estimation by the little respect i entertained for his predecessors, not even excepting madam de pompadour, whom i considered as a species of prime minister, and when it was reported that one of these two would expel the other, i thought i offered up prayers for the honor of france when i wished that m. de choiseul might triumph. i had always felt an antipathy to madam de pompadour, even before her preferment; i had seen her with madam de la popliniere when her name was still madam d'etioles. i was afterwards dissatisfied with her silence on the subject of diderot, and with her proceedings relative to myself, as well on the subject of the 'muses galantes', as on that of the 'devin du village', which had not in any manner produced me advantages proportioned to its success; and on all occasions i had found her but little disposed to serve me. this however did not prevent the chevalier de lorenzy from proposing to me to write something in praise of that lady, insinuating that i might acquire some advantage by it. the proposition excited my indignation, the more as i perceived it did not come from himself, knowing that, passive as he was, he thought and acted according to the impulsion he received. i am so little accustomed to constraint that it was impossible for me to conceal from him my disdain, nor from anybody the moderate opinion i had of the favorite; this i am sure she knew, and thus my own interest was added to my natural inclination in the wishes i formed for m. de choiseul. having a great esteem for his talents, which was all i knew of him, full of gratitude for his kind intentions, and moreover unacquainted in my retirement with his taste and manner of living, i already considered him as the avenger of the public and myself; and being at that time writing the conclusion of my social contract, i stated in it, in a single passage, what i thought of preceding ministers, and of him by whom they began to be eclipsed. on this occasion i acted contrary to my most constant maxim; and besides, i did not recollect that, in bestowing praise and strongly censuring in the same article, without naming the persons, the language must be so appropriated to those to whom it is applicable, that the most ticklish pride cannot find in it the least thing equivocal. i was in this respect in such an imprudent security, that i never once thought it was possible any one should make a false application. it will soon appear whether or not i was right. one of my misfortunes was always to be connected with some female author. this i thought i might avoid amongst the great. i was deceived; it still pursued me. madam de luxembourg was not, however; at least that i know of, attacked with the mania of writing; but madam de boufflers was. she wrote a tragedy in prose, which, in the first place, was read, handed about, and highly spoken of in the society of the prince conti, and upon which, not satisfied with the encomiums she received, she would absolutely consult me for the purpose of having mine. this she obtained, but with that moderation which the work deserved. she besides had with it the information i thought it my duty to give her, that her piece, entitled 'l'esclave genereux', greatly resembled the english tragedy of 'oroonoko', but little known in france, although translated into the french language. madam de bouffiers thanked me for the remark, but, however, assured me there was not the least resemblance between her piece and the other. i never spoke of the plagiarisms except to herself, and i did it to discharge a duty she had imposed on me; but this has not since prevented me from frequently recollecting the consequences of the sincerity of gil blas to the preaching archbishop. besides the abbe de bouffiers, by whom i was not beloved, and madam de bouffiers, in whose opinion i was guilty of that which neither women nor authors ever pardon, the other friends of madam de luxembourg never seemed much disposed to become mine, particularly the president henault, who, enrolled amongst authors, was not exempt from their weaknesses; also madam du deffand, and mademoiselle de lespinasse, both intimate with voltaire and the friends of d'alembert, with whom the latter at length lived, however upon an honorable footing, for it cannot be understood i mean otherwise. i first began to interest myself for madam du deffand, whom the loss of her eyes made an object of commiseration in mine; but her manner of living so contrary to my own, that her hour of going to bed was almost mine for rising; her unbounded passion for low wit, the importance she gave to every kind of printed trash, either complimentary or abusive, the despotism and transports of her oracles, her excessive admiration or dislike of everything, which did not permit her to speak upon any subject without convulsions, her inconceivable prejudices, invincible obstinacy, and the enthusiasm of folly to which this carried her in her passionate judgments; all disgusted me and diminished the attention i wished to pay her. i neglected her and she perceived it; this was enough to set her in a rage, and, although i was sufficiently aware how much a woman of her character was to be feared, i preferred exposing myself to the scourge of her hatred rather than to that of her friendship. my having so few friends in the society of madam de luxembourg would not have been in the least dangerous had i had no enemies in the family. of these i had but one, who, in my then situation, was as powerful as a hundred. it certainly was not m. de villeroy, her brother; for he not only came to see me, but had several times invited me to villeroy; and as i had answered to the invitation with all possible politeness and respect, he had taken my vague manner of doing it as a consent, and arranged with madam de luxembourg a journey of a fortnight, in which it was proposed to me to make one of the party. as the cares my health then required did not permit me to go from home without risk, i prayed madam de luxembourg to have the goodness to make my apologies. her answer proves this was done with all possible ease, and m. de villeroy still continued to show me his usual marks of goodness. his nephew and heir, the young marquis of villeroy, had not for me the same benevolence, nor had i for him the respect i had for his uncle. his harebrained manner rendered him insupportable to me, and my coldness drew upon me his aversion. he insultingly attacked me one evening at table, and i had the worst of it because i am a fool, without presence of mind; and because anger, instead of rendering my wit more poignant, deprives me of the little i have. i had a dog which had been given me when he was quite young, soon after my arrival at the hermitage, and which i had called duke. this dog, not handsome, but rare of his kind, of which i had made my companion and friend, a title which he certainly merited much more than most of the persons by whom it was taken, became in great request at the castle of montmorency for his good nature and fondness, and the attachment we had for each other; but from a foolish pusillanimity i had changed his name to turk, as if there were not many dogs called marquis, without giving the least offence to any marquis whatsoever. the marquis of villeroy, who knew of the change of name, attacked me in such a manner that i was obliged openly at table to relate what i had done. whatever there might be offensive in the name of duke, it was not in my having given but in my having taken it away. the worst of it all was, there were many dukes present, amongst others m. de luxembourg and his son; and the marquis de villeroy, who was one day to have, and now has the title, enjoyed in the most cruel manner the embarrassment into which he had thrown me. i was told the next day his aunt had severely reprimanded him, and it may be judged whether or not, supposing her to have been serious, this put me upon better terms with him. to enable me to support his enmity i had no person, neither at the hotel de luxembourg nor at the temple, except the chevalier de lorenzy, who professed himself my friend; but he was more that of d'alembert, under whose protection he passed with women for a great geometrician. he was more, over the cicisbe, or rather the complaisant chevalier of the countess of boufflers, a great friend also to d'alembert, and the chevalier de lorenzy was the most passive instrument in her hands. thus, far from having in that circle any counter-balance to my inaptitude, to keep me in the good graces of madam de luxembourg, everybody who approached her seemed to concur in injuring me in her good opinion. yet, besides emilius, with which she charged herself, she gave me at the same time another mark of her benevolence, which made me imagine that, although wearied with my conversation, she would still preserve for me the friendship she had so many times promised me for life. as soon as i thought i could depend upon this, i began to ease my heart, by confessing to her all my faults, having made it an inviolable maxim to show myself to my friends such as i really was, neither better nor worse. i had declared to her my connection with theresa, and everything that had resulted from it, without concealing the manner in which i had disposed of my children. she had received my confessions favorably, and even too much so, since she spared me the censures i so much merited; and what made the greatest impression upon me was her goodness to theresa, making her presents, sending for her, and begging her to come and see her, receiving her with caresses, and often embracing her in public. this poor girl was in transports of joy and gratitude, of which i certainly partook; the friendship madam de luxembourg showed me in her condescensions to theresa affected me much more than if they had been made immediately to myself. things remained in this state for a considerable time; but at length madam de luxembourg carried her goodness so far as to have a desire to take one of my children from the hospital. she knew i had put a cipher into the swaddling clothes of the eldest; she asked me for the counterpart of the cipher, and i gave it to her. in this research she employed la roche, her valet de chambre and confidential servant, who made vain inquiries, although after only about twelve or fourteen years, had the registers of the foundling hospital been in order, or the search properly made, the original cipher ought to have been found. however this may be, i was less sorry for his want of success than i should have been had i from time to time continued to see the child from its birth until that moment. if by the aid of the indications given, another child had been presented as my own, the doubt of its being so in fact, and the fear of having one thus substituted for it, would have contracted my affections, and i should not have tasted of the charm of the real sentiment of nature. this during infancy stands in need of being supported by habit. the long absence of a child whom the father has seen but for an instant, weakens, and at length annihilates paternal sentiment, and parents will never love a child sent to nurse, like that which is brought up under their eyes. this reflection may extenuate my faults in their effects, but it must aggravate them in their source. it may not perhaps be useless to remark that by the means of theresa, the same la roche became acquainted with madam le vasseur, whom grimm still kept at deuil, near la chevrette, and not far from montmorency. after my departure it was by means of la roche that i continued to send this woman the money i had constantly sent her at stated times, and i am of opinion he often carried her presents from madam de luxembourg; therefore she certainly was not to be pitied, although she constantly complained. with respect to grimm, as i am not fond of speaking of persons whom i ought to hate, i never mentioned his name to madam de luxembourg, except when i could not avoid it; but she frequently made him the subject of conversation, without telling me what she thought of the man, or letting me discover whether or not he was of her acquaintance. reserve with people i love and who are open with me being contrary to my nature, especially in things relating to themselves, i have since that time frequently thought of that of madam de luxembourg; but never, except when other events rendered the recollection natural. having waited a long time without hearing speak of emilius, after i had given it to madam de luxembourg, i at last heard the agreement was made at paris, with the bookseller duchesne, and by him with neaulme, of amsterdam. madam de luxembourg sent me the original and the duplicate of my agreement with duchesne, that i might sign them. i discovered the writing to be by the same hand as that of the letters of m. de malesherbes, which he himself did not write. the certainty that my agreement was made by the consent, and under the eye of that magistrate, made me sign without hesitation. duchesne gave me for the manuscript six thousand livres(two hundred and fifty pounds), half in specie, and one or two hundred copies. after having signed the two parts, i sent them both to madam de luxembourg, according to her desire; she gave one to duchesne, and instead of returning the other kept it herself, so that i never saw it afterwards. my acquaintance with m. and madam de luxembourg, though it diverted me a little from my plan of retirement, did not make me entirely renounce it. even at the time i was most in favor with madam de luxembourg, i always felt that nothing but my sincere attachment to the marechal and herself could render to me supportable the people with whom they were connected, and all the difficulty i had was in conciliating this attachment with a manner of life more agreeable to my inclination, and less contrary to my health, which constraint and late suppers continually deranged, notwithstanding all the care taken to prevent it; for in this, as in everything else, attention was carried as far as possible; thus, for instance, every evening after supper the marechal, who went early to bed, never failed, notwithstanding everything that could be said to the contrary, to make me withdraw at the same time. it was not until some little time before my catastrophe that, for what reason i know not, he ceased to pay me that attention. before i perceived the coolness of madam de luxembourg, i was desirous, that i might not expose myself to it, to execute my old project; but not having the means to that effect, i was obliged to wait for the conclusion of the agreement for 'emilius', and in the time i finished the 'social contract', and sent it to rey, fixing the price of the manuscript at a thousand livres (forty-one pounds), which he paid me. i ought not perhaps to omit a trifling circumstance relative to this manuscript. i gave it, well sealed up, to du voisin, a minister in the pays de vaud and chaplain at the hotel de hollande, who sometimes came to see me, and took upon himself to send the packet to rey, with whom he was connected. the manuscript, written in a small letter, was but very trifling, and did not fill his pocket. yet, in passing the barriere, the packet fell, i know not by what means, into the hands of the commis, who opened and examined it, and afterwards returned it to him, when he had reclaimed it in the name of the ambassador. this gave him an opportunity of reading it himself, which he ingeniously wrote me he had done, speaking highly of the work, without suffering a word of criticism or censure to escape him; undoubtedly reserving to himself to become the avenger of christianity as soon as the work should appear. he resealed the packet and sent it to rey. such is the substance of his narrative in the letter in which he gave an account of the affair, and is all i ever knew of the matter. besides these two books and my dictionary of music, at which i still did something as opportunity offered, i had other works of less importance ready to make their appearance, and which i proposed to publish either separately or in my general collection, should i ever undertake it. the principal of these works, most of which are still in manuscript in the hands of de peyrou, was an essay on the origin of languages, which i had read to m. de malesherbes and the chevalier de lorenzy, who spoke favorably of it. i expected all the productions together would produce me a net capital of from eight to ten thousand livres (three to four hundred pounds), which i intended to sink in annuities for my life and that of theresa; after which, our design, as i have already mentioned, was to go and live together in the midst of some province, without further troubling the public about me, or myself with any other project than that of peacefully ending my days and still continuing to do in my neighborhood all the good in my power, and to write at leisure the memoirs which i intended. such was my intention, and the execution of it was facilitated by an act of generosity in rey, upon which i cannot be silent. this bookseller, of whom so many unfavorable things were told me in paris, is, notwithstanding, the only one with whom i have always had reason to be satisfied. it is true, we frequently disagreed as to the execution of my works. he was heedless and i was choleric; but in matters of interest which related to them, although i never made with him an agreement in form, i always found in him great exactness and probity. he is also the only person of his profession who frankly confessed to me he gained largely by my means; and he frequently, when he offered me a part of his fortune, told me i was the author of it all. not finding the means of exercising his gratitude immediately upon myself, he wished at least to give me proofs of it in the person of my governante, upon whom he settled an annuity of three hundred livres (twelve pounds), expressing in the deed that it was an acknowledgment for the advantages i had procured him. this he did between himself and me, without ostentation, pretension, or noise, and had not i spoken of it to anybody, not a single person would ever have known anything of the matter. i was so pleased with this action that i became attached to rey, and conceived for him a real friendship. sometime afterwards he desired i would become godfather to one of his children; i consented, and a part of my regret in the situation to which i am reduced, is my being deprived of the means of rendering in future my attachment of my goddaughter useful to her and her parents. why am i, who am so sensible of the modest generosity of this bookseller, so little so of the noisy eagerness of many persons of the highest rank, who pompously fill the world with accounts of the services they say they wished to render me, but the good effects of which i never felt? is it their fault or mine? are they nothing more than vain; is my insensibility purely ingratitude? intelligent reader weigh and determine; for my part i say no more. this pension was a great resource to theresa and considerable alleviation to me, although i was far from receiving from it a direct advantage, any more than from the presents that were made her. she herself has always disposed of everything. when i kept her money i gave her a faithful account of it, without ever applying any part of the deposit to our common expenses, not even when she was richer than myself. "what is mine is ours," said i to her; "and what is thine is thine." i never departed from this maxim. they who have had the baseness to accuse me of receiving by her hands that which i refused to take with mine, undoubtedly judged of my heart by their own, and knew but little of me. i would willingly eat with her the bread she should have earned, but not that she should have had given her. for a proof of this i appeal to herself, both now and hereafter, when, according to the course of nature, she shall have survived me. unfortunately, she understands but little of economy in any respect, and is, besides, careless and extravagant, not from vanity nor gluttony, but solely from negligence. no creature is perfect here below, and since the excellent qualities must be accompanied with some detects; i prefer these to vices; although her defects are more prejudicial to us both. the efforts i have made, as formerly i did for mamma, to accumulate something in advance which might some day be to her a never-failing resource, are not to be conceived; but my cares were always ineffectual. neither of these women ever called themselves to an account, and, notwithstanding all my efforts, everything i acquired was dissipated as fast as it came. notwithstanding the great simplicity of theresa's dress, the pension from rey has never been sufficient to buy her clothes, and i have every year been under the necessity of adding something to it for that purpose. we are neither of us born to be rich, and this i certainly do not reckon amongst our misfortunes. the 'social contract' was soon printed. this was not the case with 'emilius', for the publication of which i waited to go into the retirement i meditated. duchesne, from time to time, sent me specimens of impression to choose from; when i had made my choice, instead of beginning he sent me others. when, at length, we were fully determined on the size and letter, and several sheets were already printed off, on some trifling alteration i made in a proof, he began the whole again; and at the end of six months we were in less forwardness than on the first day. during all these experiments i clearly perceived the work was printing in france as well as in holland, and that two editions of it were preparing at the same time. what could i do? the manuscript was no longer mine. far from having anything to do with the edition in france, i was always against it; but since, at length, this was preparing in spite of all opposition, and was to serve as a model to the other, it was necessary i should cast my eyes over it and examine the proofs, that my work might not be mutilated. it was, besides, printed so much by the consent of the magistrate, that it was he who, in some measure, directed the undertaking; he likewise wrote to me frequently, and once came to see me and converse on the subject upon an occasion of which i am going to speak. whilst duchesne crept like a snail, neaulme, whom he withheld, scarcely moved at all. the sheets were not regularly sent him as they were printed. he thought there was some trick in the manoeuvre of duchesne, that is, of guy who acted for him; and perceiving the terms of the agreement to be departed from, he wrote me letter after letter full of complaints, and it was less possible for me to remove the subject of them than that of those i myself had to make. his friend guerin, who at that time came frequently to see my house, never ceased speaking to me about the work, but always with the greatest reserve. he knew and he did not know that it was printing in france, and that the magistrate had a hand in it. in expressing his concern for my embarrassment, he seemed to accuse me of imprudence without ever saying in what this consisted; he incessantly equivocated, and seemed to speak for no other purpose than to hear what i had to say. i thought myself so secure that i laughed at his mystery and circumspection as at a habit he had contracted with ministers and magistrates whose offices he much frequented. certain of having conformed to every rule with the work, and strongly persuaded that i had not only the consent and protection of the magistrate, but that the book merited and had obtained the favor of the minister, i congratulated myself upon my courage in doing good, and laughed at my pusillanimous friends who seemed uneasy on my account. duclos was one of these, and i confess my confidence in his understanding and uprightness might have alarmed me, had i had less in the utility of the work and in the probity of those by whom it was patronized. he came from the house of m. baille to see me whilst 'emilius' was in the press; he spoke to me concerning it; i read to him the 'profession of faith of the savoyard vicar', to which he listened attentively and, as it seemed to me with pleasure. when i had finished he said: "what! citizen, this is a part of a work now printing in paris?"--"yes," answered i, and it ought to be printed at the louvre by order of the king."--i confess it," replied he; "but pray do not mention to anybody your having read to me this fragment." this striking manner of expressing himself surprised without alarming me. i knew duclos was intimate with m. de malesherbes, and i could not conceive how it was possible he should think so differently from him upon the same subject. i had lived at montmorency for the last four years without ever having had there one day of good health. although the air is excellent, the water is bad, and this may possibly be one of the causes which contributed to increase my habitual complaints. towards the end of the autumn of , i fell quite ill, and passed the whole winter in suffering almost without intermission. the physical ill, augmented by a thousand inquietudes, rendered these terrible. for some time past my mind had been disturbed by melancholy forebodings without my knowing to what these directly tended. i received anonymous letters of an extraordinary nature, and others, that were signed, much of the same import. i received one from a counsellor of the parliament of paris, who, dissatisfied with the present constitution of things, and foreseeing nothing but disagreeable events, consulted me upon the choice of an asylum at geneva or in switzerland, to retire to with his family. an other was brought me from m. de -----, 'president a mortier' of the parliament of -----, who proposed to me to draw up for this parliament, which was then at variance with the court, memoirs and remonstrances, and offering to furnish me with all the documents and materials necessary for that purpose. when i suffer i am subject to ill humor. this was the case when i received these letters, and my answers to them, in which i flatly refused everything that was asked of me, bore strong marks of the effect they had had upon my mind. i do not however reproach myself with this refusal, as the letters might be so many snares laid by my enemies, [i knew, for instance, the president de----- to be connected with the encyclopedists and the holbachiens] and what was required of me was contrary to the principles from which i was less willing than ever to swerve. but having it within my power to refuse with politeness i did it with rudeness, and in this consists my error. the two letters of which i have just spoken will be found amongst my papers. the letter from the chancellor did not absolutely surprise me, because i agreed with him in opinion, and with many others, that the declining constitution of france threatened an approaching destruction. the disasters of an unsuccessful war, all of which proceeded from a fault in the government; the incredible confusion in the finances; the perpetual drawings upon the treasury by the administration, which was then divided between two or three ministers, amongst whom reigned nothing but discord, and who, to counteract the operations of each other, let the kingdom go to ruin; the discontent of the people, and of every other rank of subjects; the obstinacy of a woman who, constantly sacrificing her judgment, if she indeed possessed any, to her inclinations, kept from public employment persons capable of discharging the duties of them, to place in them such as pleased her best; everything occurred in justifying the foresight of the counsellor, that of the public, and my own. this, made me several times consider whether or not i myself should seek an asylum out of the kingdom before it was torn by the dissensions by which it seemed to be threatened; but relieved from my fears by my insignificance, and the peacefulness of my disposition, i thought that in the state of solitude in which i was determined to live, no public commotion could reach me. i was sorry only that, in this state of things, m. de luxembourg should accept commissions which tended to injure him in the opinion of the persons of the place of which he was governor. i could have wished he had prepared himself a retreat there, in case the great machine had fallen in pieces, which seemed much to be apprehended; and still appears to me beyond a doubt, that if the reins of government had not fallen into a single hand, the french monarchy would now be at the last gasp. whilst my situation became worse the printing of 'emilius' went on more slowly, and was at length suspended without my being able to learn the reason why; guy did not deign to answer my letter of inquiry, and i could obtain no information from any person of what was going forward. m. de malesherbes being then in the country. a misfortune never makes me uneasy provided i know in what it consists; but it is my nature to be afraid of darkness, i tremble at the appearance of it; mystery always gives me inquietude, it is too opposite to my natural disposition, in which there is an openness bordering on imprudence. the sight of the most hideous monster would, i am of opinion, alarm me but little; but if by night i were to see a figure in a white sheet i should be afraid of it. my imagination, wrought upon by this long silence, was now employed in creating phantoms. i tormented myself the more in endeavoring to discover the impediment to the printing of my last and best production, as i had the publication of it much at heart; and as i always carried everything to an extreme, i imagined that i perceived in the suspension the suppression of the work. yet, being unable to discover either the cause or manner of it, i remained in the most cruel state of suspense. i wrote letter after letter to guy, to m. de malesherbes and to madam de luxembourg, and not receiving answers, at least when i expected them, my head became so affected that i was not far from a delirium. i unfortunately heard that father griffet, a jesuit, had spoken of 'emilius' and repeated from it some passages. my imagination instantly unveiled to me the mystery of iniquity; i saw the whole progress of it as clearly as if it had been revealed to me. i figured to myself that the jesuits, furious on account of the contemptuous manner in which i had spoken of colleges, were in possession of my work; that it was they who had delayed the publication; that, informed by their friend guerin of my situation, and foreseeing my approaching dissolution, of which i myself had no manner of doubt, they wished to delay the appearance of the work until after that event, with an intention to curtail and mutilate it, and in favor of their own views, to attribute to me sentiments not my own. the number of facts and circumstances which occurred to my mind, in confirmation of this silly proposition, and gave it an appearance of truth supported by evidence and demonstration, is astonishing. i knew guerin to be entirely in the interest of the jesuits. i attributed to them all the friendly advances he had made me; i was persuaded he had, by their entreaties, pressed me to engage with neaulme, who had given them the first sheets of my work; that they had afterwards found means to stop the printing of it by duchesne, and perhaps to get possession of the manuscript to make such alterations in it as they should think proper, that after my death they might publish it disguised in their own manner. i had always perceived, notwithstanding the wheedling of father berthier, that the jesuits did not like me, not only as an encyclopedist, but because all my principles were more in opposition to their maxims and influence than the incredulity of my colleagues, since atheistical and devout fanaticism, approaching each other by their common enmity to toleration, may become united; a proof of which is seen in china, and in the cabal against myself; whereas religion, both reasonable and moral, taking away all power over the conscience, deprives those who assume that power of every resource. i knew the chancellor was a great friend to the jesuits, and i had my fears less the son, intimidated by the father, should find himself under the necessity of abandoning the work he had protected. i besides imagined that i perceived this to be the case in the chicanery employed against me relative to the first two volumes, in which alterations were required for reasons of which i could not feel the force; whilst the other two volumes were known to contain things of such a nature as, had the censor objected to them in the manner he did to the passages he thought exceptionable in the others, would have required their being entirely written over again. i also understood, and m. de malesherbes himself told me of it, that the abbe de grave, whom he had charged with the inspection of this edition, was another partisan of the jesuits. i saw nothing but jesuits, without considering that, upon the point of being suppressed, and wholly taken up in making their defence, they had something which interested them much more than the cavillings relative to a work in which they were not in question. i am wrong, however, in saying this did not occur to me; for i really thought of it, and m. de malesherbes took care to make the observation to me the moment he heard of my extravagant suspicions. but by another of those absurdities of a man, who, from the bosom of obscurity, will absolutely judge of the secret of great affairs, with which he is totally unacquainted. i never could bring myself to believe the jesuits were in danger, and i considered the rumor of their suppression as an artful manoeuvre of their own to deceive their adversaries. their past successes, which had been uninterrupted, gave me so terrible an idea of the power, that i already was grieved at the overthrow of the parliament. i knew m. de choiseul had prosecuted his studies under the jesuits, that madam de pompadour was not upon bad terms with them, and that their league with favorites and ministers had constantly appeared advantageous to their order against their common enemies. the court seemed to remain neuter, and persuaded as i was that should the society receive a severe check it would not come from the parliament, i saw in the inaction of government the ground of their confidence and the omen of their triumph. in fine, perceiving in the rumors of the day nothing more than art and dissimulation on their part, and thinking they, in their state of security, had time to watch over all their interests, i had had not the least doubt of their shortly crushing jansenism, the parliament and the encyclopedists, with every other association which should not submit to their yoke; and that if they ever suffered my work to appear, this would not happen until it should be so transformed as to favor their pretensions, and thus make use of my name the better to deceive my readers. i felt my health and strength decline; and such was the horror with which my mind was filled, at the idea of dishonor to my memory in the work most worthy of myself, that i am surprised so many extravagant ideas did not occasion a speedy end to my existence. i never was so much afraid of death as at this time, and had i died with the apprehensions i then had upon my mind, i should have died in despair. at present, although i perceived no obstacle to the execution of the blackest and most dreadful conspiracy ever formed against the memory of a man, i shall die much more in peace, certain of leaving in my writings a testimony in my favor, and one which, sooner or later, will triumph over the calumnies of mankind. m. de malesherbes, who discovered the agitation of my mind, and to whom i acknowledged it, used such endeavors to restore me to tranquility as proved his excessive goodness of heart. madam de luxembourg aided him in his good work, and several times went to duchesne to know in what state the edition was. at length the impression was again begun, and the progress of it became more rapid than ever, without my knowing for what reason it had been suspended. m. de malesherbes took the trouble to come to montmorency to calm my mind; in this he succeeded, and the full confidence i had in his uprightness having overcome the derangement of my poor head, gave efficacy to the endeavors he made to restore it. after what he had seen of my anguish and delirium, it was natural he should think i was to be pitied; and he really commiserated my situation. the expressions, incessantly repeated, of the philosophical cabal by which he was surrounded, occurred to his memory. when i went to live at the hermitage, they, as i have already remarked, said i should not remain there long. when they saw i persevered, they charged me with obstinacy and pride, proceeding from a want of courage to retract, and insisted that my life was there a burden to me; in short, that i was very wretched. m. de malesherbes believed this really to be the case, and wrote to me upon the subject. this error in a man for whom i had so much esteem gave me some pain, and i wrote to him four letters successively, in which i stated the real motives of my conduct, and made him fully acquainted with my taste, inclination and character, and with the most interior sentiments of my heart. these letters, written hastily, almost without taking pen from paper, and which i neither copied, corrected, nor even read, are perhaps the only things i ever wrote with facility, which, in the midst of my sufferings, was, i think, astonishing. i sighed, as i felt myself declining, at the thought of leaving in the midst of honest men an opinion of me so far from truth; and by the sketch hastily given in my four letters, i endeavored, in some measure, to substitute them to the memoirs i had proposed to write. they are expressive of my grief to m. de malesherbes, who showed them in paris, and are, besides, a kind of summary of what i here give in detail, and, on this account, merit preservation. the copy i begged of them some years afterwards will be found amongst my papers. the only thing which continued to give me pain, in the idea of my approaching dissolution, was my not having a man of letters for a friend, to whom i could confide my papers, that after my death he might take a proper choice of such as were worthy of publication. after my journey to geneva, i conceived a friendship for moulton; this young man pleased me, and i could have wished him to receive my last breath. i expressed to him this desire, and am of opinion he would readily have complied with it, had not his affairs prevented him from so doing. deprived of this consolation, i still wished to give him a mark of my confidence by sending him the 'profession of faith of the savoyard vicar' before it was published. he was pleased with the work, but did not in his answer seem so fully to expect from it the effect of which i had but little doubt. he wished to receive from me some fragment which i had not given to anybody else. i sent him the funeral oration of the late duke of orleans; this i had written for the abbe darty, who had not pronounced it, because, contrary to his expectation, another person was appointed to perform that ceremony. the printing of emilius, after having been again taken in hand, was continued and completed without much difficulty; and i remarked this singularity, that after the curtailings so much insisted upon in the first two volumes, the last two were passed over without an objection, and their contents did not delay the publication for a moment. i had, however, some uneasiness which i must not pass over in silence. after having been afraid of the jesuits, i begun to fear the jansenists and philosophers. an enemy to party, faction and cabal, i never heard the least good of parties concerned in them. the gossips had quitted their old abode and taken up their residence by the side of me, so that in their chamber, everything said in mine, and upon the terrace, was distinctly heard; and from their garden it would have been easy to scale the low wall by which it was separated from my alcove. this was become my study; my table was covered with proofsheets of emilius and the social contract and stitching these sheets as they were sent to me, i had all my volumes a long time before they were published. my negligence and the confidence i had in m. mathas, in whose garden i was shut up, frequently made me forget to lock the door at night, and in the morning i several times found it wide open; this, however, would not have given me the least inquietude had i not thought my papers seemed to have been deranged. after having several times made the same remark, i became more careful, and locked the door. the lock was a bad one, and the key turned in it no more than half round. as i became more attentive, i found my papers in a much greater confusion than they were when i left everything open. at length i missed one of my volumes without knowing what was become of it until the morning of the third day, when i again found it upon the table. i never suspected either m. mathas or his nephew m. du moulin, knowing myself to be beloved by both, and my confidence in them was unbounded. that i had in the gossips began to diminish. although they were jansenists, i knew them to have some connection with d' alembert, and moreover they all three lodged in the same house. this gave me some uneasiness, and put me more upon my guard. i removed my papers from the alcove to my chamber, and dropped my acquaintance with these people, having learned they had shown in several houses the first volume of 'emilius', which i had been imprudent enough to lend them. although they continued until my departure to be my neighbors i never, after my first suspicions, had the least communication with them. the 'social contract' appeared a month or two before 'emilius'. rey, whom i had desired never secretly to introduce into france any of my books, applied to the magistrate for leave to send this book by rouen, to which place he sent his package by sea. he received no answer, and his bales, after remaining at rouen several months, were returned to him, but not until an attempt had been made to confiscate them; this, probably, would have been done had not he made a great clamor. several persons, whose curiosity the work had excited, sent to amsterdam for copies, which were circulated without being much noticed. maulion, who had heard of this, and had, i believe, seen the work, spoke to me on the subject with an air of mystery which surprised me, and would likewise have made me uneasy if, certain of having conformed to every rule, i had not by virtue of my grand maxim, kept my mind calm. i moreover had no doubt but m. de choiseul, already well disposed towards me, and sensible of the eulogium of his administration, which my esteem for him had induced me to make in the work, would support me against the malevolence of madam de pompadour. i certainly had then as much reason as ever to hope for the goodness of m. de luxembourg, and even for his assistance in case of need; for he never at any time had given me more frequent and more pointed marks of his friendship. at the journey of easter, my melancholy state no longer permitting me to go to the castle, he never suffered a day to pass without coming to see me, and at length, perceiving my sufferings to be incessant, he prevailed upon me to determine to see friar come. he immediately sent for him, came with him, and had the courage, uncommon to a man of his rank, to remain with me during the operation which was cruel and tedious. upon the first examination, come thought he found a great stone, and told me so; at the second, he could not find it again. after having made a third attempt with so much care and circumspection that i thought the time long, he declared there was no stone, but that the prostate gland was schirrous and considerably thickened. he besides added, that i had a great deal to suffer, and should live a long time. should the second prediction be as fully accomplished as the first, my sufferings are far from being at an end. it was thus i learned after having been so many years treated for disorders which i never had, that my incurable disease, without being mortal, would last as long as myself. my imagination, repressed by this information, no longer presented to me in prospective a cruel death in the agonies of the stone. delivered from imaginary evils, more cruel to me than those which were real, i more patiently suffered the latter. it is certain i have since suffered less from my disorder than i had done before, and every time i recollect that i owe this alleviation to m. de luxembourg, his memory becomes more dear to me. restored, as i may say, to life, and more than ever occupied with the plan according to which i was determined to pass the rest of my days, all the obstacle to the immediate execution of my design was the publication of 'emilius'. i thought of touraine where i had already been and which pleased me much, as well on account of the mildness of the climate, as on that of the character of the inhabitants. 'la terra molle lieta a dilettosa simile a se l'habitator produce.' i had already spoken of my project to m. de luxembourg, who endeavored to dissuade me from it; i mentioned it to him a second time as a thing resolved upon. he then offered me the castle of merlon, fifteen leagues from paris, as an asylum which might be agreeable to me, and where he and madam de luxembourg would have a real pleasure in seeing me settled. the proposition made a pleasing impression on my mind. but the first thing necessary was to see the place, and we agreed upon a day when the marechal was to send his valet de chambre with a carriage to take me to it. on the day appointed, i was much indisposed; the journey was postponed, and different circumstances prevented me from ever making it. i have since learned the estate of merlou did not belong to the marechal but to his lady, on which account i was the less sorry i had not gone to live there. 'emilius' was at length given to the public, without my having heard further of retrenchments or difficulties. previous to the publication, the marechal asked me for all the letters m. de malesherbes had written to me on the subject of the work. my great confidence in both, and the perfect security in which i felt myself, prevented me from reflecting upon this extraordinary and even alarming request. i returned all the letters excepting one or two which, from inattention, were left between the leaves of a book. a little time before this, m. de malesherbes told me he should withdraw the letters i had written to duchesne during my alarm relative to the jesuits, and, it must be confessed, these letters did no great honor to my reason. but in my answer i assured him i would not in anything pass for being better than i was, and that he might leave the letters where they were. i know not what he resolved upon. the publication of this work was not succeeded by the applause which had followed that of all my other writings. no work was ever more highly spoken of in private, nor had any literary production ever had less public approbation. what was said and written to me upon the subject by persons most capable of judging, confirmed me in my opinion that it was the best, as well as the most important of all the works i had produced. but everything favorable was said with an air of the most extraordinary mystery, as if there had been a necessity of keeping it a secret. madam de boufflers, who wrote to me that the author of the work merited a statue, and the homage of mankind, at the end of her letter desired it might be returned to her. d'alembert, who in his note said the work gave me a decided superiority, and ought to place me at the head of men of letters, did not sign what he wrote, although he had signed every note i had before received from him. duclos, a sure friend, a man of veracity, but circumspect, although he had a good opinion of the work, avoided mentioning it in his letters to me. la condomine fell upon the confession of faith, and wandered from the subject. clairaut confined himself to the same part; but he was not afraid of expressing to me the emotion which the reading of it had caused in him, and in the most direct terms wrote to me that it had warmed his old imagination: of all those to whom i had sent my book, he was the only person who spoke freely what he thought of it. mathas, to whom i also had given a copy before the publication, lent it to m. de blaire, counsellor in the parliament of strasbourg. m. de blaire had a country-house at st. gratien, and mathas, his old acquaintance, sometimes went to see him there. he made him read emilius before it was published. when he returned it to him, m. de blaire expressed himself in the following terms, which were repeated to me the same day: "m. mathas, this is a very fine work, but it will in a short time be spoken of more than, for the author might be wished." i laughed at the prediction, and saw in it nothing more than the importance of a man of the robe, who treats everything with an air of mystery. all the alarming observations repeated to me made no impression upon my mind, and, far from foreseeing the catastrophe so near at hand, certain of the utility and excellence of my work, and that i had in every respect conformed to established rules; convinced, as i thought i was that i should be supported by all the credit of m. de luxembourg and the favor of the ministry, i was satisfied with myself for the resolution i had taken to retire in the midst of my triumphs, and at my return to crush those by whom i was envied. one thing in the publication of the work alarmed me, less on account of my safety than for the unburdening of my mind. at the hermitage and at montmorency i had seen with indignation the vexations which the jealous care of the pleasures of princes causes to be exercised on wretched peasants, forced to suffer the havoc made by game in their fields, without daring to take any other measure to prevent this devastation than that of making a noise, passing the night amongst the beans and peas, with drums, kettles and bells, to keep off the wild boars. as i had been a witness to the barbarous cruelty with which the comte de charolois treated these poor people, i had toward the end of emilius exclaimed against it. this was another infraction of my maxims, which has not remained unpunished. i was informed that the people of the prince of conti were but little less severe upon his, estates; i trembled less that prince, for whom i was penetrated with respect and gratitude, should take to his own account what shocked humanity had made me say on that of others, and feel himself offended. yet, as my conscience fully acquitted me upon this article, i made myself easy, and by so doing acted wisely: at least, i have not heard that this great prince took notice of the passage, which, besides, was written long before i had the honor of being known to him. a few days either before or after the publication of my work, for i do not exactly recollect the time, there appeared another work upon the same subject, taken verbatim from my first volume, except a few stupid things which were joined to the extract. the book bore the name of a genevese, one balexsert, and, according to the title-page, had gained the premium in the academy of harlem. i easily imagined the academy and the premium to be newly founded, the better to conceal the plagiarism from the eyes of the public; but i further perceived there was some prior intrigue which i could not unravel; either by the lending of my manuscript, without which the theft could not have been committed, or for the purpose of forging the story of the pretended premium, to which it was necessary to give some foundation. it was not until several years afterwards, that by a word which escaped d'ivernois, i penetrated the mystery and discovered those by whom balexsert had been brought forward. the low murmurings which precede a storm began to be heard, and men of penetration clearly saw there was something gathering, relative to me and my book, which would shortly break over my head. for my part my stupidity was such, that, far from foreseeing my misfortune, i did not suspect even the cause of it after i had felt its effect. it was artfully given out that while the jesuits were treated with severity, no indulgence could be shown to books nor the authors of them in which religion was attacked. i was reproached with having put my name to emilius, as if i had not put it to all my other works of which nothing was said. government seemed to fear it should be obliged to take some steps which circumstances rendered necessary on account of my imprudence. rumors to this effect reached my ears, but gave me not much uneasiness: it never even came into my head, that there could be the least thing in the whole affair which related to me personally, so perfectly irreproachable and well supported did i think myself; having besides conformed to every ministerial regulation, i did not apprehend madam de luxembourg would leave me in difficulties for an error, which, if it existed, proceeded entirely from herself. but knowing the manner of proceeding in like cases, and that it was customary to punish booksellers while authors were favored; i had some uneasiness on account of poor duchesne, whom i saw exposed to danger, should m. de malesherbes abandon him. my tranquility still continued. rumors increased and soon changed their nature. the public, and especially the parliament, seemed irritated by my composure. in a few days the fermentation became terrible, and the object of the menaces being changed, these were immediately addressed to me. the parliamentarians were heard to declare that burning books was of no effect, the authors also should be burned with them; not a word was said of the booksellers. the first time these expressions, more worthy of an inquisitor of goa than a senator, were related to me, i had no doubt of their coming from the holbachiques with an intention to alarm me and drive me from france. i laughed at their puerile manoeuvre, and said they would, had they known the real state of things, have thought of some other means of inspiring me with fear; but the rumor at length became such that i perceived the matter was serious. m. and madam de luxembourg had this year come to montmorency in the month of june, which, for their second journey, was more early than common. i heard but little there of my new books, notwithstanding the noise they made in paris; neither the marechal nor his lady said a single word to me on the subject. however, one morning, when m. de luxembourg and i were together, he asked me if, in the 'social contract', i had spoken ill of m. de choiseul. "i?" said i, retreating a few steps with surprise; "no, i swear to you i have not; but on the contrary, i have made on him, and with a pen not given to praise, the finest eulogium a minister ever received." i then showed him the passage. "and in emilius?" replied he. "not a word," said i; "there is not in it a single word which relates to him."--"ah!" said he, with more vivacity than was common to him, "you should have taken the same care in the other book, or have expressed yourself more clearly!" "i thought," replied i, "what i wrote could not be misconstrued; my esteem for him was such as to make me extremely cautious not to be equivocal." he was again going to speak; i perceived him ready to open his mind: he stopped short and held his tongue. wretched policy of a courtier, which in the best of hearts, subjugates friendship itself! this conversation although short, explained to me my situation, at least in certain respects, and gave me to understand that it was against myself the anger of administration was raised. the unheard of fatality, which turned to my prejudice all the good i did and wrote, afflicted my heart. yet, feeling myself shielded in this affair by madam de luxembourg and m. de malesherbes, i did not perceive in what my persecutors could deprive me of their protection. however, i, from that moment was convinced equity and judgment were no longer in question, and that no pains would be spared in examining whether or not i was culpable. the storm became still more menacing. neaulme himself expressed to me, in the excess of his babbling, how much he repented having had anything to do in the business, and his certainty of the fate with which the book and the author were threatened. one thing, however, alleviated my fears: madam de luxembourg was so calm, satisfied and cheerful, that i concluded she must necessarily be certain of the sufficiency of her credit, especially if she did not seem to have the least apprehension on my account; moreover, she said not to me a word either of consolation or apology, and saw the turn the affair took with as much unconcern as if she had nothing to do with it or anything else that related to me. what surprised me most was her silence. i thought she should have said something on the subject. madam de boufflers seemed rather uneasy. she appeared agitated, strained herself a good deal, assured me the prince of conti was taking great pains to ward off the blow about to be directed against my person, and which she attributed to the nature of present circumstances, in which it was of importance to the parliament not to leave the jesuits an opening whereby they might bring an accusation against it as being indifferent with respect to religion. she did not, however, seem to depend much either upon the success of her own efforts or even those of the prince. her conversations, more alarming than consolatory, all tended to persuade me to leave the kingdom and go to england, where she offered me an introduction to many of her friends, amongst others one to the celebrated hume, with whom she had long been upon a footing of intimate friendship. seeing me still unshaken, she had recourse to other arguments more capable of disturbing my tranquillity. she intimated that, in case i was arrested and interrogated, i should be under the necessity of naming madam de luxembourg, and that her friendship for me required, on my part, such precautions as were necessary to prevent her being exposed. my answer was, that should what she seemed to apprehend come to pass, she need not be alarmed; that i should do nothing by which the lady she mentioned might become a sufferer. she said such a resolution was more easily taken than adhered to, and in this she was right, especially with respect to me, determined as i always have been neither to prejudice myself nor lie before judges, whatever danger there might be in speaking the truth. perceiving this observation had made some impression upon my mind, without however inducing me to resolve upon evasion, she spoke of the bastile for a few weeks, as a means of placing me beyond the reach of the jurisdiction of the parliament, which has nothing to do with prisoners of state. i had no objection to this singular favor, provided it were not solicited in my name. as she never spoke of it a second time, i afterwards thought her proposition was made to sound me, and that the party did not think proper to have recourse to an expedient which would have put an end to everything. a few days afterwards the marechal received from the cure de dueil, the friend of grimm and madam d'epinay, a letter informing him, as from good authority, that the parliament was to proceed against me with the greatest severity, and that, on a day which he mentioned, an order was to be given to arrest me. i imagined this was fabricated by the holbachiques; i knew the parliament to be very attentive to forms, and that on this occasion, beginning by arresting me before it was juridically known i avowed myself the author of the book was violating them all. i observed to madam de boufflers that none but persons accused of crimes which tend to endanger the public safety were, on a simple information ordered to be arrested lest they should escape punishment. but when government wish to punish a crime like mine, which merits honor and recompense, the proceedings are directed against the book, and the author is as much as possible left out of the question. upon this she made some subtle distinction, which i have forgotten, to prove that ordering me to be arrested instead of summoning me to be heard was a matter of favor. the next day i received a letter from guy, who informed me that having in the morning been with the attorney-general, he had seen in his office a rough draft of a requisition against emilius and the author. guy, it is to be remembered, was the partner of duchesne, who had printed the work, and without apprehensions on his own account, charitably gave this information to the author. the credit i gave to him maybe judged of. it was, no doubt, a very probable story, that a bookseller, admitted to an audience by the attorney-general, should read at ease scattered rough drafts in the office of that magistrate! madam de boufflers and others confirmed what he had said. by the absurdities which were incessantly rung in my ears, i was almost tempted to believe that everybody i heard speak had lost their senses. clearly perceiving that there was some mystery, which no one thought proper to explain to me, i patiently awaited the event, depending upon my integrity and innocence, and thinking myself happy, let the persecution which awaited me be what it would, to be called to the honor of suffering in the cause of truth. far from being afraid and concealing myself, i went every day to the castle, and in the afternoon took my usual walk. on the eighth of june, the evening before the order was concluded on, i walked in company with two professors of the oratory, father alamanni and father mandard. we carried to champeaux a little collation, which we ate with a keen appetite. we had forgotten to bring glasses, and supplied the want of them by stalks of rye, through which we sucked up the wine from the bottle, piquing ourselves upon the choice of large tubes to vie with each other in pumping up what we drank. i never was more cheerful in my life. i have related in what manner i lost my sleep during my youth. i had since that time contracted a habit of reading every night in my bed, until i found my eyes begin to grow heavy. i then extinguished my wax taper, and endeavored to slumber for a few moments, which were in general very short. the book i commonly read at night was the bible, which, in this manner i read five or six times from the beginning to the end. this evening, finding myself less disposed to sleep than ordinary, i continued my reading beyond the usual hour, and read the whole book which finishes at the levite of ephraim, the book of judges, if i mistake not, for since that time i have never once seen it. this history affected me exceedingly, and, in a kind of a dream, my imagination still ran on it, when suddenly i was roused from my stupor by a noise and light. theresa carrying a candle, lighted m. la roche, who perceiving me hastily raise myself up, said: "do not be alarmed; i come from madam de luxembourg, who, in her letter incloses you another from the prince of conti." in fact, in the letter of madam de luxembourg i found another, which an express from the prince had brought her, stating that, notwithstanding all his efforts, it was determined to proceed against me with the utmost rigor. "the fermentation," said he, "is extreme; nothing can ward off the blow; the court requires it, and the parliament will absolutely proceed; at seven o'clock in the morning an order will be made to arrest him, and persons will immediately be sent to execute it. i have obtained a promise that he shall not be pursued if he makes his escape; but if he persists in exposing himself to be taken this will immediately happen." la roche conjured me in behalf of madam de luxembourg to rise and go and speak to her. it was two o'clock and she had just retired to bed. "she expects you," added he, "and will not go to sleep without speaking to you." i dressed myself in haste and ran to her. she appeared to be agitated; this was for the first time. her distress affected me. in this moment of surprise and in the night, i myself was not free from emotion; but on seeing her i forgot my own situation, and thought of nothing but the melancholy part she would have to act should i suffer myself to be arrested; for feeling i had sufficient courage strictly to adhere to truth, although i might be certain of its being prejudicial or even destructive to me, i was convinced i had not presence of mind, address, nor perhaps firmness enough, not to expose her should i be closely pressed. this determined me to sacrifice my reputation to her tranquillity, and to do for her that which nothing could have prevailed upon me to do for myself. the moment i had come to this resolution, i declared it, wishing not to diminish the magnitude of the sacrifice by giving her the least trouble to obtain it. i am sure she could not mistake my motive, although she said not a word, which proved to me she was sensible of it. i was so much shocked at her indifference that i, for a moment, thought of retracting; but the marechal came in, and madam de bouffiers arrived from paris a few moments afterwards. they did what madam de luxembourg ought to have done. i suffered myself to be flattered; i was ashamed to retract; and the only thing that remained to be determined upon was the place of my retreat and the time of my departure. m. de luxembourg proposed to me to remain incognito a few days at the castle, that we might deliberate at leisure, and take such measures as should seem most proper; to this i would not consent, no more than to go secretly to the temple. i was determined to set off the same day rather than remain concealed in any place whatever. knowing i had secret and powerful enemies in the kingdom, i thought, notwithstanding my attachment to france, i ought to quit it, the better to insure my future tranquillity. my first intention was to retire to geneva, but a moment of reflection was sufficient to dissuade me from committing that act of folly; i knew the ministry of france, more powerful at geneva than at paris, would not leave me more at peace in one of these cities than in the other, were a resolution taken to torment me. i was also convinced the 'discourse upon inequality' had excited against me in the council a hatred the more dangerous as the council dared not make it manifest. i had also learned, that when the new eloisa appeared, the same council had immediately forbidden the sale of that work, upon the solicitation of doctor tronchin; but perceiving the example not to be imitated, even in paris, the members were ashamed of what they had done, and withdrew the prohibition. i had no doubt that, finding in the present case a more favorable opportunity, they would be very careful to take advantage of it. notwithstanding exterior appearances, i knew there reigned against me in the heart of every genevese a secret jealousy, which, in the first favorable moment, would publicly show itself. nevertheless, the love of my country called me to it, and could i have flattered myself i should there have lived in peace, i should not have hesitated; but neither honor nor reason permitting me to take refuge as a fugitive in a place of which i was a citizen, i resolved to approach it only, and to wait in switzerland until something relative to me should be determined upon in geneva. this state of uncertainty did not, as it will soon appear, continue long. madam de boufflers highly disapproved this resolution, and renewed her efforts to induce me to go to england, but all she could say was of no effect; i had never loved england nor the english, and the eloquence of madam de boufflers, far from conquering my repugnancy, seemed to increase it without my knowing why. determined to set off the same day, i was from the morning inaccessible to everybody, and la roche, whom i sent to fetch my papers, would not tell theresa whether or not i was gone. since i had determined to write my own memoirs, i had collected a great number of letters and other papers, so that he was obliged to return several times. a part of these papers, already selected, were laid aside, and i employed the morning in sorting the rest, that i might take with me such only as were necessary and destroy what remained. m. de luxembourg, was kind enough to assist me in this business, which we could not finish before it was necessary i should set off, and i had not time to burn a single paper. the marechal offered to take upon himself to sort what i should leave behind me, and throw into the fire every sheet that he found useless, without trusting to any person whomsoever, and to send me those of which he should make choice. i accepted his offer, very glad to be delivered from that care, that i might pass the few hours i had to remain with persons so dear to me, from whom i was going to separate forever. he took the key of the chamber in which i had left these papers; and, at my earnest solicitation, sent for my poor aunt, who, not knowing what had become of me, or what was to become of herself, and in momentary expectation of the arrival of the officers of justice, without knowing how to act or what to answer them, was miserable to an extreme. la roche accompanied her to the castle in silence; she thought i was already far from montmorency; on perceiving me, she made the place resound with her cries, and threw herself into my arms. oh, friendship, affinity of sentiment, habit and intimacy. in this pleasing yet cruel moment, the remembrance of so many days of happiness, tenderness and peace, passed together augmented the grief of a first separation after an union of seventeen years during which we had scarcely lost sight of each other for a single day. the marechal who saw this embrace, could not suppress his tears. he withdrew. theresa determined never more to leave me out of her sight. i made her feel the inconvenience of accompanying me at that moment, and the necessity of her remaining to take care of my effects and collect my money. when an order is made to arrest a man, it is customary to seize his papers and put a seal upon his effects, or to make an inventory of them and appoint a guardian to whose care they are intrusted. it was necessary theresa should remain to observe what passed, and get everything settled in the most advantageous manner possible. i promised her she should shortly come to me; the marechal confirmed my promise; but i did not choose to tell her to what place i was going, that, in case of being interrogated by the persons who came to take me into custody, she might with truth plead ignorance upon that head. in embracing her the moment before we separated i felt within me a most extraordinary emotion, and i said to her with an agitation which, alas! was but too prophetic: "my dear girl, you must arm yourself with courage. you have partaken of my prosperity; it now remains to you, since you have chosen it, to partake of my misery. expect nothing in future but insult and calamity in following me. the destiny begun for me by this melancholy day will pursue me until my latest hour." i had now nothing to think of but my departure. the officers were to arrive at ten o'clock. it was four in the afternoon when i set off, and they were not yet come. it was determined i should take post. i had no carriage, the marechal made me a present of a cabriolet, and lent me horses and a postillion the first stage, where, in consequence of the measures he had taken, i had no difficulty in procuring others. as i had not dined at table, nor made my appearance in the castle, the ladies came to bid me adieu in the entresol where i had passed the day. madam de luxembourg embraced me several times with a melancholy air; but i did not in these embraces feel the pressing i had done in those she had lavished upon me two or three years before. madam de boufflers also embraced me, and said to me many civil things. an embrace which surprised me more than all the rest had done was one from madam de mirepoix, for she also was at the castle. madam la marechale de mirepoix is a person extremely cold, decent, and reserved, and did not, at least as she appeared to me, seem quite exempt from the natural haughtiness of the house of lorraine. she had never shown me much attention. whether, flattered by an honor i had not expected, i endeavored to enhance the value of it; or that there really was in the embrace a little of that commiseration natural to generous hearts, i found in her manner and look something energetical which penetrated me. i have since that time frequently thought that, acquainted with my destiny, she could not refrain from a momentary concern for my fate. the marechal did not open his mouth; he was as pale as death. he would absolutely accompany me to the carriage which waited at the watering place. we crossed the garden without uttering a single word. i had a key of the park with which i opened the gate, and instead of putting it again into my pocket, i held it out to the marechal without saying a word. he took it with a vivacity which surprised me, and which has since frequently intruded itself upon my thoughts. i have not in my whole life had a more bitter moment than that of this separation. our embrace was long and silent: we both felt that this was our last adieu. between barre and montmorency i met, in a hired carriage, four men in black, who saluted me smilingly. according to what theresa has since told me of the officers of justice, the hour of their arrival and their manner of behavior, i have no doubt, that they were the persons i met, especially as the order to arrest me, instead of being made out at seven o'clock, as i had been told it would, had not been given till noon. i had to go through paris. a person in a cabriolet is not much concealed. i saw several persons in the streets who saluted me with an air of familiarity but i did not know one of them. the same evening i changed my route to pass villeroy. at lyons the couriers were conducted to the commandant. this might have been embarrassing to a man unwilling either to lie or change his name. i went with a letter from madam de luxembourg to beg m. de villeroy would spare me this disagreeable ceremony. m. de villeroy gave me a letter of which i made no use, because i did not go through lyons. this letter still remains sealed up amongst my papers. the duke pressed me to sleep at villeroy, but i preferred returning to the great road, which i did, and travelled two more stages the same evening. my carriage was inconvenient and uncomfortable, and i was too much indisposed to go far in a day. my appearance besides was not sufficiently distinguished for me to be well served, and in france post-horses feel the whip in proportion to the favorable opinion the postillion has of his temporary master. by paying the guides generously thought i should make up for my shabby appearance: this was still worse. they took me for a worthless fellow who was carrying orders, and, for the first time in my life, travelling post. from that moment i had nothing but worn-out hacks, and i became the sport of the postillions. i ended as i should have begun by being patient, holding my tongue, and suffering myself to be driven as my conductors thought proper. i had sufficient matter of reflection to prevent me from being weary on the road, employing myself in the recollection of that which had just happened; but this was neither my turn of mind nor the inclination of my heart. the facility with which i forget past evils, however recent they may be, is astonishing. the remembrance of them becomes feeble, and, sooner or later, effaced, in the inverse proportion to the greater degree of fear with which the approach of them inspires me. my cruel imagination, incessantly tormented by the apprehension of evils still at a distance, diverts my attention, and prevents me from recollecting those which are past. caution is needless after the evil has happened, and it is time lost to give it a thought. i, in some measure, put a period to my misfortunes before they happen: the more i have suffered at their approach the greater is the facility with which i forget them; whilst, on the contrary, incessantly recollecting my past happiness, i, if i may so speak, enjoy it a second time at pleasure. it is to this happy disposition i am indebted for an exemption from that ill humor which ferments in a vindictive mind, by the continual remembrance of injuries received, and torments it with all the evil it wishes to do its enemy. naturally choleric, i have felt all the force of anger, which in the first moments has sometimes been carried to fury, but a desire of vengeance never took root within me. i think too little of the offence to give myself much trouble about the offender. i think of the injury i have received from him on account of that he may do me a second time, but were i certain he would never do me another the first would be instantly forgotten. pardon of offences is continually preached to us. i knew not whether or not my heart would be capable of overcoming its hatred, for it never yet felt that passion, and i give myself too little concern about my enemies to have the merit of pardoning them. i will not say to what a degree, in order to torment me, they torment themselves. i am at their mercy, they have unbounded power, and make of it what use they please. there is but one thing in which i set them at defiance: which is in tormenting themselves about me, to force me to give myself the least trouble about them. the day after my departure i had so perfectly forgotten what had passed, the parliament, madam de pompadour, m. de choiseul, grimm, and d'alembert, with their conspiracies, that had not it been for the necessary precautions during the journey i should have thought no more of them. the remembrance of one thing which supplied the place of all these was what i had read the evening before my departure. i recollect, also, the pastorals of gessner, which his translator hubert had sent me a little time before. these two ideas occurred to me so strongly, and were connected in such a manner in my mind, that i was determined to endeavor to unite them by treating after the manner of gessner, the subject of the levite of ephraim. his pastoral and simple style appeared to me but little fitted to so horrid a subject, and it was not to be presumed the situation i was then in would furnish me with such ideas as would enliven it. however, i attempted the thing, solely to amuse myself in my cabriolet, and without the least hope of success. i had no sooner begun than i was astonished at the liveliness of my ideas, and the facility with which i expressed them. in three days i composed the first three cantos of the little poem i finished at motiers, and i am certain of not having done anything in my life in which there is a more interesting mildness of manners, a greater brilliancy of coloring, more simple delineations, greater exactness of proportion, or more antique simplicity in general, notwithstanding the horror of the subject which in itself is abominable, so that besides every other merit i had still that of a difficulty conquered. if the levite of ephraim be not the best of my works, it will ever be that most esteemed. i have never read, nor shall i ever read it again without feeling interiorly the applause of a heart without acrimony, which, far from being embittered by misfortunes, is susceptible of consolation in the midst of them, and finds within itself a resource by which they are counterbalanced. assemble the great philosophers, so superior in their books to adversity which they do not suffer, place them in a situation similar to mine, and, in the first moments of the indignation of their injured honor, give them a like work to compose, and it will be seen in what manner they will acquit themselves of the task. when i set of from montmorency to go into switzerland, i had resolved to stop at yverdon, at the house of my old friend roguin, who had several years before retired to that place, and had invited me to go and see him. i was told lyons was not the direct road, for which reason i avoided going through it. but i was obliged to pass through besancon, a fortified town, and consequently subject to the same inconvenience. i took it into my head to turn about and to go to salins, under the pretense of going to see m. de marian, the nephew of m. dupin, who had an employment at the salt-works, and formerly had given me many invitations to his house. the expedition succeeded: m. de marian was not in the way, and, happily, not being obliged to stop, i continued my journey without being spoken to by anybody. the moment i was within the territory of berne, i ordered the postillion to stop; i got out of my carriage, prostrated myself, kissed the ground, and exclaimed in a transport of joy: "heaven, the protector of virtue be praised, i touch a land of liberty!" thus blind and unsuspecting in my hopes, have i ever been passionately attached to that which was to make me unhappy. the man thought me mad. i got into the carriage, and a few hours afterwards i had the pure and lively satisfaction of feeling myself pressed within the arms of the respectable rougin. ah! let me breathe for a moment with this worthy host! it is necessary i should gain strength and courage before i proceed further. i shall soon find that in my way which will give employment to them both. it is not without reason that i have been diffuse in the recital of all the circumstances i have been able to recollect. although they may seem uninteresting, yet, when once the thread of the conspiracy is got hold of, they may throw some light upon the progress of it; and, for instance, without giving the first idea of the problem i am going to propose, afford some aid in solving it. suppose that, for the execution of the conspiracy of which i was the object, my absence was absolutely necessary, everything tending to that effect could not have happened otherwise than it did; but if without suffering myself to be alarmed by the nocturnal embassy of madam de luxembourg, i had continued to hold out, and, instead of remaining at the castle, had returned to my bed and quietly slept until morning, should i have equally had an order of arrest made out against me? this is a great question upon which the solution of many others depends, and for the examination of it, the hour of the comminatory decree of arrest, and that of the real decree may be remarked to advantage. a rude but sensible example of the importance of the least detail in the exposition of facts, of which the secret causes are sought for to discover them by induction. the confessions of jean jacques rousseau (in books) privately printed for the members of the aldus society london, book xii. with this book begins the work of darkness, in which i have for the last eight years been enveloped, though it has not by any means been possible for me to penetrate the dreadful obscurity. in the abyss of evil into which i am plunged, i feel the blows reach me, without perceiving the hand by which they are directed or the means it employs. shame and misfortune seem of themselves to fall upon me. when in the affliction of my heart i suffer a groan to escape me, i have the appearance of a man who complains without reason, and the authors of my ruin have the inconceivable art of rendering the public unknown to itself, or without its perceiving the effects of it, accomplice in their conspiracy. therefore, in my narrative of circumstances relative to myself, of the treatment i have received, and all that has happened to me, i shall not be able to indicate the hand by which the whole has been directed, nor assign the causes, while i state the effect. the primitive causes are all given in the preceding books; and everything in which i am interested, and all the secret motives pointed out. but it is impossible for me to explain, even by conjecture, that in which the different causes are combined to operate the strange events of my life. if amongst my readers one even of them should be generous enough to wish to examine the mystery to the bottom, and discover the truth, let him carefully read over a second time the three preceding books, afterwards at each fact he shall find stated in the books which follow, let him gain such information as is within his reach, and go back from intrigue to intrigue, and from agent to agent, until he comes to the first mover of all. i know where his researches will terminate; but in the meantime i lose myself in the crooked and obscure subterraneous path through which his steps must be directed. during my stay at yverdon, i became acquainted with all the family of my friend roguin, and amongst others with his niece, madam boy de la tour, and her daughters, whose father, as i think i have already observed, i formerly knew at lyons. she was at yverdon, upon a visit to her uncle and his sister; her eldest daughter, about fifteen years of age, delighted me by her fine understanding and excellent disposition. i conceived the most tender friendship for the mother and the daughter. the latter was destined by m. rougin to the colonel, his nephew, a man already verging towards the decline of life, and who showed me marks of great esteem and affection; but although the heart of the uncle was set upon this marriage, which was much wished for by the nephew also, and i was greatly desirous to promote the satisfaction of both, the great disproportion of age, and the extreme repugnancy of the young lady, made me join with the mother in postponing the ceremony, and the affair was at length broken off. the colonel has since married mademoiselle dillan, his relation, beautiful, and amiable as my heart could wish, and who has made him the happiest of husbands and fathers. however, m. rougin has not yet forgotten my opposition to his wishes. my consolation is in the certainty of having discharged to him, and his family, the duty of the most pure friendship, which does not always consist in being agreeable, but in advising for the best. i did not remain long in doubt about the reception which awaited me at geneva, had i chosen to return to that city. my book was burned there, and on the th of june, nine days after an order to arrest me had been given at paris, another to the same effect was determined upon by the republic. so many incredible absurdities were stated in this second decree, in which the ecclesiastical edict was formally violated, that i refused to believe the first accounts i heard of it, and when these were well confirmed, i trembled lest so manifest an infraction of every law, beginning with that of common-sense, should create the greatest confusion in the city. i was, however, relieved from my fears; everything remained quiet. if there was any rumor amongst the populace, it was unfavorable to me, and i was publicly treated by all the gossips and pedants like a scholar threatened with a flogging for not having said his catechism. these two decrees were the signal for the cry of malediction, raised against me with unexampled fury in every part of europe. all the gazettes, journals and pamphlets, rang the alarm-bell. the french especially, that mild, generous, and polished people, who so much pique themselves upon their attention and proper condescension to the unfortunate, instantly forgetting their favorite virtues, signalized themselves by the number and violence of the outrages with which, while each seemed to strive who should afflict me most, they overwhelmed me. i was impious, an atheist, a madman, a wild beast, a wolf. the continuator of the journal of trevoux was guilty of a piece of extravagance in attacking my pretended lycanthropy, which was by no means proof of his own. a stranger would have thought an author in paris was afraid of incurring the animadversion of the police, by publishing a work of any kind without cramming into it some insult to me. i sought in vain the cause of this unanimous animosity, and was almost tempted to believe the world was gone mad. what! said i to myself, the editor of the 'perpetual peace', spread discord; the author of the 'confession of the savoyard vicar', impious; the writer of the 'new eloisa', a wolf; the author of 'emilius', a madman! gracious god! what then should i have been had i published the 'treatise de l'esprit', or any similar work? and yet, in the storm raised against the author of that book, the public, far from joining the cry of his persecutors, revenged him of them by eulogium. let his book and mine, the receptions the two works met with, and the treatment of the two authors in the different countries of europe, be compared; and for the difference let causes satisfactory to, a man of sense be found, and i will ask no more. i found the residence of yverdon so agreeable that i resolved to yield to the solicitations of m. roguin and his family, who, were desirous of keeping me there. m. de moiry de gingins, bailiff of that city, encouraged me by his goodness to remain within his jurisdiction. the colonel pressed me so much to accept for my habitation a little pavilion he had in his house between the court and the garden, that i complied with his request, and he immediately furnished it with everything necessary for my little household establishment. the banneret roguin, one of the persons who showed me the most assiduous attention, did not leave me for an instant during the whole day. i was much flattered by his civilities, but they sometimes importuned me. the day on which i was to take possession of my new habitation was already fixed, and i had written to theresa to come to me, when suddenly a storm was raised against me in berne, which was attributed to the devotees, but i have never been able to learn the cause of it. the senate, excited against me, without my knowing by whom, did not seem disposed to suffer me to remain undisturbed in my retreat. the moment the bailiff was informed of the new fermentation, he wrote in my favor to several of the members of the government, reproaching them with their blind intolerance, and telling them it was shameful to refuse to a man of merit, under oppression, the asylum which such a numerous banditti found in their states. sensible people were of opinion the warmth of his reproaches had rather embittered than softened the minds of the magistrates. however this may be, neither his influence nor eloquence could ward off the blow. having received an intimation of the order he was to signify to me, he gave me a previous communication of it; and that i might wait its arrival, i resolved to set off the next day. the difficulty was to know where to go, finding myself shut out from geneva and all france, and foreseeing that in the affair each state would be anxious to imitate its neighbor. madam boy de la tour proposed to me to go and reside in an uninhabited but completely furnished house, which belonged to her son in the village of motiers, in the val de travers, in the county of neuchatel. i had only a mountain to cross to arrive at it. the offer came the more opportunely, as in the states of the king of prussia i should naturally be sheltered from all persecution, at least religion could not serve as a pretext for it. but a secret difficulty: improper for me at that moment to divulge, had in it that which was very sufficient to make me hesitate. the innnate love of justice, to which my heart was constantly subject, added to my secret inclination to france, had inspired me with an aversion to the king of prussia, who by his maxims and conduct, seemed to tread under foot all respect for natural law and every duty of humanity. amongst the framed engravings, with which i had decorated my alcove at montmorency, was a portrait of this prince, and under it a distich, the last line of which was as follows: il pense en philosophe, et se conduit en roi. [he thinks like a philosopher, and acts like a king.] this verse, which from any other pen would have been a fine eulogium, from mine had an unequivocal meaning, and too clearly explained the verse by which it was preceded. the distich had been, read by everybody who came to see me, and my visitors were numerous. the chevalier de lorenzy had even written it down to give it to d'alembert, and i had no doubt but d' alembert had taken care to make my court with it to the prince. i had also aggravated this first fault by a passage in 'emilius', where under the name of adrastus, king of the daunians, it was clearly seen whom i had in view, and the remark had not escaped critics, because madam de boufflers had several times mentioned the subject to me. i was, therefore, certain of being inscribed in red ink in the registers of the king of prussia, and besides, supposing his majesty to have the principles i had dared to attribute to him, he, for that reason, could not but be displeased with my writings and their author; for everybody knows the worthless part of mankind, and tyrants have never failed to conceive the most mortal hatred against me, solely on reading my works, without being acquainted with my person. however, i had presumption enough to depend upon his mercy, and was far from thinking i ran much risk. i knew none but weak men were slaves to the base passions, and that these had but little power over strong minds, such as i had always thought his to be. according to his art of reigning, i thought he could not but show himself magnanimous on this occasion, and that being so in fact was not above his character. i thought a mean and easy vengeance would not for a moment counterbalance his love of glory, and putting myself in his place, his taking advantage of circumstances to overwhelm with the weight of his generosity a man who had dared to think ill of him, did not appear to me impossible. i therefore went to settle at motiers, with a confidence of which i imagined he would feel all the value, and said to myself: when jean jacques rises to the elevation of coriolanus, will frederick sink below the general of the volsci? colonel roguin insisted on crossing the mountain with me, and installing me at moiters. a sister-in-law to madam boy de la tour, named madam girardier, to whom the house in which i was going to live was very convenient, did not see me arrive there with pleasure; however, she with a good grace put me in possession of my lodgings, and i eat with her until theresa came, and my little establishment was formed. perceiving at my departure from montmorency i should in future be a fugitive upon the earth, i hesitated about permitting her to come to me and partake of the wandering life to which i saw myself condemned. i felt the nature of our relation to each other was about to change, and that what until then had on my part been favor and friendship, would in future become so on hers. if her attachment was proof against my misfortunes, to this i knew she must become a victim, and that her grief would add to my pain. should my disgrace weaken her affections, she would make me consider her constancy as a sacrifice, and instead of feeling the pleasure i had in dividing with her my last morsel of bread, she would see nothing but her own merit in following me wherever i was driven by fate. i must say everything; i have never concealed the vices either of my poor mamma or myself; i cannot be more favorable to theresa, and whatever pleasure i may have in doing honor to a person who is dear to me, i will not disguise the truth, although it may discover in her an error, if an involuntary change of the affections of the heart be one. i had long perceived hers to grow cooler towards me, and that she was no longer for me what she had been in our younger days. of this i was the more sensible, as for her i was what i had always been. i fell into the same inconvenience as that of which i had felt the effect with mamma, and this effect was the same now i was with theresa. let us not seek for perfection, which nature never produces; it would be the same thing with any other woman. the manner in which i had disposed of my children, however reasonable it had appeared to me, had not always left my heart at ease. while writing my 'treatise on education', i felt i had neglected duties with which it was not possible to dispense. remorse at length became so strong that it almost forced from me a public confession of my fault at the beginning of my 'emilius', and the passage is so clear, that it is astonishing any person should, after reading it, have had the courage to reproach me with my error. my situation was however still the same, or something worse, by the animosity of my enemies, who sought to find me in a fault. i feared a relapse, and unwilling to run the risk, i preferred abstinence to exposing theresa to a similar mortification. i had besides remarked that a connection with women was prejudicial to my health; this double reason made me form resolutions to which i had but sometimes badly kept, but for the last three or four years i had more constantly adhered to them. it was in this interval i had remarked theresa's coolness; she had the same attachment to me from duty, but not the least from love. our intercourse naturally became less agreeable, and i imagined that, certain of the continuation of my cares wherever she might be, she would choose to stay at paris rather than to wander with me. yet she had given such signs of grief at our parting, had required of me such positive promises that we should meet again, and, since my departure, had expressed to the prince de conti and m. de luxembourg so strong a desire of it, that, far from having the courage to speak to her of separation, i scarcely had enough to think of it myself; and after having felt in my heart how impossible it was for me to do without her, all i thought of afterwards was to recall her to me as soon as possible. i wrote to her to this effect, and she came. it was scarcely two months since i had quitted her; but it was our first separation after a union of so many years. we had both of us felt it most cruelly. what emotion in our first embrace! o how delightful are the tears of tenderness and joy! how does my heart drink them up! why have i not had reason to shed them more frequently? on my arrival at motiers i had written to lord keith, marshal of scotland and governor of neuchatel, informing him of my retreat into the states of his prussian majesty, and requesting of him his protection. he answered me with his well-known generosity, and in the manner i had expected from him. he invited me to his house. i went with m. martinet, lord of the manor of val de travers, who was in great favor with his excellency. the venerable appearance of this illustrious and virtuous scotchman, powerfully affected my heart, and from that instant began between him and me the strong attachment, which on my part still remains the same, and would be so on his, had not the traitors, who have deprived me of all the consolation of life, taken advantage of my absence to deceive his old age and depreciate me in his esteem. george keith, hereditary marshal of scotland, and brother to the famous general keith, who lived gloriously and died in the bed of honor, had quitted his country at a very early age, and was proscribed on account of his attachment to the house of stuart. with that house, however, he soon became disgusted with the unjust and tyrannical spirit he remarked in the ruling character of the stuart family. he lived a long time in spain, the climate of which pleased him exceedingly, and at length attached himself, as his brother had done, to the service of the king of prussia, who knew men and gave them the reception they merited. his majesty received a great return for this reception, in the services rendered him by marshal keith, and by what was infinitely more precious, the sincere friendship of his lordship. the great mind of this worthy man, haughty and republican, could stoop to no other yoke than that of friendship, but to this it was so obedient, that with very different maxims he saw nothing but frederic the moment he became attached to him. the king charged the marshal with affairs of importance, sent him to paris, to spain, and at length, seeing he was already advanced in years, let him retire with the government of neuchatel, and the delightful employment of passing there the remainder of his life in rendering the inhabitants happy. the people of neuchatel, whose manners are trivial, know not how to distinguish solid merit, and suppose wit to consist in long discourses. when they saw a sedate man of simple manners appear amongst them, they mistook his simplicity for haughtiness, his candor for rusticity, his laconism for stupidity, and rejected his benevolent cares, because, wishing to be useful, and not being a sycophant, he knew not how to flatter people he did not esteem. in the ridiculous affair of the minister petitpierre, who was displaced by his colleagues, for having been unwilling they should be eternally damned, my lord, opposing the usurpations of the ministers, saw the whole country of which he took the part, rise up against him, and when i arrived there the stupid murmur had not entirely subsided. he passed for a man influenced by the prejudices with which he was inspired by others, and of all the imputations brought against him it was the most devoid of truth. my first sentiment on seeing this venerable old man, was that of tender commiseration, on account of his extreme leanness of body, years having already left him little else but skin and bone; but when i raised my eyes to his animated, open, noble countenance, i felt a respect, mingled with confidence, which absorbed every other sentiment. he answered the very short compliment i made him when i first came into his presence by speaking of something else, as if i had already been a week in his house. he did not bid us sit down. the stupid chatelain, the lord of the manor, remained standing. for my part i at first sight saw in the fine and piercing eye of his lordship something so conciliating that, feeling myself entirely at ease, i without ceremony, took my seat by his side upon the sofa. by the familiarity of his manner i immediately perceived the liberty i took gave him pleasure, and that he said to himself: this is not a neuchatelois. singular effect of the similarity of characters! at an age when the heart loses its natural warmth, that of this good old man grew warm by his attachment to me to a degree which surprised everybody. he came to see me at motiers under the pretence of quail shooting, and stayed there two days without touching a gun. we conceived such a friendship for each other that we knew not how to live separate; the castle of colombier, where he passed the summer, was six leagues from motiers; i went there at least once a fortnight, and made a stay of twenty-four hours, and then returned like a pilgrim with my heart full of affection for my host. the emotion i had formerly experienced in my journeys from the hermitage to raubonne was certainly very different, but it was not more pleasing than that with which i approached columbier. what tears of tenderness have i shed when on the road to it, while thinking of the paternal goodness, amiable virtues, and charming philosophy of this respectable old man! i called him father, and he called me son. these affectionate names give, in some measure, an idea of the attachment by which we were united, but by no means that of the want we felt of each other, nor of our continual desire to be together. he would absolutely give me an apartment at the castle of columbier, and for a long time pressed me to take up my residence in that in which i lodged during my visits. i at length told him i was more free and at my ease in my own house, and that i had rather continue until the end of my life to come and see him. he approved of my candor, and never afterwards spoke to me on the subject. oh, my good lord! oh, my worthy father! how is my heart still moved when i think of your goodness? ah, barbarous wretches! how deeply did they wound me when they deprived me of your friendship? but no, great man, you are and ever will be the same for me, who am still the same. you have been deceived, but you are not changed. my lord marechal is not without faults; he is a man of wisdom, but he is still a man. with the greatest penetration, the nicest discrimination, and the most profound knowledge of men, he sometimes suffers himself to be deceived, and never recovers his error. his temper is very singular and foreign to his general turn of mind. he seems to forget the people he sees every day, and thinks of them in a moment when they least expect it; his attention seems ill-timed; his presents are dictated by caprice and not by propriety. he gives or sends in an instant whatever comes into his head, be the value of it ever so small. a young genevese, desirous of entering into the service of prussia, made a personal application to him; his lordship, instead of giving him a letter, gave him a little bag of peas, which he desired him to carry to the king. on receiving this singular recommendation his majesty gave a commission to the bearer of it. these elevated geniuses have between themselves a language which the vulgar will never understand. the whimsical manner of my lord marechal, something like the caprice of a fine woman, rendered him still more interesting to me. i was certain, and afterwards had proofs, that it had not the least influence over his sentiments, nor did it affect the cares prescribed by friendship on serious occasions, yet in his manner of obliging there is the same singularity as in his manners in general. of this i will give one instance relative to a matter of no great importance. the journey from motiers to colombier being too long for me to perform in one day, i commonly divided it by setting off after dinner and sleeping at brot, which is half way. the landlord of the house where i stopped, named sandoz, having to solicit at berlin a favor of importance to him, begged i would request his excellency to ask it in his behalf. "most willingly," said i, and took him with me. i left him in the antechamber, and mentioned the matter to his lordship, who returned me no answer. after passing with him the whole morning, i saw as i crossed the hall to go to dinner, poor sandoz, who was fatigued to death with waiting. thinking the governor had forgotten what i had said to him, i again spoke of the business before we sat down to table, but still received no answer. i thought this manner of making me feel i was importunate rather severe, and, pitying the poor man in waiting, held my tongue. on my return the next day i was much surprised at the thanks he returned me for the good dinner his excellency had given him after receiving his paper. three weeks afterwards his lordship sent him the rescript he had solicited, dispatched by the minister, and signed by the king, and this without having said a word either to myself or sandoz concerning the business, about which i thought he did not wish to give himself the least concern. i could wish incessantly to speak of george keith; from him proceeds my recollection of the last happy moments i have enjoyed: the rest of my life, since our separation, has been passed in affliction and grief of heart. the remembrance of this is so melancholy and confused that it was impossible for me to observe the least order in what i write, so that in future i shall be under the necessity of stating facts without giving them a regular arrangement. i was soon relieved from my inquietude arising from the uncertainty of my asylum, by the answer from his majesty to the lord marshal, in whom, as it will readily be believed, i had found an able advocate. the king not only approved of what he had done, but desired him, for i must relate everything, to give me twelve louis. the good old man, rather embarrassed by the commission, and not knowing how to execute it properly, endeavored to soften the insult by transforming the money into provisions, and writing to me that he had received orders to furnish me with wood and coal to begin my little establishment; he moreover added, and perhaps from himself, that his majesty would willingly build me a little house, such a one as i should choose to have, provided i would fix upon the ground. i was extremely sensible of the kindness of the last offer, which made me forget the weakness of the other. without accepting either, i considered frederic as my benefactor and protector, and became so sincerely attached to him, that from that moment i interested myself as much in his glory as until then i had thought his successes unjust. at the peace he made soon after, i expressed my joy by an illumination in a very good taste: it was a string of garlands, with which i decorated the house i inhabited, and in which, it is true, i had the vindictive haughtiness to spend almost as much money as he had wished to give me. the peace ratified, i thought as he was at the highest pinnacle of military and political fame, he would think of acquiring that of another nature, by reanimating his states, encouraging in them commerce and agriculture, creating a new soil, covering it with a new people, maintaining peace amongst his neighbors, and becoming the arbitrator, after having been the terror, of europe. he was in a situation to sheath his sword without danger, certain that no sovereign would oblige him again to draw it. perceiving he did not disarm, i was afraid he would profit but little by the advantages he had gained, and that he would be great only by halves. i dared to write to him upon the subject, and with a familiarity of a nature to please men of his character, conveying to him the sacred voice of truth, which but few kings are worthy to hear. the liberty i took was a secret between him and myself. i did not communicate it even to the lord marshal, to whom i sent my letter to the king sealed up. his lordship forwarded my dispatch without asking what it contained. his majesty returned me no answer and the marshal going soon after to berlin, the king told him he had received from me a scolding. by this i understood my letter had been ill received, and the frankness of my zeal had been mistaken for the rusticity of a pedant. in fact, this might possibly be the case; perhaps i did not say what was necessary, nor in the manner proper to the occasion. all i can answer for is the sentiment which induced me to take up the pen. shortly after my establishment at motiers, travers having every possible assurance that i should be suffered to remain there in peace, i took the armenian habit. this was not the first time i had thought of doing it. i had formerly had the same intention, particularly at montmorency, where the frequent use of probes often obliging me to keep my chamber, made me more clearly perceive the advantages of a long robe. the convenience of an armenian tailor, who frequently came to see a relation he had at montmorency, almost tempted me to determine on taking this new dress, troubling myself but little about what the world would say of it. yet, before i concluded about the matter, i wished to take the opinion of m. de luxembourg, who immediately advised me to follow my inclination. i therefore procured a little armenian wardrobe, but on account of the storm raised against me, i was induced to postpone making use of it until i should enjoy tranquillity, and it was not until some months afterwards that, forced by new attacks of my disorder, i thought i could properly, and without the least risk, put on my new dress at motiers, especially after having consulted the pastor of the place, who told me i might wear it even in the temple without indecency. i then adopted the waistcoat, caffetan, fur bonnet, and girdle; and after having in this dress attended divine service, i saw no impropriety in going in it to visit his lordship. his excellency in seeing me clothed in this manner made me no other compliment than that which consisted in saying "salaam aliakum," i.e., "peace be with you;" the common turkish salutation; after which nothing more was said upon the subject, and i continued to wear my new dress. having quite abandoned literature, all i now thought of was leading a quiet life, and one as agreeable as i could make it. when alone, i have never felt weariness of mind, not even in complete inaction; my imagination filling up every void, was sufficient to keep up my attention. the inactive babbling of a private circle, where, seated opposite to each other, they who speak move nothing but the tongue, is the only thing i have ever been unable to support. when walking and rambling about there is some satisfaction in conversation; the feet and eyes do something; but to hear people with their arms across speak of the weather, of the biting of flies, or what is still worse, compliment each other, is to me an insupportable torment. that i might not live like a savage, i took it into my head to learn to make laces. like the women, i carried my cushion with me, when i went to make visits, or sat down to work at my door, and chatted with passers-by. this made me the better support the emptiness of babbling, and enabled me to pass my time with my female neighbors without weariness. several of these were very amiable and not devoid of wit. one in particular, isabella d'ivernois, daughter of the attorney-general of neuchatel, i found so estimable as to induce me to enter with her into terms of particular friendship, from which she derived some advantage by the useful advice i gave her, and the services she received from me on occasions of importance, so that now a worthy and virtuous mother of a family, she is perhaps indebted to me for her reason, her husband, her life, and happiness. on my part, i received from her gentle consolation, particularly during a melancholy winter, through out the whole of which when my sufferings were most cruel, she came to pass with theresa and me long evenings, which she made very short for us by her agreeable conversation, and our mutual openness of heart. she called me papa, and i called her daughter, and these names, which we still give to each other, will, i hope, continue to be as dear to her as they are to me. that my laces might be of some utility, i gave them to my young female friends at their marriages, upon condition of their suckling their children; isabella's eldest sister had one upon these terms, and well deserved it by her observance of them; isabella herself also received another, which, by intention she as fully merited. she has not been happy enough to be able to pursue her inclination. when i sent the laces to the two sisters, i wrote each of them a letter; the first has been shown about in the world; the second has not the same celebrity: friendship proceeds with less noise. amongst the connections i made in my neighborhood, of which i will not enter into a detail, i must mention that with colonel pury, who had a house upon the mountain, where he came to pass the summer. i was not anxious to become acquainted with him, because i knew he was upon bad terms at court, and with the lord marshal, whom he did not visit. yet, as he came to see me, and showed me much attention, i was under the necessity of returning his visit; this was repeated, and we sometimes dined with each other. at his house i became acquainted with m. du perou, and afterwards too intimately connected with him to pass his name over in silence. m. du perou was an american, son to a commandant of surinam, whose successor, m. le chambrier, of neuchatel, married his widow. left a widow a second time, she came with her son to live in the country of her second husband. du perou, an only son, very rich, and tenderly beloved by his mother, had been carefully brought up, and his education was not lost upon him. he had acquired much knowledge, a taste for the arts, and piqued himself upon his having cultivated his rational faculty: his dutch appearance, yellow complexion, and silent and close disposition, favored this opinion. although young, he was already deaf and gouty. this rendered his motions deliberate and very grave, and although he was fond of disputing, he in general spoke but little because his hearing was bad. i was struck with his exterior, and said to myself, this is a thinker, a man of wisdom, such a one as anybody would be happy to have for a friend. he frequently addressed himself to me without paying the least compliment, and this strengthened the favorable opinion i had already formed of him. he said but little to me of myself or my books, and still less of himself; he was not destitute of ideas, and what he said was just. this justness and equality attracted my regard. he had neither the elevation of mind, nor the discrimination of the lord marshal, but he had all his simplicity: this was still representing him in something. i did not become infatuated with him, but he acquired my attachment from esteem; and by degrees this esteem led to friendship, and i totally forgot the objection i made to the baron holbach: that he was too rich. for a long time i saw but little of du perou, because i did not go to neuchatel, and he came but once a year to the mountain of colonel pury. why did i not go to neuchatel? this proceeded from a childishness upon which i must not be silent. although protected by the king of prussia and the lord marshal, while i avoided persecution in my asylum, i did not avoid the murmurs of the public, of municipal magistrates and ministers. after what had happened in france it became fashionable to insult me; these people would have been afraid to seem to disapprove of what my persecutors had done by not imitating them. the 'classe' of neuchatel, that is, the ministers of that city, gave the impulse, by endeavoring to move the council of state against me. this attempt not having succeeded, the ministers addressed themselves to the municipal magistrate, who immediately prohibited my book, treating me on all occasions with but little civility, and saying, that had i wished to reside in the city i should not have been suffered to do it. they filled their mercury with absurdities and the most stupid hypocrisy, which, although, it makes every man of sense laugh, animated the people against me. this, however, did not prevent them from setting forth that i ought to be very grateful for their permitting me to live at motiers, where they had no authority; they would willingly have measured me the air by the pint, provided i had paid for it a dear price. they would have it that i was obliged to them for the protection the king granted me in spite of the efforts they incessantly made to deprive me of it. finally, failing of success, after having done me all the injury they could, and defamed me to the utmost of their power, they made a merit of their impotence, by boasting of their goodness in suffering me to stay in their country. i ought to have laughed at their vain efforts, but i was foolish enough to be vexed at them, and had the weakness to be unwilling to go to neuchatel, to which i yielded for almost two years, as if it was not doing too much honor to such wretches, to pay attention to their proceedings, which, good or bad, could not be imputed to them, because they never act but from a foreign impulse. besides, minds without sense or knowledge, whose objects of esteem are influence, power and money, and far from imagining even that some respect is due to talents, and that it is dishonorable to injure and insult them. a certain mayor of a village, who from sundry malversations had been deprived of his office, said to the lieutenant of val de travers, the husband of isabella: "i am told this rousseau has great wit,--bring him to me that i may see whether he has or not." the disapprobation of such a man ought certainly to have no effect upon those on whom it falls. after the treatment i had received at paris, geneva, berne, and even at neuchatel, i expected no favor from the pastor of this place. i had, however, been recommended to him by madam boy de la tour, and he had given me a good reception; but in that country where every new-comer is indiscriminately flattered, civilities signify but little. yet, after my solemn union with the reformed church, and living in a protestant country, i could not, without failing in my engagements, as well as in the duty of a citizen, neglect the public profession of the religion into which i had entered; i therefore attended divine service. on the other hand, had i gone to the holy table, i was afraid of exposing myself to a refusal, and it was by no means probable, that after the tumult excited at geneva by the council, and at neuchatel by the classe (the ministers), he would, without difficulty administer to me the sacrament in his church. the time of communion approaching, i wrote to m. de montmollin, the minister, to prove to him my desire of communicating, and declaring myself heartily united to the protestant church; i also told him, in order to avoid disputing upon articles of faith, that i would not hearken to any particular explanation of the point of doctrine. after taking these steps i made myself easy, not doubting but m. de montmollin would refuse to admit me without the preliminary discussion to which i refused to consent, and that in this manner everything would be at an end without any fault of mine. i was deceived: when i least expected anything of the kind, m. de montmollin came to declare to me not only that he admitted me to the communion under the condition which i had proposed, but that he and the elders thought themselves much honored by my being one of their flock. i never in my whole life felt greater surprise or received from it more consolation. living always alone and unconnected, appeared to me a melancholy destiny, especially in adversity. in the midst of so many proscriptions and persecutions, i found it extremely agreeable to be able to say to myself: i am at least amongst my brethren; and i went to the communion with an emotion of heart, and my eyes suffused with tears of tenderness, which perhaps were the most agreeable preparation to him to whose table i was drawing near. sometime afterwards his lordship sent me a letter from madam de boufflers, which he had received, at least i presumed so, by means of d'alembert, who was acquainted with the marechal. in this letter, the first this lady had written to me after my departure from montmorency, she rebuked me severely for having written to m. de montmollin, and especially for having communicated. i the less understood what she meant by her reproof, as after my journey to geneva, i had constantly declared myself a protestant, and had gone publicly to the hotel de hollande without incurring the least censure from anybody. it appeared to me diverting enough, that madam de boufflers should wish to direct my conscience in matters of religion. however, as i had no doubt of the purity of her intention, i was not offended by this singular sally, and i answered her without anger, stating to her my reasons. calumnies in print were still industriously circulated, and their benign authors reproached the different powers with treating me too mildly. for my part, i let them say and write what they pleased, without giving myself the least concern about the matter. i was told there was a censure from the sorbonne, but this i could not believe. what could the sorbonne have to do in the matter? did the doctors wish to know to a certainty that i was not a catholic? everybody already knew i was not one. were they desirous of proving i was not a good calvinist? of what consequence was this to them? it was taking upon themselves a singular care, and becoming the substitutes of our ministers. before i saw this publication i thought it was distributed in the name of the sorbonne, by way of mockery: and when i had read it i was convinced this was the case. but when at length there was not a doubt of its authenticity, all i could bring myself to believe was, that the learned doctors would have been better placed in a madhouse than they were in the college. i was more affected by another publication, because it came from a man for whom i always had an esteem, and whose constancy i admired, though i pitied his blindness. i mean the mandatory letter against me by the archbishop of paris. i thought to return an answer to it was a duty i owed myself. this i felt i could do without derogating from my dignity; the case was something similar to that of the king of poland. i had always detested brutal disputes, after the manner of voltaire. i never combat but with dignity, and before i deign to defend myself i must be certain that he by whom i am attacked will not dishonor my retort. i had no doubt but this letter was fabricated by the jesuits, and although they were at that time in distress, i discovered in it their old principle of crushing the wretched. i was therefore at liberty to follow my ancient maxim, by honoring the titulary author, and refuting the work which i think i did completely. i found my residence at motiers very agreeable, and nothing was wanting to determine me to end my days there, but a certainty of the means of subsistence. living is dear in that neighborhood, and all my old projects had been overturned by the dissolution of my household arrangements at montmorency, the establishment of others, the sale or squandering of my furniture, and the expenses incurred since my departure. the little capital which remained to me daily diminished. two or three years were sufficient to consume the remainder without my having the means of renewing it, except by again engaging in literary pursuits: a pernicious profession which i had already abandoned. persuaded that everything which concerned me would change, and that the public, recovered from its frenzy, would make my persecutors blush, all my endeavors tended to prolong my resources until this happy revolution should take place, after which i should more at my ease choose a resource from amongst those which might offer themselves. to this effect i took up my dictionary of music, which ten years' labor had so far advanced as to leave nothing wanting to it but the last corrections. my books which i had lately received, enabled me to finish this work; my papers sent me by the same conveyance, furnished me with the means of beginning my memoirs to which i was determined to give my whole attention. i began by transcribing the letters into a book, by which my memory might be guided in the order of fact and time. i had already selected those i intended to keep for this purpose, and for ten years the series was not interrupted. however, in preparing them for copying i found an interruption at which i was surprised. this was for almost six months, from october, , to march following. i recollected having put into my selection a number of letters from diderot, de leyre, madam d' epinay, madam de chenonceaux, etc., which filled up the void and were missing. what was become of them? had any person laid their hands upon my papers whilst they remained in the hotel de luxembourg? this was not conceivable, and i had seen m. de luxembourg take the key of the chamber in which i had deposited them. many letters from different ladies, and all those from diderot, were without date, on which account i had been under the necessity of dating them from memory before they could be put in order, and thinking i might have committed errors, i again looked them over for the purpose of seeing whether or not i could find those which ought to fill up the void. this experiment did not succeed. i perceived the vacancy to be real, and that the letters had certainly been taken away. by whom and for what purpose? this was what i could not comprehend. these letters, written prior to my great quarrels, and at the time of my first enthusiasm in the composition of 'eloisa', could not be interesting to any person. they contained nothing more than cavillings by diderot, jeerings from de leyre, assurances of friendship from m. de chenonceaux, and even madam d'epinay, with whom i was then upon the best of terms. to whom were these letters of consequence? to what use were they to be put? it was not until seven years afterwards that i suspected the nature of the theft. the deficiency being no longer doubtful, i looked over my rough drafts to see whether or not it was the only one. i found several, which on account of the badness of my memory, made me suppose others in the multitude of my papers. those i remarked were that of the 'morale sensitive', and the extract of the adventures of lord edward. the last, i confess, made me suspect madam de luxembourg. la roche, her valet de chambre, had sent me the papers, and i could think of nobody but herself to whom this fragment could be of consequence; but what concern could the other give her, any more than the rest of the letters missing, with which, even with evil intentions, nothing to my prejudice could be done, unless they were falsified? as for the marechal, with whose friendship for me, and invariable integrity, i was perfectly acquainted, i never could suspect him for a moment. the most reasonable supposition, after long tormenting my mind in endeavoring to discover the author of the theft, that which imputed it to d'alembert, who, having thrust himself into the company of madam de luxembourg, might have found means to turn over these papers, and take from amongst them such manuscripts and letters as he might have thought proper, either for the purpose of endeavoring to embroil me with the writer of them, or to appropriate those he should find useful to his own private purposes. i imagined that, deceived by the title of morale sensitive, he might have supposed it to be the plan of a real treatise upon materialism, with which he would have armed himself against me in a manner easy to be imagined. certain that he would soon be undeceived by reading the sketch and determined to quit all literary pursuits, these larcenies gave me but little concern. they besides were not the first the same hand [i had found in his 'elemens de musique' (elements of music) several things taken from what i had written for the 'encyclopedie', and which were given to him several years before the publication of his elements. i know not what he may have had to do with a book entitled 'dictionaire des beaux arts' (dictionary of the fine arts) but i found in it articles transcribed word for word from mine, and this long before the same articles were printed in the encyclopedie.] had committed upon me without having complained of these pilferings. in a very little time i thought no more of the trick that had been played me than if nothing had happened, and began to collect the materials i had left for the purpose of undertaking my projected confessions. i had long thought the company of ministers, or at least the citizens and burgesses of geneva, would remonstrate against the infraction of the edict in the decree made against me. everything remained quiet, at least to all exterior appearance; for discontent was general, and ready, on the first opportunity, openly to manifest itself. my friends, or persons calling themselves such, wrote letter after letter exhorting me to come and put myself at their head, assuring me of public separation from the council. the fear of the disturbance and troubles which might be caused by my presence, prevented me from acquiescing with their desires, and, faithful to the oath i had formerly made, never to take the least part in any civil dissension in my country, i chose rather to let the offence remain as it was, and banish myself forever from the country, than to return to it by means which were violent and dangerous. it is true, i expected the burgesses would make legal remonstrances against an infraction in which their interests were deeply concerned; but no such steps were taken. they who conducted the body of citizens sought less the real redress of grievances than an opportunity to render themselves necessary. they caballed but were silent, and suffered me to be bespattered by the gossips and hypocrites set on to render me odious in the eyes of the populace, and pass upon them their boistering for a zeal in favor of religion. after having, during a whole year, vainly expected that some one would remonstrate against an illegal proceeding, and seeing myself abandoned by my fellow-citizens, i determined to renounce my ungrateful country in which i never had lived, from which i had not received either inheritance or services, and by which, in return for the honor i had endeavored to do it, i saw myself so unworthily treated by unanimous consent, since they, who should have spoken, had remained silent. i therefore wrote to the first syndic for that year, to m. favre, if i remember right, a letter in which i solemnly gave up my freedom of the city of geneva, carefully observing in it, however, that decency and moderation, from which i have never departed in the acts of haughtiness which, in my misfortunes, the cruelty of my enemies have frequently forced upon me, this step opened the eyes of the citizens, who feeling they had neglected their own interests by abandoning my defence, took my part when it was too late. they had wrongs of their own which they joined to mine, and made these the subject of several well-reasoned representations, which they strengthened and extended, as the refusal of the council, supported by the ministry of france, made them more clearly perceive the project formed to impose on them a yoke. these altercations produced several pamphlets which were undecisive, until that appeared entitled 'lettres ecrites de la campagne', a work written in favor of the council, with infinite art, and by which the remonstrating party, reduced to silence, was crushed for a time. this production, a lasting monument of the rare talents of its author, came from the attorney-general tronchin, a man of wit and an enlightened understanding, well versed in the laws and government of the republic. 'siluit terra'. the remonstrators, recovered from their first overthrow, undertook to give an answer, and in time produced one which brought them off tolerably well. but they all looked to me, as the only person capable of combating a like adversary with hope of success. i confess i was of their opinion, and excited by my former fellow-citizens, who thought it was my duty to aid them with my pen, as i had been the cause of their embarrassment, i undertook to refute the 'lettres ecrites de la campagne', and parodied the title of them by that of 'lettres ecrites de la montagne,' which i gave to mine. i wrote this answer so secretly, that at a meeting i had at thonon, with the chiefs of the malcontents to talk of their affairs, and where they showed me a sketch of their answer, i said not a word of mine, which was quite ready, fearing obstacles might arise relative to the impression of it, should the magistrate or my enemies hear of what i had done. this work was, however known in france before the publication; but government chose rather to let it appear, than to suffer me to guess at the means by which my secret had been discovered. concerning this i will state what i know, which is but trifling: what i have conjectured shall remain with myself. i received, at motiers, almost as many visits as at the hermitage and montmorency; but these, for the most part were a different kind. they who had formerly come to see me were people who, having taste, talents, and principles, something similar to mine, alleged them as the causes of their visits, and introduced subjects on which i could converse. at motiers the case was different, especially with the visitors who came from france. they were officers or other persons who had no taste for literature, nor had many of them read my works, although, according to their own accounts, they had travelled thirty, forty, sixty, and even a hundred leagues to come and see me, and admire the illustrious man, the very celebrated, the great man, etc. for from the time of my settling at motiers, i received the most impudent flattery, from which the esteem of those with whom i associated had formerly sheltered me. as but few of my new visitors deigned to tell me who or what they were, and as they had neither read nor cast their eye over my works, nor had their researches and mine been directed to the same objects, i knew not what to speak to them upon: i waited for what they had to say, because it was for them to know and tell me the purpose of their visit. it will naturally be imagined this did not produce conversations very interesting to me, although they, perhaps, were so to my visitors, according to the information they might wish to acquire; for as i was without suspicion, i answered without reserve, to every question they thought proper to ask me, and they commonly went away as well informed as myself of the particulars of my situation. i was, for example, visited in this manner by m. de feins, equerry to the queen, and captain of cavalry, who had the patience to pass several days at motiers, and to follow me on foot even to la ferriere, leading his horse by the bridle, without having with me any point of union, except our acquaintance with mademoiselle fel, and that we both played at 'bilboquet'. [a kind of cup and ball.] before this i had received another visit much more extraordinary. two men arrived on foot, each leading a mule loaded with his little baggage, lodging at the inn, taking care of their mules and asking to see me. by the equipage of these muleteers they were taken for smugglers, and the news that smugglers were come to see me was instantly spread. their manner of addressing me sufficiently showed they were persons of another description; but without being smugglers they might be adventurers, and this doubt kept me for some time on my guard. they soon removed my apprehensions. one was m. de montauban, who had the title of comte de la tour du pin, gentleman to the dauphin; the other, m. dastier de carpentras, an old officer who had his cross of st. louis in his pocket, because he could not display it. these gentlemen, both very amiable, were men of sense, and their manner of travelling, so much to my own taste, and but little like that of french gentlemen, in some measure gained them my attachment, which an intercourse with them served to improve. our acquaintance did not end with the visit; it is still kept up, and they have since been several times to see me, not on foot, that was very well for the first time; but the more i have seen of these gentlemen the less similarity have i found between their taste and mine; i have not discovered their maxims to be such as i have ever observed, that my writings are familiar to them, or that there is any real sympathy between them and myself. what, therefore, did they want with me? why came they to see me with such an equipage? why repeat their visit? why were they so desirous of having me for their host? i did not at that time propose to myself these questions; but they have sometimes occurred to me since. won by their advances, my heart abandoned itself without reserve, especially to m. dastier, with whose open countenance i was more particularly pleased. i even corresponded with him, and when i determined to print the 'letters from the mountains', i thought of addressing myself to him, to deceive those by whom my packet was waited for upon the road to holland. he had spoken to me a good deal, and perhaps purposely, upon the liberty of the press at avignon; he offered me his services should i have anything to print there: i took advantage of the offer and sent him successively by the post my first sheets. after having kept these for some time, he sent them back to me, "because," said he, "no bookseller dared to sell them;" and i was obliged to have recourse to rey taking care to send my papers, one after the other, and not to part with those which succeeded until i had advice of the reception of those already sent. before the work was published, i found it had been seen in the office of the ministers, and d'escherny, of neuchatel, spoke to me of the book, entitled 'del' homme de la monlagne', which d'holbach had told him was by me. i assured him, and it was true, that i never had written a book which bore that title. when the letters appeared he became furious, and accused me of falsehood; although i had told him truth. by this means i was certain my manuscript had been read; as i could not doubt the fidelity of rey, the most rational conjecture seemed to be, that my packets had been opened at the post-house. another acquaintance i made much about the same time, but which was begun by letters, was that with m. laliand of nimes, who wrote to me from paris, begging i would send him my profile; he said he was in want of it for my bust in marble, which le moine was making for him to be placed in his library. if this was a pretence invented to deceive me, it fully succeeded. i imagined that a man who wished to have my bust in marble in his library had his head full of my works, consequently of my principles, and that he loved me because his mind was in unison with mine. it was natural this idea should seduce me. i have since seen m. laliand. i found him very ready to render me many trifling services, and to concern himself in my little affairs, but i have my doubts of his having, in the few books he ever read, fallen upon any one of those i have written. i do not know that he has a library, or that such a thing is of any use to him; and for the bust he has a bad figure in plaster, by le moine, from which has been engraved a hideous portrait that bears my name, as if it bore to me some resemblance. the only frenchman who seemed to come to see me, on account of my sentiments, and his taste for my works, was a young officer of the regiment of limousin, named seguier de st. brisson. he made a figure in paris, where he still perhaps distinguishes himself by his pleasing talents and wit. he came once to montmorency, the winter which preceded my catastrophe. i was pleased with his vivacity. he afterwards wrote to me at motiers, and whether he wished to flatter me, or that his head was turned with emilius, he informed me he was about to quit the service to live independently, and had begun to learn the trade of a carpenter. he had an elder brother, a captain in the same regiment, the favorite of the mother, who, a devotee to excess, and directed by i know not what hypocrite, did not treat the youngest son well, accusing him of irreligion, and what was still worse, of the unpardonable crime of being connected with me. these were the grievances, on account of which he was determined to break with his mother, and adopt the manner of life of which i have just spoken, all to play the part of the young emilius. alarmed at his petulance, i immediately wrote to him, endeavoring to make him change his resolution, and my exhortations were as strong as i could make them. they had their effect. he returned to his duty, to his mother, and took back the resignation he had given the colonel, who had been prudent enough to make no use of it, that the young man might have time to reflect upon what he had done. st. brisson, cured of these follies, was guilty of another less alarming, but, to me, not less disagreeable than the rest: he became an author. he successively published two or three pamphlets which announced a man not devoid of talents, but i have not to reproach myself with having encouraged him by my praises to continue to write. some time afterwards he came to see me, and we made together a pilgrimage to the island of st. pierre. during this journey i found him different from what i saw of him at montmorency. he had, in his manner, something affected, which at first did not much disgust me, although i have since thought of it to his disadvantage. he once visited me at the hotel de st. simon, as i passed through paris on my way to england. i learned there what he had not told me, that he lived in the great world, and often visited madam de luxembourg. whilst i was at trie, i never heard from him, nor did he so much as make inquiry after me, by means of his relation mademoiselle seguier, my neighbor. this lady never seemed favorably disposed towards me. in a word, the infatuation of m. de st. brisson ended suddenly, like the connection of m. de feins: but this man owed me nothing, and the former was under obligations to me, unless the follies i prevented him from committing were nothing more than affectation; which might very possibly be the case. i had visits from geneva also. the delucs, father and son, successively chose me for their attendant in sickness. the father was taken ill on the road, the son was already sick when he left geneva; they both came to my house. ministers, relations, hypocrites, and persons of every description came from geneva and switzerland, not like those from france, to laugh at and admire me, but to rebuke and catechise me. the only person amongst them, who gave me pleasure, was moultou, who passed with me three or four days, and whom i wished to remain much longer; the most persevering of all, the most obstinate, and who conquered me by importunity, was a m. d'ivernois, a merchant at geneva, a french refugee, and related to the attorney-general of neuchatel. this man came from geneva to motiers twice a year, on purpose to see me, remained with me several days together from morning to night, accompanied me in my walks, brought me a thousand little presents, insinuated himself in spite of me into my confidence, and intermeddled in all my affairs, notwithstanding there was not between him and myself the least similarity of ideas, inclination, sentiment, or knowledge. i do not believe he ever read a book of any kind throughout, or that he knows upon what subject mine are written. when i began to herbalize, he followed me in my botanical rambles, without taste for that amusement, or having anything to say to me or i to him. he had the patience to pass with me three days in a public house at goumoins, whence, by wearying him and making him feel how much he wearied me, i was in hopes of driving him away. i could not, however, shake his incredible perseverance, nor by any means discover the motive of it. amongst these connections, made and continued by force, i must not omit the only one that was agreeable to me, and in which my heart was really interested: this was that i had with a young hungarian who came to live at neuchatel, and from that place to motiers, a few months after i had taken up my residence there. he was called by the people of the country the baron de sauttern, by which name he had been recommended from zurich. he was tall, well made, had an agreeable countenance, and mild and social qualities. he told everybody, and gave me also to understand that he came to neuchatel for no other purpose, than that of forming his youth to virtue, by his intercourse with me. his physiognomy, manner, and behavior, seemed well suited to his conversation, and i should have thought i failed in one of the greatest duties had i turned my back upon a young man in whom i perceived nothing but what was amiable, and who sought my acquaintance from so respectable a motive. my heart knows not how to connect itself by halves. he soon acquired my friendship, and all my confidence, and we were presently inseparable. he accompanied me in all my walks, and become fond of them. i took him to the marechal, who received him with the utmost kindness. as he was yet unable to explain himself in french, he spoke and wrote to me in latin, i answered in french, and this mingling of the two languages did not make our conversations either less smooth or lively. he spoke of his family, his affairs, his adventures, and of the court of vienna, with the domestic details of which he seemed well acquainted. in fine, during two years which we passed in the greatest intimacy, i found in him a mildness of character proof against everything, manners not only polite but elegant, great neatness of person, an extreme decency in his conversation, in a word, all the marks of a man born and educated a gentleman, and which rendered him in my eyes too estimable not to make him dear to me. at the time we were upon the most intimate and friendly terms, d' ivernois wrote to me from geneva, putting me upon my guard against the young hungarian who had taken up his residence in my neighborhood; telling me he was a spy whom the minister of france had appointed to watch my proceedings. this information was of a nature to alarm me the more, as everybody advised me to guard against the machinations of persons who were employed to keep an eye upon my actions, and to entice me into france for the purpose of betraying me. to shut the mouths, once for all, of these foolish advisers, i proposed to sauttern, without giving him the least intimation of the information i had received, a journey on foot to pontarlier, to which he consented. as soon as we arrived there i put the letter from d'ivernois into his hands, and after giving him an ardent embrace, i said: "sauttern has no need of a proof of my confidence in him, but it is necessary i should prove to the public that i know in whom to place it." this embrace was accompanied with a pleasure which persecutors can neither feel themselves, nor take away from the oppressed. i will never believe sauttern was a spy, nor that he betrayed me: but i was deceived by him. when i opened to him my heart without reserve, he constantly kept his own shut, and abused me by lies. he invented i know not what kind of story, to prove to me his presence was necessary in his own country. i exhorted him to return to it as soon as possible. he setoff, and when i thought he was in hungary, i learned he was at strasbourgh. this was not the first time he had been there. he had caused some disorder in a family in that city; and the husband knowing i received him in my house, wrote to me. i used every effort to bring the young woman back to the paths of virtue, and sauttern to his duty. when i thought they were perfectly detached from each other, they renewed their acquaintance, and the husband had the complaisance to receive the young man at his house; from that moment i had nothing more to say. i found the pretended baron had imposed upon me by a great number of lies. his name was not sauttern, but sauttersheim. with respect to the title of baron, given him in switzerland, i could not reproach him with the impropriety, because he had never taken it; but i have not a doubt of his being a gentleman, and the marshal, who knew mankind, and had been in hungary, always considered and treated him as such. he had no sooner left my neighborhood, than the girl at the inn where he eat, at motiers, declared herself with child by him. she was so dirty a creature, and sauttern, generally esteemed in the country for his conduct and purity of morals, piqued himself so much upon cleanliness, that everybody was shocked at this impudent pretension. the most amiable women of the country, who had vainly displayed to him their charms, were furious: i myself was almost choked with indignation. i used every effort to get the tongue of this impudent woman stopped, offering to pay all expenses, and to give security for sauttersheim. i wrote to him in the fullest persuasion, not only that this pregnancy could not relate to him, but that it was feigned, and the whole a machination of his enemies and mine. i wished him to return and confound the strumpet, and those by whom she was dictated to. the pusillanimity of his answer surprised me. he wrote to the master of the parish to which the creature belonged, and endeavored to stifle the matter. perceiving this, i concerned myself no more about it, but i was astonished that a man who could stoop so low should have been sufficiently master of himself to deceive me by his reserve in the closest familiarity. from strasbourgh, sauttersheim went to seek his fortune in paris, and found there nothing but misery. he wrote to me acknowledging his error. my compassion was excited by the recollection of our former friendship, and i sent him a sum of money. the year following, as i passed through paris, i saw him much in the same situation; but he was the intimate friend of m. de laliand, and i could not learn by what means he had formed this acquaintance, or whether it was recent or of long standing. two years afterwards sauttersheim returned to strasbourgh, whence he wrote to me and where he died. this, in a few words, is the history of our connection, and what i know of his adventures; but while i mourn the fate of the unhappy young man, i still, and ever shall, believe he was the son of people of distinction, and the impropriety of his conduct was the effect of the situations to which he was reduced. such were the connections and acquaintance i acquired at motiers. how many of these would have been necessary to compensate the cruel losses i suffered at the same time. the first of these was that of m. de luxembourg, who, after having been long tormented by the physicians, at length became their victim, by being treated for the gout which they would not acknowledge him to have, as for a disorder they thought they could cure. according to what la roche, the confidential servant of madam de luxembourg, wrote to me relative to what had happened, it is by this cruel and memorable example that the miseries of greatness are to be deplored. the loss of this good nobleman afflicted me the more, as he was the only real friend i had in france, and the mildness of his character was such as to make me quite forget his rank, and attach myself to him as his equal. our connection was not broken off on account of my having quitted the kingdom; he continued to write to me as usual. i nevertheless thought i perceived that absence, or my misfortune, had cooled his affection for me. it is difficult to a courtier to preserve the same attachment to a person whom he knows to be in disgrace with courts. i moreover suspected the great ascendancy madam de luxembourg had over his mind, had been unfavorable to me, and that she had taken advantage of our separation to injure me in his esteem. for her part, notwithstanding a few affected marks of regard, which daily became less frequent, she less concealed the change in her friendship. she wrote to me four or five times into switzerland, after which she never wrote to me again, and nothing but my prejudice, confidence and blindness, could have prevented my discovering in her something more than a coolness towards me. guy the bookseller, partner with duchesne, who, after i had left montmorency, frequently went to the hotel de luxembourg, wrote to me that my name was in the will of the marechal. there was nothing in this either incredible or extraordinary, on which account i had no doubt of the truth of the information. i deliberated within myself whether or not i should receive the legacy. everything well considered, i determined to accept it, whatever it might be, and to do that honor to the memory of an honest man, who, in a rank in which friendship is seldom found, had had a real one for me. i had not this duty to fulfill. i heard no more of the legacy, whether it were true or false; and in truth i should have felt some pain in offending against one of the great maxims of my system of morality, in profiting by anything at the death of a person whom i had once held dear. during the last illness of our friend mussard, leneips proposed to me to take advantage of the grateful sense he expressed for our cares, to insinuate to him dispositions in our favor. "ah! my dear leneips," said i, "let us not pollute by interested ideas the sad but sacred duties we discharge towards our dying friend. i hope my name will never be found in the testament of any person, at least not in that of a friend." it was about this time that my lord marshal spoke to me of his, of what he intended to do in it for me, and that i made him the answer of which i have spoken in the first part of my memoirs. my second loss, still more afflicting and irreparable, was that of the best of women and mothers, who, already weighed down with years, and overburthened with infirmities and misery, quitted this vale of tears for the abode of the blessed, where the amiable remembrance of the good we have done here below is the eternal reward of our benevolence. go, gentle and beneficent shade, to those of fenelon, berneg, catinat, and others, who in a more humble state have, like them, opened their hearts to pure charity; go and taste of the fruit of your own benevolence, and prepare for your son the place he hopes to fill by your side. happy in your misfortunes that heaven, in putting to them a period, has spared you the cruel spectacle of his! fearing, lest i should fill her heart with sorrow by the recital of my first disasters, i had not written to her since my arrival in switzerland; but i wrote to m. de conzie, to inquire after her situation, and it was from him i learned she had ceased to alleviate the sufferings of the afflicted, and that her own were at an end. i myself shall not suffer long; but if i thought i should not see her again in the life to come, my feeble imagination would less delight in the idea of the perfect happiness i there hope to enjoy. my third and last loss, for since that time i have not had a friend to lose, was that of the lord marshal. he did not die but tired of serving the ungratful, he left neuchatel, and i have never seen him since. he still lives, and will, i hope, survive me: he is alive, and thanks to him all my attachments on earth are not destroyed. there is one man still worthy of my friendship; for the real value of this consists more in what we feel than in that which we inspire; but i have lost the pleasure i enjoyed in his, and can rank him in the number of those only whom i love, but with whom i am no longer connected. he went to england to receive the pardon of the king, and acquired the possession of the property which formerly had been confiscated. we did not separate without an intention of again being united, the idea of which seemed to give him as much pleasure as i received from it. he determined to reside at keith hall, near aberdeen, and i was to join him as soon as he was settled there: but this project was too flattering to my hopes to give me any of its success. he did not remain in scotland. the affectionate solicitations of the king of prussia induced him to return to berlin, and the reason of my not going to him there will presently appear. before this departure, foreseeing the storm which my enemies began to raise against me, he of his own accord sent me letters of naturalization, which seemed to be a certain means of preventing me from being driven from the country. the community of the convent of val de travers followed the example of the governor, and gave me letters of communion, gratis, as they were the first. thus, in every respect, become a citizen, i was sheltered from legal expulsion, even by the prince; but it has never been by legitimate means, that the man who, of all others, has shown the greatest respect for the laws, has been persecuted. i do not think i ought to enumerate, amongst the number of my losses at this time, that of the abbe malby. having lived sometime at the house of his mother, i have been acquainted with the abbe, but not very intimately, and i have reason to believe the nature of his sentiments with respect to me changed after i acquired a greater celebrity than he already had. but the first time i discovered his insincerity was immediately after the publication of the 'letters from the mountain'. a letter attributed to him, addressed to madam saladin, was handed about in geneva, in which he spoke of this work as the seditious clamors of a furious demagogue. the esteem i had for the abbe malby, and my great opinion of his understanding, did not permit me to believe this extravagant letter was written by him. i acted in this business with my usual candor. i sent him a copy of the letter, informing him he was said to be the author of it. he returned me no answer. this silence astonished me: but what was my surprise when by a letter i received from madam de chenonceaux, i learned the abbe was really the author of that which was attributed to him, and found himself greatly embarrassed by mine. for even supposing for a moment that what he stated was true, how could he justify so public an attack, wantonly made, without obligation or necessity, for the sole purpose of overwhelming in the midst of his greatest misfortunes, a man to whom he had shown himself a well-wisher, and who had not done anything that could excite his enmity? in a short time afterwards the 'dialogues of phocion', in which i perceived nothing but a compilation, without shame or restraint, from my writings, made their appearance. in reading this book i perceived the author had not the least regard for me, and that in future i must number him among my most bitter enemies. i do not believe he has ever pardoned me for the social contract, far superior to his abilities, or the perpetual peace; and i am, besides, of opinion that the desire he expressed that i should make an extract from the abby de st. pierre, proceeded from a supposition in him that i should not acquit myself of it so well. the further i advance in my narrative, the less order i feel myself capable of observing. the agitation of the rest of my life has deranged in my ideas the succession of events. these are too numerous, confused, and disagreeable to be recited in due order. the only strong impression they have left upon my mind is that of the horrid mystery by which the cause of them is concealed, and of the deplorable state to which they have reduced me. my narrative will in future be irregular, and according to the events which, without order, may occur to my recollection. i remember about the time to which i refer, full of the idea of my confessions, i very imprudently spoke of them to everybody, never imagining it could be the wish or interest, much less within the power of any person whatsoever, to throw an obstacle in the way of this undertaking, and had i suspected it, even this would not have rendered me more discreet, as from the nature of my disposition it is totally impossible for me to conceal either my thoughts or feelings. the knowledge of this enterprise was, as far as i can judge, the cause of the storm that was raised to drive me from switzerland, and deliver me into the hands of those by whom i might be prevented from executing it. i had another project in contemplation which was not looked upon with a more favorable eye by those who were afraid of the first: this was a general edition of my works. i thought this edition of them necessary to ascertain what books, amongst those to which my name was affixed, were really written by me, and to furnish the public with the means of distinguishing them from the writings falsely attributed to me by my enemies, to bring me to dishonor and contempt. this was besides a simple and an honorable means of insuring to myself a livelihood, and the only one that remained to me. as i had renounced the profession of an author, my memoirs not being of a nature to appear during my lifetime; as i no longer gained a farthing in any manner whatsoever, and constantly lived at a certain expense, i saw the end of my resources in that of the produce of the last things i had written. this reason had induced me to hasten the finishing of my dictionary of music, which still was incomplete. i had received for it a hundred louis(guineas) and a life annuity of three hundred livres; but a hundred louis could not last long in the hands of a man who annually expended upwards of sixty, and three-hundred livres (twelve guineas) a year was but a trifling sum to one upon whom parasites and beggarly visitors lighted like a swarm of flies. a company of merchants from neuchatel came to undertake the general edition, and a printer or bookseller of the name of reguillat, from lyons, thrust himself, i know not by what means, amongst them to direct it. the agreement was made upon reasonable terms, and sufficient to accomplish my object. i had in print and manuscript, matter for six volumes in quarto. i moreover agreed to give my assistance in bringing out the edition. the merchants were, on their part, to pay me a thousand crowns (one hundred and twenty-five pounds) down, and to assign me an annuity of sixteen hundred livres (sixty-six pounds) for life. the agreement was concluded but not signed, when the letters from the mountain appeared. the terrible explosion caused by this infernal work, and its abominable author, terrified the company, and the undertaking was at an end. i would compare the effect of this last production to that of the letter on french music, had not that letter, while it brought upon me hatred, and exposed me to danger, acquired me respect and esteem. but after the appearance of the last work, it was a matter of astonishment at geneva and versailles that such a monster as the author of it should be suffered to exist. the little council, excited by resident de france, and directed by the attorney-general, made a declaration against my work, by which, in the most severe terms, it was declared to be unworthy of being burned by the hands of the hangman, adding, with an address which bordered upon the burlesque, there was no possibility of speaking of or answering it without dishonor. i would here transcribe the curious. piece of composition, but unfortunately i have it not by me. i ardently wish some of my readers, animated by the zeal of truth and equity, would read over the letters from the mountain: they will, i dare hope, feel the stoical moderation which reigns throughout the whole, after all the cruel outrages with which the author was loaded. but unable to answer the abuse, because no part of it could be called by that name nor to the reasons because these were unanswerable, my enemies pretended to appear too much enraged to reply: and it is true, if they took the invincible arguments it contains, for abuse, they must have felt themselves roughly treated. the remonstrating party, far from complaining of the odious declaration, acted according to the spirit of it, and instead of making a trophy of the letters from the mountain, which they veiled to make them serve as a shield, were pusillanimous enough not to do justice or honor to that work, written to defend them, and at their own solicitation. they did not either quote or mention the letters, although they tacitly drew from them all their arguments, and by exactly following the advice with which they conclude, made them the sole cause of their safety and triumph. they had imposed on me this duty: i had fulfilled it, and unto the end had served their cause and the country. i begged of them to abandon me, and in their quarrels to think of nobody but themselves. they took me at my word, and i concerned myself no more about their affairs, further than constantly to exhort them to peace, not doubting, should they continue to be obstinate, of their being crushed by france; this however did not happen; i know the reason why it did not, but this is not the place to explain what i mean. the effect produced at neuchatel by the letters from the mountain was at first very mild. i sent a copy of them to m. de montmollin, who received it favorably, and read it without making any objection. he was ill as well as myself; as soon as he recovered he came in a friendly manner to see me, and conversed on general subjects. a rumor was however begun; the book was burned i know not where. from geneva, berne, and perhaps from versailles, the effervescence quickly passed to neuchatel, and especially to val de travers, where, before even the ministers had taken any apparent steps, an attempt was secretly made to stir up the people, i ought, i dare assert, to have been beloved by the people of that country in which i have lived, giving alms in abundance, not leaving about me an indigent person without assistance, never refusing to do any service in my power, and which was consistent with justice, making myself perhaps too familiar with everybody, and avoiding, as far as it was possible for me to do it, all distinction which might excite the least jealousy. this, however, did not prevent the populace, secretly stirred up against me, by i know not whom, from being by degrees irritated against me, even to fury, nor from publicly insulting me, not only in the country and upon the road, but in the street. those to whom i had rendered the greatest services became most irritated against me, and even people who still continued to receive my benefactions, not daring to appear, excited others, and seemed to wish thus to be revenged of me for their humiliation, by the obligations they were under for the favors i had conferred upon them. montmollin seemed to pay no attention to what was passing, and did not yet come forward. but as the time of communion approached, he came to advise me not to present myself at the holy table, assuring me, however, he was not my enemy, and that he would leave me undisturbed. i found this compliment whimsical enough; it brought to my recollection the letter from madam de boufflers, and i could not conceive to whom it could be a matter of such importance whether i communicated or not. considering this condescension on my part as an act of cowardice, and moreover, being unwilling to give to the people a new pretext under which they might charge me with impiety, i refused the request of the minister, and he went away dissatisfied, giving me to understand i should repent of my obstinacy. he could not of his own authority forbid me the communion: that of the consistory, by which i had been admitted to it, was necessary, and as long as there was no objection from that body i might present myself without the fear of being refused. montmollin procured from the classe (the ministers) a commission to summon me to the consistory, there to give an account of the articles of my faith, and to excommunicate me should i refuse to comply. this excommunication could not be pronounced without the aid of the consistory also, and a majority of the voices. but the peasants, who under the appellation of elders, composed this assembly, presided over and governed by their minister, might naturally be expected to adopt his opinion, especially in matters of the clergy, which they still less understood than he did. i was therefore summoned, and i resolved to appear. what a happy circumstance and triumph would this have been to me could i have spoken, and had i, if i may so speak, had my pen in my mouth! with what superiority, with what facility even, should i have overthrown this poor minister in the midst of his six peasants! the thirst after power having made the protestant clergy forget all the principles of the reformation, all i had to do to recall these to their recollection and to reduce them to silence, was to make comments upon my first 'letters from the mountain', upon which they had the folly to animadvert. my text was ready, and i had only to enlarge on it, and my adversary was confounded. i should not have been weak enough to remain on the defensive; it was easy to me to become an assailant without his even perceiving it, or being able to shelter himself from my attack. the contemptible priests of the classe, equally careless and ignorant, had of themselves placed me in the most favorable situation i could desire to crush them at pleasure. but what of this? it was necessary i should speak without hesitation, and find ideas, turn of expression, and words at will, preserving a presence of mind, and keeping myself collected, without once suffering even a momentary confusion. for what could i hope, feeling as i did, my want of aptitude to express myself with ease? i had been reduced to the most mortifying silence at geneva, before an assembly which was favorable to me, and previously resolved to approve of everything i should say. here, on the contrary, i had to do with a cavalier who, substituting cunning to knowledge, would spread for me a hundred snares before i could perceive one of them, and was resolutely determined to catch me in an error let the consequence be what it would. the more i examined the situation in which i stood, the greater danger i perceived myself exposed to, and feeling the impossibility of successfully withdrawing from it, i thought of another expedient. i meditated a discourse which i intended to pronounce before the consistory, to exempt myself from the necessity of answering. the thing was easy. i wrote the discourse and began to learn it by memory, with an inconceivable ardor. theresa laughed at hearing me mutter and incessantly repeat the same phrases, while endeavoring to cram them into my head. i hoped, at length, to remember what i had written: i knew the chatelain as an officer attached to the service of the prince, would be present at the consistory, and that notwithstanding the manoeuvres and bottles of montmollin, most of the elders were well disposed towards me. i had, moreover, in my favor, reason, truth, and justice, with the protection of the king, the authority of the council of state, and the good wishes of every real patriot, to whom the establishment of this inquisition was threatening. in fine, everything contributed to encourage me. on the eve of the day appointed, i had my discourse by rote, and recited it without missing a word. i had it in my head all night: in the morning i had forgotten it. i hesitated at every word, thought myself before the assembly, became confused, stammered, and lost my presence of mind. in fine, when the time to make my appearance was almost at hand, my courage totally failed me. i remained at home and wrote to the consistory, hastily stating my reasons, and pleaded my disorder, which really, in the state to which apprehension had reduced me, would scarcely have permitted me to stay out the whole sitting. the minister, embarrassed by my letter, adjourned the consistory. in the interval, he of himself, and by his creatures, made a thousand efforts to seduce the elders, who, following the dictates of their consciences, rather than those they received from him, did not vote according to his wishes, or those of the class. whatever power his arguments drawn from his cellar might have over this kind of people, he could not gain one of them, more than the two or three who were already devoted to his will, and who were called his 'ames damnees'.--[damned souls]--the officer of the prince, and the colonel pury, who, in this affair, acted with great zeal, kept the rest to their duty, and when montmollin wished to proceed to excommunication, his consistory, by a majority of voices, flatly refused to authorize him to do it. thus reduced to the last expedient, that of stirring up the people against me, he, his colleagues, and other persons, set about it openly, and were so successful, that not-withstanding the strong and frequent rescripts of the king, and the orders of the council of state, i was at length obliged to quit the country, that i might not expose the officer of the king to be himself assassinated while he protected me. the recollection of the whole of this affair is so confused, that it is impossible for me to reduce to or connect the circumstances of it. i remember a kind of negotiation had been entered into with the class, in which montmollin was the mediator. he feigned to believe it was feared i should, by my writings, disturb the peace of the country, in which case, the liberty i had of writing would be blamed. he had given me to understand that if i consented to lay down my pen, what was past would be forgotten. i had already entered into this engagement with myself, and did not hesitate in doing it with the class, but conditionally and solely in matters of religion. he found means to have a duplicate of the agreement upon some change necessary to be made in it. the condition having been rejected by the class; i demanded back the writing, which was returned to me, but he kept the duplicate, pretending it was lost. after this, the people, openly excited by the ministers, laughed at the rescripts of the king, and the orders of the council of state, and shook off all restraint. i was declaimed against from the pulpit, called antichrist, and pursued in the country like a mad wolf. my armenian dress discovered me to the populace; of this i felt the cruel inconvenience, but to quit it in such circumstances, appeared to me an act of cowardice. i could not prevail upon myself to do it, and i quietly walked through the country with my caffetan and fur bonnet in the midst of the hootings of the dregs of the people, and sometimes through a shower of stones. several times as i passed before houses, i heard those by whom they were inhabited call out: "bring me my gun that i may fire at him." as i did not on this account hasten my pace, my calmness increased their fury, but they never went further than threats, at least with respect to firearms. during the fermentation i received from two circumstances the most sensible pleasure. the first was my having it in my power to prove my gratitude by means of the lord marshal. the honest part of the inhabitants of neuchatel, full of indignation at the treatment i received, and the manoeuvres of which i was the victim, held the ministers in execration, clearly perceiving they were obedient to a foreign impulse, and the vile agents of people, who, in making them act, kept themselves concealed; they were moreover afraid my case would have dangerous consequences, and be made a precedent for the purpose of establishing a real inquisition. the magistrates, and especially m. meuron, who had succeeded m. d' ivernois in the office of attorney-general, made every effort to defend me. colonel pury, although a private individual, did more and succeeded better. it was the colonel who found means to make montmollin submit in his consistory, by keeping the elders to their duty. he had credit, and employed it to stop the sedition; but he had nothing more than the authority of the laws, and the aid of justice and reason, to oppose to that of money and wine: the combat was unequal, and in this point montmollin was triumphant. however, thankful for his zeal and cares, i wished to have it in my power to make him a return of good offices, and in some measure discharge a part of the obligations i was under to him. i knew he was very desirous of being named a counsellor of state; but having displeased the court by his conduct in the affair of the minister petitpierre, he was in disgrace with the prince and governor. i however undertook, at all risks, to write to the lord marshal in his favor: i went so far as even to mention the employment of which he was desirous, and my application was so well received that, contrary to the expectations of his most ardent well wishers, it was almost instantly conferred upon him by the king. in this manner fate, which has constantly raised me to too great an elevation, or plunged me into an abyss of adversity, continued to toss me from one extreme to another, and whilst the populace covered me with mud i was able to make a counsellor of state. the other pleasing circumstance was a visit i received from madam de verdelin with her daughter, with whom she had been at the baths of bourbonne, whence they came to motiers and stayed with me two or three days. by her attention and cares, she at length conquered my long repugnancy; and my heart, won by her endearing manner, made her a return of all the friendship of which she had long given me proofs. this journey made me extremely sensible of her kindness: my situation rendered the consolations of friendship highly necessary to support me under my sufferings. i was afraid she would be too much affected by the insults i received from the populace, and could have wished to conceal them from her that her feelings might not be hurt, but this was impossible; and although her presence was some check upon the insolent populace in our walks, she saw enough of their brutality to enable her to judge of what passed when i was alone. during the short residence she made at motiers, i was still attacked in my habitation. one morning her chambermaid found my window blocked up with stones, which had been thrown at it during the night. a very heavy bench placed in the street by the side of the house, and strongly fastened down, was taken up and reared against the door in such a manner as, had it not been perceived from the window, to have knocked down the first person who should have opened the door to go out. madam de verdelin was acquainted with everything that passed; for, besides what she herself was witness to, her confidential servant went into many houses in the village, spoke to everybody, and was seen in conversation with montmollin. she did not, however, seem to pay the least attention to that which happened to me, nor never mentioned montmollin nor any other person, and answered in a few words to what i said to her of him. persuaded that a residence in england would be more agreeable to me than any other, she frequently spoke of mr. hume who was then at paris, of his friendship for me, and the desire he had of being of service to me in his own country. it is time i should say something of hume. he had acquired a great reputation in france amongst the encyclopedists by his essays on commerce and politics, and in the last place by his history of the house of stuart, the only one of his writings of which i had read a part, in the translation of the abbe prevot. for want of being acquainted with his other works, i was persuaded, according to what i heard of him, that mr. hume joined a very republican mind to the english paradoxes in favor of luxury. in this opinion i considered his whole apology of charles i. as a prodigy of impartiality, and i had as great an idea of his virtue as of his genius. the desire of being acquainted with this great man, and of obtaining his friendship, had greatly strengthened the inclination i felt to go to england, induced by the solicitations of madam de boufflers, the intimate friend of hume. after my arrival in switzerland, i received from him, by means of this lady, a letter extremely flattering; in which, to the highest encomiums on my genius, he subjoined a pressing invitation to induce me to go to england, and the offer of all his interest, and that of his friends, to make my residence there agreeable. i found in the country to which i had retired, the lord marshal, the countryman and friend of hume, who confirmed my good opinion of him, and from whom i learned a literary anecdote, which did him great honor in the opinion of his lordship and had the same effect in mine. wallace, who had written against hume upon the subject of the population of the ancients, was absent whilst his work was in the press. hume took upon himself to examine the proofs, and to do the needful to the edition. this manner of acting was according to my way of thinking. i had sold at six sous (three pence) a piece, the copies of a song written against myself. i was, therefore, strongly prejudiced in favor of hume, when madam de verdelin came and mentioned the lively friendship he expressed for me, and his anxiety to do me the honors of england; such was her expression. she pressed me a good deal to take advantage of this zeal and to write to him. as i had not naturally an inclination to england, and did not intend to go there until the last extremity, i refused to write or make any promise; but i left her at liberty to do whatever she should think necessary to keep mr. hume favorably disposed towards me. when she went from motiers, she left me in the persuasion, by everything she had said to me of that illustrious man, that he was my friend, and she herself still more his. after her departure, montmollin carried on his manoeuvres with more vigor, and the populace threw off all restraint. yet i still continued to walk quietly amidst the hootings of the vulgar; and a taste for botany, which i had begun to contract with doctor d'ivernois, making my rambling more amusing, i went through the country herbalising, without being affected by the clamors of this scum of the earth, whose fury was still augmented by my calmness. what affected me most was, seeing families of my friends, [this fatality had begun with my residence at, yverdon; the banneret roguin dying a year or two after my departure from that city, the old papa roguin had the candor to inform me with grief, as he said, that in he papers of his relation, proofs had been found of his having been concerned in the conspiracy to expel me from yverdon and the state of berne. this clearly proved the conspiracy not to be, as some people pretended to believe, an affair of hypocrisy since the banneret, far from being a devotee, carried materialism and incredulity to intolerance and fanaticism. besides, nobody at yverdon had shown me more constant attention, nor had so prodigally bestowed upon me praises and flattery as this banneret. he faithfully followed the favorite plan of my persecutors.] or of persons who gave themselves that name, openly join the league of my persecutors; such as the d'ivernois, without excepting the father and brother of my isabel le boy de la tour, a relation to the friend in whose house i lodged, and madam girardier, her sister-in-law. this peter boy was such a brute; so stupid, and behaved so uncouthly, that, to prevent my mind from being disturbed, i took the liberty to ridicule him; and after the manner of the 'petit prophete', i wrote a pamphlet of a few pages, entitled, 'la vision de pierre de la montagne dit le voyant, --[the vision of peter of the mountain called the seer.]--in which i found means to be diverting enough on the miracles which then served as the great pretext for my persecution. du peyrou had this scrap printed at geneva, but its success in the country was but moderate; the neuchatelois with all their wit, taste but weakly attic salt or pleasantry when these are a little refined. in the midst of decrees and persecutions, the genevese had distinguished themselves by setting up a hue and cry with all their might; and my friend vernes amongst others, with an heroical generosity, chose that moment precisely to publish against me letters in which he pretended to prove i was not a christian. these letters, written with an air of self-sufficiency were not the better for it, although it was positively said the celebrated bonnet had given them some correction: for this man, although a materialist, has an intolerant orthodoxy the moment i am in question. there certainly was nothing in this work which could tempt me to answer it; but having an opportunity of saying a few words upon it in my 'letters from the mountain', i inserted in them a short note sufficiently expressive of disdain to render vernes furious. he filled geneva with his furious exclamations, and d'ivernois wrote me word he had quite lost his senses. sometime afterwards appeared an anonymous sheet, which instead of ink seemed to be written with water of phelethon. in this letter i was accused of having exposed my children in the streets, of taking about with me a soldier's trull, of being worn out with debaucheries,....., and other fine things of a like nature. it was not difficult for me to discover the author. my first idea on reading this libel, was to reduce to its real value everything the world calls fame and reputation amongst men; seeing thus a man who was never in a brothel in his life, and whose greatest defect was in being as timid and shy as a virgin, treated as a frequenter of places of that description; and in finding myself charged with being......, i, who not only never had the least taint of such disorder, but, according to the faculty, was so constructed as to make it almost impossible for me to contract it. everything well considered, i thought i could not better refute this libel than by having it printed in the city in which i longest resided, and with this intention i sent it to duchesne to print it as it was with an advertisement in which i named m. vernes and a few short notes by way of eclaircissement. not satisfied with printing it only, i sent copies to several persons, and amongst others one copy to the prince louis of wirtemberg, who had made me polite advances and with whom i was in correspondence. the prince, du peyrou, and others, seemed to have their doubts about the author of the libel, and blamed me for having named vernes upon so slight a foundation. their remarks produced in me some scruples, and i wrote to duchesne to suppress the paper. guy wrote to me he had suppressed it: this may or may not be the case; i have been deceived on so many occasions that there would be nothing extraordinary in my being so on this, and from the time of which i speak, was so enveloped in profound darkness that it was impossible for me to come at any kind of truth. m. vernes bore the imputation with a moderation more than astonishing in a man who was supposed not to have deserved it, and after the fury with which he was seized on former occasions. he wrote me two or three letters in very guarded terms, with a view, as it appeared to me, to endeavor by my answers to discover how far i was certain of his being the author of the paper, and whether or not i had any proofs against him. i wrote him two short answers, severe in the sense, but politely expressed, and with which he was not displeased. to his third letter, perceiving he wished to form with me a kind of correspondence, i returned no answer, and he got d'ivernois to speak to me. madam cramer wrote to du peyrou, telling him she was certain the libel was not by vernes. this however, did not make me change my opinion. but as it was possible i might be deceived, and as it is certain that if i were, i owed vernes an explicit reparation, i sent him word by d'ivernois that i would make him such a one as he should think proper, provided he would name to me the real author of the libel, or at least prove that he himself was not so. i went further: feeling that, after all, were he not culpable, i had no right to call upon him for proofs of any kind, i stated in a memoir of considerable length, the reasons whence i had inferred my conclusion, and determined to submit them to the judgment of an arbitrator, against whom vernes could not except. but few people would guess the arbitrator of whom i made choice. i declared at the end of the memoir, that if, after having examined it, and made such inquiries as should seem necessary, the council pronounced m. vernes not to be the author of the libel, from that moment i should be fully persuaded he was not, and would immediately go and throw myself at his feet, and ask his pardon until i had obtained it. i can say with the greatest truth that my ardent zeal for equity, the uprightness and generosity of my heart, and my confidence in the love of justice innate in every mind never appeared more fully and perceptible than in this wise and interesting memoir, in which i took, without hesitation, my most implacable enemies for arbitrators between a calumniator and myself. i read to du peyrou what i had written: he advised me to suppress it, and i did so. he wished me to wait for the proofs vernes promised, and i am still waiting for them: he thought it best that i should in the meantime be silent, and i held my tongue, and shall do so the rest of my life, censured as i am for having brought against vernes a heavy imputation, false and unsupportable by proof, although i am still fully persuaded, nay, as convinced as i am of my existence, that he is the author of the libel. my memoir is in the hands of du peyrou. should it ever be published my reasons will be found in it, and the heart of jean jacques, with which my contemporaries would not be acquainted, will i hope be known. i have now to proceed to my catastrophe at motiers, and to my departure from val de travers, after a residence of two years and a half, and an eight months suffering with unshaken constancy of the most unworthy treatment. it is impossible for me clearly to recollect the circumstances of this disagreeable period, but a detail of them will be found in a publication to that effect by du peyrou, of which i shall hereafter have occasion to speak. after the departure of madam de verdelin the fermentation increased, and, notwithstanding the reiterated rescripts of the king, the frequent orders of the council of state, and the cares of the chatelain and magistrates of the place, the people, seriously considering me as antichrist, and perceiving all their clamors to be of no effect, seemed at length determined to proceed to violence; stones were already thrown after me in the roads, but i was however in general at too great a distance to receive any harm from them. at last, in the night of the fair of motiers, which is in the beginning of september, i was attacked in my habitation in such a manner as to endanger the lives of everybody in the house. at midnight i heard a great noise in the gallery which ran along the back part of the house. a shower of stones thrown against the window and the door which opened to the gallery fell into it with so much noise and violence, that my dog, which usually slept there, and had begun to bark, ceased from fright, and ran into a corner gnawing and scratching the planks to endeavor to make his escape. i immediately rose, and was preparing to go from my chamber into the kitchen, when a stone thrown by a vigorous arm crossed the latter, after having broken the window, forced open the door of my chamber, and fell at my feet, so that had i been a moment sooner upon the floor i should have had the stone against my stomach. i judged the noise had been made to bring me to the door, and the stone thrown to receive me as i went out. i ran into the kitchen, where i found theresa, who also had risen, and was tremblingly making her way to me as fast as she could. we placed ourselves against the wall out of the direction of the window to avoid the stones, and deliberate upon what was best to be done; for going out to call assistance was the certain means of getting ourselves knocked on the head. fortunately the maid-servant of an old man who lodged under me was waked by the noise, and got up and ran to call the chatelain, whose house was next to mine. he jumped from his bed, put on his robe de chambre, and instantly came to me with the guard, which, on account of the fair, went the round that night, and was just at hand. the chatelain was so alarmed at the sight of the effects of what had happened that he turned pale and on seeing the stones in the gallery, exclaimed, "good god! here is a quarry!" on examining below stairs, a door of a little court was found to have been forced, and there was an appearance of an attempt having been made to get into the house by the gallery. on inquiring the reason why the guard had neither prevented nor perceived the disturbance, it came out that the guards of motiers had insisted upon doing duty that night, although it was the turn of those of another village. the next day the chatelain sent his report to the council of state, which two days afterwards sent an order to inquire into the affair, to promise a reward and secrecy to those who should impeach such as were guilty, and in the meantime to place, at the expense of the king, guards about my house, and that of the chatelain, which joined to it. the day after the disturbance, colonel pury, the attorney-general meuron, the chatelain martinet, the receiver guyenet, the treasurer d'ivernois and his father, in a word, every person of consequence in the country, came to see me, and united their solicitations to persuade me to yield to the storm and leave, at least for a time, a place in which i could no longer live in safety nor with honor. i perceived that even the chatelain was frightened at the fury of the people, and apprehending it might extend to himself, would be glad to see me depart as soon as possible, that he might no longer have the trouble of protecting me there, and be able to quit the parish, which he did after my departure. i therefore yielded to their solicitations, and this with but little pain, for the hatred of the people so afflicted my heart that i was no longer able to support it. i had a choice of places to retire to. after madam de verdelin returned to paris, she had, in several letters, mentioned a mr. walpole, whom she called my lord, who, having a strong desire to serve me, proposed to me an asylum at one of his country houses, of the situation of which she gave me the most agreeable description; entering, relative to lodging and subsistence, into a detail which proved she and lord walpole had held particular consultations upon the project. my lord marshal had always advised me to go to england or scotland, and in case of my determining upon the latter, offered me there an asylum. but he offered me another at potsdam, near to his person, and which tempted me more than all the rest. he had just communicated to me what the king had said to him about my going there, which was a kind of invitation to me from that monarch, and the duchess of saxe-gotha depended so much upon my taking the journey that she wrote to me desiring i should go to see her in my way to the court of prussia, and stay some time before i proceeded farther; but i was so attached to switzerland that i could not resolve to quit it so long as it was possible for me to live there, and i seized this opportunity to execute a project of which i had for several months conceived the idea, and of which i have deferred speaking, that i might not interrupt my narrative. this project consisted in going to reside in the island of st. peter, an estate belonging to the hospital of berne, in the middle of the lake of bienne. in a pedestrian pilgrimage i had made the preceding year with du peyrou we had visited this isle, with which i was so much delighted that i had since that time incessantly thought of the means of making it my place of residence. the greatest obstacle to my wishes arose from the property of the island being vested in the people of berne, who three years before had driven me from amongst them; and besides the mortification of returning to live with people who had given me so unfavorable a reception, i had reason to fear they would leave me no more at peace in the island than they had done at yverdon. i had consulted the lord marshal upon the subject, who thinking as i did, that the people of berne would be glad to see me banished to the island, and to keep me there as a hostage for the works i might be tempted to write, and sounded their dispositions by means of m. sturler, his old neighbor at colombier. m. sturler addressed himself to the chiefs of the state, and, according to their answer assured the marshal the bernois, sorry for their past behavior, wished to see me settled in the island of st. peter, and to leave me there at peace. as an additional precaution, before i determined to reside there, i desired the colonel chaillet to make new inquiries. he confirmed what i had already heard, and the receiver of the island having obtained from his superiors permission to lodge me in it, i thought i might without danger go to the house, with the tactic consent of the sovereign and the proprietors; for i could not expect the people of berne would openly acknowledge the injustice they had done me, and thus act contrary to the most inviolable maxim of all sovereigns. the island of st. peter, called at neuchatel the island of la motte, in the middle of the lake of bienne, is half a league in, circumference; but in this little space all the chief productions necessary to subsistence are found. the island has fields, meadows, orchards, woods, and vineyards, and all these, favored by variegated and mountainous situations, form a distribution of the more agreeable, as the parts, not being discovered all at once, are seen successively to advantage, and make the island appear greater than it really is. a very elevated terrace forms the western part of it, and commands gleresse and neuverville. this terrace is planted with trees which form a long alley, interrupted in the middle by a great saloon, in which, during the vintage, the people from the neighboring shores assemble and divert themselves. there is but one house in the whole island, but that is very spacious and convenient, inhabited by the receiver, and situated in a hollow by which it is sheltered from the winds. five or six hundred paces to the south of the island of st. peter is another island, considerably less than the former, wild and uncultivated, which appears to have been detached from the greater island by storms: its gravelly soil produces nothing but willows and persicaria, but there is in it a high hill well covered with greensward and very pleasant. the form of the lake is an almost regular oval. the banks, less rich than those of the lake of geneva and neuchatel, form a beautiful decoration, especially towards the western part, which is well peopled, and edged with vineyards at the foot, of a chain of mountains, something like those of cote-rotie, but which produce not such excellent wine. the bailiwick of st. john, neuveville, berne, and bienne, lie in a line from the south to the north, to the extremity of the lake, the whole interspersed with very agreeable villages. such was the asylum i had prepared for myself, and to which i was determined to retire alter quitting val de travers. [it may perhaps be necessary to remark that i left there an enemy in m. du teneaux, mayor of verrieres, not much esteemed in the country, but who has a brother, said to be an honest man, in the office of m. de st. florentin. the mayor had been to see him sometime before my adventure. little remarks of this kind, though of no consequence, in themselves, may lead to the discovery of many underhand dealings.] this choice was so agreeable to my peaceful inclinations, and my solitary and indolent disposition, that i consider it as one of the pleasing reveries of which i became the most passionately fond. i thought i should in that island be more separated from men, more sheltered from their outrages, and sooner forgotten by mankind: in a word, more abandoned to the delightful pleasures of the inaction of a contemplative life. i could have wished to have been confined in it in such a manner as to have had no intercourse with mortals, and i certainly took every measure i could imagine to relieve me from the necessity of troubling my head about them. the great question was that of subsistence, and by the dearness of provisions, and the difficulty of carriage, this is expensive in the island; the inhabitants are besides at the mercy of the receiver. this difficulty was removed by an arrangement which du peyrou made with me in becoming a substitute to the company which had undertaken and abandoned my general edition. i gave him all the materials necessary, and made the proper arrangement and distribution. to the engagement between us i added that of giving him the memoirs of my life, and made him the general depositary of all my papers, under the express condition of making no use of them until after my death, having it at heart quietly to end my days without doing anything which should again bring me back to the recollection of the public. the life annuity he undertook to pay me was sufficient to my subsistence. my lord marshal having recovered all his property, had offered me twelve hundred livres (fifty pounds) a year, half of which i accepted. he wished to send me the principal, and this i refused on account of the difficulty of placing it. he then sent the amount to du peyrou, in whose hands it remained, and who pays me the annuity according to the terms agreed upon with his lordship. adding therefore to the result of my agreement with du peyrou, the annuity of the marshal, two-thirds of which were reversible to theresa after my death, and the annuity of three hundred livres from duchesne, i was assured of a genteel subsistence for myself, and after me for theresa, to whom i left seven hundred livres (twenty-nine pounds) a year, from the annuities paid me by rey and the lord marshal; i had therefore no longer to fear a want of bread. but it was ordained that honor should oblige me to reject all these resources which fortune and my labors placed within my reach, and that i should die as poor as i had lived. it will be seen whether or not, without reducing myself to the last degree of infamy, i could abide by the engagements which care has always taken to render ignominious, by depriving me of every other resource to force me to consent to my own dishonor. how was it possible anybody could doubt of the choice i should make in such an alternative? others have judged of my heart by their own. my mind at ease relative to subsistence was without care upon every other subject. although i left in the world the field open to my enemies, there remained in the noble enthusiasm by which my writings were dictated, and in the constant uniformity of my principles, an evidence of the uprightness of my heart which answered to that deducible from my conduct in favor of my natural disposition. i had no need of any other defense against my calumniators. they might under my name describe another man, but it was impossible they should deceive such as were unwilling to be imposed upon. i could have given them my whole life to animadvert upon, with a certainty, notwithstanding all my faults and weaknesses, and my want of aptitude to, support the lightest yoke, of their finding me in every situation a just and good man, without bitterness, hatred, or jealousy, ready to acknowledge my errors, and still more prompt to forget the injuries i received from others; seeking all my happiness in love, friendship, and affection and in everything carrying my sincerity even to imprudence and the most incredible disinterestedness. i therefore in some measure took leave of the age in which i lived and my contemporaries, and bade adieu to the world, with an intention to confine myself for the rest of my days to that island; such was my resolution, and it was there i hoped to execute the great project of the indolent life to which i had until then consecrated the little activity with which heaven had endowed me. the island was to become to me that of papimanie, that happy country where the inhabitants sleep: ou l'on fait plus, ou l'on fait nulle chose. [where they do more: where they do nothing.] this more was everything for me, for i never much regretted sleep; indolence is sufficient to my happiness, and provided i do nothing, i had rather dream waking than asleep. being past the age of romantic projects, and having been more stunned than flattered by the trumpet of fame, my only hope was that of living at ease, and constantly at leisure. this is the life of the blessed in the world to come, and for the rest of mine here below i made it my supreme happiness. they who reproach me with so many contradictions, will not fail here to add another to the number. i have observed the indolence of great companies made them unsupportable to me, and i am now seeking solitude for the sole purpose of abandoning myself to inaction. this however is my disposition; if there be in it a contradiction, it proceeds from nature and not from me; but there is so little that it is precisely on that account that i am always consistent. the indolence of company is burdensome because it is forced. that of solitude is charming because it is free, and depends upon the will. in company i suffer cruelly by inaction, because this is of necessity. i must there remain nailed to my chair, or stand upright like a picket, without stirring hand or foot, not daring to run, jump, sing, exclaim, nor gesticulate when i please, not allowed even to dream, suffering at the same time the fatigue of inaction and all the torment of constraint; obliged to pay attention to every foolish thing uttered, and to all the idle compliments paid, and constantly to keep my mind upon the rack that i may not fail to introduce in my turn my jest or my lie. and this is called idleness! it is the labor of a galley slave. the indolence i love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts, but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject. i love to amuse myself with trifles, by beginning a hundred things and never finishing one of them, by going or coming as i take either into my head, by changing my project at every instant, by following a fly through all its windings, in wishing to overturn a rock to see what is under it, by undertaking with ardor the work of ten years, and abandoning it without regret at the end of ten minutes; finally, in musing from morning until night without order or coherence, and in following in everything the caprice of a moment. botany, such as i have always considered it, and of which after my own manner i began to become passionately fond, was precisely an idle study, proper to fill up the void of my leisure, without leaving room for the delirium of imagination or the weariness of total inaction. carelessly wandering in the woods and the country, mechanically gathering here a flower and there a branch; eating my morsel almost by chance, observing a thousand and a thousand times the same things, and always with the same interest, because i always forgot them, were to me the means of passing an eternity without a weary moment. however elegant, admirable, and variegated the structure of plants may be, it does not strike an ignorant eye sufficiently to fix the attention. the constant analogy, with, at the same time, the prodigious variety which reigns in their conformation, gives pleasure to those only who have already some idea of the vegetable system. others at the sight of these treasures of nature feel nothing more than a stupid and monotonous admiration. they see nothing in detail because they know not for what to look, nor do they perceive the whole, having no idea of the chain of connection and combinations which overwhelms with its wonders the mind of the observer. i was arrived at that happy point of knowledge, and my want of memory was such as constantly to keep me there, that i knew little enough to make the whole new to me, and yet everything that was necessary to make me sensible to the beauties of all the parts. the different soils into which the island, although little, was divided, offered a sufficient variety of plants, for the study and amusement of my whole life. i was determined not to leave a blade of grass without analyzing it, and i began already to take measures for making, with an immense collection of observations, the 'flora petrinsularis'. i sent for theresa, who brought with her my books and effects. we boarded with the receiver of the island. his wife had sisters at nidau, who by turns came to see her, and were company for theresa. i here made the experiment of the agreeable life which i could have wished to continue to the end of my days, and the pleasure i found in it only served to make me feel to a greater degree the bitterness of that by which it was shortly to be succeeded. i have ever been passionately fond of water, and the sight of it throws me into a delightful reverie, although frequently without a determinate object. immediately after i rose from my bed i never failed, if the weather was fine, to run to the terrace to respire the fresh and salubrious air of the morning, and glide my eye over the horizon of the lake, bounded by banks and mountains, delightful to the view. i know no homage more worthy of the divinity than the silent admiration excited by the contemplation of his works, and which is not externally expressed. i can easily comprehend the reason why the inhabitants of great cities, who see nothing but walls, and streets, have but little faith; but not whence it happens that people in the country, and especially such as live in solitude, can possibly be without it. how comes it to pass that these do not a hundred times a day elevate their minds in ecstasy to the author of the wonders which strike their senses. for my part, it is especially at rising, wearied by a want of sleep, that long habit inclines me to this elevation which imposes not the fatigue of thinking. but to this effect my eyes must be struck with the ravishing beauties of nature. in my chamber i pray less frequently, and not so fervently; but at the view of a fine landscape i feel myself moved, but by what i am unable to tell. i have somewhere read of a wise bishop who in a visit to his diocese found an old woman whose only prayer consisted in the single interjection "oh!"--"good mother," said he to her, "continue to pray in this manner; your prayer is better than ours." this better prayer is mine also. after breakfast, i hastened, with a frown on my brow, to write a few pitiful letters, longing ardently for the moment after which i should have no more to write. i busied myself for a few minutes about my books and papers, to unpack and arrange them, rather than to read what they contained; and this arrangement, which to me became the work of penelope, gave me the pleasure of musing for a while. i then grew weary, and quitted my books to spend the three or four hours which remained to me of the morning in the study of botany, and especially of the system of linnaeus, of which i became so passionately fond, that, after having felt how useless my attachment to it was, i yet could not entirely shake it off. this great observer is, in my opinion, the only one who, with ludwig, has hitherto considered botany as a naturalist, and a philosopher; but he has too much studied it in herbals and gardens, and not sufficiently in nature herself. for my part, whose garden was always the whole island, the moment i wanted to make or verify an observation, i ran into the woods or meadows with my book under my arm, and there laid myself upon the ground near the plant in question, to examine it at my ease as it stood. this method was of great service to me in gaining a knowledge of vegetables in their natural state, before they had been cultivated and changed in their nature by the hands of men. fagon, first physician to louis xiv., and who named and perfectly knew all the plants in the royal garden, is said to have been so ignorant in the country as not to know how to distinguish the same plants. i am precisely the contrary. i know something of the work of nature, but nothing of that of the gardener. i gave every afternoon totally up to my indolent and careless disposition, and to following without regularity the impulse of the moment. when the weather was calm, i frequently went immediately after i rose from dinner, and alone got into the boat. the receiver had taught me to row with one oar; i rowed out into the middle of the lake. the moment i withdrew from the bank, i felt a secret joy which almost made me leap, and of which it is impossible for me to tell or even comprehend the cause, if it were not a secret congratulation on my being out of the reach of the wicked. i afterwards rowed about the lake, sometimes approaching the opposite bank, but never touching at it. i often let my boat float at the mercy of the wind and water, abandoning myself to reveries without object, and which were not the less agreeable for their stupidity. i sometimes exclaimed, "o nature! o my mother! i am here under thy guardianship alone; here is no deceitful and cunning mortal to interfere between thee and me." in this manner i withdrew half a league from land; i could have wished the lake had been the ocean. however, to please my poor dog, who was not so fond as i was of such a long stay on the water, i commonly followed one constant course; this was going to land at the little island where i walked an hour or two, or laid myself down on the grass on the summit of the hill, there to satiate myself with the pleasure of admiring the lake and its environs, to examine and dissect all the herbs within my reach, and, like another robinson crusoe, built myself an imaginary place of residence in the island. i became very much attached to this eminence. when i brought theresa, with the wife of the receiver and her sisters, to walk there, how proud was i to be their pilot and guide! we took there rabbits to stock it. this was another source of pleasure to jean jacques. these animals rendered the island still more interesting to me. i afterwards went to it more frequently, and with greater pleasure to observe the progress of the new inhabitants. to these amusements i added one which recalled to my recollection the delightful life i led at the charmettes, and to which the season particularly invited me. this was assisting in the rustic labors of gathering of roots and fruits, of which theresa and i made it a pleasure to partake with the wife of the receiver and his family. i remember a bernois, one m. kirkeberguer, coming to see me, found me perched upon a tree with a sack fastened to my waist, and already so full of apples that i could not stir from the branch on which i stood. i was not sorry to be caught in this and similar situations. i hoped the people of berne, witnesses to the employment of my leisure, would no longer think of disturbing my tranquillity but leave me at peace in my solitude. i should have preferred being confined there by their desire: this would have rendered the continuation of my repose more certain. this is another declaration upon which i am previously certain of the incredulity of many of my readers, who obstinately continue to judge me by themselves, although they cannot but have seen, in the course of my life, a thousand internal affections which bore no resemblance to any of theirs. but what is still more extraordinary is, that they refuse me every sentiment, good or indifferent, which they have not, and are constantly ready to attribute to me such bad ones as cannot enter into the heart of man: in this case they find it easy to set me in opposition to nature, and to make of me such a monster as cannot in reality exist. nothing absurd appears to them incredible, the moment it has a tendency to blacken me, and nothing in the least extraordinary seems to them possible, if it tends to do me honor. but, notwithstanding what they may think or say, i will still continue faithfully to state what j. j. rousseau was, did, and thought; without explaining, or justifying, the singularity of his sentiments and ideas, or endeavoring to discover whether or not others have thought as he did. i became so delighted with the island of st. peter, and my residence there was so agreeable to me that, by concentrating all my desires within it, i formed the wish that i might stay there to the end of my life. the visits i had to return in the neighborhood, the journeys i should be under the necessity of making to neuchatel, bienne, yverdon, and nidau, already fatigued my imagination. a day passed out of the island, seemed to me a loss of so much happiness, and to go beyond the bounds of the lake was to go out of my element. past experience had besides rendered me apprehensive. the very satisfaction that i received from anything whatever was sufficient to make me fear the loss of it, and the ardent desire i had to end my days in that island, was inseparable from the apprehension of being obliged to leave it. i had contracted a habit of going in the evening to sit upon the sandy shore, especially when the lake was agitated. i felt a singular pleasure in seeing the waves break at my feet. i formed of them in my imagination the image of the tumult of the world contrasted with the peace of my habitation; and this pleasing idea sometimes softened me even to tears. the repose i enjoyed with ecstasy was disturbed by nothing but the fear of being deprived of it, and this inquietude was accompanied with some bitterness. i felt my situation so precarious as not to dare to depend upon its continuance. "ah! how willingly," said i to myself, "would i renounce the liberty of quitting this place, for which i have no desire, for the assurance of always remaining in it. instead of being permitted to stay here by favor, why am i not detained by force! they who suffer me to remain may in a moment drive me away, and can i hope my persecutors, seeing me happy, will leave me here to continue to be so? permitting me to live in the island is but a trifling favor. i could wish to be condemned to do it, and constrained to remain here that i may not be obliged to go elsewhere." i cast an envious eye upon micheli du cret, who, quiet in the castle of arbourg, had only to determine to be happy to become so. in fine, by abandoning myself to these reflections, and the alarming apprehensions of new storms always ready to break over my head, i wished for them with an incredible ardor, and that instead of suffering me to reside in the island, the bernois would give it me for a perpetual prison; and i can assert that had it depended upon me to get myself condemned to this, i would most joyfully have done it, preferring a thousand times the necessity of passing my life there to the danger of being driven to another place. this fear did not long remain on my mind. when i least expected what was to happen, i received a letter from the bailiff of nidau, within whose jurisdiction the island of st. peter was; by his letter he announced to me from their excellencies an order to quit the island and their states. i thought myself in a dream. nothing could be less natural, reasonable, or foreseen than such an order: for i considered my apprehensions as the result of inquietude in a man whose imagination was disturbed by his misfortunes, and not to proceed from a foresight which could have the least foundation. the measures i had taken to insure myself the tacit consent of the sovereign, the tranquillity with which i had been left to make my establishment, the visits of several people from berne, and that of the bailiff himself, who had shown me such friendship and attention, and the rigor of the season in which it was barbarous to expel a man who was sickly and infirm, all these circumstances made me and many people believe that there was some mistake in the order and that ill-disposed people had purposely chosen the time of the vintage and the vacation of the senate suddenly to do me an injury. had i yielded to the first impulse of my indignation, i should immediately have departed. but to what place was i to go? what was to become of me at the beginning of the winter, without object, preparation, guide or carriage? not to leave my papers and effects at the mercy of the first comer, time was necessary to make proper arrangements, and it was not stated in the order whether or not this would be granted me. the continuance of misfortune began to weigh down my courage. for the first time in my life i felt my natural haughtiness stoop to the yoke of necessity, and, notwithstanding the murmurs of my heart, i was obliged to demean myself by asking for a delay. i applied to m. de graffenried, who had sent me the order, for an explanation of it. his letter, conceived in the strongest terms of disapprobation of the step that had been taken, assured me it was with the greatest regret he communicated to me the nature of it, and the expressions of grief and esteem it contained seemed so many gentle invitations to open to him my heart: i did so. i had no doubt but my letter would open the eyes of my persecutors, and that if so cruel an order was not revoked, at least a reasonable delay, perhaps the whole winter, to make the necessary preparations for my retreat, and to choose a place of abode, would be granted me. whilst i waited for an answer, i reflected upon my situation, and deliberated upon the steps i had to take. i perceived so many difficulties on all sides, the vexation i had suffered had so strongly affected me, and my health was then in such a bad state, that i was quite overcome, and the effect of my discouragement was to deprive me of the little resource which remained in my mind, by which i might, as well as it was possible to do it, have withdrawn myself from my melancholy situation. in whatever asylum i should take refuge, it appeared impossible to avoid either of the two means made use of to expel me. one of which was to stir up against me the populace by secret manoeuvres; and the other to drive me away by open force, without giving a reason for so doing. i could not, therefore, depend upon a safe retreat, unless i went in search of it farther than my strength and the season seemed likely to permit. these circumstances again bringing to my recollection the ideas which had lately occurred to me, i wished my persecutors to condemn me to perpetual imprisonment rather than oblige me incessantly to wander upon the earth, by successively expelling me from the asylums of which i should make choice: and to this effect i made them a proposal. two days after my first letter to m. de graffenried, i wrote him a second, desiring he would state what i had proposed to their excellencies. the answer from berne to both was an order, conceived in the most formal and severe terms, to go out of the island, and leave every territory, mediate and immediate of the republic, within the space of twenty-four hours, and never to enter them again under the most grievous penalties. this was a terrible moment. i have since that time felt greater anguish, but never have i been more embarrassed. what afflicted me most was being forced to abandon the project which had made me desirous to pass the winter in the island. it is now time i should relate the fatal anecdote which completed my disasters, and involved in my ruin an unfortunate people, whose rising virtues already promised to equal those of rome and sparta, i had spoken of the corsicans in the 'social contract' as a new people, the only nation in europe not too worn out for legislation, and had expressed the great hope there was of such a people, if it were fortunate enough to have a wise legislator. my work was read by some of the corsicans, who were sensible of the honorable manner in which i had spoken of them; and the necessity under which they found themselves of endeavoring to establish their republic, made their chiefs think of asking me for my ideas upon the subject. m. buttafuoco, of one of the first families in the country, and captain in france, in the royal italians, wrote to me to that effect, and sent me several papers for which i had asked to make myself acquainted with the history of the nation and the state of the country. m. paoli, also, wrote to me several times, and although i felt such an undertaking to be superior to my abilities; i thought i could not refuse to give my assistance to so great and noble a work, the moment i should have acquired all the necessary information. it was to this effect i answered both these gentlemen, and the correspondence lasted until my departure. precisely at the same time, i heard that france was sending troops to corsica, and that she had entered into a treaty with the genoese. this treaty and sending of troops gave me uneasiness, and, without imagining i had any further relation with the business, i thought it impossible and the attempt ridiculous, to labor at an undertaking which required such undisturbed tranquillity as the political institution of a people in the moment when perhaps they were upon the point of being subjugated. i did not conceal my fears from m. buttafuoco, who rather relieved me from them by the assurance that, were there in the treaty things contrary to the liberty of his country, a good citizen like himself would not remain as he did in the service of france. in fact, his zeal for the legislation of the corsicans, and his connections with m. paoli, could not leave a doubt on my mind respecting him; and when i heard he made frequent journeys to versailles and fontainebleau, and had conversations with m. de choiseul, all i concluded from the whole was, that with respect to the real intentions of france he had assurances which he gave me to understand, but concerning which he did not choose openly to explain himself by letter. this removed a part of my apprehensions. yet, as i could not comprehend the meaning of the transportation of troops from france, nor reasonably suppose they were sent to corsica to protect the liberty of the inhabitants, which they of themselves were very well able to defend against the genoese, i could neither make myself perfectly easy, nor seriously undertake the plan of the proposed legislation, until i had solid proofs that the whole was serious, and that the parties meant not to trifle with me. i much wished for an interview with m. buttafuoco, as that was certainly the best means of coming at the explanation i wished. of this he gave me hopes, and i waited for it with the greatest impatience. i know not whether he really intended me any interview or not; but had this even been the case, my misfortunes would have prevented me from profiting by it. the more i considered the proposed undertaking, and the further i advanced in the examination of the papers i had in my hands, the greater i found the necessity of studying, in the country, the people for whom institutions were to be made, the soil they inhabited, and all the relative circumstances by which it was necessary to appropriate to them that institution. i daily perceived more clearly the impossibility of acquiring at a distance all the information necessary to guide me. this i wrote to m. buttafuoco, and he felt as i did. although i did not form the precise resolution of going to corsica. i considered a good deal of the means necessary to make that voyage. i mentioned it to m. dastier, who having formerly served in the island under m. de maillebois, was necessarily acquainted with it. he used every effort to dissuade me from this intention, and i confess the frightful description he gave me of the corsicans and their country, considerably abated the desire i had of going to live amongst them. but when the persecutions of motiers made me think of quitting switzerland, this desire was again strengthened by the hope of at length finding amongst these islanders the repose refused me in every other place. one thing only alarmed me, which was my unfitness for the active life to which i was going to be condemned, and the aversion i had always had to it. my disposition, proper for meditating at leisure and in solitude, was not so for speaking and acting, and treating of affairs with men. nature, which had endowed me with the first talent, had refused me the last. yet i felt that, even without taking a direct and active part in public affairs, i should as soon as i was in corsica, be under the necessity of yielding to the desires of the people, and of frequently conferring with the chiefs. the object even of the voyage required that, instead of seeking retirement, i should in the heart of the country endeavor to gain the information of which i stood in need. it was certain that i should no longer be master of my own time, and that, in spite of myself, precipitated into the vortex in which i was not born to move, i should there lead a life contrary to my inclination, and never appear but to disadvantage. i foresaw that ill-supporting by my presence the opinion my books might have given the corsicans of my capacity, i should lose my reputation amongst them, and, as much to their prejudice as my own, be deprived of the confidence they had in me, without which, however, i could not successfully produce the work they expected from my pen. i am certain that, by thus going out of my sphere, i should become useless to the inhabitants, and render myself unhappy. tormented, beaten by storms from every quarter, and, for several years past, fatigued by journeys and persecution, i strongly felt a want of the repose of which my barbarous enemies wantonly deprived me: i sighed more than ever after that delicious indolence, that soft tranquillity of body and mind, which i had so much desired, and to which, now that i had recovered from the chimeras of love and friendship, my heart limited its supreme felicity. i viewed with terror the work i was about to undertake; the tumultuous life into which i was to enter made me tremble, and if the grandeur, beauty, and utility of the object animated my courage, the impossibility of conquering so many difficulties entirely deprived me of it. twenty years of profound meditation in solitude would have been less painful to me than an active life of six months in the midst of men and public affairs, with a certainty of not succeeding in my undertaking. i thought of an expedient which seemed proper to obviate every difficulty. pursued by the underhand dealings of my secret persecutors to every place in which i took refuge, and seeing no other except corsica where i could in my old days hope for the repose i had until then been everywhere deprived of, i resolved to go there with the directions of m. buttafuoco as soon as this was possible, but to live there in tranquillity; renouncing, in appearance, everything relative to legislation, and, in some measure, to make my hosts a return for their hospitality, to confine myself to writing in the country the history of the corsicans, with a reserve in my own mind of the intention of secretly acquiring the necessary information to become more useful to them should i see a probability of success. in this manner, by not entering into an engagement, i hoped to be enabled better to meditate in secret and more at my ease, a plan which might be useful to their purpose, and this without much breaking in upon my dearly beloved solitude, or submitting to a kind of life which i had ever found insupportable. but the journey was not, in my situation, a thing so easy to get over. according to what m. dastier had told me of corsica, i could not expect to find there the most simple conveniences of life, except such as i should take with me; linen, clothes, plate, kitchen furniture, and books, all were to be conveyed thither. to get there myself with my gouvernante, i had the alps to cross, and in a journey of two hundred leagues to drag after me all my baggage; i had also to pass through the states of several sovereigns, and according to the example set to all europe, i had, after what had befallen me, naturally to expect to find obstacles in every quarter, and that each sovereign would think he did himself honor by overwhelming me with some new insult, and violating in my person all the rights of persons and humanity. the immense expense, fatigue, and risk of such a journey made a previous consideration of them, and weighing every difficulty, the first step necessary. the idea of being alone, and, at my age, without resource, far removed from all my acquaintance, and at the mercy of these semi-barbarous and ferocious people, such as m. dastier had described them to me, was sufficient to make me deliberate before i resolved to expose myself to such dangers. i ardently wished for the interview for which m. buttafuoco had given me reason to hope, and i waited the result of it to guide me in my determination. whilst i thus hesitated came on the persecutions of motiers, which obliged me to retire. i was not prepared for a long journey, especially to corsica. i expected to hear from buttafuoco; i took refuge in the island of st. peter, whence i was driven at the beginning of winter, as i have already stated. the alps, covered with snow, then rendered my emigration impracticable, especially with the promptitude required from me. it is true, the extravagant severity of a like order rendered the execution of it almost impossible; for, in the midst of that concentred solitude, surrounded by water, and having but twenty-four hours after receiving the order to prepare for my departure, and find a boat and carriages to get out of the island and the territory, had i had wings, i should scarcely have been able to pay obedience to it. this i wrote to the bailiff of nidau, in answer to his letter, and hastened to take my departure from a country of iniquity. in this manner was i obliged to abandon my favorite project, for which reason, not having in my oppression been able to prevail upon my persecutors to dispose of me otherwise, i determined, in consequence of the invitation of my lord marshal, upon a journey to berlin, leaving theresa to pass the winter in the island of st. peter, with my books and effects, and depositing my papers in the hands of m. du peyrou. i used so much diligence that the next morning i left the island and arrived at bienne before noon. an accident, which i cannot pass over in silence, had here well nigh put an end to my journey. as soon as the news or my having received an order to quit my asylum was circulated, i received a great number of visits from the neighborhood, and especially from the bernois, who came with the most detestable falsehood to flatter and soothe me, protesting that my persecutors had seized the moment of the vacation of the senate to obtain and send me the order, which, said they, had excited the indignation of the two hundred. some of these comforters came from the city of bienne, a little free state within that of berne, and amongst others a young man of the name of wildremet whose family was of the first rank, and had the greatest credit in that city. wildremet strongly solicited me in the name of his fellow-citizens to choose my retreat amongst them, assuring me that they were anxiously desirous of it, and that they would think it an honor and their duty to make me forget the persecutions i had suffered; that with them i had nothing to fear from the influence of the bernois, that bienne was a free city, governed by its own laws, and that the citizens were unanimously resolved not to hearken to any solicitation which should be unfavorable to me. wildremet perceiving all he could say to be ineffectual, brought to his aid several other persons, as well from bienne and the environs as from berne; even, and amongst others, the same kirkeberguer, of whom i have spoken, who, after my retreat to switzerland had endeavored to obtain my esteem, and by his talents and principles had interested me in his favor. but i received much less expected and more weighty solicitations from m. barthes, secretary to the embassy from france, who came with wildremet to see me, exhorted me to accept his invitation, and surprised me by the lively and tender concern he seemed to feel for my situation. i did not know m. barthes; however i perceived in what he said the warmth and zeal of friendship, and that he had it at heart to persuade me to fix my residence at bienne. he made the most pompous eulogium of the city and its inhabitants, with whom he showed himself so intimately connected as to call them several times in my presence his patrons and fathers. this from barthes bewildered me in my conjectures. i had always suspected m. de choisuel to be the secret author of all the persecutions i suffered in switzerland. the conduct of the resident of geneva, and that of the ambassador at soleure but too much confirmed my suspicion; i perceived the secret influence of france in everything that happened to me at berne, geneva and neuchatel, and i did not think i had any powerful enemy in that kingdom, except the duke de choiseul. what therefore could i think of the visit of barthes and the tender concern he showed for my welfare? my misfortunes had not yet destroyed the confidence natural to my heart, and i had still to learn from experience to discern snares under the appearance of friendship. i sought with surprise the reason of the benevolence of m. barthes; i was not weak enough to believe he had acted from himself; there was in his manner something ostentatious, an affectation even which declared a concealed intention, and i was far from having found in any of these little subaltern agents, that generous intrepidity which, when i was in a similar employment, had often caused a fermentation in my heart. i had formerly known something of the chevalier beauteville, at the castle of montmorency; he had shown me marks of esteem; since his appointment to the embassy he had given me proofs of his not having entirely forgotten me, accompanied with an invitation to go and see him at soleure. though i did not accept this invitation, i was extremely sensible of his civility, not having been accustomed to be treated with such kindness by people in place. i presume m. de beauteville, obliged to follow his instructions in what related to the affairs of geneva, yet pitying me under my misfortunes, had by his private cares prepared for me the asylum of bienne, that i might live there in peace under his auspices. i was properly sensible of his attention, but without wishing to profit by it and quite determined upon the journey to berlin, i sighed after the moment in which i was to see my lord marshal, persuaded i should in future find zeal repose and lasting happiness nowhere but near his person. on my departure from the island, kirkeberguer accompanied me to bienne. i found wildremet and other biennois, who, by the water side, waited my getting out of the boat. we all dined together at the inn, and on my arrival there my first care was to provide a chaise, being determined to set off the next morning. whilst we were at dinner these gentlemen repeated their solicitations to prevail upon me to stay with them, and this with such warmth and obliging protestations, that notwithstanding all my resolutions, my heart, which has never been able to resist friendly attentions, received an impression from theirs; the moment they perceived i was shaken, they redoubled their efforts with so much effect that i was at length overcome, and consented to remain at bienne, at least until the spring. wildremet immediately set about providing me with a lodging, and boasted, as of a fortunate discovery, of a dirty little chamber in the back of the house, on the third story, looking into a courtyard, where i had for a view the display of the stinking skins of a dresser of chamois leather. my host was a man of a mean appearance, and a good deal of a rascal; the next day after i went to his house i heard that he was a debauchee, a gamester, and in bad credit in the neighborhood. he had neither wife, children, nor servants, and shut up in my solitary chamber, i was in the midst of one of the most agreeable countries in europe, lodged in a manner to make me die of melancholy in the course of a few days. what affected me most was, that, notwithstanding what i had heard of the anxious wish of the inhabitants to receive me amongst them, i had not perceived, as i passed through the streets, anything polite towards me in their manners, or obliging in their looks. i was, however, determined to remain there; but i learned, saw, and felt, the day after, that there was in the city a terrible fermentation, of which i was the cause. several persons hastened obligingly to inform me that on the next day i was to receive an order conceived in the most severe terms, immediately to quit the state, that is the city. i had nobody in whom i could confide; they who had detained me were dispersed. wildremet had disappeared; i heard no more of barthes, and it did not appear that his recommendation had brought me into great favor with those whom he had styled his patrons and fathers. one m. de van travers, a bernois, who had an agreeable house not far from the city, offered it to me for my asylum, hoping, as he said, that i might there avoid being stoned. the advantage this offer held out was not sufficiently flattering to tempt me to prolong my abode with these hospitable people. yet, having lost three days by the delay, i had greatly exceeded the twenty-four hours the bernois had given me to quit their states, and knowing their severity, i was not without apprehensions as to the manner in which they would suffer me to cross them, when the bailiff of nidau came opportunely and relieved me from my embarrassment. as he had highly disapproved of the violent proceedings of their excellencies, he thought, in his generosity, he owed me some public proof of his taking no part in them, and had courage to leave his bailiwick to come and pay me a visit at bienne. he did me this favor the evening before my departure, and far from being incognito he affected ceremony, coming in fiocchi in his coach with his secretary, and brought me a passport in his own name that i might cross the state of berne at my ease, and without fear of molestation. i was more flattered by the visit than by the passport, and should have been as sensible of the merit of it, had it had for object any other person whatsoever. nothing makes a greater impression on my heart than a well-timed act of courage in favor of the weak unjustly oppressed. at length, after having with difficulty procured a chaise, i next morning left this barbarous country, before the arrival of the deputation with which i was to be honored, and even before i had seen theresa, to whom i had written to come to me, when i thought i should remain at bienne, and whom i had scarcely time to countermand by a short letter, informing her of my new disaster. in the third part of my memoirs, if ever i be able to write them, i shall state in what manner, thinking to set off for berlin, i really took my departure for england, and the means by which the two ladies who wished to dispose of my person, after having by their manoeuvres driven me from switzerland, where i was not sufficiently in their power, at last delivered me into the hands of their friend. i added what follows on reading my memoirs to m. and madam, the countess of egmont, the prince pignatelli, the marchioness of mesme, and the marquis of juigne. i have written the truth: if any person has heard of things contrary to those i have just stated, were they a thousand times proved, he has heard calumny and falsehood; and if he refuses thoroughly to examine and compare them with me whilst i am alive, he is not a friend either to justice or truth. for my part, i openly, and without the least fear declare, that whoever, even without having read my works, shall have examined with his own eyes, my disposition, character, manners, inclinations, pleasures, and habits, and pronounce me a dishonest man, is himself one who deserves a gibbet. thus i concluded, and every person was silent; madam d'egmont was the only person who seemed affected; she visibly trembled, but soon recovered herself, and was silent like the rest of the company. such were the fruits of my reading and declaration. the confessions of jean jacques rousseau (in books) privately printed for the members of the aldus society london, book iv. let any one judge my surprise and grief at not finding her on my arrival. i now felt regret at having abandoned m. le maitre, and my uneasiness increased when i learned the misfortunes that had befallen him. his box of music, containing all his fortune, that precious box, preserved with so much care and fatigue, had been seized on at lyons by means of count dortan, who had received information from the chapter of our having absconded with it. in vain did le maitre reclaim his property, his means of existence, the labor of his life; his right to the music in question was at least subject to litigation, but even that liberty was not allowed him, the affair being instantly decided on the principal of superior strength. thus poor le maitre lost the fruit of his talents, the labor of his youth, and principal dependence for the support of old age. nothing was wanting to render the news i had received truly afflicting, but i was at an age when even the greatest calamities are to be sustained; accordingly i soon found consolation. i expected shortly to hear news of madam de warrens, though i was ignorant of the address, and she knew nothing of my return. as to my desertion of le maitre (all things considered) i did not find it so very culpable. i had been serviceable to him at his retreat; it was not in my power to give him any further assistance. had i remained with him in france it would not have cured his complaint. i could not have saved his music, and should only have doubled his expense: in this point of view i then saw my conduct; i see it otherwise now. it frequently happens that a villainous action does not torment us at the instant we commit it, but on recollection, and sometimes even after a number of years have elapsed, for the remembrance of crimes is not to be extinguished. the only means i had to obtain news of madam de warrens was to remain at annecy. where should i seek her in paris? or how bear the expense of such a journey? sooner or later there was no place where i could be so certain to hear of her as that i was now at; this consideration determined me to remain there, though my conduct was very indifferent. i did not go to the bishop, who had already befriended me, and might continue to do so; my patroness was not present, and i feared his reprimands on the subject of our flight; neither did i go to the seminary, m. graswas no longer there; in short, i went to none of my acquaintances. i should gladly have visited the intendant's lady, but did not dare; i did worse, i sought out m. venture, whom (notwithstanding my enthusiasm) i had never thought of since my departure. i found him quite gay, in high spirits, and the universal favorite of the ladies of annecy. this success completed my infatuation; i saw nothing but m. venture; he almost made me forget even madam de warrens. that i might profit more at ease by his instructions and example, i proposed to share his lodgings, to which he readily consented. it was at a shoemaker's; a pleasant, jovial fellow, who, in his county dialect, called his wife nothing but trollop; an appellation which she certainly merited. venture took care to augment their differences, though under an appearance of doing the direct contrary, throwing out in a distant manner, and provincial accents, hints that produced the utmost effect, and furnished such scenes as were sufficient to make any one die with laughter. thus the mornings passed without our thinking of them; at two or three o'clock we took some refreshment. venture then went to his various engagements, where he supped, while i walked alone, meditating on his great merit, coveting and admiring his rare talents, and cursing my own unlucky stars, that did not call me to so happy a life. how little did i then know of myself! mine had been a thousand times more delightful, had i not been such a fool, or known better how to enjoy it. madam de warrens had taken no one with her but anet: merceret, the chambermaid, whom i have before mentioned, still remained in the house. merceret was something older than myself, not pretty, but tolerably agreeable; good-natured, free from malice, having no fault to my knowledge but being a little refractory with her mistress. i often went to see her; she was an old acquaintance, who recalled to my remembrance one more beloved, and this made her dear to me. she had several friends, and among others one mademoiselle giraud, a genevese, who, for the punishment of my sins, took it in her head to have an inclination for me, always pressing merceret, when she returned her visits, to bring me with her. as i liked merceret, i felt no disinclination to accompany her; besides i met there with some young people whose company pleased me. for mademoiselle giraud, who offered every kind of enticement, nothing could increase the aversion i had for her. when she drew near me, with her dried black snout, smeared with spanish snuff, it was with the utmost difficulty that i could refrain from expressing my distaste; but, being pleased with her visitors, i took patience. among these were two girls who (either to pay their court to mademoiselle giraud or myself) paid me every possible attention. i conceived this to be only friendship; but have since thought it depended only on myself to have discovered something more, though i did not even think of it at the time. there was another reason for my stupidity. seamstresses, chambermaids, or milliners, never tempted me; i sighed for ladies! every one has his peculiar taste, this has ever been mine; being in this particular of a different opinion from horace. yet it is not vanity of riches or rank that attracts me; it is a well-preserved complexion, fine hands, elegance of ornaments, an air of delicacy and neatness throughout the whole person; more in taste, in the manner of expressing themselves, a finer or better made gown, a well-turned ankle, small foot, ribbons, lace, and well-dressed hair; i even prefer those who have less natural beauty, provided they are elegantly decorated. i freely confess this preference is very ridiculous; yet my heart gives in to it spite of my understanding. well, even this advantage presented itself, and it only depended on my own resolution to have seized the opportunity. how do i love, from time to time, to return to those moments of my youth, which were so charmingly delightful; so short, so scarce, and enjoyed at so cheap a rate!--how fondly do i wish to dwell on them! even yet the remembrance of these scenes warms my heart with a chaste rapture, which appears necessary to reanimate my drooping courage, and enable me to sustain the weariness of my latter days. the appearance of aurora seemed so delightful one morning that, putting on my clothes, i hastened into the country, to see the rising of the sun. i enjoyed that pleasure in its utmost extent; it was one week after midsummer; the earth was covered with verdure and flowers, the nightingales, whose soft warblings were almost concluded, seemed to vie with each other, and in concert with birds of various kinds to bid adieu to spring, and hail the approach of a beautiful summer's day: one of those lovely days that are no longer to be enjoyed at my age, and which have never been seen on the melancholy soil i now inhabit. i had rambled insensibly, to a considerable distance from the town--the heat augmented--i was walking in the shade along a valley, by the side of a brook, i heard behind me the steps of horses, and the voice of some females who, though they seemed embarrassed, did not laugh the less heartily on that account. i turn round, hear myself called by name, and approaching, find two young people of my acquaintance, mademoiselle de g---- and mademoiselle galley, who, not being very excellent horsewomen, could not make their horses cross the rivulet. mademoiselle de g---- was a young lady of berne, very amiable; who, having been sent from that country for some youthful folly, had imitated madam de warrens, at whose house i had sometimes seen her; but not having, like her, a pension, she had been fortunate in this attachment to mademoiselle galley, who had prevailed on her mother to engage her young friend as a companion, till she could be otherwise provided for. mademoiselle galley was one year younger than her friend, handsomer, more delicate, more ingenious, and to complete all, extremely well made. they loved each other tenderly, and the good disposition of both could not fail to render their union durable, if some lover did not derange it. they informed me they were going to toune, an old castle belonging to madam galley, and implored my assistance to make their horses cross the stream, not being able to compass it themselves. i would have given each a cut or two with the whip, but they feared i might be kicked, and themselves thrown; i therefore had recourse to another expedient, i took hold of mademoiselle galley's horse and led him through the brook, the water reaching half-way up my legs. the other followed without any difficulty. this done, i would have paid my compliments to the ladies, and walked off like a great booby as i was, but after whispering each other, mademoiselle de g---- said, "no, no, you must not think to escape thus; you have got wet in our service, and we ought in conscience to take care and dry you. if you please you must go with us, you are now our prisoner." my heart began to beat--i looked at mademoiselle galley --"yes, yes," added she, laughing at my fearful look; "our prisoner of war; come, get up behind her, we shall give a good account of you."--"but, mademoiselle," continued i, "i have not the honor to be acquainted with your mother; what will she say on my arrival?"--"her mother," replied mademoiselle de g---- is not at toune, we are alone, we shall return at night, and you shall come back with us." the stroke of electricity has not a more instantaneous effect than these words produced on me. leaping behind mademoiselle de g----, i trembled with joy, and when it became necessary to clasp her in order to hold myself on, my heart beat so violently that she perceived it, and told me hers beat also from a fear of falling. in my present posture, i might naturally have considered this an invitation to satisfy myself of the truth of her assertion, yet i did not dare, and during the whole way my arm served as a girdle (a very close one, i must confess), without being a moment displaced. some women that may read this would be for giving me a box on the ear, and, truly, i deserved it. the gayety of the journey, and the chat of these girls, so enlivened me, that during the whole time we passed together we never ceased talking a moment. they had set me so thoroughly at ease, that my tongue spoke as fast as my eyes, though not exactly the same things. some minutes, indeed, when i was left alone with either, the conversation became a little embarrassed, but neither of them was absent long enough to allow time for explaining the cause. arrived at toune, and myself well dried, we breakfasted together; after which it was necessary to settle the important business of preparing dinner. the young ladies cooked, kissing from time to time the farmer's children, while the poor scullion looked on grumbling. provisions had been sent for from town, and there was everything necessary for a good dinner, but unhappily they had forgotten wine; this forgetfulness was by no means astonishing to girls who seldom drank any, but i was sorry for the omission, as i had reckoned on its help, thinking it might add to my confidence. they were sorry likewise, and perhaps from the same motive; though i have no reason to say this, for their lively and charming gayety was innocence itself; besides, there were two of them, what could they expect from me? they went everywhere about the neighborhood to seek for wine, but none could be procured, so pure and sober are the peasants in those parts. as they were expressing their concern, i begged them not to give themselves any uneasiness on my account, for while with them i had no occasion for wine to intoxicate me. this was the only gallantry i ventured at during the whole of the day, and i believe the sly rogues saw well enough that i said nothing but the truth. we dined in the kitchen; the two friends were seated on the benches, one on each side the long table, and their guest at the end, between them, on a three--legged stool. what a dinner! how charming the remembrance! while we can enjoy, at so small an expense, such pure, such true delights, why should we be solicitous for others? never did those 'petite soupes', so celebrated in paris, equal this; i do not only say for real pleasure and gayety, but even for sensuality. after dinner, we were economical; instead of drinking the coffee we had reserved at breakfast, we kept it for an afternoon collation, with cream, and some cake they had brought with them. to keep our appetites in play, we went into the orchard, meaning to finish our dessert with cherries. i got into a tree, throwing them down bunches, from which they returned the stones through the branches. one time, mademoiselle galley, holding out her apron, and drawing back her head, stood so fair, and i took such good aim, that i dropped a bunch into her bosom. on her laughing, i said to myself, "why are not my lips cherries? how gladly would i throw them there likewise." thus the day passed with the greatest freedom, yet with the utmost decency; not a single equivocal word, not one attempt at double-meaning pleasantry; yet this delicacy was not affected, we only performed the parts our hearts dictated; in short, my modesty, some will say my folly, was such that the greatest familiarity that escaped me was once kissing the hand of mademoiselle galley; it is true, the attending circumstances helped to stamp a value on this trifling favor; we were alone, i was embarrassed, her eyes were fixed on the ground, and my lips, instead of uttering words, were pressed on her hand, which she drew gently back after the salute, without any appearance of displeasure. i know not what i should have said to her; but her friend entered, and at that moment i thought her ugly. at length, they bethought themselves, that they must return to town before night; even now we had but just time to reach it by daylight; and we hastened our departure in the same order we came. had i pleased myself, i should certainly have reversed this order, for the glance of mademoiselle galley had reached my heart, but i dared not mention it, and the proposal could not reasonably come from her. on the way, we expressed our sorrow that the day was over, but far from complaining of the shortness of its duration, we were conscious of having prolonged it by every possible amusement. i quitted them in nearly the same spot where i had taken them up. with what regret did we part! with what pleasure did we form projects to renew our meeting! delightful hours, which we passed innocently together, yet were worth ages of familiarity! the sweet remembrance of those days cost those amiable girls nothing; the tender union which reigned among us equalled more lively pleasures, with which it could not have existed. we loved each other without shame or mystery, and wished to continue our reciprocal affection. there is a species of enjoyment connected with innocence of manners which is superior to any other, because it has no interval; for myself, the remembrance of such a day touches me nearer, delights me more, and returns with greater rapture to my heart than any other pleasure i ever tasted. i hardly knew what i wished with those charming girls. i do not say: that had the arrangement been in my power, i should have divided my heart between them; i certainly felt some degree of preference: though i should have been happy to have had mademoiselle de g----, for a mistress, i think, by choice, i should have liked her, better as a confidante; be that as it may, i felt on leaving them as though i could not live without either. who would have thought that i should never see them more; and that here our ephemeral amours must end? those who read this will not fail to laugh at my gallantries, and remark, that after very promising preliminaries, my most forward adventures concluded by a kiss of the hand: yet be not mistaken, reader, in your estimate of my enjoyments; i have, perhaps, tasted more real pleasure in my amours, which concluded by a kiss of the hand, than you will ever have in yours, which, at least, begin there. venture, who had gone to bed late the night before, came in soon after me. i did not now see him with my usual satisfaction, and took care not to inform him how i had passed the day. the ladies had spoken of him slightingly, and appeared discontented at finding me in such bad hands; this hurt him in my esteem; besides, whatever diverted my ideas from them was at this time disagreeable. however, he soon brought me back to him and myself, by speaking of the situation of my affairs, which was too critical to last; for, though i spent very little, my slender finances were almost exhausted. i was without resource; no news of madam de warrens; not knowing what would become of me, and feeling a cruel pang at heart to see the friend of mademoiselle galley reduced to beggary. i now learned from venture that he had spoken of me to the judge major, and would take me next day to dine with him; that he was a man who by means of his friends might render me essential service. in other respects he was a desirable acquaintance, being a man of wit and letters, of agreeable conversation, one who possessed talents and loved them in others. after this discourse (mingling the most serious concerns with the most trifling frivolity) he showed me a pretty couplet, which came from paris, on an air in one of mouret's operas, which was then playing. monsieur simon (the judge major) was so pleased with this couplet, that he determined to make another in answer to it, on the same air. he had desired venture to write one, and he wished me to make a third, that, as he expressed it, they might see couplets start up next day like incidents in a comic romance. in the night (not being able to sleep) i composed a couplet, as my first essay in poetry. it was passable; better, or at least composed with more taste than it would have been the preceding night, the subject being tenderness, to which my heart was now entirely disposed. in the morning i showed my performance to venture, who, being pleased with the couplet, put it in his pocket, without informing me whether he had made his. we dined with m. simon, who treated us very politely. the conversation was agreeable; indeed it could not be otherwise between two men of natural good sense, improved by reading. for me, i acted my proper part, which was to listen without attempting to join in the conversation. neither of them mentioned the couplet nor do i know that it ever passed for mine. m. simon appeared satisfied with my behavior; indeed, it was almost all he saw of me at this interview. we had often met at madam de warrens, but he had never paid much attention to me; it is from this dinner, therefore, that i date our acquaintance, which, though of no use in regard to the object i then had in view, was afterwards productive of advantages which make me recollect it with pleasure. i should be wrong not to give some account of this person, since from his office of magistrate, and the reputation of wit on which he piqued himself, no idea could be formed of it. the judge major, simon, certainly was not two feet high; his legs spare, straight, and tolerably long, would have added something to his stature had they been vertical, but they stood in the direction of an open pair of compasses. his body was not only short, but thin, being in every respect of most inconceivable smallness--when naked he must have appeared like a grasshopper. his head was of the common size, to which appertained a well-formed face, a noble look, and tolerably fine eyes; in short, it appeared a borrowed head, stuck on a miserable stump. he might very well have dispensed with dress, for his large wig alone covered him from head to foot. he had two voices, perfectly different, which intermingled perpetually in his conversation, forming at first a diverting, but afterwards a very disagreeable contrast. one grave and sonorous, was, if i may hazard the expression, the voice of his head: the other, clear, sharp, and piercing, the voice of his body. when he paid particular attention, and spoke leisurely, so as to preserve his breath, he could continue his deep tone; but if he was the least animated, or attempted a lively accent, his voice sounded like the whistling of a key, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he could return to the bass. with the figure i have just described, and which is by no means overcharged, m. simon was gallant, ever entertaining the ladies with soft tales, and carrying the decoration of his person even to foppery. willing to make use of every advantage he, during the morning, gave audience in bed, for when a handsome head was discovered on the pillow no one could have imagined what belonged to it. this circumstance gave birth to scenes, which i am certain are yet remembered by all annecy. one morning, when he expected to give audience in bed, or rather on the bed, having on a handsome night-cap ornamented with rose-colored ribbon, a countryman arriving knocked at the door; the maid happened to be out; the judge, therefore, hearing the knock repeated, cried "come in," and, as he spoke rather loud, it was in his shrill tone. the man entered, looked about, endeavoring to discover whence the female voice proceeded and at length seeing a handsome head-dress set off with ribbons, was about to leave the room, making the supposed lady a hundred apologies. m. simon, in a rage, screamed the more; and the countryman, yet more confirmed in his opinion, conceiving himself to be insulted, began railing in his turn, saying that, "apparently, she was nothing better than a common streetwalker, and that the judge major should be ashamed of setting such ill examples." the enraged magistrate, having no other weapon than the jordan under his bed, was just going to throw it at the poor fellow's head as his servant returned. this dwarf, ill-used by nature as to his person, was recompensed by possessing an understanding naturally agreeable, and which he had been careful to cultivate. though he was esteemed a good lawyer, he did not like his profession, delighting more in the finer parts of literature, which he studied with success: above all, he possessed that superficial brilliancy, the art of pleasing in conversation, even with the ladies. he knew by heart a number of little stories, which he perfectly well knew how to make the most of; relating with an air of secrecy, and as an anecdote of yesterday, what happened sixty years before. he understood music, and could sing agreeably; in short, for a magistrate, he had many pleasing talents. by flattering the ladies of annecy, he became fashionable among them, appearing continually in their train. he even pretended to favors, at which they were much amused. a madam d'epigny used to say "the greatest favor he could aspire to, was to kiss a lady on her knees." as he was well read, and spoke fluently, his conversation was both amusing and instructive. when i afterwards took a taste for study, i cultivated his acquaintance, and found my account in it: when at chambery, i frequently went from thence to see him. his praises increased my emulation, to which he added some good advice respecting the prosecution of my studies, which i found useful. unhappily, this weakly body contained a very feeling soul. some years after, he was chagrined by i know not what unlucky affair, but it cost him his life. this was really unfortunate, for he was a good little man, whom at a first acquaintance one laughed at, but afterwards loved. though our situations in life were very little connected with each other, as i received some useful lessons from him, i thought gratitude demanded that i should dedicate a few sentences to his memory. as soon as i found myself at liberty, i ran into the street where mademoiselle galley lived, flattering myself that i should see someone go in or out, or at least open a window, but i was mistaken, not even a cat appeared, the house remaining as close all the time as if it had been uninhabited. the street was small and lonely, any one loitering about was, consequently, more likely to be noticed; from time to time people passed in and out of the neighborhood; i was much embarrassed, thinking my person might be known, and the cause that brought me there conjectured; this idea tortured me, for i have ever preferred the honor and happiness of those i love to my own pleasures. at length, weary of playing the spanish lover, and having no guitar, i determined to write to mademoiselle de g----. i should have preferred writing to her friend, but did not dare take that liberty, as it appeared more proper to begin with her to whom i owed the acquaintance, and with whom i was most familiar. having written my letter, i took it to mademoiselle giraud, as the young ladies had agreed at parting, they having furnished me with this expedient. mademoiselle giraud was a quilter, and sometimes worked at madam galley's, which procured her free admission to the house. i must confess, i was not thoroughly satisfied with this messenger, but was cautious of starting difficulties, fearing that if i objected to her no other might be named, and it was impossible to intimate that she had an inclination to me herself. i even felt humiliated that she should think i could imagine her of the same sex as those young ladies: in a word, i accepted her agency rather than none, and availed myself of it at all events. at the very first word, giraud discovered me. i must own this was not a difficult matter, for if sending a letter to young girls had not spoken sufficiently plain, my foolish embarrassed air would have betrayed me. it will easily be supposed that the employment gave her little satisfaction, she undertook it, however, and performed it faithfully. the next morning i ran to her house and found an answer ready for me. how did i hurry away that i might have an opportunity to read and kiss it alone! though this need not been told, but the plan adopted by mademoiselle giraud (and in which i found more delicacy and moderation than i had expected) should. she had sense enough to conclude that her thirty--seven years, hare's eyes, daubed nose, shrill voice, and black skin, stood no chance against two elegant young girls, in all the height and bloom of beauty; she resolved, therefore, nether to betray nor assist them, choosing rather to lose me entirely than entertain me for them. as merceret had not heard from her mistress for some time, she thought of returning to fribourg, and the persuasions of giraud determined her; nay more, she intimated it was proper someone should conduct her to her father's and proposed me. as i happened to be agreeable to little merceret, she approved the idea, and the same day they mentioned it to me as a fixed point. finding nothing displeasing in the manner they had disposed of me, i consented, thinking it could not be above a week's journey at most; but giraud, who had arranged the whole affair, thought otherwise. it was necessary to avow the state of my finances, and the conclusion was, that merceret should defray my expenses; but to retrench on one hand what was expended on the other, i advised that her little baggage should be sent on before, and that we should proceed by easy journeys on foot. i am sorry to have so many girls in love with me, but as there is nothing to be very vain of in the success of these amours, i think i may tell the truth without scruple. merceret, younger and less artful than giraud, never made me so many advances, but she imitated my manners, my actions, repeated my words, and showed me all those little attentions i ought to have had for her. being very timorous, she took great care that we should both sleep in the same chamber; a circumstance that usually produces some consequences between a lad of twenty and a girl of twenty --five. for once, however, it went no further; my simplicity being such, that though merceret was by no means a disagreeable girl, an idea of gallantry never entered my head, and even if it had, i was too great a novice to have profited by it. i could not imagine how two young persons could bring themselves to sleep together, thinking that such familiarity must require an age of preparation. if poor merceret paid my expenses in hopes of any return, she was terribly cheated, for we arrived at fribourg exactly as we had quitted annecy. i passed through geneva without visiting any one. while going over the bridges, i found myself so affected that i could scarcely proceed. never could i see the walls of that city, never could i enter it, without feeling my heart sink from excess of tenderness, at the same time that the image of liberty elevated my soul. the ideas of equality, union, and gentleness of manners, touched me even to tears, and inspired me with a lively regret at having forfeited all these advantages. what an error was i in! but yet how natural! i imagined i saw all this in my native country, because i bore it in my heart. it was necessary to pass through nion: could i do this without seeing my good father? had i resolved on doing so, i must afterwards have died with regret. i left merceret at the inn, and ventured to his house. how wrong was i to fear him! on seeing me, his soul gave way to the parental tenderness with which it was filled. what tears were mingled with our embraces! he thought i was returned to him: i related my history, and informed him of my resolution. he opposed it feebly, mentioning the dangers to which i exposed myself, and telling me the shortest follies were best, but did not attempt to keep me by force, in which particular i think he acted right; but it is certain he did not do everything in his power to detain me, even by fair means. whether after the step i had taken, he thought i ought not to return, or was puzzled at my age to know what to do with me--i have since found that he conceived a very unjust opinion of my travelling companion. my step --mother, a good woman, a little coaxingly put on an appearance of wishing me to stay to supper; i did not, however, comply, but told them i proposed remaining longer with them on my return; leaving as a deposit my little packet, that had come by water, and would have been an incumbrance, had i taken it with me. i continued my journey the next morning, well satisfied that i had seen my father, and had taken courage to do my duty. we arrived without any accident at fribourg. towards the conclusion of the journey, the politeness of mademoiselle merceret rather diminished, and, after our arrival, she treated me even with coldness. her father, who was not in the best circumstances, did not show me much attention, and i was obliged to lodge at an alehouse. i went to see them the next morning, and received an invitation to dine there, which i accepted. we separated without tears at night; i returned to my paltry lodging, and departed the second day after my arrival, almost without knowing whither to go to. this was a circumstance of my life in which providence offered me precisely what was necessary to make my days pass happily. merceret was a good girl, neither witty, handsome, nor ugly; not very lively, but tolerably rational, except while under the influence of some little humors, which usually evaporated in tears, without any violent outbreak of temper. she had a real inclination for me; i might have married her without difficulty, and followed her father's business. my taste for music would have made me love her; i should have settled at fribourg, a small town, not pretty, but inhabited by very worthy people--i should certainly have missed great pleasures, but should have lived in peace to my last hour, and i must know best what i should have gained by such a step. i did not return to nion, but to lausanne, wishing to gratify myself with a view of that beautiful lake which is seen there in its utmost extent. the greater part of my secret motives have not been so reasonable. distant expectation has rarely strength enough to influence my actions; the uncertainty of the future ever making me regard projects whose execution requires a length of time as deceitful lures. i give in to visionary scenes of hope as well as others, provided they cost nothing, but if attended with any trouble, i have done with them. the smallest, the most trifling pleasure that is conveniently within my reach, tempts me more than all the joys of paradise. i must except, however, those pleasures which are necessarily followed by pain; i only love those enjoyments which are unadulterated, which can never be the case where we are conscious they must be followed by repentance. it was necessary i should arrive at some place, and the nearest was best; for having lost my way on the road, i found myself in the evening at moudon, where i spent all that remained of my little stock except ten creuzers, which served to purchase my next day's dinner. arriving in the evening at lausanne, i went into an ale-house, without a penny in my pocket to pay for my lodging, or knowing what would become of me. i found myself extremely hungry--setting, therefore, a good face on the matter, i ordered supper, made my meal, went to bed without thought and slept with great composure. in the morning, having breakfasted and reckoned with my host, i offered to leave my waistcoat in pledge for seven batz, which was the amount of my expenses. the honest man refused this, saying, thank heaven, he had never stripped any one, and would not now begin for seven batz, adding i should keep my waistcoat and pay him when i could. i was affected with this unexpected kindness, but felt it less than i ought to have done, or have since experienced on the remembrance of it. i did not fail sending him his money, with thanks, by one i could depend on. fifteen years after, passing lausanne, on my return from italy, i felt a sensible regret at having forgotten the name of the landlord and house. i wished to see him, and should have felt real pleasure in recalling to his memory that worthy action. services which doubtless have been much more important, but rendered with ostentation, have not appeared to me so worthy of gratitude as the simple unaffected humanity of this honest man. as i approached lausanne, i thought of my distress, and the means of extricating myself, without appearing in want to my step-mother. i compared myself, in this walking pilgrimage, to my friend venture, on his arrival at annecy, and was so warmed with the idea, that without recollecting that i had neither his gentility nor his talents, i determined to act the part of little venture at lausanne, to teach music, which i did not understand, and say i came from paris, where i had never been. in consequence of this noble project (as there was no company where i could introduce myself without expense, and not choosing to venture among professional people), i inquired for some little inn, where i could lodge cheap, and was directed to one named perrotet, who took in boarders. this perrotet, who was one of the best men in the world, received me very kindly, and after having heard my feigned story and profession, promised to speak of me, and endeavored to procure me scholars, saying he should not expect any money till i had earned it. his price for board, though moderate in itself, was a great deal to me; he advised me, therefore, to begin with half board, which consisted of good soup only for dinner, but a plentiful supper at night. i closed with this proposition, and the poor perrotet trusted me with great cheerfulness, sparing, meantime, no trouble to be useful to me. having found so many good people in my youth, why do i find so few in my age? is their race extinct? no; but i do not seek them in the same situation i did formerly, among the commonality, where violent passions predominate only at intervals, and where nature speaks her genuine sentiments. in more elevated stations they are entirely smothered, and under the mask of sentiment, only interest or vanity is heard. having written to my father from lausanne, he sent my packet and some excellent advice, of which i should have profited better. i have already observed that i have moments of inconceivable delirium, in which i am entirely out of myself. the adventure i am about to relate is an instance of this: to comprehend how completely my brain was turned, and to what degree i had 'venturised' (if i may be allowed the expression), the many extravagances i ran into at the same time should be considered. behold me, then, a singing master, without knowing how to note a common song; for if the five or six months passed with le maitre had improved me, they could not be supposed sufficient to qualify me for such an undertaking; besides, being taught by a master was enough (as i have before observed) to make me learn ill. being a parisian from geneva, and a catholic in a protestant country, i thought i should change my name with my religion and country, still approaching as near as possible to the great model i had in view. he called himself venture de villeneuve. i changed, by anagram, the name rousseau into that of vaussore, calling myself monsieur vaussore de villeneuve. venture was a good composer, though he had not said so; without knowing anything of the art, i boasted of my skill to every one. this was not all: being presented to monsieur de freytorens, professor of law, who loved music, and who gave concerts at his house, nothing would do but i must give him a proof of my talents, and accordingly i set about composing a piece for his concerts, as boldly as if i had really understood the science. i had the constancy to labor a fortnight at this curious business, to copy it fair, write out the different parts, and distribute them with as much assurance as if they had been masterpieces of harmony; in short (what will hardly be believed, though strictly true), i tacked a very pretty minuet to the end of it, that was commonly played about the streets, and which many may remember from these words, so well known at that time: quel caprice! quel injustice! quio, tu clarice trahiriot tes feux? &'c. venture had taught me this air with the bass, set to other words, by the help of which i had retained it: thus at the end of my composition, i put this minuet and bass, suppressing the words, and uttering it for my own as confidently as if i had been speaking to the inhabitants of the moon. they assembled to perform my piece; i explain to each the movement, taste of execution, and references to his part--i was fully occupied. they were five or six minutes preparing, which were for me so many ages: at length, everything is adjusted, myself in a conspicuous situation, a fine roll of paper in my hand, gravely preparing to beat time. i gave four or five strokes with my paper, attending with "take care!" they begin --no, never since french operas existed was there such a confused discord! the minuet, however, presently put all the company in good humor; hardly was it begun, before i heard bursts of laughter from all parts, every one congratulated me on my pretty taste for music, declaring this minuet would make me spoken of, and that i merited the loudest praise. it is not necessary to describe my uneasiness, or to own how much i deserved it. next day, one of the musicians, named lutold, came to see me and was kind enough to congratulate me on my success. the profound conviction of my folly, shame, regret, and the state of despair to which i was reduced, with the impossibility of concealing the cruel agitation of my heart, made me open it to him; giving, therefore, a loose to my tears, not content with owning my ignorance, i told all, conjuring him to secrecy; he kept his word, as every one will suppose. the same evening, all lausanne knew who i was, but what is remarkable, no one seemed to know, not even the good perrotet, who (notwithstanding what had happened) continued to lodge and board me. i led a melancholy life here; the consequences of such an essay had not rendered lausanne a very agreeable residence. scholars did not present themselves in crowds, not a single female, and not a person of the city. i had only two or three great dunces, as stupid as i was ignorant, who fatigued me to death, and in my hands were not likely to edify much. at length, i was sent for to a house, where a little serpent of a girl amused herself by showing me a parcel of music that i could not read a note of, and which she had the malice to sing before her master, to teach him how it should be executed; for i was so unable to read an air at first sight, that in the charming concert i have just described, i could not possibly follow the execution a moment, or know whether they played truly what lay before them, and i myself had composed. in the midst of so many humiliating circumstances, i had the pleasing consolation, from time to time, of receiving letters from my two charming friends. i have ever found the utmost consolatory virtue in the fair; when in disgrace, nothing softens my affliction more than to be sensible that an amiable woman is interested for me. this correspondence ceased soon after, and was never renewed: indeed it was my own fault, for in changing situations i neglected sending my address, and forced by necessity to think perpetually of myself, i soon forgot them. it is a long time since i mentioned madam de warrens, but it should not be supposed i had forgotten her; never was she a moment absent from my thoughts. i anxiously wished to find her, not merely because she was necessary to my subsistence, but because she was infinitely more necessary to my heart. my attachment to her (though lively and tender, as it really was) did not prevent my loving others, but then it was not in the same manner. all equally claimed my tenderness for their charms, but it was those charms alone i loved, my passion would not have survived them, while madam de warrens might have become old or ugly without my loving her the less tenderly. my heart had entirely transmitted to herself the homage it first paid to her beauty, and whatever change she might experience, while she remained herself, my sentiments could not change. i was sensible how much gratitude i owed to her, but in truth, i never thought of it, and whether she served me or not, it would ever have been the same thing. i loved her neither from duty, interest, nor convenience; i loved her because i was born to love her. during my attachment to another, i own this affection was in some measure deranged; i did not think so frequently of her, but still with the same pleasure, and never, in love or otherwise, did i think of her without feeling that i could expect no true happiness in life while in a state of separation. though in so long a time i had received no news from madam de warrens, i never imagined i had entirely lost her, or that she could have forgotten me. i said to myself, she will know sooner or later that i am wandering about, and will find some means to inform me of her situation: i am certain i shall find her. in the meantime, it was a pleasure to live in her native country, to walk in the streets where she had walked, and before the houses that she had lived in; yet all this was the work of conjecture, for one of my foolish peculiarities was, not daring to inquire after her, or even pronounce her name without the most absolute necessity. it seemed in speaking of her that i declared all i felt, that my lips revealed the secrets of my heart, and in some degree injured the object of my affection. i believe fear was likewise mingled with this idea; i dreaded to hear ill of her. her management had been much spoken of, and some little of her conduct in other respects; fearing, therefore, that something might be said which i did not wish to hear, i preferred being silent on the subject. as my scholars did not take up much of my time, and the town where she was born was not above four leagues from lausanne, i made it a walk of three or four days; during which time a most pleasant emotion never left me. a view of the lake of geneva and its admirable banks, had ever, in my idea, a particular attraction which i cannot describe; not arising merely from the beauty of the prospect, but something else, i know not why, more interesting, which affects and softens me. every time i have approached the vaudois country i have experienced an impression composed of the remembrance of madam de warrens, who was born there; of my father, who lived there; of miss vulson, who had been my first love, and of several pleasant journeys i had made there in my childhood, mingled with some nameless charm, more powerfully attractive than all the rest. when that ardent desire for a life of happiness and tranquility (which ever follows me, and for which i was born) inflames my mind, 'tis ever to the country of vaud, near the lake, in those charming plains, that imagination leads me. an orchard on the banks of that lake, and no other, is absolutely necessary; a firm friend, an amiable woman, a cow, and a little boat; nor could i enjoy perfect happiness on earth without these concomitants. i laugh at the simplicity with which i have several times gone into that country for the sole purpose of seeking this imaginary happiness when i was ever surprised to find the inhabitants, particularly the women, of a quite different disposition to what i sought. how strange did this appear to me! the country and people who inhabit it, were never, in my idea, formed for each other. walking along these beautiful banks, on my way to vevay, i gave myself up to the soft melancholy; my heart rushed with ardor into a thousand innocent felicities; melting to tenderness, i sighed and wept like a child. how often, stopping to weep more at my ease, and seated on a large stone, did i amuse myself with seeing my tears drop into the water. on my arrival at vevay, i lodged at the key, and during the two days i remained there, without any acquaintance, conceived a love for that city, which has followed me through all my travels, and was finally the cause that i fixed on this spot, in the novel i afterwards wrote, for the residence of my hero and heroines. i would say to any one who has taste and feeling, go to vevay, visit the surrounding country, examine the prospects, go on the lake and then say, whether nature has not designed this country for a julia, a clara, and a st. preux; but do not seek them there. i now return to my story. giving myself out for a catholic, i followed without mystery or scruple the religion i had embraced. on a sunday, if the weather was fine, i went to hear mass at assans, a place two leagues distant from lausanne, and generally in company with other catholics, particularly a parisian embroiderer, whose name i have forgotten. not such a parisian as myself, but a real native of paris, an arch-parisian from his maker, yet honest as a peasant. he loved his country so well, that he would not doubt my being his countryman, for fear he should not have so much occasion to speak of it. the lieutenant-governor, m. de crouzas, had a gardener, who was likewise from paris, but not so complaisant; he thought the glory of his country concerned, when any one claimed that honor who was not really entitled to it; he put questions to me, therefore, with an air and tone, as if certain to detect me in a falsehood, and once, smiling malignantly, asked what was remarkable in the 'marcheneuf'? it may be supposed i asked the question; but i have since passed twenty years at paris, and certainly know that city, yet was the same question repeated at this day, i should be equally embarrassed to answer it, and from this embarrassment it might be concluded i had never been there: thus, even when we meet with truths, we are subject to build our opinions on circumstances, which may easily deceive us. i formed no ideas, while at lausanne, that were worth recollecting, nor can i say exactly how long i remained there; i only know that not finding sufficient to subsist on, i went from thence to neutchatel, where i passed the winter. here i succeeded better, i got some scholars, and saved enough to pay my good friend perrotet, who had faithfully sent my baggage, though at that time i was considerably in his debt. by continuing to teach music, i insensibly gained some knowledge of it. the life i led was sufficiently agreeable, and any reasonable man might have been satisfied, but my unsettled heart demanded something more. on sundays, or whenever i had leisure, i wandered, sighing and thoughtful, about the adjoining woods, and when once out of the city never returned before night. one day, being at boudry, i went to dine at a public-house, where i saw a man with a long beard, dressed in a violet-colored grecian habit, with a fur cap, and whose air and manner were rather noble. this person found some difficulty in making himself understood, speaking only an unintelligible jargon, which bore more resemblance to italian than any other language. i understood almost all he said, and i was the only person present who could do so, for he was obliged to make his request known to the landlord and others about him by signs. on my speaking a few words in italian, which he perfectly understood, he got up and embraced me with rapture; a connection was soon formed, and from that moment, i became his interpreter. his dinner was excellent, mine rather worse than indifferent, he gave me an invitation to dine with him, which i accepted without much ceremony. drinking and chatting soon rendered us familiar, and by the end of the repast we had all the disposition in the world to become inseparable companions. he informed me he was a greek prelate, and 'archimandrite' of jerusalem; that he had undertaken to make a gathering in europe for the reestablishment of the holy sepulchre, and showed me some very fine patents from the czarina, the emperor, and several other sovereigns. he was tolerably content with what he had collected hitherto, though he had experienced inconceivable difficulties in germany; for not understanding a word of german, latin, or french, he had been obliged to have recourse to his greek, turkish lingua franca, which did not procure him much in the country he was travelling through; his proposal, therefore, to me was, that i should accompany him in the quality of secretary and interpreter. in spite of my violet-colored coat, which accorded well enough with the proposed employment, he guessed from my meagre appearance, that i should easily be gained; and he was not mistaken. the bargain was soon made, i demanded nothing, and he promised liberally; thus, without any security or knowledge of the person i was about to serve, i gave myself up entirely to his conduct, and the next day behold me on an expedition to jerusalem. we began our expedition unsuccessfully by the canton of fribourg. episcopal dignity would not suffer him to play the beggar, or solicit help from private individuals; but we presented his commission to the senate, who gave him a trifling sum. from thence we went to berne, where we lodged at the falcon, then a good inn, and frequented by respectable company; the public table being well supplied and numerously attended. i had fared indifferently so long, that i was glad to make myself amends, therefore took care to profit by the present occasion. my lord, the archimandrite, was himself an excellent companion, loved good cheer, was gay, spoke well for those who understood him, and knew perfectly well how to make the most of his grecian erudition. one day, at dessert while cracking nuts, he cut his finger pretty deeply, and as it bled freely showed it to the company, saying with a laugh, "mirate, signori; questo a sangue pelasgo." at berne, i was not useless to him, nor was my performance so bad as i had feared: i certainly spoke better and with more confidence than i could have done for myself. matters were not conducted here with the same simplicity as at fribourg; long and frequent conferences were necessary with the premiers of the state, and the examination of his titles was not the work of a day; at length, everything being adjusted, he was admitted to an audience by the senate; i entered with him as interpreter, and was ordered to speak. i expected nothing less, for it never entered my mind, that after such long and frequent conferences with the members, it was necessary to address the assembly collectively, as if nothing had been said. judge my embarrassment!--a man so bashful to speak, not only in public, but before the whole of the senate of berne! to speak impromptu, without a single moment for recollection; it was enough to annihilate me--i was not even intimidated. i described distinctly and clearly the commission of the archimandrite; extolled the piety of those princes who had contributed, and to heighten that of their excellencies by emulation, added that less could not be expected from their well--known munificence; then, endeavoring to prove that this good work was equally interesting to all christians, without distinction of sect; and concluded by promising the benediction of heaven to all those who took part in it. i will not say that my discourse was the cause of our success, but it was certainly well received; and on our quitting the archimandrite was gratified by a very genteel present, to which some very handsome compliments were added on the understanding of his secretary; these i had the agreeable office of interpreting; but could not take courage to render them literally. this was the only time in my life that i spoke in public, and before a sovereign; and the only time, perhaps, that i spoke boldly and well. what difference in the disposition of the same person. three years ago, having been to see my old friend, m. roguin, at yverdon, i received a deputation to thank me for some books i had presented to the library of that city; the swiss are great speakers; these gentlemen, accordingly, made me a long harangue, which i thought myself obliged in honor to answer, but so embarrassed myself in the attempt, that my head became confused, i stopped short, and was laughed at. though naturally timid, i have sometimes acted with confidence in my youth, but never in my advanced age: the more i have seen of the world the less i have been able to adapt its manners. on leaving berne, we went to soleurre: the archimandrite designing to re-enter germany, and return through hungary or poland to his own country. this would have been a prodigious tour; but as the contents of his purse rather increased than diminished during his journey, he was in no haste to return. for me, who was almost as much pleased on horseback as on foot, i would have desired no better than to have travelled thus during my whole life; but it was pre-ordained that my journey should soon end. the first thing we did after our arrival at soleurre, was to pay our respects to the french ambassador there. unfortunately for my bishop, this chanced to be the marquis de bonac, who had been ambassador at the porte, and was acquainted with every particular relative to the holy sepulchre. the archimandrite had an audience that lasted about a quarter of an hour, to which i was not admitted, as the ambassador spoke french and italian at least as well as myself. on my grecian's retiring, i was prepared to follow him, but was detained: it was now my turn. having called myself a parisian, as such, i was under the jurisdiction of his excellency: he therefore asked me who i was? exhorting me to tell the truth; this i promised to do, but entreated a private audience, which was immediately granted. the ambassador took me to his closet, and shut the door; there, throwing myself at his feet, i kept my word, nor should i have said less, had i promised nothing, for a continual wish to unbosom myself, puts my heart perpetually upon my lips. after having disclosed myself without reserve to the musician lutold, there was no occasion to attempt acting the mysterious with the marquis de bonac, who was so well pleased with my little history, and the ingenuousness with which i had related it, that he led me to the ambassadress, and presented me, with an abridgment of my recital. madam de bonac received me kindly, saying, i must not be suffered to follow that greek monk. it was accordingly resolved that i should remain at their hotel till something better could be done for me. i wished to bid adieu to my poor archimandrite, for whom i had conceived an attachment, but was not permitted; they sent him word that i was to be detained there, and in quarter of an hour after, i saw my little bundle arrive. m. de la martiniere, secretary of the embassy, had in a manner the care of me; while following him to the chamber appropriated to my use, he said, "this apartment was occupied under the count de luc, by a celebrated man of the same name as yourself; it is in your power to succeed him in every respect, and cause it to be said hereafter, rousseau the first, rousseau the second." this similarity which i did not then expect, would have been less flattering to my wishes could i have foreseen at what price i should one day purchase the distinction. what m. de la martiniere had said excited my curiosity; i read the works of the person whose chamber i occupied, and on the strength of the compliment that had been paid me (imagining i had a taste for poetry) made my first essay in a cantata in praise of madam de bonac. this inclination was not permanent, though from time to time i have composed tolerable verses. i think it is a good exercise to teach elegant turns of expression, and to write well in prose, but could never find attractions enough in french poetry to give entirely in to it. m. de la martiniere wished to see my style, and asked me to write the detail i had before made the ambassador; accordingly i wrote him a long letter, which i have since been informed was preserved by m. de marianne, who had long been attached to the marquis de bonac, and has since succeeded m. de martiniere as secretary to the embassy of m. de courtellies. the experience i began to acquire tended to moderate my romantic projects; for example, i did not fall in love with madam de bonac, but also felt i did not stand much chance of succeeding in the service of her husband. m. de la martiniere was already in the only place that could have satisfied my ambition, and m. de marianne in expectancy: thus my utmost hopes could only aspire to the office of under secretary, which did not infinitely tempt me: this was the reason that when consulted on the situation i should like to be placed in, i expressed a great desire to go to paris. the ambassador readily gave in to the idea, which at least tended to disembarrass him of me. m. de mervilleux interpreting secretary to the embassy, said, that his friend, m. godard, a swiss colonel, in the service of france, wanted a person to be with his nephew, who had entered very young into the service, and made no doubt that i should suit him. on this idea, so lightly formed, my departure was determined; and i, who saw a long journey to perform with paris at the end of it, was enraptured with the project. they gave me several letters, a hundred livres to defray the expenses of my journey, accompanied with some good advice, and thus equipped i departed. i was a fortnight making the journey, which i may reckon among the happiest days of my life. i was young, in perfect health, with plenty of money, and the most brilliant hopes, add to this, i was on foot, and alone. it may appear strange, i should mention the latter circumstance as advantageous, if my peculiarity of temper is not already familiar to the reader. i was continually occupied with a variety of pleasing chimeras, and never did the warmth of my imagination produce more magnificent ones. when offered an empty place in a carriage, or any person accosted me on the road, how vexed was i to see that fortune overthrown, whose edifice, while walking, i had taken such pains to rear. for once my ideas were all martial: i was going to live with a military man; nay, to become one, for it was concluded i should begin with being a cadet. i already fancied myself in regimentals, with a fine white feather nodding on my hat, and my heart was inflamed by the noble idea. i had some smattering of geometry and fortification; my uncle was an engineer; i was in a manner a soldier by inheritance. my short sight, indeed, presented some little obstacle, but did not by any means discourage me, as i reckoned to supply that defect by coolness and intrepidity. i had read, too, that marshal schomberg was remarkably shortsighted, and why might not marshal rousseau be the same? my imagination was so warm by these follies, that it presented nothing but troops, ramparts, gabions, batteries, and myself in the midst of fire and smoke, an eyeglass in hand, commanding with the utmost tranquility. notwithstanding, when the country presented a delightful prospect, when i saw charming groves and rivulets, the pleasing sight made me sigh with regret, and feel, in the midst of all this glory, that my heart was not formed for such havoc; and soon without knowing how, i found my thoughts wandering among my dear sheep-folds, renouncing forever the labor of mars. how much did paris disappoint the idea i had formed of it! the exterior decorations i had seen at turin, the beauty of the streets, the symmetry and regularity of the houses, contributed to this disappointment, since i concluded that paris must be infinitely superior. i had figured to myself a splendid city, beautiful as large, of the most commanding aspect, whose streets were ranges of magnificent palaces, composed of marble and gold. on entering the faubourg st. marceau, i saw nothing but dirty stinking streets, filthy black houses, an air of slovenliness and poverty, beggars, carters, butchers, cries of diet-drink and old hats. this struck me so forcibly, that all i have since seen of real magnificence in paris could never erase this first impression, which has ever given me a particular disgust to residing in that capital; and i may say, the whole time i remained there afterwards, was employed in seeking resources which might enable me to live at a distance from it. this is the consequence of too lively imagination, which exaggerates even beyond the voice of fame, and ever expects more than is told. i have heard paris so flatteringly described, that i pictured it like the ancient babylon, which, perhaps, had i seen, i might have found equally faulty, and unlike that idea the account had conveyed. the same thing happened at the opera-house, to which i hastened the day after my arrival! i was sensible of the same deficiency at versailles! and some time after on viewing the sea. i am convinced this would ever be the consequence of a too flattering description of any object; for it is impossible for man, and difficult even for nature herself, to surpass the riches of my imagination. by the reception i met with from all those to whom my letters were addressed, i thought my fortune was certainly made. the person who received me the least kindly was m. de surbeck, to whom i had the warmest recommendation. he had retired from the service, and lived philosophically at bagneux, where i waited on him several times without his offering me even a glass of water. i was better received by madam de merveilleux, sister-in-law to the interpreter, and by his nephew, who was an officer in the guards. the mother and son not only received me kindly, but offered me the use of their table, which favor i frequently accepted during my stay at paris. madam de merveilleux appeared to have been handsome; her hair was of a fine black, which, according to the old mode, she wore curled on the temples. she still retained (what do not perish with a set of features) the beauties of an amiable mind. she appeared satisfied with mine, and did all she could to render me service; but no one seconded her endeavors, and i was presently undeceived in the great interest they had seemed to take in my affairs. i must, however, do the french nation the justice to say, they do not so exhaust themselves with protestations, as some have represented, and that those they make are usually sincere; but they have a manner of appearing interested in your affairs, which is more deceiving than words. the gross compliments of the swiss can only impose upon fools; the manners of the french are more seducing, and at the same time so simple, that you are persuaded they do not express all they mean to do for you, in order that you may be the more agreeably surprised. i will say more; they are not false in their protestations, being naturally zealous to oblige, humane, benevolent, and even (whatever may be said to the contrary) more sincere than any other nation; but they are too flighty: in effect they feel the sentiments they profess for you, but that sentiment flies off as instantaneously as it was formed. in speaking to you, their whole attention is employed on you alone, when absent you are forgotten. nothing is permanent in their hearts, all is the work of the moment. thus i was greatly flattered, but received little service. colonel godard for whose nephew i was recommended, proved to be an avaricious old wretch, who, on seeing my distress (though he was immensely rich), wished to have my services for nothing, meaning to place me with his nephew, rather as a valet without wages than a tutor. he represented that as i was to be continually engaged with him, i should be excused from duty, and might live on my cadet's allowance; that is to say, on the pay of a soldier: hardly would he consent to give me a uniform, thinking the clothing of the army might serve. madam de merveilleux, provoked at his proposals, persuaded me not to accept them; her son was of the same opinion; something else was to be thought on, but no situation was procured. meantime, i began to be necessitated; for the hundred livres with which i had commenced my journey could not last much longer; happily, i received a small remittance from the ambassador, which was very serviceable, nor do i think he would have abandoned me had i possessed more patience; but languishing, waiting, soliciting, are to me impossible: i was disheartened, displeased, and thus all my brilliant expectations came once more to nothing. i had not all this time forgotten my dear madam de warrens, but how was i to find her? where should i seek her? madam de merveilleux, who knew my story, assisted me in the search, but for a long time unavailingly; at length, she informed me that madam de warrens had set out from paris about two months before, but it was not known whether for savoy or turin, and that some conjectured she was gone to switzerland. nothing further was necessary to fix my determination to follow her, certain that wherever she might be, i stood more chance of finding her at those places than i could possibly do at paris. before my departure, i exercised my new poetical talent in an epistle to colonel godard, whom i ridiculed to the utmost of my abilities. i showed this scribble to madam de merveilleux, who, instead of discouraging me, as she ought to have done, laughed heartily at my sarcasms, as well as her son, who, i believe, did not like m. godard; indeed, it must be confessed, he was a man not calculated to obtain affection. i was tempted to send him my verses, and they encouraged me in it; accordingly i made them up in a parcel directed to him, and there being no post then at paris by which i could conveniently send this, i put it in my pocket, and sent it to him from auxerre, as i passed through that place. i laugh, even yet, sometimes, at the grimaces i fancy he made on reading this panegyric, where he was certainly drawn to the life; it began thus: tu croyois, vieux penard, qu' une folle manie d' elever ton neveu m'inspireroit l'envie. this little piece, which, it is true, was but indifferently written; did not want for salt, and announced a turn for satire; it is, notwithstanding, the only satirical writing that ever came from my pen. i have too little hatred in my heart to take advantage of such a talent; but i believe it may be judged from those controversies, in which from time to time i have been engaged in my own defence, that had i been of a vindictive disposition, my adversaries would rarely have had the laughter on their side. what i most regret, is not having kept a journal of my travels, being conscious that a number of interesting details have slipped my memory; for never did i exist so completely, never live so thoroughly, never was so much myself, if i dare use the expression, as in those journeys made on foot. walking animates and enlivens my spirits; i can hardly think when in a state of inactivity; my body must be exercised to make my judgmemt active. the view of a fine country, a succession of agreeable prospects, a free air, a good appetite, and the health i gained by walking; the freedom of inns, and the distance from everything that can make me recollect the dependence of my situation, conspire to free my soul, and give boldness to my thoughts, throwing me, in a manner, into the immensity of beings, where i combine, choose and appropriate them to my fancy, without constraint or fear. i dispose of all nature as i please; my heart wandering from object to object, approximates and unites with those that please it, is surrounded by charming images, and becomes intoxicated with delicious sensations. if, attempting to render these permanent, i am amused in describing to myself, what glow of coloring, what energy of expression, do i give them!--it has been said, that all these are to be found in my works, though written in the decline of life. oh! had those of my early youth been seen, those made during my travels, composed, but never written!--why did i not write them? will be asked; and why should i have written them? i may answer. why deprive myself of the actual charm of my enjoyments to inform others what i enjoyed? what to me were readers, the public, or all the world, while i was mounting the empyrean. besides, did i carry pens, paper and ink with me? had i recollected all these, not a thought would have occurred worth preserving. i do not foresee when i shall have ideas; they come when they please, and not when i call for them; either they avoid me altogether, or rushing in crowds, overwhelm me with their force and number. ten volumes a day would not suffice barely to enumerate my thoughts; how then should i find time to write them? in stopping, i thought of nothing but a hearty dinner; on departing, of nothing but a charming walk; i felt that a new paradise awaited me at the door, and eagerly leaped forward to enjoy it. never did i experience this so feelingly as in the perambulation i am now describing. on coming to paris, i had confined myself to ideas which related to the situation i expected to occupy there. i had rushed into the career i was about to run, and should have completed it with tolerable eclat, but it was not that my heart adhered to. some real beings obscured my imagined ones--colonel godard and his nephew could not keep pace with a hero of my disposition. thank heaven, i was soon delivered from all these obstacles, and could enter at pleasure into the wilderness of chimeras, for that alone remained before me, and i wandered in it so completely that i several times lost my way; but this was no misfortune, i would not have shortened it, for, feeling with regret, as i approached lyons, that i must again return to the material world, i should have been glad never to have arrived there. one day, among others, having purposely gone out of my way to take a nearer view of a spot that appeared delightful, i was so charmed with it, and wandered round it so often, that at length i completely lost myself, and after several hours' useless walking, weary, fainting with hunger and thirst, i entered a peasant's hut, which had not indeed a very promising appearance, but was the only one i could discover near me. i thought it was here, as at geneva, or in switzerland, where the inhabitants, living at ease, have it in their power to exercise hospitality. i entreated the countryman to give me some dinner, offering to pay for it: on which he presented me with some skimmed milk and coarse barley--bread, saying it was all he had. i drank the milk with pleasure, and ate the bread, chaff and all; but it was not very restorative to a man sinking with fatigue. the countryman, who watched me narrowly, judged the truth of my story by my appetite, and presently (after having said that he plainly saw i was an honest, good--natured young man, and did not come to betray him) opened a little trap door by the side of his kitchen, went down, and returned a moment after with a good brown loaf of pure wheat, the remains of a well-flavored ham, and a bottle of wine, the sight of which rejoiced my heart more than all the rest: he then prepared a good thick omelet, and i made such a dinner as none but a walking traveller ever enjoyed. when i again offered to pay, his inquietude and fears returned; he not only would have no money, but refused it with the most evident emotion; and what made this scene more amusing, i could not imagine the motive of his fear. at length, he pronounced tremblingly those terrible words, "commissioners," and "cellar-rats," which he explained by giving me to understand that he concealed his wine because of the excise, and his bread on account of the tax imposed on it; adding, he should be an undone man, if it was suspected he was not almost perishing with want. what he said to me on this subject (of which i had not the smallest idea) made an impression on my mind that can never be effaced, sowing seeds of that inextinguishable hatred which has since grow up in my heart against the vexations these unhappy people suffer, and against their oppressors. this man, though in easy circumstances, dare not eat the bread gained by the sweat of his brow, and could only escape destruction by exhibiting an outward appearance of misery!--i left his cottage with as much indignation as concern, deploring the fate of those beautiful countries, where nature has been prodigal of her gifts, only that they may become the prey of barbarous exactors. the incident which i have just related, is the only one i have a distinct remembrance of during this journey: i recollect, indeed, that on approaching lyons, i wished to prolong it by going to see the banks of the lignon; for among the romances i had read with my father, astrea was not forgotten and returned more frequently to my thoughts than any other. stopping for some refreshment (while chatting with my hostess), i inquired the way to forez, and was informed that country was an excellent place for mechanics, as there were many forges, and much iron work done there. this eulogium instantly calmed my romantic curiosity, for i felt no inclination to seek dianas and sylvanders among a generation of blacksmiths. the good woman who encouraged me with this piece of information certainly thought i was a journeyman locksmith. i had some view in going to lyons: on my arrival, i went to the chasattes, to see mademoiselle du chatelet, a friend of madam de warrens, for whom i had brought a letter when i came there with m. le maitre, so that it was an acquaintance already formed. mademoiselle du chatelet informed me her friend had passed through lyons, but could not tell whether she had gone on to piedmont, being uncertain at her departure whether it would not be necessary to stop in savoy; but if i choose, she would immediately write for information, and thought my best plan would be to remain at lyons till she received it. i accepted this offer; but did not tell mademoiselle du chatelet how much i was pressed for an answer, and that my exhausted purse would not permit me to wait long. it was not an appearance of coolness that withheld me, on the contrary, i was very kindly received, treated on the footing of equality, and this took from me the resolution of explaining my circumstances, for i could not bear to descend from a companion to a miserable beggar. i seem to have retained a very connecting remembrance of that part of my life contained in this book; yet i think i remember, about the same period, another journey to lyons, (the particulars of which i cannot recollect) where i found myself much straitened, and a confused remembrance of the extremities to which i was reduced does not contribute to recall the idea agreeably. had i been like many others, had i possessed the talent of borrowing and running in debt at every ale-house i came to, i might have fared better; but in that my incapacity equalled my repugnance, and to demonstrate the prevalence of both, it will be sufficient to say, that though i have passed almost my whole life in indifferent circumstances, and frequently have been near wanting bread, i was never once asked for money by a creditor without having it in my power to pay it instantly; i could never bear to contract clamorous debts, and have ever preferred suffering to owing. being reduced to pass my nights in the streets, may certainly be called suffering, and this was several times the case at lyons, having preferred buying bread with the few pence i had remaining, to bestowing them on a lodging; as i was convinced there was less danger of dying for want of sleep than of hunger. what is astonishing, while in this unhappy situation, i took no care for the future, was neither uneasy nor melancholy, but patiently waited an answer to mademoiselle du chatelet's letter, and lying in the open air, stretched on the earth, or on a bench, slept as soundly as if reposing on a bed of roses. i remember, particularly, to have passed a most delightful night at some distance from the city, in a road which had the rhone, or soane, i cannot recollect which, on the one side, and a range of raised gardens, with terraces, on the other. it had been a very hot day, the evening was delightful, the dew moistened the fading grass, no wind was stirring, the air was fresh without chillness, the setting sun had tinged the clouds with a beautiful crimson, which was again reflected by the water, and the trees that bordered the terrace were filled with nightingales who were continually answering each other's songs. i walked along in a kind of ecstasy, giving up my heart and senses to the enjoyment of so many delights, and sighing only from a regret of enjoying them alone. absorbed in this pleasing reverie, i lengthened my walk till it grew very late, without perceiving i was tired; at length, however, i discovered it, and threw myself on the step of a kind of niche, or false door, in the terrace wall. how charming was the couch! the trees formed a stately canopy, a nightingale sat directly over me, and with his soft notes lulled me to rest: how pleasing my repose; my awaking more so. it was broad day; on opening my eyes i saw the water, the verdure, and the admirable landscape before me. i arose, shook off the remains of drowsiness, and finding i was hungry, retook the way to the city, resolving, with inexpressible gayety, to spend the two pieces of six francs i had yet remaining in a good breakfast. i found myself so cheerful that i went all the way singing; i even remember i sang a cantata of batistin's called the baths of thomery, which i knew by heart. may a blessing light on the good batistin and his good cantata, which procured me a better breakfast than i had expected, and a still better dinner which i did not expect at all! in the midst of my singing, i heard some one behind me, and turning round perceived an antonine, who followed after and seemed to listen with pleasure to my song. at length accosting me, he asked, if i understood music. i answered, "a little," but in a manner to have it understood i knew a great deal, and as he continued questioning of me, related a part of my story. he asked me, if i had ever copied music? i replied, "often," which was true: i had learned most by copying. "well," continued he, "come with me, i can employ you for a few days, during which time you shall want for nothing; provided you consent not to quit my room." i acquiesced very willingly, and followed him. this antonine was called m. rotichon; he loved music, understood it, and sang in some little concerts with his friends; thus far all was innocent and right, but apparently this taste had become a furor, part of which he was obliged to conceal. he conducted me into a chamber, where i found a great quantity of music: he gave me some to copy, particularly the cantata he had heard me singing, and which he was shortly to sing himself. i remained here three or four days, copying all the time i did not eat, for never in my life was i so hungry, or better fed. m. rolichon brought my provisions himself from the kitchen, and it appeared that these good priests lived well, at least if every one fared as i did. in my life, i never took such pleasure in eating, and it must be owned this good cheer came very opportunely, for i was almost exhausted. i worked as heartily as i ate, which is saying a great deal; 'tis true i was not as correct as diligent, for some days after, meeting m. rolichon in the street, he informed me there were so many omissions, repetitions, and transpositions, in the parts i had copied, that they could not be performed. it must be owned, that in choosing the profession of music, i hit on that i was least calculated for; yet my voice was good and i copied neatly; but the fatigue of long works bewilders me so much, that i spend more time in altering and scratching out than in pricking down, and if i do not employ the strictest attention in comparing the several parts, they are sure to fail in the execution. thus, through endeavoring to do well, my performance was very faulty; for aiming at expedition, i did all amiss. this did not prevent m. rolichon from treating me well to the last, and giving me half-a-crown at my departure, which i certainly did not deserve, and which completely set me up, for a few days after i received news from madam de warrens, who was at chambery, with money to defray the expenses of my journey to her, which i performed with rapture. since then my finances have frequently been very low, but never at such an ebb as to reduce me to fasting, and i mark this period with a heart fully alive to the bounty of providence, as the last of my life in which i sustained poverty and hunger. i remained at lyons seven or eight days to wait for some little commissions with which madam de warrens had charged mademoiselle du chatelet, who during this interval i visited more assiduously than before, having the pleasure of talking with her of her friend, and being no longer disturbed by the cruel remembrance of my situation, or painful endeavors to conceal it. mademoiselle du chatelet was neither young nor handsome, but did not want for elegance; she was easy and obliging while her understanding gave price to her familiarity. she had a taste for that kind of moral observation which leads to the knowledge of mankind, and from her originated that study in myself. she was fond of the works of le sage, particularly gil blas, which she lent me, and recommended to my perusal. i read this performance with pleasure, but my judgment was not yet ripe enough to relish that sort of reading. i liked romances which abounded with high-flown sentiments. thus did i pass my time at the grate of mademoiselle du chatelet, with as much profit as pleasure. it is certain that the interesting and sensible conversation of a deserving woman is more proper to form the understanding of a young man than all the pedantic philosophy of books. i got acquainted at the chasattes with some other boarders and their friends, and among the rest, with a young person of fourteen, called mademoiselle serre, whom i did not much notice at that time, though i was in love with her eight or nine years afterwards, and with great reason, for she was a most charming girl. i was fully occupied with the idea of seeing madam de warrens, and this gave some respite to my chimeras, for finding happiness in real objects i was the less inclined to seek it in nonentities. i had not only found her, but also by her means, and near her, an agreeable situation, having sent me word that she had procured one that would suit me, and by which i should not be obliged to quit her. i exhausted all my conjectures in guessing what this occupation could be, but i must have possessed the art of divination to have hit it on the right. i had money sufficient to make my journey agreeable: mademoiselle du chatelet persuaded me to hire a horse, but this i could not consent to, and i was certainly right, for by so doing i should have lost the pleasure of the last pedestrian expedition i ever made; for i cannot give that name to those excursions i have frequently taken about my own neighborhood, while i lived at motiers. it is very singular that my imagination never rises so high as when my situation is least agreeable or cheerful. when everything smiles around me, i am least amused; my heart cannot confine itself to realities, cannot embellish, but must create. real objects strike me as they really are, my imagination can only decorate ideal ones. if i would paint the spring, it must be in winter; if describe a beautiful landscape, it must be while surrounded with walls; and i have said a hundred times, that were i confined in the bastile, i could draw the most enchanting picture of liberty. on my departure from lyons, i saw nothing but an agreeable future, the content i now with reason enjoyed was as great as my discontent had been at leaving paris, notwithstanding, i had not during this journey any of those delightful reveries i then enjoyed. my mind was serene, and that was all; i drew near the excellent friend i was going to see, my heart overflowing with tenderness, enjoying in advance, but without intoxication, the pleasure of living near her; i had always expected this, and it was as if nothing new had happened. meantime, i was anxious about the employment madam de warrens had procured me, as if that alone had been material. my ideas were calm and peaceable, not ravishing and celestial; every object struck my sight in its natural form; i observed the surrounding landscape, remarked the trees, the houses, the springs, deliberated on the cross-roads, was fearful of losing myself, yet did not do so; in a word, i was no longer in the empyrean, but precisely where i found myself, or sometimes perhaps at the end of my journey, never farther. i am in recounting my travels, as i was in making them, loath to arrive at the conclusion. my heart beat with joy as i approached my dear madam de warrens, but i went no faster on that account. i love to walk at my ease, and stop at leisure; a strolling life is necessary to me: travelling on foot, in a fine country, with fine weather and having an agreeable object to terminate my journey, is the manner of living of all others most suited to my taste. it is already understood what i mean by a fine country; never can a flat one, though ever so beautiful, appear such in my eyes: i must have torrents, fir trees, black woods, mountains to climb or descend, and rugged roads with precipices on either side to alarm me. i experienced this pleasure in its utmost extent as i approached chambery, not far from a mountain which is called pas de l'echelle. above the main road, which is hewn through the rock, a small river runs and rushes into fearful chasms, which it appears to have been millions of ages in forming. the road has been hedged by a parapet to prevent accidents, which enabled me to contemplate the whole descent, and gain vertigoes at pleasure; for a great part of my amusement in these steep rocks, is, they cause a giddiness and swimming in my head, which i am particularly fond of, provided i am in safety; leaning, therefore, over the parapet, i remained whole hours, catching, from time to time, a glance of the froth and blue water, whose rushing caught my ear, mingled with the cries of ravens, and other birds of prep that flew from rock to rock, and bush to bush, at six hundred feet below me. in places where the slope was tolerably regular, and clear enough from bushes to let stones roll freely, i went a considerable way to gather them, bringing those i could but just carry, which i piled on the parapet, and then threw down one after the other, being transported at seeing them roll, rebound, and fly into a thousand pieces, before they reached the bottom of the precipice. near chambery i enjoyed an equal pleasing spectacle, though of a different kind; the road passing near the foot of the most charming cascade i ever saw. the water, which is very rapid, shoots from the top of an excessively steep mountain, falling at such a distance from its base that you may walk between the cascade and the rock without any inconvenience; but if not particularly careful it is easy to be deceived as i was, for the water, falling from such an immense height, separates, and descends in a rain as fine as dust, and on approaching too near this cloud, without perceiving it, you may be wet through in an instant. at length i arrived at madam de warrens; she was not alone, the intendant-general was with her. without speaking a word to me, she caught my hand, and presenting me to him with that natural grace which charmed all hearts, said: "this, sir, is the poor young man i mentioned; deign to protect him as long as he deserves it, and i shall feel no concern for the remainder of his life." then added, addressing herself to me, "child, you now belong to the king, thank monsieur the intendant, who furnishes you with the means of existence." i stared without answering, without knowing what to think of all this; rising ambition almost turned my head; i was already prepared to act the intendant myself. my fortune, however, was not so brilliant as i had imagined, but it was sufficient to maintain me, which, as i was situated, was a capital acquisition. i shall now explain the nature of my employment. king victor amadeus, judging by the event of preceding wars, and the situation of the ancient patrimony of his fathers, that he should not long be able to maintain it, wished to drain it beforehand. resolving, therefore, to tax the nobility, he ordered a general survey of the whole country, in order that it might be rendered more equal and productive. this scheme, which was begun under the father, was completed by the son: two or three hundred men, part surveyors, who were called geometricians, and part writers, who were called secretaries, were employed in this work: among those of the latter description madam de warrens had got me appointed. this post, without being very lucrative, furnished the means of living eligibly in that country; the misfortune was, this employment could not be of any great duration, but it put me in train to procure something better, as by this means she hoped to insure the particular protection of the intendant, who might find me some more settled occupation before this was concluded. i entered on my new employment a few days after my arrival, and as there was no great difficulty in the business, soon understood it; thus, after four or five years of unsettled life, folly, and suffering, since my departure from geneva, i began, for the first time, to gain my bread with credit. these long details of my early youth must have appeared trifling, and i am sorry for it: though born a man, in a variety of instances, i was long a child, and am so yet in many particulars. i did not promise the public a great personage: i promised to describe myself as i am, and to know me in my advanced age it was necessary to have known me in my youth. as, in general, objects that are present make less impression on me than the bare remembrance of them (my ideas being all from recollection), the first traits which were engraven on my mind have distinctly remained: those which have since been imprinted there, have rather combined with the former than effaced them. there is a certain, yet varied succession of affections and ideas, which continue to regulate those that follow them, and this progression must be known in order to judge rightly of those they have influenced. i have studied to develop the first causes, the better to show the concatenation of effects. i would be able by some means to render my soul transparent to the eyes of the reader, and for this purpose endeavor to show it in every possible point of view, to give him every insight, and act in such a manner, that not a motion should escape him, as by this means he may form a judgment of the principles that produce them. did i take upon myself to decide, and say to the reader, "such is my character," he might think that if i did not endeavor to deceive him, i at least deceived myself; but in, recounting simply all that has happened to me, all my actions, thoughts, and feelings, i cannot lead him into an error, unless i do it wilfully, which by this means i could not easily effect, since it is his province to compare the elements, and judge of the being they compose: thus the result must be his work, and if he is then deceived the error will be his own. it is not sufficient for this purpose that my recitals should be merely faithful, they must also be minute; it is not for me to judge of the importance of facts, i ought to declare them simply as they are, and leave the estimate that is to be formed of them to him. i have adhered to this principle hitherto, with the most scrupulous exactitude, and shall not depart from it in the continuation; but the impressions of age are less lively than those of youth; i began by delineating the latter: should i recollect the rest with the same precision, the reader, may, perhaps, become weary and impatient, but i shall not be dissatisfied with my labor. i have but one thing to apprehend in this undertaking: i do not dread saying too much, or advancing falsities, but i am fearful of not saying enough, or concealing truths. victor hugo _his life and work_ by g. barnett smith, author of 'shelley: a critical biography,' 'poets and novelists,' etc. _with a portrait of victor hugo._ london: ward and downey, , york street, covent garden. . [_all rights reserved._] [illustration: victor hugo] i inscribe this volume to algernon charles swinburne, rejoicing thus to connect the great bard and prophet of france with the english singer of a younger day, who has drunk deeply of the master's spirit. _g. b. s._ preliminary note. i began this study of victor hugo in december last, and arrangements were made for its early publication. the great poet has now passed away, and this melancholy event gives the biographical portion of the present volume a completeness not originally anticipated. notwithstanding the multitude of criticisms which have appeared in our own and other languages upon hugo's works, this is the only book which relates the full story of his life, and now traces to its close his literary career. more than twenty years have elapsed since the publication of madame hugo's memorials of the earlier portion of the poet's history, and since that time m. barbou's work (excellently translated by miss frewer) is the only narrative of a biographical character which has appeared. the writings of various french and english critics, the two works i have named, and those valuable chroniclers, the journals of london and paris, have been of considerable service to me in the preparation of the biography now offered to the public. the writings of victor hugo are so varied and multifarious, and many of them are so well known to english readers, that i have not deemed it necessary to subject them to a detailed analysis. at the same time, the reader unfamiliar with these powerful works will, i trust, be able to gather something of their purport and scope from the ensuing pages. as they have impressed all minds, moreover, by their striking originality, i thought that it would not be without its value if, while venturing to record my own impressions, i gave at the same time a representation of critical contemporary opinion upon them. finally, it has been my object to present to the reader, within reasonable compass, a complete survey of the life and work of the most celebrated frenchman of the nineteenth century. g. barnett smith. highgate, london, n., _june rd, _. contents. chapter page i. early years ii. dawnings of genius iii. victor hugo's humanitarianism iv. the triumph of romanticism v. 'notre-dame de paris' vi. 'marion de lorme' and other dramas vii. last dramatic writings viii. the french academy ix. personal and political x. the poet in exile xi. in guernsey.--'les misÉrables' xii. literary and dramatic xiii. paris and the siege xiv. 'quatre-vingt-treize.'--politics, etc. xv. poems on religion xvi. public addresses, etc. xvii. 'la lÉgende des siÈcles,' etc. xviii. honours to victor hugo xix. personal and miscellaneous xx. the poet's death and burial xxi. genius and characteristics victor hugo: his life and work. chapter i. early years. the glory of france touched its zenith at the period when our narrative opens. europe virtually lay at the feet of napoleon, who had risen to a height of authority and power which might well have satisfied the most vaulting ambition. nations whose records extended back into the ages of antiquity trembled before him; and only one people, that of this sea-girt isle of britain, declined to bend the knee to the all-conquering first consul. yet the philosophic mind, reflecting that the stability of a nation or a throne must be measured by its growth, must surely have distrusted the permanence of a grandeur and a greatness thus rapidly achieved. and speedily would such prevision have been justified, for in little more than one brief decade the sun of napoleon set as suddenly as it arose. but while as yet the fame and the splendour of the conqueror were in their noonday, there was born at besançon another child of genius, whose triumphs were to be won in a different and a nobler sphere. he was destined to touch, as with ithuriel's spear, the sleeping spirit of french poesy, and to animate it with new life, vigour, and enthusiasm; he was to recall the divine muse from the drear region of classicism, and, by revivifying almost every branch of imaginative literature, he was himself to gain the triple crown of poet, romancist, and dramatist. and not alone for this was the child victor hugo to grow into manhood and venerable age. he was to become a great apostle of liberty, and as his life opened with the triumphs of the first napoleon, so before its close he was destined to behold the last of that name pass away in the whirlwind, and france recover much of her prosperity and her power under the ægis of the republic, of which the poet sang and for which he laboured. the ancestry of victor hugo were not undistinguished. documents concerning them before the fifteenth century were lost in the pillage of nancy, but since that time a clear genealogy is claimed. there was one hugo, a soldier, who obtained in letters patent of nobility for himself and his descendants from cardinal jean de lorraine, archbishop of rheims, which letters were subsequently confirmed by the cardinal's brother, antoine, duke of lorraine. the fifth descendant from this warrior-noble, charles hyacinthe hugo, obtained new letters patent; and his grandson, joseph leopold sigisbert, was the father of the poet. in the seventeenth century, a member of the hugo family was known both in the church and in literature, and became abbé of estival and bishop of ptolemais. another who lived in the eighteenth century, louis antoine hugo, was a member of the convention, and was executed for moderatism. thus in career, as in character, there was much variety in the hugo family. sigisbert hugo, who entered the army as a cadet in , ultimately attained the rank of general under the first empire. although the hereditary title of count was the appanage of this rank, he never took it up. while brave and fearless in war, he is represented as being devotion and goodness personified, and humane to a fault. 'he set his children a fine example of duty, being ever their instructor in the paths of honour.' during a period of military service at nantes, he became acquainted with sophie trébuchet, the daughter of a wealthy shipowner. an attachment soon sprang up between them, and they were married in paris, hugo having been summoned thither as reporter to the first council of war on the seine. though the grandfather of victor hugo on the maternal side was engaged in commerce, he belonged to an old family, and one famous in la vendée for its devotion to the royalist cause. a cousin of madame hugo was the count de chasseboeuf, better known as volney, the author of _les ruines_; and another cousin was count cornet, who was very prominent in political matters both before and during the first empire. two sons were born to major hugo and his wife, and then they looked forward with hope to the birth of a daughter, whom it was decided to name victorine. another son, however, came instead, and one so weakly and diminutive that the accoucheur declared strongly against his chances of life. the babe was taken to the mairie at besançon, and registered as having been born on the th of february, . he received the names of victor marie hugo, and his godfather was major hugo's intimate friend, general lahorie, chief of the staff to general moreau. it has been pointed out that the word hugo in old german was the equivalent of the latin word _spiritus_, and this fact, combined with the christian name of victor, caused dumas the elder to say that 'the name of victor hugo stands forth as the conquering spirit, the triumphant soul, the breath of victory.' but for some time there could be little presage of triumph or victory in connection with victor hugo. languid and ailing in body, he became unusually sad for a child of such tender years, and 'was sometimes discovered in a corner, weeping silently without any reason.' he afterwards described his untoward childhood in the opening lines of the _feuilles d'automne_. for some time the hugo family accompanied its head in his military journeyings; but when major hugo was ultimately ordered to join the army of italy, he settled his wife and their three young children in paris, in the rue de clichy. that the youngest scion of the house could not really have been as feeble and frail as he looked, and that he must have had the basis of a good, sound constitution, is proved by his long life; but we must not forget also in this regard the great care and assiduous attention lavished upon him by his mother. his career furnishes another illustration of the truth that while the most glorious promise sometimes sets in gloom and premature death, on the other hand genius also not infrequently advances from the wavering spark to a noble flame, and out of weakness is made strength. major (afterwards general) hugo rendered conspicuous service in italy by the capture of the notorious bandit chief, fra diavolo, and the pacification of naples. for these acts he was made colonel of royal corsica and governor of avellino. when not quite five years old victor was taken by his mother, with his brothers, abel and eugène, to avellino, and the journey to italy is associated with his first observations of natural scenery. though so young, his imagination was fired by all he saw, and the impressions he formed were very distinct--so much so that in after life he would discuss with alexandre dumas the aspects of the country through which he had travelled in his childhood. in colonel hugo was sent to madrid in the train of joseph bonaparte; but, as spain was disturbed by war, he would not hazard the presence of his wife and children in that country. madame hugo accordingly went to paris, and established herself at the house no. , in the impasse des feuillantines, where she now devoted herself to the education of her children. late in life, victor hugo described the household in the feuillantines. near by there was an aged priest, who acted as tutor to the boys, teaching them a good deal of latin, a smattering of greek, and the barest outlines of history. in the gardens, and amid the ruins of an old convent in the grounds, the hugo boys passed many happy days. 'together in their work and in their play, rough-hewing their lives regardless of destiny, they passed their time as children of the spring, mindful only of their books, of the trees, and of the clouds, listening to the tumultuous chorus of the birds, but watched over incessantly by one sweet and loving smile.' 'blessings on thee, o my mother!' was the invocation of the poet in his later years. once the family received an accession in the person of general lahorie, who had been connected with moreau's conspiracy, and was condemned to death for contumacy. madame hugo, in her secluded dwelling, and in a little chapel buried amongst the foliage, gave him a secure shelter for eighteen months. young victor did not then know that the stranger in whom he took so deep an interest, and in whom he begat an equal interest, was his godfather. lahorie took kindly to the boy, and frequently conversed with him, saying to him on one occasion with great impressiveness, 'child, everything must yield to liberty!' the precautions of lahorie and his friends were in the end of no avail. in he was arrested at the feuillantines, tried and condemned by court-martial, and shot on the plain of grenelle. napoleon was implacable in his revenge; his wrath might sleep, but it was never allowed to die. another visitor to the feuillantines was general louis hugo, uncle to the youths. with that strong poetic imagery which characterized him, little victor said that the entrance of his uncle into the salon 'had on us the effect of the archangel michael appearing on a beam of light.' the visitor came at the request of his brother to hasten the departure of the family for spain. the boys hugo were informed by their mother that they must learn spanish, and just as they would have performed much more impossible feats under such a command, they acquired the language in the course of a few weeks. in the spring of , madame hugo and her children began their journey into spain. at bayonne they had to await a convoy for madrid. here the travellers paid several visits to the theatre, which made a deep impression upon victor, yet one which, while more lasting perhaps, was not so deep as that made by the little daughter of a widow, who seems to have quite captivated the boy. he afterwards referred to this attachment as bearing the same relation to love that the light of dawn bears to the full blaze of day. but he never saw again the youthful _inamorata_ who stirred 'the first cry of the awakening heart.' the dilatory progress of the convoy to madrid, though irksome to madame hugo, was not so to her youngest son. he delighted in observing the features of the scenery and the towns through which they passed. with ernani he was especially pleased, and subsequently gave to one of his dramas the name of this town. after a number of adventures, some of them of a trying character, the convoy entered madrid, and madame hugo and her family were accommodated at the palace of prince masserano. their rooms and all the appointments were very sumptuous, and there was a great display of bohemian and venetian glass and magnificent china vases. concerning the latter, victor hugo said that he had 'never since met with any so remarkable.' victor's eldest brother, abel, was made a page to king joseph, and it was intended that victor himself should follow his example. meanwhile eugène and victor were placed in the seminary of nobles, a proceeding which affected them deeply, and made them inexpressibly miserable after the happiness they had found in the masserano palace. but great and dire events were impending in napoleonic history. by the beginning of the year the position of french affairs generally became so threatening that general hugo decided to send his wife and the two younger children back to paris. not many months elapsed before his prescience was justified. bonaparte's army was decimated by the inclement snows of russia after the burning of moscow, and the kings he had set up in the european capitals began to tremble for the stability of their thrones. madame hugo and her two sons safely reached paris after a tedious journey, and once more established themselves in the feuillantines. the biographical work written by the poet's wife shows that madame hugo had liberal ideas on the subject of education: that where religion was in question she was averse to forcing any particular persuasion on her sons, or to interfere with their natural tendencies; neither did she wish to tax their intelligence any more than their consciences. in the matter of reading she was equally liberal: the boys were allowed the greatest freedom, and read rousseau, voltaire, diderot, and other authors; but the works of such writers paled in comparison with captain cook's travels, which had a great fascination for the young students. madame hugo judged that any errors her sons were likely to imbibe in their wide and catholic reading would be rendered innocuous by the influence of a good example and the purity of the home life. she restrained them by her authority, and, while attending to their mental and moral development, she did not neglect the physical. she desired them to grow up healthy and complete in mind and body alike. the troubles in spain thickened apace, and king joseph left madrid, being followed by general hugo. the victory of the allies at vittoria practically settled the fate of joseph bonaparte and the spanish crown. the king dismissed his retinue of officers and retired into private life, and general hugo returned to paris with his son abel. madame hugo and the other children had moved into the rue du cherche-midi. having herself been an invader, it was now the turn of france to be invaded. general hugo was no favourite with the emperor (who had not forgotten the moreau conspiracy), but when his country was in danger he could not remain inactive. so he volunteered, and went into the provinces, where he rendered conspicuous service. he long held thionville, keeping the allies at bay, and refused to open the town until he received official despatches from his general-in-chief announcing the cessation of hostilities. the restoration of the bourbons followed, and, although this was hailed with great joy by madame hugo, it led to general hugo being deprived of his command and removed from active employment, together with all the officers who had shared in the defence of thionville. eugène and victor hugo now lost the liberty they had for some time enjoyed, and were sent to school, being placed in the collége cordier et decotte, in the rue ste. marguerite. at first the removal was especially bitter to victor, as it separated him from adèle foucher, a young girl who had completely won his youthful heart. this love continued to grow from its inception in the rue du cherche-midi till the time when adèle became his devoted wife, and returned victor hugo's affection with an ardour equal to his own. the hugo boys were naturally the subject of a cross-fire in regard to politics. their father was devoted to the empire, and their mother was equally devoted to the royalists. but as the influence of a mother always has priority in regard to time, victor hugo was for a season enthusiastic about royalty. he could not, with his warm temperament and lively imagination, be half-hearted about anything. nor need it surprise us that he yielded first to the influence of his mother as regarded the bourbons, and then to that of his father as regarded the bonapartes. in youth it is the imagination which is developed; the judgment is formed by slow stages. it would have surprised us more if victor hugo had not shown himself amenable to the potent influences of his home training. his father and mother were of no ordinary type; they had both great latent force of nature and character, which deeply impressed itself upon their children. in estimating the career of victor hugo, then, with its later changes of opinion, the circumstances which surrounded his early years, and greatly assisted in moulding his character, must not be forgotten. early in paris was electrified by the news that napoleon had returned from elba. for a brief period the magic of his name once more exercised a profound influence; and under this revival of bonapartist prospects general hugo was again despatched to take the command of thionville. he exhibited the same capacity and spirit as before, but all was of no avail. the crowning disaster of waterloo extinguished the hopes of the bonapartists, and napoleon fell, 'like lucifer, never to rise again.' it is matter for regret that the differences between general and madame hugo on the subject of politics and dynasties led to a separation between them, though one that was mutually desired. each felt too strongly on these subjects to give way, and thereby stultify his or her convictions. but political disagreements did not affect the deep interest of both parents in their children. the boys made great progress at school, and also attended courses of lectures in physics, philosophy, and mathematics at the collége louis-le-grand. their proficiency was especially marked in mathematics, and it obtained for both honourable mention in the examinations. poetry, however, even thus early, was the real mistress of victor hugo. his tentative efforts in this direction were as varied as they were numerous, and he has left an amusing record of his first wooings of the muse. he alternated fights at the college (he and eugène were the kings of the school) with flights of the imagination. nothing came amiss to him, whether ode, satire, epistle, lyric, tragedy, elegy, etc.; and he imitated ossian and translated from virgil, horace, and lucan at an age when others only just begin to acquire an appreciation and understanding of those authors. nor were such writers as martial and ausonius unknown to him. then from poetry he would turn to romances, fables, stories, epigrams, madrigals, logographs, acrostics, charades, enigmas, and impromptus; and he even wrote a comic opera. in one of these youthful pieces he deprecated the exercise of the reader's satirical rage over the effusion; and certainly the chief impression which these initial attempts at composition leave upon the reader is not a critical one founded upon their manifest crudity and inconsequences of thought, but one of surprise at the exuberance of fancy and command of expression so soon and so singularly displayed. there was more than sufficient in them to the observant eye to foreshadow the genius which their author afterwards developed. each of these poems was an effort of the imagination after strength of wing. but of all those who perused these early poetic efforts, madame hugo was probably the only one able to gauge the great promise of the writer. she could not but anticipate much from that genius which was just essaying to unfold itself in the sun. yet even she could not fully foresee the magnificent, eagle-like flights of which these imaginings were but the first faint flutterings of the eaglet's wing. chapter ii. dawnings of genius. victor hugo was not quite thirteen when he wrote his first poetical essay, which had for its subject _roland and chivalry_. this was followed in the same year, , by an intensely royalist poem, and one breathing indignation against the emperor, after the disaster of waterloo. the poet had been thrown constantly into the midst of royalist influences and surroundings; not only his mother, but general lahorie and m. foucher, her most intimate friends, were enemies of the empire, and the youth consequently imbibed at the same time hatred of the empire and love of the bourbons. his first tragedy, _irtamène_, was written in honour of louis xviii., and though professedly dealing with egyptian themes, it was really a defence of the french king. there is a usurper in it, who meets with condign chastisement, and the play ends with the coronation of the legitimate monarch. 'those who hate tyrants should love kings,' said the writer, to whom at that time the restoration of the bourbons meant liberty. but these things must not be made too much of. the poet was at that nebulous stage when the fact of writing poetry was more to him than the subject-matter of his exercises. he read voluminously, but he had not as yet begun to separate, to weigh, and to discriminate. a course of the _théâtre de voltaire_ led him to begin a new tragedy, _athéli; or, the scandinavians_, all in dramatic order, with its five acts, and its due regard to narrative, scenery, etc. before he had completed it, however, he turned to a comic opera, _a quelque chose hasard est bon_. then he reverted to the drama, and wrote a play in three acts, with two interludes, entitled _inez de castro_. from the point of view of literary art, little is to be said of these things; but there are many scattered passages in them which reveal remarkable insight on the part of one so young. in the year he first sought publicity for his compositions, competing for the poetical prize annually offered by the french academy. the subject chosen was, _the advantages of study in every situation of life_, and amongst the competitors were lebrun, delavigne, saintine, and loyson, who all on this occasion made their poetical debut. the first prize was divided between saintine and lebrun, and hugo received honourable mention; but when the poems came to be declaimed in public, the warmest applause followed that by victor hugo. the academy judges were considerably puzzled by master hugo's exercise. in one place he wrote as though he had arrived at years of discretion and comparative maturity, and then demolished this idea by the lines-- 'i, who have ever fled from courts and cities, scarce three short lustres have accomplished yet.' the judges came to the conclusion that the young poet was playing with them, and in their report accordingly threw doubt upon his statement that he was only fifteen years old. the production of his birth certificate set this question at rest, and victor's name now became prominent in the newspapers. m. raynouard, the cultured secretary of the academy, finding that the 'most potent, grave, and reverend signors' had not been deceived, expressed the great pleasure he had in making the youthful competitor's acquaintance. other distinguished men followed suit, and hugo was described as 'the sublime child,' either by chateaubriand or soumet. the evidence points to the latter having first made use of this phrase, but its origin matters little, for chateaubriand fully adopted it, remarking that anyone might naturally have used the words, they expressed so decided a truth. hugo was taken by a friend to see the author of _atala_, and the impression made upon his mind by this man of genius found utterance in the exclamation, 'i would be chateaubriand or nothing.' in victor's brother eugène was awarded a prize at the floral games of toulouse. the younger brother's ambition was touched, and in the following year he secured two prizes from the same academy for his poems on _the statue of henry iv._, and _the virgins of verdun_. the former poem gained the golden lily, and the latter the golden amaranth. it seems that just as the writer was about to set to work on the first-named poem, madame hugo was seized with inflammation of the chest. she lamented that her son would be unable to complete his poem in time; but he set to work, wrote it in a single night, and it was despatched next morning in time to compete for the prize. the president of the toulouse academy admitted that it was an enigma for one so young to exhibit such remarkable talents in literature. a poem, _moses on the nile_, gained him a third prize at toulouse, and this constituted him master of the floral games, so that at the age of eighteen he became a provincial academician. he was still royalist in his opinions, and on the few occasions when he was in the company of his father, the latter did not attempt to change his views, feeling that it would be useless to attempt to set the arguments of a few hours against a daily and hourly influence. but he had a true apprehension of his son's character, and on one occasion, when victor had expressed himself warmly in favour of the vendeans, general hugo turned to general lucotte, and said: 'let us leave all to time. the child shares his mother's views; the man will have the opinions of his father.' victor hugo was now the subject of conflicting claims. there was the law, which he had chosen as a profession, with its demands upon him, and there was literature, which he loved too much to surrender; while at the same time love and politics also claimed their share in him. he determined to throw himself ardently into literature. separated from the object of his youthful affections, he wrote his _han d'islande_, in which, while there are many crimes and horrors, there are also passages of tenderness, wherein he sought to embalm and reveal his feelings of love. his courage sustained him through many trials, but at last he was called upon to bear one that made a profound impression upon his heart. madame hugo, who was now living in the rue mézières, was seized with serious illness after working in her garden, which was her favourite occupation. for some time she struggled successfully with the disease, but it had obtained too firm a hold upon her, and she died suddenly on the th of june, . on the evening of the funeral, adèle foucher, unconscious of what had occurred, was dancing at a party given in celebration of her birthday. next morning victor called upon her, and the lovers, mingling their tears together, mutually renewed their old vows of attachment. victor, to whom life had seemed without an object on the death of his mother, speedily found another after his betrothal to adèle. her parents no longer actively opposed the union, but stipulated for its postponement until victor could provide a home. in conjunction with several friends, hugo had already founded the _conservateur littéraire_, to which he contributed articles on sir walter scott, byron, moore, etc., and a number of political satires. he had a sum of seven hundred francs, upon which he subsisted for a year, and the method by which he did it will be found related in the experiences of marius in _les misérables_. translations from lucan and virgil, which appeared under the name of d'auverney, and the epistles from aristides to brutus on _thou_ and _you_, emanated from his pen. he also wrote a very noticeable article on lamartine's _méditations poétiques_, which had just appeared. then came the first instalment of his own _odes et ballades_, a work in which his genius began to attain a fuller freedom and a richer expression. the volume was received with very wide favour, and though, as m. barbou has observed, it presents many ideas that would find no approval now, the poet, nevertheless, declared that he could proudly and conscientiously place the work side by side with the democratical books and poems of his matured manhood. this, he said, he should be prepared to do, because in 'the fierce strife against early prejudices imbibed with a mother's milk, and in the slow rough ascent from the false to the true, which to a certain extent makes up the substance of every man's life, and causes the development of his conscience to be the type of human progress in general; each step so taken represents some material sacrifice to moral advancement, some interest abandoned, some vanity eschewed, some worldly benefit renounced--nay, perhaps, some risk of home or even life incurred.' this justification may fairly be accepted, but from another aspect also these _odes_ are worthy of attention. they were the first noble efforts of the poet to emancipate french poetry from the trammels which had too long governed it, and which had rendered it almost dead, and effete alike in spirit and in form. at length imagination was to resume its rightful sway, and exhibit some return to its pristine vigour. the _odes_ not only brought the author friends like Émile deschamps and alfred de vigny, but they were pecuniarily successful. the first edition yielded him a profit of seven hundred francs, and a second quickly followed. the attention of the king was called to the poems, and the interest his majesty took in them, together with a romantic incident in connection with the saumur plot, led to a pension of , francs being conferred upon the poet from the king's privy purse. he now thought he was entitled to press the question of his marriage. his father, who had married again, offered no opposition; the fouchers also gave way, and bestowed the hand of their daughter adèle upon the young and now successful poet. victor hugo had shortly before this made the acquaintance of the celebrated priest lamennais, and it was from his hands that he received the certificate of confession required before he could get married. 'i trust with all my heart,' wrote the priest, 'that god will bless this happy union, which he appears himself to have prepared by implanting in you a long and unchanged affection, and a mutual love as pure as it is sweet.' the saumur plot, to which i have referred, took place in , and amongst those implicated in it was a young man named delon, who had been an intimate friend of victor hugo in his childhood. on hearing of delon's danger, hugo wrote to the conspirator's mother, offering an asylum for her son in his own house, and remarking that as the writer was well known for his devotion to the bourbons, he would never be sought in such a retreat. this letter fell into the hands of the king, but instead of its prejudicing him against victor hugo, he generously said, 'that young man has a good heart as well as great genius; he is an honourable fellow; i shall take care he has the next pension that falls vacant.' this was the origin of the poet's pension, which was in nowise due to an expressed wish or desire on his own part. _hans of iceland_, the first published romance of victor hugo, appeared anonymously in . the work at once attracted attention by reason of its graphic power and the startling nature of its contrasts. it combines horror with tenderness, the deepest gloom with flashes of the purest light. the author himself had a great affection for it, on the personal ground already mentioned. but its chief features are of a different order. in this northern romance, as one critic has observed, the youthful novelist has turned to great account the savage wilds, gloomy lakes, stormy seas, pathless caves, and ruined fortresses of scandinavia. 'a being savage as the scenery around him--human in his birth, but more akin to the brute in his nature; diminutive, but with a giant's strength; whose pastime is assassination, who lives literally as well as metaphorically on blood--is the hero; and round this monster are grouped some of the strangest, ghastliest, and yet not wholly unnatural beings which it is possible for the imagination to conceive--spiagudry, the keeper of the dead-house, or _morgue_, of drontheim, and orugex, the state executioner--while gentler forms, the noble and persecuted schumacker, and the devoted and innocent ethel, relieve the monotony of crime and horror.' m. charles nodier, one of the ablest of french contemporary critics, in a review of the work in the _quotidienne_, remarked upon the fact that there were men of a certain organization, to whom glory and distinction were temptations, just as happiness and pleasure tempted other men. 'precocious intellects and deep sensibility do not take the future into consideration--they devour their future. the passions of a young and powerful mind know no to-morrow; they look to satiate their ambition and their hopes with the reputation and excitement of the present moment. _han d'islande_ has been the result of this kind of combination, if indeed one can describe as a combination that which is only the thoughtless instinct of an original genius, who obeys, without being aware of it, an impulse at variance with his true interests, but whose fine and wide career may not improbably justify this promise of excellence, and may hereafter redeem all the anxiety he has caused by the excusable error he committed when he first launched himself upon the world.' m. nodier then discussed with much freedom, and yet with almost as much fairness, the peculiar features of the romance, its close and painful search into the morbidities of life, its pictures of the scaffold and the _morgue_, etc., as well as its strong local colouring, its historical truth, its learning, its wit, and its vigorous and picturesque style. the author and his critic became personally acquainted. the latter called upon victor hugo, who, after other changes of abode, had now established himself in the rue de vaugirard. a second pension of , francs had been awarded him by the king; hence his migration into comparatively sumptuous quarters. other literary friendships besides that with m. nodier were formed as the result of victor hugo's first romance. at this period he wrote an ode on the _arc de triomphe de l'Étoile_, and there were many indications that his early royalist opinions were in process of abandonment. he visited his father at blois, and the general was not slow to observe the changes taking place in his son's views. while he could not admire napoleon personally, he began to do justice to those who had planted the french standard in all the capitals of europe. but it seemed as though the king was resolved to retain him by favours, for there was now conferred upon him the coveted badge of the legion of honour. he attended the coronation of charles x. at rheims, and from thence went to pay a visit to lamartine. a project was formed and a treaty signed with a publisher, by which m. lamartine, victor hugo, m. charles nodier, and m. taylor engaged to prepare a work detailing a poetical and picturesque trip to mont blanc and the valley of chamouni. for four meditations lamartine was to receive , francs, hugo , for four odes, taylor , for eight drawings, and nodier , for all the text. the travellers set out, hugo being accompanied by his wife and child. on reaching geneva--after a temporary arrest of hugo, some time before, on account of the delay of his passport in its journey from paris--the visitors found the police regulations very annoying. each hotel possessed a register, in which every traveller was bound to write his name, his age, his profession, the place from whence he came, and his object in travelling. m. nodier was so exasperated that in reply to the last query he wrote, 'come to upset your government.' for a few moments the hotel-keeper was not unnaturally electrified. the travellers got their jaunt, but owing to the insolvency of the publisher with whom they had arranged, the literary scheme was never carried out. in ascending the alps to the mer de glace, victor hugo had a narrow escape. his guide, who was new to the business, took the wrong path, and landed the visitor upon a dangerous tongue of ice. from this he was rescued with great difficulty, and for several moments, which seemed like hours, he was suspended over a terrible abyss. victor hugo wrote a description of the journey from sallenches to chamouni, which was translated by madame hugo, and published in her sketch of the poet. _bug jargal_, the second romance by victor hugo, but the earliest in point of time, was published in . it had been originally written for the _conservateur littéraire_; but after its appearance there, it was almost entirely remodelled and rewritten. it is a tale of the insurrection in st. domingo. the essential improbability of such a character as bug jargal (by what means did the author get such an uncouth name?), a negro of the noblest moral and intellectual character, passionately in love with a white woman, has been unfavourably commented upon. the hero is represented as not only tempering the wildest passion with the deepest respect, but he even sacrifices life itself at last in behalf of the woman of his love, and of her husband. it was objected that this was too violent a call upon the imagination, but knowledge of the negro character would tend to prove that such a devotion as bug jargal's is by no means impossible. in any case, as the novelist is allowed great license, this objection cannot be regarded as fatal to the romance. notwithstanding its alleged defects of plot, however, this story has many enthralling passages. no reader is likely to forget 'the scenes in the camp of the insurgent chief biassou, or the death-struggle between habihrah and d'auverney on the brink of the cataract. the latter, in particular, is drawn with such intense force, that the reader seems almost to be a witness of the changing fortunes of the fight, and can hardly breathe freely till he comes to the close.' whatever else these early romances demonstrated, or failed to demonstrate, they were at least inspired by enthusiasm, and tinged with aspirations of a noble order. the genius of the author had drawn towards him the admiration, and very speedily the friendship, of such men as m. méry, the journalist; m. rabbe, author of the 'history of the popes;' m. achille devéria and m. louis boulanger, the eminent artists; m. sainte-beuve, one of the most incisive of critics, and others whose names have since occupied considerable space in the roll of fame. hugo was indefatigable in his literary efforts. _la revue française_, a periodical which unfortunately had but a brief existence, bore testimony to this, as well as his poetical miscellany entitled _la muse française_. he also wrote a criticism upon voltaire, which was afterwards reprinted in his _mélanges de littérature_; but this estimate did not reveal the breadth of view which the writer manifested in later years, when he passed an eloquent eulogium upon the philosopher of ferney. for a new edition of the _odes_ issued in , and now separated from the _ballades_, the author wrote an introduction in which he distinctly unfolded his principles of liberty in the realm of literature. he expressed his belief that 'in a literary production the bolder the conception the more irreproachable should be the execution;' and he added that liberty need not result in disorder. it was the first occasion on which the claims of what was called, for want of a better word, romanticism were formally promulgated by a writer eminent in that school. we shall shortly see how victor hugo translated these ideas into a concrete form in his works. meantime, in february, , an incident occurred which led to a stirring poem by hugo, and one which made him friends in a new quarter, while it lost them in an old one. it appears that at a ball given by the austrian ambassador in paris, the distinguished french marshals who attended were deliberately shorn of their legitimate titles. thus, the duke of taranto was announced as marshal macdonald; the duke of dalmatia as marshal soult; the duke of treviso as marshal mortier, and so on. the insult was studied and deliberate on the part of the ambassador; 'austria, humiliated by titles which recalled its defeats, publicly denied them. the marshals had been invited in order to show contempt for their victories, and the empire was insulted in their persons. they immediately quitted the embassy in a body.' victor hugo's blood was stirred by this incident, and, without counting the cost, he took his revenge. throwing all the weight of his indignation into the _ode à la colonne_, he hurled that effusion at the enemies of france. he was now only anxious to show that he was a frenchman first, and a vendéan afterwards. the ode made a great sensation, but it had a wider effect than its author anticipated. the opposition welcomed him as one of themselves, for in celebrating the marshals had not the poet celebrated the empire? the royalists, on the other hand, seeing this bitter attack upon the austrians, who were the most powerful friends of the bourbons, naturally thought that victor hugo had abandoned the royalist cause. neither side could quite understand how such a burst of invective as that witnessed in the ode might be due alone to the outraged feelings of a frenchman, without being intended in the least to partake of the nature of a political manifesto. to these fierce partisans, party was everything; to victor hugo it was the nation that was everything. but his rupture with the royalists is naturally enough traced to this period. he and they could never be the same again to each other. the poet passed now from his admiration of the bourbons to an acknowledgment of the glory and prowess of the empire, as at a later period he pressed still further forward, and hailed the fuller liberty of republican france. chapter iii. victor hugo's humanitarianism. in victor hugo published anonymously his _le dernier jour d'un condamné_ ('the last day of a convict'). it thrilled the heart of paris by its vivid recitals. while having no pretensions to the character of a regular tale, it was, as a writer in the _edinburgh review_ remarked, one of the most perfect things the author had as yet produced. it was the representation of one peculiar state of mind--that of a criminal faced by the certainty of his approaching death under the guillotine. like sterne, hugo had taken a single captive, shut him up in his dungeon, and 'then looked through the twilight of the grated door, to take his picture.' the work is a chronicle of thoughts, a register of sensations; and it is amazing to see what variety and dramatic movement may be imparted to a monologue in which the scene shifts only from, the bicètre to the conciergerie, the hôtel de ville, and the place de grève. few descriptions could be found in literature to vie with that in which victor hugo places the criminal before us as he enters the court to receive his sentence on a lovely august morning. but all the incidents attending the trial, the condemnation, and the execution are depicted with graphic skill and powerful energy. no one knows better than victor hugo how to relieve unutterable gloom by some brilliant ray of human affection, and so upon this condemned prisoner he causes to break a temporary vision of youth and innocence. the intensity all through this piece is such as to give the reader a strange realization of the criminal, with his weight of guilt, and his terrible and conflicting emotions. but the critic of the _edinburgh_ would have us believe that all this was merely due to a desire by victor hugo to exhibit his literary skill. he even calls it absurd to regard the sketch as a pleading against the punishment of death, and roundly denies that the author had any such esoteric purpose. unfortunately for him, there is conclusive evidence to prove that victor hugo had a deeper intent in this painful representation than a mere literary play upon the feelings. in a preface to the edition of he distinctly avows his purpose: 'it is the author's aim and design that posterity should recognise in his work _not_ a mere special pleading for any one particular criminal, which is always easy and always transitory, but a general and permanent appeal in behalf of all the accused, alike of the present and of the future. its great point is the right of humanity urged upon society.' moreover, there is another powerful argument to be considered. ever since victor hugo had been deeply moved on the question of capital punishment, and resolved to labour for its abolition. it will be convenient here to review briefly his public utterances on the subject, both before and subsequent to the appearance of _le dernier jour d'un condamné_. we shall thereby be enabled to keep the literary and personal thread of our narrative intact. in the year above named victor hugo had seen louvel, the murderer of the duke of berry, on his way to the scaffold. the culprit was a being for whom he had not the slightest sympathy; but his fate begat pity, and he began to reflect on the anomaly that society should, in cold blood, commit the same act as that which it punished. from that time, observes madame hugo, he had an idea of writing a book against the guillotine. two executions which he witnessed during the next few years strengthened his convictions, and led to the work we have already discussed. subsequently he wrote _claude gueux_, founded upon the sad and miserable story of a man of that name. gueux was condemned to death in for a crime to which the pangs of hunger had impelled him. the case was doubly painful from the fact that the father of claude, a very old man, had been sentenced to a punishment in the prison of clairvaux, and the son, in order to bring help to him, committed an act whose consequences brought him within the walls of the same prison. strenuous exertions were made by hugo and others to save gueux, but the council of ministers rejected the appeal. the man was executed, and a noble protest which victor hugo afterwards issued greatly moved the public conscience, and rendered society still more familiar with the writer's views. in may, , one barbès was condemned to death for his share in the insurrection in the place royale. victor hugo immediately sent this message of appeal to the king: 'by your guardian-angel fled away like a dove, by your royal child, a sweet and frail reed, pardon yet once more, pardon in the name of the tomb! pardon in the name of the cradle!' the king, against the advice of his ministers, insisted on pardoning barbès. more than twenty years afterwards the latter figured as a character in _les misérables_, and a correspondence, alike honourable to both, ensued between him and the author. twice as a peer of france victor hugo was called upon to give verdicts in cases where capital punishment would follow conviction, and in both instances he voted in favour of perpetual imprisonment and against the death-penalty. when the question of capital punishment came before the assembly in , victor hugo ascended the tribune and made an impassioned speech, from which i take these extracts: 'what is the penalty of death? it is the especial and eternal mark of barbarism. wherever the penalty is, death is common, barbarism dominates; wherever the penalty of death is rare, civilization reigns supreme. you have just acknowledged the principle that a man's private dwelling should be inviolate; we ask you now to acknowledge a principle much higher and more sacred still--the inviolability of human life. the nineteenth century will abolish the penalty of death. you will not do away with it, perhaps, at once; but be assured, either you or your successors will abolish it. i vote for the abolition, pure, simple, and definitive, of the penalty of death.' in march, , victor hugo made an unsuccessful appeal in the case of daix, condemned to death for the affair of bréa; and in the following year the poet himself appeared as an advocate in the court of assize. he defended his eldest son, charles hugo, who had been summoned for protesting in his journal, _l'Évènement_, against the execution, which had been accompanied by revolting circumstances. in the course of his eloquent pleadings, victor hugo said: 'the real culprit in this matter, if there is a culprit, is not my son. it is i myself. i, who, for a quarter of a century, have not ceased to battle against all forms of the irreparable penalty--i, who, during all this time, have never ceased to advocate the inviolability of human life.... yes, i assert it, this remains of barbarous penalties--this old and unintelligent law of retaliation--this law of blood for blood--i have battled against it all my life; and, so long as there remains one breath in my body, i will continue to battle against it with all my power as an author, and with all my acts and votes as a legislator. and i make this declaration'--(_the pleader here stretched out his arm towards the crucifix at the end of the hall above the tribunal_)--'before the victim of the penalty of death, whose effigy is now before us, who is now looking down upon us, and who hears what i utter. i swear it, i say, before this sacred tree, on which, nearly two thousand years ago, and for the instruction of men to the latest generation, the laws, instituted by men, fastened with accursed nails the divine son of god!' in conclusion, the orator exclaimed, 'my son! thou wilt this day receive a great honour. thou art judged worthy of fighting, perhaps of suffering, for the sacred cause of truth. from to-day thou enterest the just and true manly life of our time, the struggle for the true. be proud, thou who art now admitted to the ranks of those who battle for the human and democratic idea! thou art seated on the bench where béranger and lamennais have sat.' notwithstanding his father's defence, which powerfully moved the whole court, charles hugo was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. while living in exile in jersey, in , victor hugo made an appeal on behalf of a man who was to be hanged in guernsey. one of his letters was addressed to the people of guernsey, who petitioned, but in vain, for the life of the convict tapner. another was addressed to lord palmerston, who gave the usual orders for the execution; and probably no english minister ever received, either before or since, a communication couched in such burning and passionate language. the writer was literally overwhelming in his indignant rhetoric. for john brown, of harper's ferry, the anti-slavery enthusiast, victor hugo put in a strong plea with the united states. he told that country that 'brown's executioner would neither be the attorney hunter, nor the judge parker, nor the governor wyse, nor the state of virginia; it would be, though one shudders to think it, and still more to say it, the great american republic itself.... when we consider that this nation is the glory of the whole earth; that, like france, england, and germany, it is one of the organs of civilization, that it has even gone beyond europe in certain sublime strokes of bold progress, that it is at the summit of the whole world, that it wears on its brow the star of liberty, we are tempted to affirm that john brown will not die; for we shrink back horrified at the idea of so great a crime being committed by so great a nation!' the writer predicted that 'the murder of brown would make in the union a rent, at first concealed, but which would end by splitting it asunder.' john brown was executed, and hugo's prediction was verified. the south did indeed discover that the spirit of brown was 'marching on'; and the american union was for a time convulsed to its centre, ostensibly on the ground of union, but practically on account of slavery. brown, the martyr, was justified by the event, and slavery was abolished in the united states. during the year , a belgian jury pronounced, on a single occasion only, nine sentences of death. thereupon a writer, assuming the name of victor hugo, published some verses in the belgian journals, imploring the king's pardon for the nine convicts. hugo's attention was drawn to the verses, when he replied that he was quite willing for his name to be used, or even abused, in so good a cause. as his _alter ego_ had addressed the king, so he now addressed the nation. he called upon it to arrest this great sacrifice of life, and to abolish the scaffold. 'it would be a noble thing that a small people should give a lesson to the great, and by this fact alone should become greater than they. it would be a fine thing that, in the face of the abominable growth of darkness, in the presence of a growing barbarism, belgium, taking the place of a great power in civilization, should communicate to the human race by one act the full glare of light.' the sentence of seven of the condemned men was commuted, but the two remaining convicts were executed. when the republic of geneva revised its constitution in , the principal question remitted to the people was the abolition of the punishment of death. m. bost, a genevese author, appealed to victor hugo for his intervention in the discussion. the poet replied by a long and exhaustive communication, in which he reviewed the leading cases in various european countries where the scaffold had recently been called into requisition, and he closed with this exordium: 'o people of geneva, your city is situate on a lake in the garden of eden! you live in a blessed place! all that is most noble in creation surrounds you! the habitual contemplation of the beautiful reveals the truth and imposes duties on you! your civilization ought to be in harmony with nature. take counsel of all these merciful marvels. believe in your sky so bright; and as goodness descends from the sky, abolish the scaffold. be not ungrateful. let it not be said that in gratitude, and, as it were, in exchange for this admirable corner of the earth, where god has shown to man the sacred splendour of the alps, the arve and the rhone, the blue lake, and mont blanc in the glory of sunlight, man has offered to the deity the spectacle of the guillotine.' the question had already been decided by the retention of the scaffold when this letter reached geneva, but victor hugo now addressed the people. his second letter had an immense effect, and secured the rejection of the constitution proposed by the conservatives. it also brought over a great number of adherents to the cause of abolition, which ultimately triumphed. on many subsequent occasions, and notably in connection with italy and portugal, victor hugo wrote and strove for the abolition of capital punishment. in france his pressing personal appeals more than once availed to procure a commutation of the death-punishment. to his _last day of a convict_ was due the introduction of extenuating circumstances in the criminal laws of france, and he projected a work to be entitled _le dossier de la peine de mort_. it is not my intention here, nor, indeed, is it necessary, to discuss the arguments which may be advanced for or against capital punishment. it has been simply my object to present victor hugo in a light which, while it may divide men in their judgments, will unite them in their sympathies. the cases i have cited will be more than sufficient to demonstrate that noble enthusiasm of humanity which forms so conspicuous a feature in victor hugo's character. chapter iv. the triumph of romanticism. the war between the two great schools of french poetry, the classic and the romantic, passed into an acute stage shortly before the publication of victor hugo's _cromwell_. romanticism meant more than was implied in the definition of madame de staël, viz., the transference to french literature of 'the poetry originating in the songs of the troubadours, the offspring of chivalry and christianity.' victor hugo, and men of a kindred if not an equal genius, were engaged in a struggle for the very life and soul of poetry. poetic genius in france was wrapped in the grave-clothes of classicism; it was a corpse that needed galvanizing into life; and it was practically victor hugo who rose and said, 'loose her, and let her go.' goethe had already fought the battle of literary freedom from old superstitions in germany, and byron had done the same in england. it was now the turn of france to feel the new gush of life, and to gather strength and lustre in the revival. as m. asselineau has observed of the french romanticists, 'to their sincerity, their detestation of tediousness, their sympathy with life and joy and freshness, as well as to their youthful audacity, that was not abashed either by ridicule or insult, belongs the honour of securing to the nineteenth century the triumph of liberty, invaluable for its preciousness in the world of art.' and in enumerating the leaders of the movement, he cites as the most prominent and influential, chateaubriand, victor hugo, madame de staël, lamartine, dumas, alfred de vigny, balzac, george sand, théophile gautier, mérimée, philarète chasles, alfred de musset, and jules janin. certainly the influence that developed the talents of such a galaxy of genius, so far from being despised, should be acclaimed as a force worthy of all admiration. it was one, in fact, that practically saved french literature from expiring of inanition. but the romantics were fiercely assailed; so fiercely that victor hugo said, if they had been thieves, murderers, and monsters of crime, they could not have been exposed to severer condemnation. duvergier de hauranne treated romanticism as a brain disease, and recommended a careful diagnosis of those suffering from it, in order to recover for them gradually their lost senses. but pleasantries such as these were not likely to affect a man in severe earnest. the literary revolutionaries of the cénacle club, whose leading spirit was victor hugo, laughed at the denunciations hurled against them, knowing that their opportunity had come. there was only one writer who, having put his hand to the plough, turned backward. this was sainte-beuve. the temper of his mind was critical, and after the first burst of enthusiasm with which he hailed the new school, and under whose influence he for a time joined it, had spent itself, he threw off his allegiance to the movement, and vowed that he had never really belonged to the reforming band. victor hugo soon gave a pledge, though not in some respects a successful one, of the sincerity of his own convictions. m. taylor, commissaire royal at the comédie française, and afterwards widely known in the world of art, asked the poet on one occasion why he never wrote for the theatre. hugo replied that he was thinking of doing so, and had already commenced a drama on the subject of cromwell. 'a cromwell of your writing should only be acted by talma,' said taylor; and he forthwith arranged a meeting between the famous tragedian and the dramatist. talma was at that time greatly depressed, taking gloomy views of the stage, and asserting that his own career had been a failure--had never fulfilled its ends. no one knew what he might have been, he confided to hugo, but now he expected to die without having really acted once. nevertheless, from the genius of hugo he did look for something original, and he had always longed to act cromwell. in response, the author explained his intentions with regard to the proposed play, and also his views upon the drama generally. these views he afterwards enlarged upon in the preface to the play. he asserted that there were three epochs in poetry, each corresponding to an era in society; and these were the ode, the epic, and the drama. 'primitive ages are the lyric, ancient times the heroic, and modern times the dramatic. the ode sings of eternity, the epic records history, the drama depicts life.... the characters of the ode are colossal--adam, cain, noah; those of the epic are gigantic--achilles, atreus, orestes; those of the drama are human--hamlet, othello, macbeth. the ode contemplates the ideal; the epic, the sublime; the drama, the real. and, to sum up the whole, this poetical triad emanates from three fountain-heads--the bible, homer, and shakespeare.' in _cromwell_, urged hugo, he intended to substitute a drama for a tragedy, a real man for an ideal personage, reality for conventionalism; the piece was to pass from the heroic to the positive; the style was to include all varieties, epic, lyric, satiric, grave, comic; and there were to be no verses for effect. the author repeated his first line, '_demain, vingt-cinq juin, mil six cent cinquante-sept_,' which was certainly ludicrously matter-of-fact. talma was delighted with the whole idea, and begged the poet to complete his work at once. unfortunately the actor died soon afterwards, and the dramatist now went leisurely on with his play. while engaged upon the preface he saw some shakespearean dramas performed in english at the odéon, and the representations affected him deeply, and tinged his dramatic views. at the close of _cromwell_ was published, and great indeed was the controversy to which it gave rise. the period dealt with was not what would be considered one of the most dramatic in the career of the protector. it was that 'when his ambition made him eager to realize the benefits of the king's death,' when, having attained what any other man would have reckoned the summit of fortune, being not only master of england, but by his army, his navy, and his diplomacy, master of europe too, he was urged onwards to fulfil the visions of his youth, and to make himself a king. cromwell's final relinquishment of the kingly idea, with the preliminary stages which led up to his resolution, were delineated with subtle power and psychological skill. but it was not the play so much as its preface--which the author put forward as the manifesto of himself and his literary friends--that stirred the gall of the critics. a writer in the _gazette de france_, referring to hugo's avowed aim to break 'all those threads of spiders' web with which the army of liliput have undertaken to chain the drama whilst slumbering,' reminded him that in this liliputian army there were some dwarfs to be found not so despicable after all; and amongst others stood out those men who had written for the stage from _le cid_ down to _cromwell_. 'but what would these men be worth in the eyes of him who calls shakespeare the god of the theatre? it is necessary to possess some strength to venture to attack giants; and when one undertakes to dethrone writers whom whole generations have united in admiring, it would be advisable to fight them with weapons which, if not equal to theirs, are at least so constructed as to have some chance.' m. de rémusat in _le globe_ endeavoured to hold the scales of justice between the contending parties, while the famous preface acted as a rallying-cry for the supporters of the new principles. m. soumet, hugo's old friend, wrote concerning the drama: 'it seems to me full of new and daring beauties; and although in your preface you spoke mercilessly of mosses and climbing ivy, i cannot do less than acknowledge your admirable talent, and i shall speak of your work--grand in the style of michael angelo--as i formerly spoke of your odes.' about the time of the publication of _cromwell_, victor hugo was severely visited in his domestic relations. madame foucher, his wife's mother, and a woman of many and great virtues, passed away; and on the th of january, , the poet's father died suddenly of apoplexy. the general and his second wife had been quite reconciled to victor and his brothers, and the government had once more recognised the title of the old soldier as general of division. he was happy in the affection of his sons, his daughter-in-law, and victor hugo's two children--léopoldine and charles. on the evening of his death he had spent several happy hours with the poet, but in the night the apoplexy struck him with the rapidity of a shot, and he immediately expired. the incident, as may be imagined, profoundly affected the sensitive and impressionable spirit of victor hugo. some years before these events, victor hugo had, in conjunction with m. soumet, written a play entitled _amy robsart_, founded upon scott's _kenilworth_. not being able to agree as to the value of each other's contributions, the two authors separated, each bearing away his own dramatic goods. hugo afterwards handed over his play to his brother-in-law, paul foucher, who produced the piece in his own name at the odéon. it was loudly hissed. there were passages in it that unmistakably bore the impress of victor hugo, and the latter chivalrously wrote to the newspapers to say that those parts which had been hissed were his own work. this acknowledgment drew a number of young men to the theatre, who were as loud in their applause as a large portion of the audience were in their condemnation. altogether, matters became so lively that the government interfered, and, to allay the tumult, interdicted the play. in the rue notre-dame des champs there were some rare meetings of poets and wits, when victor hugo and alfred de musset would recite poems composed during the day, and mérimée and sainte-beuve would engage in arguments. m. henri beyle, m. louis boulanger, and m. eugène delacroix were also to be seen there; and once the venerable benjamin constant was a guest. when béranger was condemned to three months' imprisonment for one of his songs, victor hugo visited him in his cell. he found that the french burns, though obnoxious to the authorities, was the idol of the populace. his cell was generally full of visitors, and he was inundated with pâtés, game, fruit, and wine. another great stride in romanticism was made by the publication of victor hugo's _orientales_, which appeared in . these lyrical poems were full of energy and inspiration, and it was clear that the very antithesis of the classical style had now been reached. they enhanced the reputation of the writer, while they charmed all readers by their freshness, simplicity, and vigour. in july, , a brilliant company assembled at hugo's house to listen to the reading of a new play by the poet, the famous _marion de lorme_, originally called _a duel under richelieu_. the writer, it was soon seen, had avoided the faults which marked the construction of _cromwell_, and had produced a real drama, and one well adapted for stage representation. the company present at the reading included balzac, delacroix, alfred de musset, mérimée, sainte-beuve, alfred de vigny, dumas, deschamps, and taylor. dumas, with the generous frankness which always characterized him, afterwards wrote respecting the play: 'i listened with admiration the most intense, but yet an admiration that was tinged with sadness, for i felt that i could never attain to such a powerful style. i congratulated hugo very heartily, telling him that i, deficient in style as i was, had been quite overwhelmed by the magnificence of his.' but there was one point upon which dumas, supported by sainte-beuve and mérimée, pleaded, and pleaded successfully. not feeling satisfied that didier should meet his death without forgiving marion, hugo yielded to the pressure put upon him, and altered the drama accordingly. the news of a new play by victor hugo brought forward the managers at once, but it had already been promised to m. taylor for the théâtre français. however, there was the ordeal of the censors yet to pass through, and fears were entertained as to the fourth act, in which louis xiii. was described as a hunter, and represented as governed by a priest--points in which everybody would see a resemblance to charles x. permission to perform the play was refused. victor hugo appealed to the king, who removed from office the minister of the interior (m. de martignac), the dramatist's chief enemy, and promised to read the offending act himself. having done so, his majesty declined to give his sanction to the representation of the drama, but by way of a solatium granted the poet a fresh pension of , francs. hugo was indignant, and at once wrote declining the pension, upon which the _constitutionnel_ remarked, 'youth is less easily corrupted than the ministers think.' with regard to the drama itself, it has been well remarked that 'had marion, in spite of her heroism and her repentance, been adequately chastised for her lapse from virtue, probably much of the sentimentality would have been avoided, which, although now exploded, at the time caused a great depravity of taste, and invested the "dames aux camellias" and the "mimis" of bohemian life with an interest that they did not deserve.' undismayed by what had occurred, victor hugo now devoted himself to the composition of another drama, and his _hernani_ was shortly in the hands of m. taylor for production. the censors again interfered, and in the course of a very impertinent report, observed that the play was 'a tissue of extravagances, generally trivial, and often coarse, to which the author has failed to give anything of an elevated character. yet while we animadvert upon its flagrant faults, we are of opinion that not only is there no harm in sanctioning the representation of the piece, but that it would be inadvisable to curtail it by a single word. it will be for the benefit of the public to see to what extremes the human mind will go, when freed from all restraint.' these literary censors did, however, require the alteration or removal of certain passages in which the kingly state and dignity were handled with too much freedom; and they forbade the name of jesus to be used throughout the piece. the supporters of the classical drama strenuously exerted themselves to prevent the play from being produced, but in vain. of course, this creation of a new style meant the decline of the old one. the play went into rehearsal, and the author had a passage of arms with mademoiselle mars, who took the part of doña sol. this lady, whose power had made her imperious, found her master in hugo, and when threatened with the loss of her part, she consented to deliver a disputed phrase as written. the time for production came, and when the author was asked to name his systematic applauders, according to custom, he declined to do so, stating that there would be no systematic applause. the play excited the liveliest curiosity. benjamin constant was amongst those who earnestly begged for seats, and m. thiers wrote personally to the author for a box. the literary friends of victor hugo attended in great numbers, including gautier, borel, and balzac. the theatre was crowded, and the feeling of all parties intense. as the play progressed from act to act, nevertheless, it gained in its hold upon the audience. when the fourth act closed, m. maine, a publisher, sought out victor hugo, and offered him , francs for the play, but the matter, he said, must be decided at once. the author protested, remarking that the success of the piece might be less complete at the end. 'ah, that's true, but it may be much greater,' replied the publisher. 'at the second act i thought of offering , francs; at the third act i got up to , ; i now at the fourth act offer , ; and after the fifth i am afraid i should have to offer , .' hugo laughingly concluded the bargain for , francs, and went with the eager publisher into a tobacco shop to sign a roughly improvised agreement. the play concluded brilliantly, mademoiselle mars securing a great triumph in the last act. the whole house applauded vociferously, and the triumph of romanticism was complete. the literary war which ensued was very fierce. in the provinces, as in paris, it divided the public into hostile camps, and so deep were the feelings which it excited that in toulouse a duel was fought over the play, and one of the antagonists was killed. armand carrel was especially bitter in his assaults upon _hernani_, but hugo was more than consoled for this and other attacks by the following letter from chateaubriand: 'i was present, sir, at the first representation of _hernani_. you know how much i admire you. my vanity attaches itself to your lyre, and you know the reason. i am going--you are coming. i commend myself to the remembrance of your muse. a pious glory ought to pray for the dead.' as an amusing pendant to this, it may be mentioned in connection with the poet and _hernani_, that a provincial frenchman (in making his will) ordered the following inscription to be placed on his tombstone: 'here lies one who believed in victor hugo.' in spite of the attacks in the press, also of personal threats and of the deliberate and almost unparalleled attempts to stifle the play in the theatre itself, _hernani_ held its own, and continued to be played with great pecuniary success until the enforced absence of mademoiselle mars, when it was withdrawn from the stage, and not acted again for some years. but the play had practically established the new drama. it was the herald of the renaissance, and for this reason must continue to occupy a conspicuous position whenever an attempt is made to estimate the dramatic work and influence of victor hugo. chapter v. 'notre-dame de paris.' there is a natural desire to know something of the personal aspect of men who have become great. what would the world give, for example, for a faithful account of the character, the appearance, the sayings, the habits of shakespeare, written by a friend and a contemporary? in the case of victor hugo we fortunately have such a description from the pen of one of his most enthusiastic admirers, théophile gautier. the sketch represents the poet as he appeared at the time which we have now reached in his history, that is when he was about twenty-eight years of age. gautier was exceedingly nervous over his contemplated interview with victor hugo, and twice failed to summon up the necessary courage for the meeting. on the third occasion he found himself in the poet's study. all his prepared eloquence, we are told, at once vanished away; the long apostrophe of praise which he had spent whole evenings in composing came to nothing. he felt like heine, who, when he was going to have an interview with goethe, prepared an elaborate speech beforehand, but at the crucial moment could find nothing better to say to the author of _faust_ than that the plum-trees on the road between jena and weimar bore plums that were very nice when one was thirsty. but the jupiter of german poetry was probably more flattered by his visitor's bewilderment than he would have been by the most glowing eulogium. passing over gautier's panegyrics, here is what he wrote concerning the person of hugo: 'he was then twenty-eight years of age, and nothing about him was more striking than his forehead, that like a marble monument rose above his calm and earnest countenance: the beauty of that forehead was well-nigh superhuman; the deepest of thoughts might be written within, but it was capable of bearing the coronet of gold or the chaplet of laurel with all the dignity of a divinity or a cæsar. this splendid brow was set in a frame of rich chestnut hair that was allowed to grow to considerable length behind. his face was closely shaven, its peculiar paleness being relieved by the lustre of a pair of hazel eyes, keen as an eagle's. the curved lips betokened a firm determination, and when half opened in a smile, displayed a set of teeth of charming whiteness. his attire was neat and faultless, consisting of black frock-coat, grey trousers, and a small lay-down collar. nothing in his appearance could ever have led anyone to suspect that this perfect gentleman was the leader of the rough-bearded, dishevelled set that was the terror of the smooth-faced _bourgeoisie_. such was victor hugo. his image, as we saw it in that first interview, has never faded from our memory. it is a portrait that we cherish tenderly; its smiles, beaming with talent, continue with us, ever diffusing a clear and phosphorescent glory!' in the year victor hugo published a work which, if he had written nothing else, would have given him a place amongst the immortal writers of france. this was his _notre-dame de paris_, undertaken and produced under extraordinary circumstances. it was received with mixed favour by the critics, but at once made its way to the heart of the people. any number of hostile reviews would have been insufficient to check the progress of so singular and powerful a work. the author had made an engagement to write this book for a publisher named gosselin, and the latter now claimed the execution of the contract. the work was originally to have been ready by the close of , but in july, , it was not yet begun, and a new contract was prepared, under which it was to be completed by the ensuing december. political events greatly disturbed the progress of the romance, and a further difficulty was created by the loss of manuscript notes which had taken two months to collect. in the removal of hugo's books and manuscripts from the house in the rue jean goujon to the rue du cherche-midi, these valuable notes went astray. they were not recovered till some years afterwards, when they were incorporated in a later edition of the novel. a still further delay was granted by the publisher, in accordance with which the author was to complete the story by february, , having just five months in which to accomplish the task. hugo set to work with marvellous energy, and some amusing details are given of the way in which he laboured with his romance. 'he bought a bottle of ink, and a thick piece of grey worsted knitting which enveloped him from the neck to the heels; he locked up his clothes, in order not to be tempted to go out, and worked at his novel as if in a prison. he was very melancholy.' it appears that he never left the writing-table except to eat and to sleep, and occasionally to read over some chapters to his friends. the book was finished on the th of january, and as the writer concluded his last line and his last drop of ink at the same moment, he thought of changing the title of the novel, and calling it 'the contents of a bottle of ink.' this title, which was not thus used, however, was subsequently adopted by alphonse karr. on being asked by his publisher for some descriptive notes upon the work, which might be useful in advertising it, victor hugo wrote: 'it is a representation of paris in the fifteenth century, and of the fifteenth century in its relations to paris. louis xi. appears in one chapter, and the king is associated with, or practically decides, the _dénouement_. the book has no historical pretensions, unless they be those of painting with some care and accuracy--but entirely by sketches, and incidentally--the state of morals, creeds, laws, arts, and even civilization, in the fifteenth century. this is, however, not the most important part of the work. if it has a merit, it is in its being purely a work of imagination, caprice, and fancy.' nevertheless, the author has underrated in certain respects the value of his own work. powerful as it is from the imaginative point of view, it is no less remarkable for the way in which the writer has brought together a mass of historical and antiquarian lore. its thoroughness and careful construction in regard to such details may be recommended to less accurate writers in the field of historical romance. paris, with its myriad interests, is vividly represented by one to whom it had given up its past as well as its present. whether we see life beneath the shadow of notre-dame, in the cour des miracles, the place de grève, the palais de justice, the bastille or the louvre, it is all the same--the master-hand has given life and vitality to all it has touched. the gipsy girl esmeralda, a fascinating creation, has been compared with the fenella of scott, the la gitanilla of cervantes, and the mignon of goethe. but she has a character of her own distinct from all of these. in her history the power of love is once more exemplified, and if round her centres the finest pathos of the work, so also is she its noblest gleam of light and grace and beauty. it has been said that love makes the learned archdeacon forget his studies, his clerical character, his reputation for sanctity, to court the favours of a volatile bohemian. 'love for this same parisian fenella softens the human savage quasimodo, the dumb one-eyed bell-ringer of notre-dame, and transforms him into a delicate monster, a devoted humble worshipper of the bohemian. while she, who is the cynosure of neighbouring eyes, the object of adoration to these singular lovers, is herself hopelessly attached in turn to a giddy-pated captain of the guard, who can afford to love no one but himself.' in his grand and startling effects, the writer has been compared with the painter martin. there is an almost unparalleled breadth, which gives the work a rembrandtish effect in all the chief scenes. the siege of the cathedral by the banded beggars and vagabonds of paris in the night is one not readily effaced from the memory; and this is equally true of the terrible interview between the infatuated monk and his victim in the filthy dungeons of the palais de justice; of the weird scene of the fête de fous in the hall of the palace; of the alsatian picture of the examination and projected hanging of gringoire among the thieves in the cour des miracles; of the execution of esmeralda; and of the fearful fate of the impassioned monk. the strange fatality attending upon mere passion is insisted on all through; it binds together in one miserable chain the priest who is prepared to sacrifice all that is sacred in duty for love, the heartless soldier, and the trusting maiden. as to the _dramatis personæ_, the _athenæum_, observed, 'no character can be more intimately identified with the genius of victor hugo than the interesting, generous, and high-minded gipsy girl esmeralda. the character of phoebus de chateaupers, the bold, reckless, gay, gallant, good-tempered, light-hearted, and faithless captain of gendarmerie, is also original, and wrought out with great skill. the archdeacon claude frollo is a striking specimen of those churchmen of the fifteenth century who united the grossest superstition to the most consummate hypocrisy, and applied the influences of religion to acts of the blackest perfidy. there are many historical characters in this work, and, among others, our old acquaintances in quentin durward, louis xi., olivier-le-daim, and the squinting provost, tristan l'hermite.' in eloquence, in vigour, in animation, and in all the masterly pageantry of a bygone age, this work will continue to hold a unique position amongst symbolical and historical romances. _notre-dame_ was assailed by the majority of the parisian journals, but in the minority warmly in its favour were to be found some of the first writers of the age. touching the style of the work, sainte-beuve said, 'there is a magical facility and freedom in saying all that should be said; there is a striking keenness of observation, especially is there a profound knowledge of the populace, and a deep insight into man in his vanity, his emptiness, and his glory, whether he be mendicant, vagabond, _savant_, or sensualist. moreover, there is an unexampled comprehension of form; an unrivalled expression of grace, material beauty, and greatness; and altogether a worthy presentment of an abiding and gigantic monument. alike in the pretty prattlings of the nymph-like child, in the cravings of the she-wolf mother, and in the surging passion, almost reaching to delirium, that rages in a man's brain, there is the moulding and wielding of everything just at the author's will.' alfred de musset, while unable to take in the scope of the work, acknowledged that it was colossal. jules janin remarked that 'of all the works of the author it is pre-eminently that in which his fire of genius, his inflexible calmness, and his indomitable will are most conspicuous. what accumulation of misfortunes is piled up in these mournful pages! what a gathering together there is of ruinous passion and bewildering incident! all the foulness as well as all the faith of the middle ages are kneaded together with a trowel of gold and of iron. at the sound of the poet's voice all that was in ruins has risen to its fullest height, reanimated by his breath.... victor hugo has followed his vocation as poet and architect, as writer of history and romance; his pen has been guided alike by ancient chronicle and by his own personal genius; he has made all the bells of the great city to clang out their notes; and he has made every heart of the population, except that of louis xi., to beat with life! such is the book; it is a brilliant page of our history, which cannot fail to be a crowning glory in the career of its author.' finally, eugène sue wrote: 'if the useless admiration of a barbarian like myself had the power to express and interpret itself in a manner worthy of the book which has inspired it, i should tell you, sir, that you are a great spendthrift; that your critics resemble those poor people on the fifth story, who, whilst gazing on the prodigalities of the great nobleman, would say to each other, with anger in their hearts, "i could live during my whole life on the money spent in a single day."' the publisher had some doubts of the pecuniary success of the novel, but these speedily disappeared, as edition after edition was called for. in the course of a year only, eight large editions had been disposed of, and the number of editions which have been issued since that time may be described as legion. from thinking, as he did originally, that he had made a bad bargain, m. gosselin soon had reason to arrive at the conclusion that he had made a remarkably good one. together with other publishers, he now pestered the author continually for more novels. hugo protested that he had none to give them; but wearied at length by their importunities he furnished the titles of two stories he proposed to write, which were to be called the _fils de la bossue_ and _la quinquengrogne_. the latter name was the popular designation of one of the towers of bourbon l'aschembault, and in the novel the author intended to complete the account of his views concerning the art of the middle ages. notre-dame was the cathedral, la quinquengrogne was to be the dungeon. victor hugo wrote at this time his admirable descriptive work _le rhin_--a work full of learning, vivacity, and humour--but he never proceeded with the two projected novels. _notre-dame_ remained for many years the only romance in which the author revealed his marvellous power of moulding human sympathies, of throwing into imaginative conceptions the very form and substance of being, and of realizing a dead-past age as though it were that of the actual and the living. chapter vi. 'marion de lorme' and other dramas. that despotic monarch, charles x., having been driven from his throne by the revolution of july, , there naturally followed the removal of the interdict from the theatres. victor hugo was at once applied to by the comédie française for his drama of _marion de lorme_, which had been in enforced abeyance. but when the political reaction was an absolute certainty, the sensitive mind of hugo shrank from a demonstrative triumph. it is true that he was now in the full tide of masculine judgment, and that his ideas of progress and liberty were crystallized and matured; but he could not forget his early opinions. though crudely formed, and based upon sentiment and not upon reason, they had been genuine and disinterested, and his chief feeling at this later period was not one of hatred of the king, but rather of rejoicing with the people. however, after a year had elapsed from charles's fall, there was no reason why a drama should be lost to the stage simply because it contained an historical presentment of louis xiii. after declining many offers, the author resolved to give the play to m. crosnier, for the theatre of the porte st. martin; and he also entered into an agreement to write yearly two works of importance for this theatre. dumas's _antony_ was being performed at the porte st. martin, but on the conclusion of its run _marion de lorme_ was produced, with madame dorval in the part of marion, and m. bocage in that of didier. difficulties as usual were thrown in the way of the new play, but it eventually triumphed over them. the journals, nevertheless, were hostile, the _moniteur_ especially so, affirming that the author had never yet conceived anything more meagre and commonplace, and more full of eccentricities, than this piece. one critic asserted that the character of didier was taken from that of antony, although hugo's play had been written first. those friends who formerly applauded hugo and dumas conjointly, now divided themselves into two parties, one of which persistently assailed the writer of _marion de lorme_. from a variety of causes the play was only performed four nights on its first production, but the performances were afterwards resumed. it may be added that the _revue des deux mondes_, whose judgment was better worth having than that of most of its contemporaries, remarked that victor hugo had never so truly shown himself a poet, nor attained to so high a range of vision, nor so wide a field of judgment, as in this piece. a tragic incident which occurred not long after the representation of this play affected the poet deeply. amongst the warmest of his band of admirers was m. ernest de saxe-coburg, whose race and origin are indicated by his name. he and his mother lived in paris, on a pension granted them by the duke. ernest was taken seriously ill, and the distracted parent rushed to the house of victor hugo, exclaiming, 'you alone can save him! come at once!' but the unfortunate young man was already dead; and a painful scene took place in the chamber of death on the arrival of victor hugo and the mother. 'the unhappy woman, who had but this only child in the world to love, would not believe that he was dead. he was but cold, she said; and she threw herself on his bed, encircling him in her arms in order to impart warmth to the corpse. she frantically kissed his marble face, which was already cold. suddenly she felt within herself that it was all over; she raised herself, and haggard and wild as she was, though still beautiful, she exclaimed, "he is dead!" m. victor hugo spent the night by the side of the mother and the corpse.' it was the lot of hugo to awaken by his genius many personal attachments and enthusiasms such as that felt for him by this ill-fated youth; and these attachments were invariably strengthened and deepened by subsequent friendship. in the poet wrote his _le roi s'amuse_. it has been charged against this play that it presents an unredeemed picture of vice and licentiousness. it has 'overstepped all bounds,' wrote one critic; 'history, reason, morality, artistic dignity, and refinement, are all trampled under foot. the whole piece is monstrous; history is set at nought, and the most noble characters are slandered and vilified. the play is entirely void of interest, and the horrible, the mean, and the immoral are all jumbled together into a kind of chaos.' as we shall see, victor hugo traversed the whole of these and similar judgments. baron taylor secured the play for the théâtre français, triboulet being assigned to m. ligier, saint-vallier to m. joanny, blanche to mademoiselle anaïs, and francis i. to m. perrier. a preliminary flourish occurred between hugo and m. d'argout, the minister of public works, in whose department the theatres lay. the minister first demanded the manuscript, then sent for the author, and finally wrote that the monarchical principle in france must suffer from the author's attacks on francis i., which would be taken as being levelled against louis philippe. the poet replied that the interests of history were to be consulted before those of royalty, but he denied that there was anything in the piece reflecting on louis philippe. the play was produced on the nd of november, and met with a very mixed reception, the hisses predominating. it was partly damned by the defects of the actors. when the curtain fell upon the last act, and it was felt that the play had failed, the leading performer said to the author, 'shall i mention your name?' hugo answered haughtily, 'sir, i have a rather higher opinion of my play now it is a failure.' next day the play was suspended, the reason given being that it was an offence against public morality. it appears that a number of devotees of the classical school had persuaded the minister that a drama which had for its subject the assassination of a king was not to be tolerated on the very day after the existing monarch had himself escaped assassination; that the play was an apology for regicides, etc. victor hugo was not the man to be thus crushed without an effort to save his drama. in the first place he issued a manifesto to the public, briefly summarizing the plot of the piece, and denying that it was immoral. then he entered a civil suit before the board of trade to compel the théâtre français to perform _le roi s'amuse_, and likewise to compel the government to sanction the performance. the trial opened in a densely crowded court, many celebrities being amongst the audience. they had been attracted by the announcement that the author would plead his own case. hugo's speech was applauded by a band of very sympathetic listeners, and on its conclusion m. de montalembert assured him that he was as great an orator as he was a writer, and that if the doors of the theatre were closed against him, the tribune was still available. judgment was given against the poet, and for the minister. m. paul foucher, describing the scene on the night of the first performance of _le roi s'amuse_, observed that while the whole theatre was in an uproar, and hugo's name was drowned in the sea of roaring voices, 'the author's face exhibited no sign of despondency at the failure any more than it had shown passion or excitement during the struggle. his olympian brow had withstood the tempest with the firmness of a rock, and after the curtain fell, he went to offer his thanks and encouragements to the actors and actresses, saying, "you are a little discomposed to-night; but you will find it different the day after to-morrow!" in spite of the hissing, he was sanguine about his play; nevertheless, it was not destined to be repeated.' the poet's enemies now caused him considerable annoyance on the subject of his pension. he had ceased to receive the , francs granted him by louis xviii. out of his privy purse, but still received the , francs allowed him by the home minister. in reply to the recriminations of the ministerial journals, he wrote a letter to m. d'argout, showing that this pension was clearly granted to him on literary grounds, quite apart from political opinions. but he had decided to accept it no longer, and thus stated his reasons: 'now that the government appears to regard what are called literary pensions as proceeding from itself, and not from the country, and as this kind of grant takes from an author's independence; now that this strange pretension of the government serves as the basis to the somewhat shameful attacks of certain journals, the management of which is, unfortunately, though no doubt incorrectly, imagined to be in your hands; as it is also of importance to me to maintain my relations with the government in a higher region than that in which this kind of warfare goes on--without discussing whether your pretensions relating to this indemnity have the smallest foundation, i hasten to inform you that i entirely relinquish it.' the minister replied, taking the poet's view, that the pension was a debt due from the country, and stating that it should still be reserved for him; but victor hugo never took it up from this time forward. for a brief period managers held aloof from the dramatist, and when he wrote _le souper à ferrare_, which title was afterwards changed to that of _lucrèce borgia_, no one was eager for it. but this attitude changed after his speech at the tribunal, and m. harel, director of the porte st. martin, sought for and obtained the play. admirable representatives were found for the chief parts, frédérick lemaître taking that of grennaro, delafosse that of don alphonse d'esté, mademoiselle georges that of lucretia, and mademoiselle juliette that of the princess negroni. meyerbeer and berlioz composed the music for the song which was sung at the supper given by the princess negroni. only one person was allowed to be present at the final rehearsal, and that was sainte-beuve. the critic was playing a double part towards the dramatist, with whom he had been out of sympathy for some time past, and it is recorded that at the close of the rehearsal of _lucrèce borgia_ he warmly congratulated the author upon his drama, and went away circulating reports everywhere that the piece was an utter absurdity! 'it was solely due to his treachery and infamous gossip that on the morning of the day on which the piece was to be performed in the evening, several newspapers announced that they were in possession of the plot, and that the whole production was in the highest degree obscene, depicting orgies terrible and indecent beyond conception.' great interest, notwithstanding, was manifested in the play, and amongst those who implored the author for first-night seats was general lafayette. the representation was a triumphant success, and for awhile nothing was talked about in paris but the new play. the monetary success was equal to the literary and dramatic. the receipts for the first three performances amounted to , francs--a sum which no other work had equalled or approached during m. harel's management. referring to two of his most widely known dramas, victor hugo predicted that _le roi s'amuse_ would one day prove to be the principal political era, and _lucrèce borgia_ the principal literary era of his life. he had purposely presented deformities in both, but he believed that by uniting monsters to humanity, one could not fail to excite interest and perhaps sympathy. 'physical deformity, sanctified by paternal love, this is what you have in _le roi s'amuse_; moral deformity, purified by maternal love, this is what you find in _lucrèce borgia_.' hugo was fated to be the victim of misunderstanding with regard to almost all his dramas, and he found no exception in _lucrèce borgia_. from an attitude of delight and complacency, m. harel, the director of the theatre, passed to one of studious neglect and insolence. he took off the play, and then demanded a new one, which he averred the poet had agreed to write for him. a quarrel ensued, and the manager challenged the dramatist to a duel. it would have taken place, but m. harel thought better of the affair, and apologized, whereupon hugo agreed to give him his next piece. m. harel remarked upon the whole incident, 'you are probably the first author to whom a manager has said, "your play or your life!"' _marie tudor_, produced in november, , was the next play by victor hugo. it was concerned with a queen, a favourite, and an executioner, a trio as common in history as upon the mimic stage. the dramatist had now two difficulties to contend with. in the first place, the partisans of dumas sowed dissension between the two authors, and spread lying reports respecting hugo and his attitude towards dumas; and in the second place, the writer's own friends grew alarmed at various reports which gained currency. 'i hear on all sides,' wrote one of them, 'that your play is more than ever a tissue of horrors--that your mary is a bloodthirsty creature, that the executioner is perpetually on the stage, and several other reproaches all equally well founded.' hugo remained calm and unmoved, though he was warned that the presence of the executioner on the stage had been given as the watchword to those who intended to hiss the play. the piece was produced in due course, and mademoiselle georges looked superbly and acted well. but the author's enemies kept up a persistent hissing, and there was a strong contest between those who formed a genuine judgment upon the play and greatly admired it, and those who were resolved upon its ruin. the first night left the result dubious, but the piece continued to be played beyond the time generally regarded as constituting an average success. on its withdrawal, all the relations between the author and the porte st. martin naturally ceased, and the treaty with m. harel for a third drama was destroyed by mutual consent. hugo's dramatic work was now interrupted by the composition of his _l'Étude sur mirabeau_, which may be taken as an apology for his advanced political and social views. he felt it necessary to review his past career, and to make known to the world the processes of education through which his mind had passed since his early days of royalist fervour. this study, which appeared in his _littérature et philosophie mêlées_, is a defence of conscience, and illustrates the power of growing convictions to emancipate the mind from prejudice and error, regarding the matter, of course, from the standpoint of the writer himself. in the théâtre français applied to victor hugo for a new drama, and in response he gave to it his _angelo_, one of his best pieces for construction and for rapid and vigorous effects. it was the author's intention in this drama, as he has himself stated, 'to depict two sad but contrasted characters--the woman in society, and the woman out of society; the one he has endeavoured to deliver from despotism, the other he has striven to defend from contempt; he has shown the temptations resisted by the virtue of the one, and the tears shed over her guilt by the other; he has cast blame where blame is due, upon man in his strength and upon society in its absurdity; in contrariety to the two women, he has delineated two men--the husband and the lover, one a sovereign and one an outlaw, and, by various subordinate methods, has given a sort of summary of the relations, regular and irregular, in which a man can stand with a woman on the one hand, and with society in general on the other.' there is nothing more characteristic of the author's dramas than this exhibition of striking contrasts; and, indeed, in all his poetic work is to be traced this juxtaposition of the strongest lights and shades of which human life and human emotion are capable. the two leading stars in _angelo_ were mademoiselle mars and madame dorval. unfortunately, a serious feud arose in consequence of the former discovering that the part she had chosen was not the most forcible and picturesque; and it required all the strong will of victor hugo to bring the actress to reason. the two ladies had their partisans in the theatre when the play came to be acted, but the representation passed over without mishap, and it was conceded that a fair success had been achieved. whatever might be victor hugo's defects as a dramatist, and however he might divide in opinion the theatre-going public of paris upon the general claims of his plays, he had certainly infused life into the dramatic literature of the time. he had attained a commanding position, and although his genius was marred by some eccentricities, it was also as unquestionably distinguished for its grand conceptions, its dramatic felicities, and its splendours of diction. chapter vii. last dramatic writings. in some respects, no man of equal genius was ever so unfortunate as victor hugo in his relations with the stage. i refer, of course, to the earlier part of his career, for there came a time when the appreciation of him as a dramatist was as high and universal as was the admiration of his literary excellence. but during the long struggle between the old and the new drama there were always enemies ready to denounce and hiss whatsoever he produced; and had he given them a _romeo and juliet_ or a _hamlet_, the result would have been precisely the same. we have seen the alternations of failure and success which attended the plays already passed in review; and the same mixed reception was awarded to those final efforts in connection with the drama which led him to adopt the resolution to quit the stage for ever. an operatic venture into which the poet was drawn in resulted in the same ill-fortune which had marked more regular dramatic compositions. meyerbeer and other celebrated musicians had begged victor hugo to make an opera of _notre-dame de paris_, but he had steadfastly declined all such proposals. at length he yielded to friendship, and wrote the libretto of an opera called _la esmeralda_, the music being composed by mademoiselle bertin, daughter of the conductor of the _journal des débats_. curiously enough, the libretto ended with the word 'fatality,' and this represented the misfortune of the piece and its performers. though boasting a singular array of talent in its production and representation, it was hissed. mademoiselle falcon, the leading singer, lost her voice; m. nourrit, the tenor, subsequently went to italy, and killed himself; the duke of orleans gave the name of _esmeralda_ to a valuable mare, which was killed at a steeplechase; and finally, a ship called the esmeralda was lost in crossing from england to ireland, and every soul on board perished. a domestic grief visited the poet in the following year, when his brother eugène died. for some time before his death he had been insane, and towards the end his one favourite relative, victor, even could not visit him, as the sight of his brother conjured up illusions which made him dangerously violent. though of strong constitution naturally, when the sufferer's mind gave way his physical health began to fail also, and he gradually wasted away until death released him in february, . this was the brother who had been victor hugo's constant companion in early life, and the news of his death deeply agitated the survivor, keenly awakening the slumbering recollections of childhood. louis philippe gave a grand fête at versailles in the summer of , on the occasion of the marriage of the duke of orleans. victor hugo, dumas, balzac, and other men of letters were invited, and were obliged to appear in fancy dress, the result being ludicrous in some cases, as in that of balzac, who had on the dress of a marquis, which, it was jokingly said, fitted him as badly as the title itself would. hugo was an object of special distinction by the royal family. the king conversed with him, and the duchess of orleans paid him marked attention. there were two people, she said, with whom she wished to become acquainted--m. cousin and himself. she had often spoken of him to monsieur de goethe; she had read all his works, and knew his poems by heart. her favourite book was the _chants du crépuscule_; and she added, 'i have visited _your_ notre-dame.' hugo was promoted to the rank of officer of the legion of honour, and he received from the duchess a painting by m. saint-evre representing inez de castro. it was a valuable work, and on the gilding of the frame was inscribed, '_le duc et la duchesse d'orléans à m. victor hugo, juin, _.' at this juncture the poet brought a second action before the board of trade, to compel the comédie française to fulfil its agreement with him by producing his plays. he also claimed compensation for past neglect. hugo's advocate, m. paillard de villeneuve, in an effective speech, demonstrated the injustice of a theatre supported by the state becoming the monopoly of a clique; showed how the existing state of things pressed heavily upon such men of genius as his client; and asserted that not only had no pieces ever realized greater profits, but that actually at that moment, while they were prohibited in france, they were drawing large and appreciative audiences in london, vienna, madrid, moscow, and other important cities. victor hugo himself also spoke, complaining that the manager of the french theatre had deceived him, and that he wore two masks--one of which was intended to deceive authors, and the other to elude justice. the board gave judgment in the poet's favour, sentencing the comédie française to pay , francs damages, and to perform _hernani_, _marion de lorme_, and _angelo_ without delay. an appeal was entered against this judgment, and when it came on for hearing hugo pleaded his cause in person, asserting that there was an organized effort to close the stage against the new and rising school of literature. the appeal was dismissed, and justice was at length done to the dramatist. in conformity with the judgment, _hernani_ was first produced, and the play was brilliantly successful. i must refer in this place to some of victor hugo's lyrical efforts. not without reason has the volume entitled _feuilles d'automne_ held a high place in the regard of his admirers. it is the poetry of the emotions expressed in such graceful lyric verse as has rarely been penned. in these tender and exquisite poems, as m. alfred nettement observed, the poet's 'lay is of what he has seen, of what he has felt, of what he has loved: he sings of his wife, the ornament of his home; of his children, fascinating in their fair-haired beauty; of landscapes ever widening in their horizon; of trees under which he has enjoyed a grateful shade.' nature and personal experiences--from the opening thoughts of the child to the greater aspirations of the man--are blended in beautiful harmony in these poems, which may be turned to again and again for their sweetness and melody. in appeared _les chants du crépuscule_, which truly represent a kind of twilight of the soul. 'as compared with what had gone before, the book exhibits the same ideas; the poet is identically the same poet, but his brow is furrowed by deeper lines, and maturity is more stamped upon his years; he laments that he cannot comprehend the semi-darkness that is gathering around; his hope seems damped by hesitation; his love-songs die away in sighs of misgiving; and when he sees the people enveloped in doubt, he begins to be conscious of faltering too. but from all this temper of despondency he quickly rallies, and returns to a bright assurance of a grand development of the human race.' the volume has tones of gentleness and also tones of lofty scorn. to the suffering and the unfortunate the poet was ever tender and pitiful; but to the mean, the base, and the vicious he was as a whip and a scourge. he always endeavoured to separate the worthy from the unworthy, and wherever the latter were to be found, whether in the ranks of friends or foes, they were never suffered to escape the lash of his indignation. another volume of poems, _les voix intérieures_, was published in . 'the poet in this production,' says one of his biographers, 'regards life under its threefold aspect, at home, abroad, and at work; he maintains that it is the mission of the poet not to suffer the past to become an illusion to blind him in the present, but to survey all things calmly, to be ever staunch yet kind, to be impartial, and equally free from petty wrath and petty vanity; in everything to be sincere and disinterested. such was his ideal, and in accordance with it victor hugo spared no effort to improve the minds and morals of men in general, and by his poetry, as well as by his romances and his plays, he desired to constitute himself the champion of amelioration.' this same desire for the elevation of the race ran through all his efforts--social, literary, and political. he may have been mistaken in his means sometimes, never in the honesty and purity of his intent. returning to the stage, victor hugo had become so impressed with the idea that the french nation had a right to have a theatre in which the higher drama should be performed, that he was brought to consent to several interviews on the subject with m. guizot. the latter admitted that there never was a more legitimate request; he agreed with the poet that a new style of art required a new style of theatre; that the comédie française, which was the seat of tradition and conservatism, was not the proper arena for original literature of the day; and that the government would only be doing its duty in creating a theatre for those who had created a department of art. a scheme was perfected for a new theatre, and m. anténor joly was named as manager. no building but a very old one was to be had, however, and this--which was in a bad situation--was transformed into the théâtre de la renaissance. for this theatre hugo wrote his _ruy blas_, a drama which, as is well known, deals with the love of a queen for a valet who subsequently becomes a minister. the play was in five acts, and the leading character was sustained by lemaître. the actor strongly approved the first three acts, but was more than dubious about the fourth and fifth. during the final rehearsals of this piece victor hugo had a marvellous escape of his life. two of the actors happening to station themselves awkwardly, he got up in order to indicate their right positions. scarcely had he left his chair when a great bar of iron fell upon it from an arch above, smashing it to atoms. the author would undoubtedly have been killed on the spot but for this momentary rising to correct the mistake of the actors. the body of the theatre being incomplete when the play came to be produced, difficulties beset the representation. it was winter, and many of the audience were chilled by violent draughts. but the play soon warmed them into enthusiasm. in the fifth act, we are told by one who was present, lemaître rivalled the greatest comedians, and success was more decided than ever. 'the way in which he tore off his livery, drew the bolt, and struck his sword on the table, the way in which he said to don sallustre: '"_tenez_, pour un homme d'esprit, vraiment vous m'étonnez!" --the way in which he came back to entreat the queen's pardon, and finally drank off the poison--everything had so much greatness, truth, depth, and splendour, that the poet had the rare joy of seeing the ideal of which he had dreamt become a living soul.' the play was successful with that part of the public which was unprejudiced, and the press generally was in its favour. but it appears that the theatre was wanted by the co-manager for comic opera, so the fourth act of hugo's play was persistently hissed at every representation by interested persons. the _claqueurs_ were detected and instantly recognised. _ruy blas_ ran for fifty nights, the same programme of hissing being carried through to the end. the manuscript of the piece was sold to the manager of a publishing company, m. delboye. the company also purchased the right of publication of the whole of the poet's works for eleven years, for which they agreed to pay , francs; and the poet on his part agreed to add two unpublished volumes. victor hugo produced no drama after this for several years; but in he issued his work _les rayons et les ombres_, consisting of poems which had previously been read to his friends lamartine, deschamps, de lacretelle, and others. here again he sought expression for his ever-widening aspirations after human perfectibility. once more in this work 'he claims the right of expressing his goodwill for all who labour, his aversion to all who oppress; his love for all who serve the good cause, and his pity for all who suffer in its behalf; he declares himself free to bow down to every misery, and to pay homage to all self-sacrifice.' in the poetical alternations and contrasts in this volume will be discovered a profound love and appreciation of nature, as well as an undercurrent of affection for the human. the poet himself, looking back upon what he had accomplished, and forward towards what he hoped to do, at the transition period before he went into exile, asserted his thesis that 'a poet ought to have in him the worship of conscience, the worship of thought, and the worship of nature; he should be like juvenal, who felt that day and night were perpetual witnesses within him; he should be like dante, who defined the lost to be those who could no longer think; he should be like st. augustine, who, heedless of any accusation of pantheism, declared the sky to be an intelligent creation.' and it is under such inspiration that 'he has attempted to write the poem of humanity. he loves brightness and sunshine. the bible has been his book; virgil and dante have been his masters; he has laboured to reconcile truth and poetry, knowing that knowledge must precede thought, and thought must precede imagination, while knowledge, thought, and imagination combined are the secret of power.' it would be impossible for a poet with any vigour of imagination, and any perception of the soul of beauty in all things, to fail with these sublime ideals before him. i now come to the last of victor hugo's writings for the stage, and in _les burgraves_ we have in some respects the best of his dramatic works. it was written towards the close of , and produced (like its predecessors) in the midst of difficulties in march, , at the comédie française. at the time of its production, the author's political opinions had arrived at a stage of compromise. though he was a republican in theory, he had no strong objection to such a monarchy as that of louis philippe, which was liberty itself compared with that which it overthrew. for a sovereign who refrained from tyranny, and was not inimical to progress, he had some sympathy, and he was willing to wait until the time became ripe for the advent of the republic. writing to m. thiers, indeed, to beg for some amelioration in the lot of an imprisoned editor, he said of himself, 'i do not at the present time take any definite political part. i regard all parties as acting with impartiality, full of affection for france, and anxious for progress. i applaud sometimes those in power, sometimes the opposition, according as those in power or in opposition seem to me to act best for the country.' the catholic spirit in which he looked upon public affairs was manifested in his study upon mirabeau. defining the position of the wise politician, he remarked that 'he must give credit to the moderate party for the way in which they smooth over transitions; to the extreme parties for the activity with which they advance the circulation of ideas, which are the very life-blood of civilization; to lovers of the past for the care which they bestow on roots in which there is still life; to people zealous for the future, for their love of those beautiful flowers which will some day produce fine fruits; to mature men for their moderation, to young men for their patience; to those for what they do, to those for what they desire to do; to all the difficulty of everything.' so, some years later he stated that the aim he had in view was 'to agree with all parties in what is liberal and generous, but with none in what is illiberal and mischievous.' the form of government he regarded as a secondary affair; liberty and progress demanded the first and most urgent thought. herein, of course, he differed from the professional politician, who has ever looked at great questions not from the poet's point of view, but from the immediately personal and practical. many of his humanitarian ideas appeared quixotic and chimerical to those who viewed politics as a matter of party, or as a means of personal triumph; while unjust and illiberal men were not also wanting in the ranks of the republicans. then there were some who, like armand carrel, were prepared to go with victor hugo in politics, but rejected his new literary ideas. they clung to the old form of the drama, and found a new star in ponsard, the author of _lucrèce_, a tragedy which had for its subject the expulsion of the tarquins and the establishment of a republic in rome. so the parisians were beguiled by the name of ponsard, who found a great and useful ally in rachel; and hugo was contemned, in spite of such strictures as those of thierry in _le messager_, who drew a comparison between the ostracism with which his countrymen visited such brilliant writers as hugo, and that of the athenians, who punished people whose renown lasted too long. it was at this juncture that _les burgraves_ was produced, and even the genius of the writer himself added to the difficulties by which he was beset. he had conceived three stupendous characters, job, otbert, and barbarossa; and although the actors who sustained these characters, mm. beauvallet, geffroy, and ligier, were undoubtedly men of dramatic instinct and ability, neither they nor any other living tragedians could adequately set forth these epic creations. in the matter of this magnificent trilogy, the author has been not inaptly compared with Æschylus. 'the first of greek tragedians, Æschylus, after he had long stirred the emotions of the athenians, was finally deserted by them; they preferred sophocles to him, and full of dejection he went into exile, saying, 'i dedicate my works to time;' and time at last did him ample justice, though he did not live to enjoy his triumph. but in this, hugo differed from the glorious greek, for he lived to witness the repentance of the people. _les burgraves_ was ill received on the first night, but this was nothing compared with the opposition subsequently manifested. at every representation, sneers and hissing interrupted the progress of the piece; but the manager and the actors struggled on and played the drama for thirty nights. some of the most influential journals joined themselves to the enemy, and the time was marked by the defection of lamartine to the side of ponsard. théophile gautier was one of the small band who boldly applauded hugo's drama in the press. 'in our day,' he asserted, 'there is no one except m. hugo who is capable of giving the epic tone to three great acts, or of maintaining their lyric swing. every moment seems to produce a magnificent verse that resounds like the stroke of an eagle's wing, and exalts us to the supremest height of lyric poetry. the play is diversified in tone, and displays a singular flexibility of rhythm, making its transitions from the tender to the terrible, from the smile to the tear, with a happy facility that no other author has attained.' with the production of this play dates victor hugo's final abandonment of the stage. strange fate this for a writer for whom charles nodier claimed the honour of being, after rabelais and molière, one of the most original geniuses that french literature ever saw. but the dramatist was disgusted with the literary hostility, the political insincerity, and the personal antipathy which abounded, and although he had a play, _les jumeaux_, which had never been produced, he resolved to give no more of his writings to the stage. he was repeatedly pressed in after years to depart from this resolution, but in vain. 'my decision is final,' he said on one occasion. 'under no pretext shall any more of my plays appear on the stage during my life.' the poet wrote several plays not for publication after this time, and one of them, _torquemada_, has been published. others, named respectively _l'Épée_, _la grand'mère_, and _peut-être frère de gavoche_, will only appear posthumously. that there will be in them characters which will live, and that the plays themselves are such as to enhance the public view of victor hugo's dramatic talents, are points upon which we have explicit assurances from those who have had the privilege of listening to the pieces as read by the late venerable author himself. chapter viii. the french academy. a seat amongst the 'forty immortals' is the high and honourable aim of every distinguished frenchman. but the chequered history of the academy since its formation by richelieu two centuries and a half ago, furnishes another evidence of the truth that merit does not always secure its just reward. again and again have men illustrious in letters been passed over, whilst those who had no claim upon the nation's regard have snatched fortuitous honours by unworthy means. amongst those who knocked on more than one occasion at the doors of the french academy in vain, was victor hugo. that such a man must be ultimately successful was beyond a doubt; but it says little for the academy that it failed to recognise his claims until its hostile attitude had become a scandal to literature. as a kind of apology for, or defence of his career, in hugo published his _littérature et philosophie mêlées_. for those who could see nothing but tergiversation in the development of his views, as regarded from the royalist standpoint of and the revolutionary standpoint of , these collected papers presented a series of progressive arguments well worthy of study. nor was it merely from the personal point of view that the author issued this work; he believed that the gradual changes of thought which they revealed, all tending towards a fuller liberty in art, politics, and literature, were but typical of the states of mind through which a very large moiety of the young thinkers of his generation had passed. that he did not spare the crudities and defects which marked his own period of literary adolescence will be apparent from this passage, in which he frankly discusses his early compositions: 'there were historical sketches and miscellaneous essays, there were criticism and poetry; but the criticism was weak, the poetry weaker still; the verses were some of them light and frivolous, some of them tragically grand; the declamations against regicides were as furious as they were honest; the men of were lampooned with epigrams of , a species of satire now obsolete, but very fashionable at the date at which they were published; next came visions of regeneration for the stage, and vows of loyalty to the state; every variety of style is represented; every branch of classical knowledge made subordinate to literary reform; finally, there are schemes of government and studies of tragedies, all conceived in college or at school.' the time had now come in which he demanded a larger scope. his ideas had expanded, and while not abandoning the life contemplative, he desired to become in some way the man of action, and to mingle in the literary and political conflicts going forward around him. taxed with forsaking the study of nature, the poet replied that he still loved that holy mother, but in this century of adventure a man must be the servant of all. reviewing his political position, he felt that he had more than paid his debt to the fallen monarchy, while he could at the same time conscientiously acknowledge louis philippe. the recollection of a pension was balanced by the confiscation of a drama, observes madame hugo, and he was now his own master to follow out his convictions. in the adoption of a public career there were two courses nominally open to him. but with respect to one of these, that of entering the chamber of deputies, he was met by an obstacle which completely disbarred him. he was not a wealthy man, and by the electoral law of that day only wealthy men could become deputies. moreover, if he could have secured by some means a nominal qualification, the electors looked askance upon literary men. they regarded them as more fitted for the quietude of the study than the bustling activity of the tribune. lamartine was a deputy, it is true, but he was a rare exception. abandoning all idea of the chamber of deputies at that time, victor hugo next thought of the chamber of peers. but here again he was met by a practical difficulty. in the selection of peers the king could only choose men who had attained to certain dignities; and in hugo's case election to the academy was the only qualifying dignity that was open to him. to the academy accordingly he appealed. the first vacancy occurred in . but victor hugo had enemies, and amongst these was casimir delavigne, who had considerable weight amongst the forty. m. barbou states that 'the poet of the imperial era was sickly and asthmatic, and he detested victor hugo simply for his robustness and power.' when dumas canvassed delavigne in the interest of his friend, the author of _notre-dame_, delavigne replied with warmth that he would vote for dumas with all his heart, but for hugo never. the academicians elected m. dupaty, probably on the principle that his fame was of such a restricted character that it could not in the least detract from their own lustre. commenting upon his defeat, hugo said, 'i always thought the way to the académie was across the pont des arts; i find that it is across the pont neuf.' three years later there was another vacancy, and hugo canvassed the academicians in turn. but the whole nature of his work was opposed in spirit to the exclusives of the academy, and it is not to be wondered at, from this standpoint, that he failed to meet with a favourable appreciation. however brilliant a candidate might be, most of the members were unable to take a large and liberal view. alexandre duval was especially bitter against hugo, and when the poet was asked what he had done to offend him, he replied, 'i had written _hernani_.' though in a dying condition, duval insisted upon being taken from his bed to vote against hugo. m. molé was elected. in a third vacancy occurred, and although hugo was again a candidate, the academicians elected m. flourens. at length, in , on the occasion of his fourth candidature, victor hugo was successful. amongst the distinguished men who voted for him were lamartine, chateaubriand, villemain, mignet, cousin, and thiers. in the list of those who opposed him were the names of only two men of real note, delavigne and scribe. one, m. viennet, voted for hugo, though the amusing anecdote is told concerning him that when the poet was made a chevalier of the legion of honour, he said he should like to claim 'the cross of a chevalier for everyone who had the courage to read right through any work of a romantic, and the cross of an officer for everyone who had the wit to understand it!' amidst much that is paltry in the jealousies of literary men, it deserves to be stated to the honour of balzac that this eminent writer declined to become a candidate against victor hugo. the new academician, who was by no means universally congratulated upon his success, was received on the rd of june, . according to custom he was called on to pronounce a eulogium upon his predecessor, m. népomucène lemercier. his oration began with a description of the splendour and power of napoleon. before his greatness, said the speaker, the whole universe bowed down, with the exception of six contemplative poets. 'those poets were ducis, delille, madame de staël, benjamin constant, chateaubriand, and lemercier. but what did their resistance mean? europe was dazzled, and lay, as it were, vanquished and absorbed in the glory of france. what did these six resentful spirits represent? why, they represented for europe the only thing in which europe had failed--they represented independence; and they represented for france the only thing in which france was wanting--they represented liberty.' alluding still more directly to m. lemercier, hugo related that he was on brotherly terms with bonaparte the consul, but that when the consul became an emperor he was no longer his friend. finally, the orator declared with much eloquence that it was the mission of every author to diffuse civilization; and avowed that for his own part it had ever been his aim to devote his abilities to the development of good fellowship, feeling it his duty to be unawed by the mob, but to respect the people; and although he could not always sympathize with every form of liberty which was advocated, he was yet ever ready to hold out the hand of encouragement to all who were languishing through want of air and space, and whose future seemed to promise only gloom and despair. to ameliorate the condition of the masses he would have every generous and thinking mind lay itself out by devising fresh schemes of improvement; and libraries, studies, and schools should be multiplied, as all tending to the advancement of the human race, and to the propagation of the love of law and liberty. victor hugo's address was enthusiastically received by the bulk of the members of the academy, and the press generally commented upon it in flattering terms. times had changed since the poet had first called upon m. royer-collard to solicit his vote, when the latter professed his entire ignorance of victor hugo's name, and the following conversation took place: 'i am the author of _notre-dame de paris_, _bug jargal_, _le dernier jour dun condamné_, _marion delorme_, etc.' 'i never heard of any of them.' 'will you do me the honour of accepting a copy of my works?' 'i never read new books.' the later relations of hugo with the academy are of considerable interest. a generous forgetfulness of offence characterized him. when casimir delavigne died, and it fell upon hugo to deliver the funeral oration over one who had been his enemy, he testified to the fine talents of delavigne, and magnanimously exclaimed: 'let all the petty jealousies that follow high renown, let all disputes of the conflicting schools, let all the turmoil of party feeling and literary rivalry be forgotten. let them pass into the silence into which the departed poet has gone to take his long repose!' in january, , hugo had to reply to the speech of m. saint marc girardin, and shortly afterwards--which was a much more difficult and delicate matter--to the opening address of m. sainte-beuve. in the early stage of the poet's career, sainte-beuve, as we have seen, warmly hailed his advent, but he afterwards became his enemy, turning his back upon all his old literary beliefs. by way of covering his retreat, he advocated in the _revue des deux mondes_ a union between the classics and romanticists; and while he did justice to every other writer whom he named, he arrested his praise when he came to the name of victor hugo. he remarked that all signs of magnificent promise were forgotten, 'as soon as we think of his numerous stubborn relapses, or consider the way in which he holds to theories which public opinion has already condemned. sentiments of humanizing art, which might easily enough be praised, are utterly ignored, and m. hugo clings with a steadfast persistence to his own peculiar style.' the public were naturally curious to know how hugo would speak of one who had acted treacherously towards him, but with his usual high-minded courtesy, the speaker uttered not one word of a personal character against the man who had been so unjust towards himself. the academy had few members who were so regular in attendance, or were so useful to that august body, as victor hugo. he brought into all his relations with it the same energy and conscientiousness which marked his course in connection with literature and the drama. his association with the academy was virtually the first stage of a new departure in his career. chapter ix. personal and political. amongst all victor hugo's contemporaries there was no greater admirer of the poet than balzac. there mingled with his admiration a feeling which amounted almost to reverence; and probably the proudest moment in the novelist's life was that in which he received hugo at the jardies. léon grozlan tells us that he awaited his arrival with eagerness; indeed, so great was his anxiety that he could not remain for an instant in one place. these distinguished men of letters were noticeable in their attire, which was certainly far from solomon-like in its splendour. 'balzac was picturesque in rags. his pantaloons, without braces, receded from his ample waistcoat _à la financière_; his shoes, trodden down, receded from his pantaloons; the knot of his cravat darted its points close to his ear; his beard was in a state of four days' high vegetation. as to victor hugo, he wore a grey hat of a rather doubtful shade; a faded blue coat with gilt buttons, and a frayed black cravat, the whole set off by green spectacles of a shape and form to rejoice a rural bailiff.' during breakfast, in speaking of literature and the drama, hugo incidentally mentioned his large profits as a dramatist. 'balzac listened with the air of a martyr listening to an angel, while he heard hugo recount the enormous sums which had accrued to him from his magnificent dramas. this _coup de soleil_ was likely to excite balzac's brain for a long time to come.' at that period the author of the _comédie humaine_ was a personal authority on the bitterness of poverty. the talk proceeded to royalty, to the patronage of talent, and such like matters. balzac spoke eloquently upon the lustre which men of genius have shed upon their own times. 'the pen alone,' he said, 'can save kings and their reigns from oblivion. without virgil, horace, livy, ovid, who would recognise augustus in the midst of so many of his name?... without shakespeare the reign of elizabeth would gradually disappear from the history of england. without boileau, without racine, without corneille, without pascal, without la bruyère, without molière, louis xiv., reduced to his mistresses and his wigs, is but a crowned goat, like the sign of an inn. without the pen, philippe le roi would leave behind him a name less known than that of philippe the eating-house keeper of the rue montorgueil, or of philippe the famous pilferer and juggler. some day it will be said (at least, i hope so, for his majesty's sake), "once upon a time there lived a king called louis philippe, who, by the grace of victor hugo, lamartine, etc."' french rulers were emphatically destined to live in the pages of victor hugo, but in the case of at least one sovereign it was to be by the immortality of contempt. at the residence of hugo in the place royale, whither he had moved on leaving the rue jean goujon, there was a frequent visitor in the person of one auguste vacquerie. this young poetic enthusiast was born at villequier, in la seine inférieure, in the year . he was educated first at rouen, but having an unconquerable longing to see and be near victor hugo, he went to complete his studies at the pension favart, paris, within a few doors of hugo's house. in one of his poems he confessed that though he ardently sighed for paris, that city meant to him hugo and nothing beside--it was the shrine of the poet's fame. like his friend paul meurice, he lived in the inspiration of victor hugo's name, and the two youths became constant and intimate visitors at the house in the place royale. vacquerie fell seriously ill, and he was nursed with all the devotion of a mother by madame hugo. after his recovery, and in acknowledgment of the care bestowed on his son, m. vacquerie, senior, invited madame hugo to occupy his château at villequier during the summer vacation. the offer was gladly accepted, and madame hugo and her four children left paris for normandy on this pleasurable excursion. in the course of this visit, auguste vacquerie's brother charles was introduced to léopoldine hugo, and these impressionable natures at once fell in love. an engagement of no long duration followed, for the young couple were married in the following spring of . the wedded life of the poet's daughter was unfortunately as brief as it was happy and joyous. after a period of five months only it came to a sad and tragic termination. the catastrophe with which it closed is thus described: 'the vacquerie family property at yillequier is on the banks of the seine, which is tidal as far as rouen; but the periodical rising of the water was a matter of no uneasiness to the family, who were accustomed to make excursions almost daily from villequier to caudebec. one of these excursions was arranged for the th of september, when m. charles vacquerie, with his wife, his uncle, and cousin, started to make a trial trip in a large new boat. they all set out in high spirits upon what was quite an ordinary outing; but a sudden squall came on, and the boat capsized. léopoldine had always been taught that in the event of being upset, the safest thing to do was to cling to the boat, and accordingly she now instinctively grasped its side amidst convulsions of alarm; her husband was a good swimmer, and, anxious to carry her off, did his utmost to make her relax her hold. but all his efforts were unavailing; in her agony she seemed to have embedded her finger-nails in the wood; his very attempt to break her fingers proved ineffectual. he was but a few yards from the shore, but finding it was impossible to save her, he determined not to survive her, and, taking her into his embrace, sank with her in the stream. the two bodies were recovered a few hours afterwards.' one can well understand the accession of melancholy which would come over the poet and his wife in consequence of such a disaster as this. gloom fell upon the house in the place royale, but victor hugo found consolation in the affection of the partner of his youth, whose devotion had seemed thus far to increase with the lapse of years. again and again she animated his lyre, and gave his verse much of its sweetest and noblest inspiration. she entered fully into his high aspirations, and received with grace and _bonhomie_ visitors like lamartine and madame de girardin, who came to exchange the courtesies of friendship and genius. victor hugo was given to silent wanderings by night in the champs Élysées and the vicinity, and he has stated that many of his finest thoughts occurred to him during these midnight walks. on one occasion this habit nearly proved of serious import to him, for as he was passing along near the rue des tournelles, wrapped in meditation, he was attacked and knocked down by a band of pickpockets, and would in all probability have suffered severe injury had not some passers-by caused his assailants to take precipitate flight. the incident caused no modification in the poet's custom, for of physical or moral fear he had scant knowledge. notwithstanding his advanced political views in later life, victor hugo, as i have already had occasion to observe, moved forward towards a republic by gradual stages. he had no faith in the stability of a government which was merely the result of revolt, and in , when there appeared considerable danger of insurrectionary bloodshed, he wrote: 'some day we shall have a republic, and it will be a good one. but we must not gather in may the fruit which will only be ripe in august. we must learn to be patient, and the republic proclaimed by france will be the crown of our hoary heads.' his political honesty impressed his contemporaries. louis blanc saw a noble unity in his political progressiveness; and another critic, m. spuller, in eulogizing the three great french poets of the nineteenth century, chateaubriand, lamartine, and hugo, observed that although they were all born outside the pale of the revolution, they proved to be the very men to help forward and to glorify the democracy, hugo especially being a noble exponent of the new social truths. there naturally came a time, therefore, when hugo desired actual contact with political life. at first, as i have remarked, he formed the design of getting returned for the chamber of deputies, but this idea had to be abandoned. then he was sent for by louis philippe. this monarch, though generally immovable on social and literary questions, and caring little for the conciliation of the democracy, was much impressed by the power he recognised in victor hugo. stories are told of interviews, prolonged into the night, between the king and the poet. the result was that on the th of april, , hugo was created a peer--an event which was warmly applauded by the bulk of the people. in taking his seat in the upper chamber the new peer was by profession an independent conservative, but there was in him already a large republican leaven. his maiden speech was delivered in defence of artists and their copyright, and this was followed in march, , by a vigorous address on poland. as was the case with many other literary men, victor hugo sympathized deeply with the poles. he denounced the avowed policy of m. guizot, that france could do nothing towards re-establishing the polish nationality. 'he maintained that it was not a material but a moral intervention that was required, and that such intervention ought to be made in the name of european civilization, of which the french were the missionaries and the poles the champions. he reminded his audience how sobieski had been to poland what leonidas had been to greece, and he claimed the gratitude and moral support of france for a people who had done their part in the noble defence of freedom.' but, apart from the fact that poland had few friends, the ideas of freedom expounded by hugo excited little sympathy in the breasts of the french aristocracy. in the new peer showed his catholicity of spirit by supporting the petition of prince jerome napoleon bonaparte, praying that his family might be allowed to return to france. his chief arguments were: that the chamber would evidence its strength by its generosity; that it was repugnant to his feelings for any frenchman to be an exile or an outlaw; that any pretender must be harmless in the midst of a nation where there was freedom of work and of thought; and that by mercifulness the chamber would consolidate its power with the people. louis philippe was so impressed by these views that he allowed the bonapartes to return. that momentous revolutionary year, , did not come upon victor hugo altogether as a surprise. that which astonished him was not the character, but the strength of the new movement. he had long before seen that the stability of any french government would depend upon its attitude towards the people and the pressing social and political questions of the time. if a government ignored, or attempted to crush the forces which were at work in society, then it was inevitably doomed to fall before them. he had indulged some hope that the government of louis philippe would inaugurate an enlightened policy; but it failed to do this, while it perpetuated abuses which had long been obnoxious. that which the far-seeing predicted actually occurred; the monarchy was swept away. hugo thought for a moment that a compromise might be effected by constituting the duchess of orleans regent; but he speedily saw that the popular movement was against all royalty and its forms, and he gave in his adhesion to the republic. the provisional government having fixed the elections for the rd of april, hugo was nominated as a candidate for paris; but he was unsuccessful. shortly afterwards, however, he was returned to the national assembly, on the occasion of the supplementary elections rendered necessary in paris. he took an independent part in the debates in the assembly, voting now with the right and now with the left. his socialistic views found expression during the discussion upon the national factories, which had borne such lamentable results. 'admitting the necessity which might seem to justify their establishment, he insisted that practically they had had a most disastrous influence upon business, and pointed out the serious danger which they threatened, not alone to the finances, but to the population of paris. as a socialist, he addressed himself to socialists, and invoked them to labour in behalf of the perishing, but to labour without causing alarm to the world at large; he implored them to bestow upon the disendowed classes, as they were called, all the benefits of civilization, to provide them with education, with the means of cheap living; and, in short, to put them in the way of accumulating wealth instead of multiplying misery.' from the point of view of the social reformer, his utterances were wise and conciliatory. during the sanguinary days of june he went from place to place, striving to avert bloodshed; and after the outbreak he was instrumental in saving the lives of several of the insurgents. he advocated mercy, and in the assembly proposed that an entire amnesty should be proclaimed. a deputy rose and embraced him, and with this deputy, who was none other than victor schoelcher, a close friendship was formed. hugo would have no part in the proceedings against louis blanc, and he declined to assent to the vote that cavaignac deserved the gratitude of his country. he opposed the project of having but one chamber, and it has been pointed out that the existence of a second chamber would in all probability have saved france from the _coup d'État_. from his place in the assembly he spoke strongly in favour of the liberty of the press and of the abolition of capital punishment. in april, , he started the journal _l'Évènement_, which had for its motto 'intense hatred to anarchy, tender love for the people,' and which included amongst its contributors charles hugo, paul meurice, auguste vitu, théophile gautier, and auguste vacquerie. this journal, which supported the cause of the revolution, was for a time, but a brief one only, successful. in january, , the constituent assembly was dissolved, and a legislative assembly summoned in its stead a few months afterwards. hugo was elected one of the twenty-eight deputies for paris, his name standing tenth on the list. he has left it on record in _le droit et la loi_ that this year formed an epoch in his life. he became at this time a thorough republican. 'an inanimate body was lying on the ground; he was told that that lifeless thing was the republic; he drew near and gazed, and lo! it was liberty; he bent over it and raised it to his bosom. before him might be ruin, insult, banishment, and scorn, but he took it unto him as a wife! from that moment there existed within his very soul the union between liberty and the republic.' the uncompromising attitude he now assumed seems to have alarmed some persons, who charged him with apostasy; but they must have been superficial students of his career. the poet had long been drifting towards this end. with the advance in his political views there seems to have come an expansion in his eloquence; and the tribune witnessed many impassioned speeches from the deputy--speeches which moved his auditors to the utmost depths of emotion. when he defended italy at the time the french entered rome--and in doing so strongly attacked the abuses attendant upon ecclesiastical domination--he incurred the anger of his former friend montalembert. replying to the comte he said: 'there was a time when he employed his noble talents better. he defended poland as now i defend italy. i was with him then; he is against me now. the explanation is not far to seek. he has gone over to the side of the oppressors: i have remained on the side of the oppressed.' presiding at the peace congress of paris, held on the st of august, , and addressing richard cobden and his fellow-delegates from various parts of the world, hugo gave expression to his sanguine humanitarian sentiments. 'you have come,' he observed to these representatives of peace, 'to turn over, if it may be, the last and most august page of the gospel, the page that ordains peace amongst the children of the one creator; and here in this city, which has rejoiced to proclaim fraternity to its own citizens, you have assembled to proclaim fraternity to all men.' the orator expressed his conviction that universal peace was attainable, and at the closing sitting of the congress, held on the th, the anniversary of st. bartholomew, he spoke in this impassioned strain: 'on this very day, years ago, this city of paris was aroused in terror amidst the darkness of the night. the bell, known as the silver bell, chimed from the palais de justice, and a bloody deed, unprecedented in the annals of crime, was perpetrated; and now, on that self-same date, in that self-same city, god has brought together into one general concourse the representatives of that old antagonism, and has bidden them transform their sentiments into sentiments of love. the sad significance of this mournful anniversary is removed; each drop of blood is replaced by a ray of light. well-nigh beneath the shadow of that tower whence tolled the fatal vespers of st. bartholomew, not only englishmen and frenchmen, germans and italians, europeans and americans, but actually papists and huguenots have been content to meet, happy, nay proud, to unite themselves together in an embrace alike honourable and indissoluble.' these words excited a strange fervour and enthusiasm in the audience, and amidst the waving of hats and handkerchiefs, and other demonstrations of applause, a roman catholic abbé and a protestant pastor might have been seen embracing, overcome by the power of the orator's language. during the debate on the new education bill, introduced by m. de falloux in january, , victor hugo adversely criticized the measure as placing too much power in the hands of the clergy. he announced that he should oppose any scheme which entrusted the education of youth to the clerical party, who were always seeking to fetter the human mind. church and state must pursue independent courses. 'your law,' he exclaimed, directly addressing the minister, 'is a law with a mask. it says one thing, it does another. it may bear the aspect of liberty, but it means thraldom. it is practically confiscation under the name of a deed of gift. but it is all one with your usual policy. every time that you forge a new chain you cry, "see, here is freedom!"' during the same session hugo appealed for mercy for the political criminals, and condemned the law of transportation, by which they were not only banished but liable to be shut up in citadels. his speech on this occasion created such a profound impression that it was afterwards printed and distributed throughout the country, and a medal was struck in honour of the orator. troublous times were again looming over france. the protestations of louis napoleon that he desired to rank as a patriot only, and not as a bonaparte, had been accepted by victor hugo, louis blanc, and others, in good faith. in his prison at ham, he had been visited by several staunch republicans, who believed his asseverations that he had no other end in view than the welfare of france and the consolidation of her liberties. indeed, when the exile returned to paris he sought out victor hugo, and in the most frank and unambiguous language said to him, 'what would it be for me to be napoleon over again? why, it would not simply be an ambition, it would be a crime. why should you suppose me a fool? i am not a great man, and when the republic is made i shall never follow the steps of napoleon. as for me, i am honest; and i shall follow in the way of washington.' it never struck the poet that his visitor protested too much. upright and sincere himself, he liked to believe in the integrity of others, and he little dreamt that louis napoleon, who had sworn fidelity to the constitution, and again and again declared himself bound by his oath, would in a short time strangle the republic with his own hands. but, alas! it was not long before the poet and his friends were disillusioned, for, as proudhon remarked, 'citizen bonaparte, who but yesterday was a mere speck in the fiery heavens, has become an ominous cloud, bearing storm and tempest in its bosom.' hugo, seeing what was advancing, bore himself courageously, and from his place in the tribune never ceased to advocate the cause of freedom, while he bade the people repose securely in their own strength. the reactionary policy began with the curtailment of the liberty of the press, and culminated in the _coup d'État_ of the nd december, . on that date the legislative assembly was dissolved; universal suffrage was established, and paris was declared to be in a state of siege. thiers, cavaignac, and others were arrested and sent to the castle of vincennes. about members of the assembly, with m. berryer at their head, on endeavouring to meet, were also arrested, and paris was occupied by troops. sanguinary conflicts ensued between the people and the soldiery, but the troops were victorious. napoleon put a pistol at the head of paris, and ultimately, by means which will be condemned in history to all ages, the empire was established. victor hugo did all in his power for the maintenance of the rights of the people, but in vain. in the tribune he indignantly inveighed against the tyranny of napoleon, and was in consequence placed at the head of the list of the proscribed. he supported the committee of resistance in their efforts to depose the prince; but the people were paralyzed by the display of power, and he was obliged to fly from paris. a sum of , francs was offered to anyone who would either kill or arrest him, and so great was the terror of the populace that no one could be found who would give the friend of freedom an asylum. at length he secured temporary shelter beneath the roof of a relation, remaining here until the th of december, when he left paris, completely disguised, by the northern railway station. the expatriated poet reached brussels in safety, but his sons and the rest of the staff of _l'Évènement_ had been cast into prison. it was a momentous time for the friends of victor hugo, who were naturally anxious for his safety when so many of the friends of the republic had been seized and incarcerated. in his retreat the great patriot found himself confronted by a new task. he resolved to compile a history of the infamous events which had driven him into exile. 'his lashes should reach to the faces of napoleon and his acolytes at the tuileries; he became at once the tacitus and juvenal of his time, only his accents were mightier than theirs, because his indignation was greater and his wrath more just.' napoleon had triumphed, but the scourge was soon to descend which should leave him exposed to the derision and contempt of the world to the end of time. the sword is powerful; but the pen, which is the stronger weapon, has always overtaken it, and adjusted the historical balance in the interests of humanity. chapter x. the poet in exile. in brussels victor hugo came upon friends, amongst them being the novelist, alexandre dumas. the latter was living in this city because he was the better able to pursue his literary work there, undistracted by the myriad claims which such a centre as paris presents. he had never mixed ardently in politics, but he was so chagrined at the banishment of hugo that he chivalrously resolved never to visit louis napoleon or the tuileries again; and he resolutely adhered to this decision. victor schoelcher followed hugo to brussels, having escaped from his pursuers in the disguise of a priest. towards the close of december, , the poet began to write his stirring narrative, _l'histoire d'un crime_, and the work was completed by the following may. it was not published until , and i shall make some references to it in a later chapter. amongst other exiles in brussels were the ill-assorted couple Émile de girardin and general lamoricière. but belgium also sheltered in this hour of peril ledru rollin, the sculptor david, barbès, louis blanc, edgar quinet, and eugène sue. indeed, many of the finest and choicest spirits of france had been driven from their native soil. the sons of victor hugo joined their father in january, , and the poet determined to remain in brussels so long as napoleon iii. reigned at the tuileries. fate, nevertheless, decreed otherwise. the belgian government, though favourable to hugo, was still more anxious to maintain friendly relations with the new french empire. victor hugo soon made it impossible, however, for the belgian rulers to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. the publication of his _napoléon le petit_ fell like a thunderbolt over both paris and brussels. that scathing work made the dictator writhe amid the splendours of his palace. it was charged with wit, pathos, sarcasm, and invective. amongst the many personal passages denunciatory of louis napoleon was the following: 'he will never be other than the nocturnal strangler of liberty; he will never be other than the man who has intoxicated his soldiers, not with glory, like the first napoleon, but with wine; he will never be other than the pigmy tyrant of a great people. grandeur, even in infamy, is utterly inconsistent with the character and calibre of the man. as dictator, he is a buffoon; let him make himself emperor, he would be grotesque. that would at once put an end to him. his destiny is to make mankind shrug their shoulders. will he be less severely punished for that reason? not at all: contempt does not in his case mitigate anger. he will be hideous, and he will remain ridiculous. that's all. history laughs, and crushes. what would you have the historian do with this fellow? he can only lead him to posterity by the ear. the man once stripped of success, the pedestal removed, the dust fallen, the lace and spangles and the great sabre taken away, the poor little skeleton laid bare and shivering--can anyone imagine anything meaner and more miserable?' this powerful satire closed with a vision of vengeance: 'you do not perceive that the nd of december is nothing but an immense illusion, a pause, a stop, a sort of working curtain, behind which the deity, that marvellous machinist, is preparing and constructing the last act, the final and triumphant scene of the french revolution! you look stupefied upon the curtain, upon the things painted upon the coarse canvas, this one's nose, that one's epaulettes, the great sabre of a third, those embroidered vendors of _eau-de-cologne_ whom you call generals, those _poussahs_ that you call magistrates, those worthy men that you call senators, this mixture of caricatures and spectres--and you take them all for realities. you do not hear yonder in the shade that hollow sound! you do not hear some one going backwards and forwards! you do not see that curtain shaken by the breath of him who is behind!' the excitement caused by this work proved too much for the belgian government, and, desirous of keeping well with napoleon iii., it reluctantly decided that the author must be expelled. as there was no law bearing upon hugo's case, the belgian chamber passed one to meet it, and hugo was cast out from what he deemed to be a secure asylum. he embarked for england, but only on his way to jersey, which he had decided upon as his next place of habitation. he landed at st. helier on the th of august, , and was received by a body of french compatriots and exiles. hugo was now somewhat straitened in means, as he derived nothing from his dramas and his various works. from his very ability and genius, he was singled out as a special object of disapprobation on the part of the french rulers. the poet first settled down in a small house on the marine terrace, and the money he received from the sale of his effects in paris was a very welcome addition to his small store. but he had passed through too many periods of hardship and vicissitude to repine over these altered circumstances--he rather rejoiced to suffer for conscience' sake. he now gave himself up to intellectual labour, and found much happiness in his leisure hours in the bosom of his family, every member of which was deeply attached to him; and in the interchange of affectionate confidences with his intimate friends, vacquerie, paul meurice, and others. he was treated with great distinction by the islanders, not (as he himself said) because he was victor hugo the poet, but because he was a peer of france. in consequence of his rank, observes one writer, 'he enjoyed certain privileges, one of which was that he was exempt from the obligation of sweeping his doorstep and clearing away the grass from the front of his house!' but he was obliged to supply the suzerain of the duchy of normandy with two fowls every year, a tax that was religiously exacted from 'his lordship.' yet even in the little island home of their adoption the exiles were not permitted to rest in peace. spies were sent amongst them, who endeavoured to gather evidence of sedition, and although jersey had its own laws, as napoleon was now the ally of england the situation was not without its dangers. one imperial spy, named hubert, was discovered; and when the exiles determined that he should die for his treachery, hugo, with his usual large-hearted magnanimity, came forward and saved his life. another terrible denunciation of napoleon and his satellites was penned by hugo during his stay in jersey. _les châtiments_, this new satire, was even more powerful and telling than _napoléon le petit_. its verse burned with indignation. the poet spared no one who was in any degree responsible for the crime of the nd december. 'sometimes he is full of pity for the victims of the dastardly aggression, pouring out his sympathy for those whom the convict-ships were conveying to the deadly climates of cayenne and lambessa, to receive for political offences the fate of the worst of felons; sometimes he sounds forth their virtues in brilliant strophes; and sometimes he rises into grandeur as he scourges the great men of the second empire, whilst at others he uses the lash of satire, and depicts them all as circus grooms and mountebanks. page after page seems to bind his victim to an eternal pillory.' the work showed, in its various divisions, how society was 'saved,' order re-established, the dynasty restored, religion glorified, authority consecrated, stability assured, and the deliverers themselves delivered. it was first published in brussels, but only in a mutilated form, the belgian government dreading the effects of some of its bitter attacks upon the ruler of france. in vain the poet protested against this infringement of liberty. a complete edition of the work, however, soon appeared at st. helier, and it speedily got into circulation in all the european capitals, ingeniously defying every effort to suppress it. 'the more it was hunted down the more thoroughly it penetrated france. it had as many disguises as an outlaw. sometimes it was enclosed in a sardine-box, or rolled up in a hank of wool; sometimes it crossed the frontier entire, sometimes in fragments; concealed occasionally in plaster busts or clocks, laid in the folds of ladies' dresses, or even sewn in between the double soles of men's boots.' matters were thus rendered righteously unpleasant for napoleon, who dreaded these attacks upon his person and power. a man of genius fighting for liberty is sometimes stronger than a throne; and it was possible that this might be the issue between the poet and the dictator. the work brought no profit to its author, but he had the far higher reward of seeing it carry terror into the midst of the tuileries, while it at the same time stirred the slumbering conscience of the french nation. for two or three years the jersey exiles remained unmolested, but napoleon, feeling insecure, determined that they should 'move on.' victor hugo on several occasions delivered funeral orations over departed patriots. he never spared the french rulers, and invariably expressed sympathy with 'the heartrending cry of humanity which made the crowned criminal turn pale upon his throne.' at the obsequies of one félix bony, who had been a victim of imperial tyranny, the poet referred to the british alliance with the emperor of the french as a degradation to england. upon this, sir robert peel intimated in the house of commons that he should feel it his duty to put an end to this kind of language on the part of french refugees as soon as possible. ribeyrolles, the editor of _l'homme_, the french newspaper in jersey, retorted that england was england no longer, and victor hugo returned the following answer: 'm. bonaparte has driven me from france because i have acted on my rights as a citizen, and as a representative of the people; he has driven me from belgium because i have written _napoléon le petit_, and he will probably drive me from england because of the protests that i have made and shall continue to make. be it so. that concerns england more than it concerns me. america is open to me, and america is sufficiently after my heart. but i warn him, that whether it be from france, from belgium, from england, or from america, my voice shall never cease to declare that sooner or later he will have to expiate the crime of the nd of december. what is said is true: there _is_ a personal quarrel between him and me; there is the old quarrel of the judge upon the bench and the prisoner at the bar.' the tension became too great when félix pyat published in _l'homme_ a 'letter to queen victoria,' commenting in sarcastic but foolish terms upon her majesty's visit to the emperor and empress of the french. some of the personal portions of the pamphlet affecting the queen were perfectly unjustifiable, and the result was a serious agitation in jersey for the expulsion of the exiles. at one moment their lives were in danger. hugo confessed that he did not care for this, but he should greatly regret the destruction of his manuscripts. his compositions, which represented thirty years' labour, and included _les contemplations_, _la légende des siècles_, and the first portion of _les misérables_, were accordingly secured in a strong iron-bound chest. madame hugo, though warned of her danger, resolutely remained by the side of her husband. the conductors of _l'homme_ were at once expelled from jersey, whereupon victor hugo drew up a protest on behalf of the exiles. 'the _coup d'État_,' said this document, 'has penetrated into english liberty. england has reached this point that she now banishes exiles.' it then went onto inveigh against the crimes of 'treason, perjury, spoliation, and murder,' committed by napoleon iii., for which he had been legally condemned by the french court of assize, and morally by the bulk of the english press. the protest received thirty-seven signatures, amongst them being those of louis blanc and victor schoelcher. after a period of uncertainty, the english government consented to the expulsion of the refugees. on the th of october, , the news was communicated to victor hugo that he must quit the island by the nd of november. the poet said to the constable of st. clément, the bearer of the tidings, 'i do not await the expiration of the respite that is given me. i hasten to quit a land where honour has no place, and which burns my feet.' after paying a farewell visit to the graves of their dead comrades, the exiles dispersed, leaving jersey for various destinations; and on the st of october, hugo and his family embarked for guernsey. chapter xi. in guernsey.--'les misÉrables.' though harassed in mind and in person, victor hugo had reserved to himself, during his troubled stay in jersey, leisure in which to devote himself to the muses pure and simple. as the result of these periods of meditation, there appeared in paris in _les contemplations_. this work, which speedily went through several editions, was the lyrical record of twenty-five years. according to the author himself, it holds, more than any other of the numerous collections of his poetry, 'as in a rocky chalice, the gathered waters of his life.' and, again, he observed that 'the author has allowed this book to form itself, so to speak, within him. life, filtering drop by drop, through events and sufferings, has deposited it in his heart.' divided into two parts, the earlier division of the work dealt with other times, the second with 'to-day.' from the trials and the joys through which the poet had passed he endeavoured to extract the philosophy of life. everything is tinged with deep feeling, for it would be superfluous to say that hugo was ever the subject of profound emotions. he felt more deeply and strongly than other men, and this gives that intense personal realism to his work which distinguished it from the first recorded utterance to the last. virulently attacked in some quarters, this series of poems was as warmly welcomed in others. with the public it found ready favour, and speedily ran through numerous editions. it may safely be affirmed that criticism which is merely captious has never yet permanently injured any work. wherever there is genius, it will force its way through such obstacles, and find an honest public appreciation. if hugo had not himself had faith in the poetic seed in such works as _les contemplations_, he must have despaired; but with that egotism of talent which is never offensive, he left his work confidently to the judgment of minds which could think and souls which could feel. of that gigantic work, _la légende des siècles_, the first part of which appeared in , i shall speak in greater detail when referring to its completion. expelled from jersey, the poet found a home in guernsey; for although the islands are geographically near, the sentiments of the islanders differed greatly on the subject of political refugees. at hauteville house, which, as its name implies, occupied a commanding elevation, victor hugo found a home which is now peculiarly linked with his name. the re-arrangement of the place was a work of time. writing to jules janin, hugo announced his getting into new quarters: 'england has hardly been a better guardian of my fireside than france. my poor fireside! france broke it up, belgium broke it up, jersey broke it up; and now i am beginning, with all the patience of an ant, to build it up anew. if ever i am driven away again i shall turn to england, and see whether that worthy prude albion can help me to find myself _at home_.... i have taken a house in guernsey. it has three stories, a flat roof, a fine flight of steps, a courtyard, a crypt, and a look-out; but it is all being paid for by the proceeds of _les contemplations_.' innumerable are the pilgrimages which have been made to hauteville house, with consequent descriptions of the residence. a brief sketch of the leading features of the poet's home, for which i am indebted to an account written by one of such visitors, will not be unacceptable. hauteville house, which overlooks the city and fort beneath, and commands a vast expanse of sea, is likewise famed for its interior treasures. the visitor finds carvings of the renaissance and the middle ages, and porcelain, enamels, and glass, the work of venetian and florentine masters. entering the house by a vestibule, there is first perceived on the upper lintel a _basso-relievo_ representing the chief subject in _notre-dame de paris_. on the right and left, in carved oak, are two medallions, by david, of victor hugo and his second daughter. a fine renaissance column supports the whole. passing on, the monumental door of the dining-room is reached. upon one of the panels is written 'love and believe;' and over one of the doors, and below a statuette of the virgin, is the word of welcome to the visitor, '_ave_.' in the billiard-saloon are hung the poet's designs, framed in varnished fir. to his other evidences of ability hugo adds that of a graphic artist. many of his sketches have a breadth and power which strongly recall the pencil of rembrandt, though in the matter of drawing and some other points they will not, of course, sustain comparison with the work of that wonderful master. the tapestry-parlour is an apartment of special interest, the mantelpiece particularly fixing the attention. imagine a cathedral of carved oak, which, rising vigorously from the floor, springs up to the ceiling, where its upper carving touches the tapestry. the doorway corresponds to the fireplace; the rosace is a convex mirror, placed above the mantelpiece; the central gable is a firm entablature covered with fantastic foliage, and decorated by arches of exquisite taste, in which the byzantine mingles with the rococo; the two towers are two counterforts, which repeat all the ornamentation of the entire mass. the coping, very imposing in its effect, recalls the fronts of the houses in antwerp and bruges. a face appears amid the woodwork, vigorously thrown out. it is that of a bishop, whose crosier alone is gilded. on each side of it is a shield, with the witty motto: 'crosier of wood, bishop of gold: crosier of gold, bishop of wood.' on two scrolls, representing rolled parchment, are inscribed the names of those whom victor hugo looks upon as the principal poets of humanity--job, isaiah, homer, Æschylus, lucretius, dante, shakespeare, molière. on the opposite side are the names of moses, socrates, christ, columbus, luther, washington. two oaken statues lean from the double entablature of the chimney-piece. one represents st. paul reading, with an inscription on the pedestal--'the book;' the other shows a monk in ecstasy, with his eyes uplifted, and on the pedestal is written 'heaven.' the working-room contains another fine monumental piece of work, bearing a motto taken from the fourth act of _hernani_, '_ad augusta per angusta_.' the dining-room walls are covered with splendid dutch delf of the seventeenth century, and the room has also a magnificent mirror and a piece of gobelin tapestry representing the riches of summer. vases and statuettes are to be met with everywhere; and on panels are carved various legends--'man,' 'god,' 'my country,' 'life is exile.' an armchair of carved oak, which was regarded by the poet as the ancestral seat at his table, is closed by a chain, and bears the inscription, 'the absent are here.' the galleries and rooms of the first story are likewise rich in renaissance work, and in chinese and japanese treasures. the oak gallery, which is a kind of guest-chamber, has six windows looking out upon fort st. george, which distribute the light through a perfect forest of carved oak. the mantelpiece--a marvellous piece of work, represents the sacrifice of isaac. a state bed and a massive candelabrum in oak, surmounted by a figure carved by victor hugo, are also noticeable objects; but they are almost eclipsed by the splendid door of entrance, which, as seen from the interior, is as brilliant as a church window. two spiral columns sustain a pediment of oak with renaissance grotesques, surrounded by arabesques and monsters; it advances with two folds, which are resplendent with paintings, among which are eight large figures of the martyrs, attired in gold and purple, the principal being st. peter. there is inscribed on the lintel, '_surge, perge_,' and close by the words of lucan, 'the conquerors have the gods, with the conquered cato remains.' there are also numerous maxims, poetic and otherwise. hugo's own room was the look-out--a little belvedere open in all directions, but very small in extent. it contains the poet's writing-table and an iron bed. whether regarded from the point of view of its noble situation, or from that of the artistic treasures which find a lodgment in its interior, hauteville house is a place to inspire a poet of a far less expansive imagination than victor hugo. while the author of _notre-dame_ pursued his studies and compositions in the belvedere, the other inmates of hauteville house were generally engaged in a variety of pursuits beneath. the elder son, charles, devoted himself to the writing of dramas and romances, while the second son, victor françois, undertook with much spirit and success a translation of shakespeare. adèle, the one daughter now remaining, composed music; auguste vacquerie plunged into a series of curious literary studies, which resulted in the production of _les mielles de l'histoire_ and _profils et grimaces_; and madame victor hugo busied herself in collecting notes for her husband's _life_. unfortunately, owing to her death, her task was never completed, a portion only of her labour of love seeing the light in . the whole family ever cordially welcomed any frenchmen who sought a refuge at hauteville house, and gérard de nerval, balzac, and many others occupied in turns a room specially set apart for the use of such visitors. two or three years after hugo established himself in guernsey, an amnesty was announced by the emperor of the french. the proclamation was dated the th of august, . the poet refused to avail himself of the act of grace, and in conjunction with louis blanc, edgar quinet, and others, replied to the imperial pardon by a counter manifesto. he was blamed by some for this step, it being urged that it was his duty to return to france during the days of the second empire, and to use every effort to procure that amelioration of the condition of the people, and the fruition of their hopes, which he and other patriots desired. but victor hugo was very depressed at this time, and saw little prospect of the realization of his own aspirations and of those who felt and acted with him. but an idea of the vast personal influence attributed to the poet may be gathered from such language as the following which was used concerning him at this time: 'had victor hugo stood forward, as he was morally bound to do, the fatal day of sadowa might never have happened, the disastrous ministry of m. Émile ollivier would have been impossible, and france could have been spared the overwhelming ruin which fell upon her when absolutely abandoned to the counsels and government of the feeblest mediocrity.' it is impossible, of course, to say that these sanguine expectations would have been justified; but they will at least serve to show the high esteem in which the poet was held, and the weight attached to his individual will and example. another epoch in the literary career of victor hugo was reached in by the publication of the celebrated romance, _les misérables_. this work had been begun many years before, and was to have been published in . its original conception was vastly extended in course of time, until what was at first meant to occupy only two octavo volumes ultimately spread over ten. the work appeared simultaneously in paris, london, brussels, new york, madrid, berlin, turin, st. petersburg, leipzig, milan, rotterdam, warsaw, pesth, and rio de janeiro. the first paris edition amounted to , copies, the first brussels edition to , , and the first leipzig edition to , . no fewer than , copies were sold in one year, and altogether, in various forms and editions, more than three times this immense number of copies were disposed of. the book was found everywhere, from the steppes of russia to the battlefields of the united states, where it solaced many a soldier during the civil war. this stupendous work is divided into five parts, entitled respectively 'fantine,' 'cosette,' 'marius,' 'l'idylle rue plumet et l'Épopée rue st. denis,' and 'jean valjean.' each of these parts consists of eight or more books, which are again divided into chapters. it was complained that the book was partly the offspring of a poet, and partly the offspring of a social philosopher, and that while the poetry was noble the philosophy was detestable. at the same time it was admitted that the writer had stamped upon every page the hall-mark of genius, and the loving patience and conscientious labour of a true artist. the romance opens with a finely-sketched portrait of a worthy bishop, called by the people monseigneur bienvenu, a noble creation, which surprised those who looked upon hugo merely as a curser of the church and all its works. a scene of strong dramatic power occurs in chapter x., which deals with an interview between the bishop and a dying conventionnel, who had all but voted for the death of the king. victor hugo's unequalled command of language and his terse and vigorous emphasis come here into full play. 'all french writers of mark,' says a writer in the _quarterly review_, 'are divisible into two schools; the one is characterized by the polish and smoothness to which the romance element is carried in a racine, or, in more modern times, a lamartine; the other is full of a _viel esprit gaulois_, a molière or a la fontaine. for this rugged force of speech, all knots, the bark still on, m. hugo is very remarkable. the terseness with which he throws into a word the compressed power which a feebler but more elegant writer would draw out into a whole sentence, indicates an amount of genius which belongs only to the kinglier spirits of an age, and which in french literature has only been matched by rabelais, in italian by dante.' the real hero of the story is jean valjean, the son of a woodcutter of faverolles. losing his father and mother when a child, he grew up to carry on the former's craft, supporting thereby an elder sister (left a widow) and her seven children. one night, in that terrible year of famine, , jean valjean broke into a baker's shop to steal a loaf for the starving children at home. he was arrested for the theft, and condemned to five years at the galleys. frequent attempts to escape added fourteen years more to his punishment. at length, after nineteen years, he was liberated; but, while now free, his lot was as hard as though he were still in confinement. no one will recognise or aid this pariah of civilization, and he enters the episcopal town of d---- in despair. the good bishop alone will receive the outcast, and he entertains him, and has a bed provided for him. in the middle of the night valjean is overcome by wild impulses. he steals the spoons from the cupboard over the bed of the sleeping bishop, and escapes through the garden. in the morning he is caught and brought back, but the bishop only heaps coals of fire upon his head in return for his perfidy. valjean is allowed to go out into the world, but there is a terrible struggle between the good and the evil nature within him. the psychological power of this part of the novel is marvellous. the conflict between right and wrong is renewed periodically in valjean's breast all through the romance, and it is the influence of the christian bishop which prevents the miserable man from becoming dead to all his better instincts. the third book of the first part is devoted to the episode of fantine, an unhappy being who is more sinned against than sinning, and whose sorrows are vividly and painfully described, with some few delicate lights thrown in upon child-life. a striking portrait of javert, a severe french _agent de police_, testifies once more to victor hugo's power of human analysis; but the most thrilling scenes still centre round valjean. the ex-convict becomes a respectable provincial mayor under an assumed name, and when a man is arrested in his old name of valjean, after a tremendous struggle, in which he sees the dead bishop calling upon him to be true to his conscience, he resolves to deliver himself up and save the innocent man. i cannot follow all the ramifications of this extraordinary work, which absolutely teems with exciting incidents, all graphically told, and having for their central and cardinal motive the trials of valjean and the revolt against society. in the last volume we have the marriage of cosette, daughter of fantine, with one marius, both of whom owed their lives to valjean. marius and cosette shrink from valjean when they hear his confession that he is a liberated convict. but when marius learns further that valjean had saved his life and conveyed him from the barricades to his grandfather's house, and that he had also secured for him his wife's dowry of , francs, remorse overcomes him for his ingratitude. he and cosette seek out valjean at his lodgings, but only arrive in time to witness the death of the suffering, sinning, struggling convict, and to receive his last blessing. this romance contains passages which, for grandeur of conception and skill in execution, have never been equalled by any other french writer. at the same time the work is not without its defects, chief of which is the frequent recurrence of prolix digressions. for example, at a very critical point in the story, when jean valjean has effected his escape with marius in his arms from the pursuit of the soldiery, the reader is treated to some hundred pages of speculation on the valuable uses to which the sewage of large towns may be put. other eccentricities might be pointed out, but high and above them all burns the light of the original genius of the author, which transforms the book for us into a veritable wizard's spell. hugo, even with his perversities and his literary contradictions, can move us as no other man can. writing to lamartine, who had been considerably exercised by the social views promulgated in this book, the author said: 'a society that admits misery, a humanity that admits war, seem to me an inferior society and a debased humanity; it is a higher society, and a more elevated humanity at which i am aiming--a society without kings, a humanity without barriers. i want to universalize property, not to abolish it; i would suppress parasitism; i want to see every man a proprietor, and no man a master. this is my idea of true social economy. the goal may be far distant, but is that a reason for not striving to advance towards it? yes, as much as a man can long for anything i long to destroy human fatality. i condemn slavery; i chase away misery; i instruct ignorance; i illumine darkness; i discard malice. hence it is that i have written _les misérables_.' so much for one side of the work; but if its social and political philosophy be condemned to the exclusion of its manifold excellences and beauties, then i can only pity the mole-like blindness of those who, in their haste to be critical, have lost that key-note of human sympathy which alone can unlock the treasures of _les misérables_. chapter xii. literary and dramatic. utopian as some of victor hugo's social theories might be, his aspirations after the perfection of the race were unquestionably noble. what is more, he furnished practical evidence of the sincerity of his desire to bridge over the gulf which separates humanity into classes. at his house in guernsey he entertained periodically the children of the poor, frequently to the number of forty, at his own table. they would be accompanied by their mothers, and would sit down to an excellent repast, the hospitable board being presided over by the poet himself. in this fraternal spirit he endeavoured to carry out his democratic ideas. at one of his christmas feasts at hauteville house, hugo remarked: 'my idea of providing a substantial dinner for the destitute has been well received almost everywhere; as an institution of fraternity it is accepted with a cordial welcome--accepted by christians as being in conformity with the gospel, and by democrats as being agreeable to the principles of the revolution.' he also advocated the education of children, as well in the principles of justice and real happiness as in the various branches of knowledge; for by elevating the child they would elevate the people of the future. the good work thus initiated in guernsey was imitated by humanitarians in london, who provided acceptable meals for the poor in the ragged schools, and for the neglected and the outcast. hugo's example was therefore not barren of results, though systematic care for the poor was still a dream of the future. a strangely interesting scene took place at brussels, when victor hugo's publishers in that city, messrs. lacroix and verboeckhoven, gave a grand banquet to the author in celebration of the success of _les misérables_. distinguished representatives of the english, french, italian, spanish and belgian press attended, and amongst the chief guests were the burgomaster of brussels, the president of the chamber of representatives, mm. eugène pelletan, de banville, champfleury, and louis blanc. the illustrious exile was much moved as he listened to speeches breathing sympathy and affection for himself as a man, and admiration for him as a writer. 'eleven years ago, my friends,' he said in reply, 'you saw me departing from among you comparatively young. you see me now grown old. but though my hair has changed, my heart remains the same. i thank you for coming here to-day, and beg you to accept my best and warmest acknowledgments. in the midst of you i seem to be breathing my native air again; every frenchman seems to bring me a fragment of france; and while thus i find myself in contact with your spirits, a beautiful glamour appears to encircle my soul, and to charm me like the smile of my mother-country.' the empire had made this gathering impossible in paris, the city where it should naturally have been held. a pleasant act of reparation for past injustice was performed when, on the th of may, , the inhabitants of jersey once more welcomed hugo to their island. he went over upon the requisition of five hundred sympathizers with liberty, who invited him to speak on behalf of the subscription which was being raised to assist garibaldi in the liberation of italy. the occasion was pre-eminently one to unseal the fount of eloquence in the exile and the poet. his own deep love for france led him to feel profoundly with the noble patriot who was struggling for a united italy. hugo spoke with great energy, first depicting italy in her bondage, then pleading for her freedom and independence, and prophesying the near approach of the time when, with the sword of garibaldi, aided by the support of france and england, italy would rise victorious in the struggle for liberty. a few years later, and we have some glimpses of the domestic relations of the poet. his son charles was married in , at brussels, to the ward of m. jules simon. in april, , victor hugo became a grandfather, and amongst the many evidences of his affection for children this little letter, written upon his grandson's birth, is well worthy of preservation: 'georges,--be born to duty, grow up for liberty, live for progress, die in light! bear in thy veins the gentleness of thy mother, the nobleness of thy father. be good, be brave, be just, be honourable! with thy grandmother's kiss, receive thy father's blessing.' the child had scarcely come, however, to gladden the household before he was taken away again. he lived a twelvemonth only; but in his place there soon came another georges, and he was followed by a sister jeanne--offshoots of humanity which twined themselves round the heart of the grandfather, and on more than one occasion inspired his pen. in the summer of , the poet and his two sons, with a party of friends, went upon a tour of pleasure through zealand. but the journey, which was intended to be pursued strictly incognito, became in reality a kind of progress. the principal traveller was recognised at antwerp, and charles hugo, who afterwards published a work entitled _victor hugo en zélande_, remarked that though his father had come to discover zealand, zealand had discovered him instead. many pleasant incidents marked the journey, not the least gratifying being a reception at ziericsee, when, in addition to being welcomed by the municipal authorities, two little girls, dressed in white, came forward and presented hugo with magnificent bouquets. on leaving dordrecht, the farewell was one that might have been tendered to a sovereign. shortly before making this tour hugo had issued _les chansons des rues et des bois_. in these songs of the streets and the woods will be discovered the amusing recreations of a great spirit and the representations of its lighter moods. applying to the volume a standpoint quite out of keeping with its scope and motive, some of the reviewers saw in it a decadence of genius. they had no ear for its music or for its more delicate undertones. it was so different from the work they expected from such a writer that it must be bad. charles monselet thought there were some passages in this book which, in pure musical quality, were worthy of rossini or hérold. but those who complained of the poems had no reason to complain of the work which followed it in , _les travailleurs de la mer_. this was another of the great romances by which the name of victor hugo will live. in announcing the completion of the work the author wrote, 'in these volumes i have desired to glorify work, will, devotion, and whatever makes man great. i have made it a point to demonstrate how the most insatiable abyss is the human heart, and that what escapes the sea, does not escape a woman.' in the work itself was the inscription, 'i dedicate this book to the rock of hospitality and liberty, to that portion of old norman ground inhabited by the noble little people of the sea: to the island of guernsey, severe yet kind, my present refuge, and probably my grave.' this powerful story dealt with the last of three great forces which victor hugo had now illumined by his genius--religion, society, and nature. in these forces were to be seen the three struggles of man. they constitute at the same time, said the writer, his three needs. man has need of a faith; hence the temple. he must create; hence the city. he must live; hence the plough and the ship. but these three solutions comprise three perpetual conflicts. the mysterious difficulty of life results from all three. man strives with obstacles under the form of superstition, under the form of prejudice, and under the form of the elements. he is weighed down by a triple kind of fatality or necessity. first, there is the fatality of dogmas, then the oppression of human laws, and finally the inexorability of nature. the author had denounced the first of these fatalities in _notre-dame de paris_; the second was fully exemplified in _les misérables_; and the third was indicated in _les travailleurs de la mer_. but with all these fatalities there also mingled that inward fatality, the supreme agonizing power, the human heart. this book on the toilers of the sea has been compared with the _prometheus_ of Æschylus. the story or plot is very subordinate, the author having devoted himself to the great contest between his hero and the powers of nature. in the whole range of literature there is probably nothing more graphic than the account of gilliatt's battle with the devil-fish. 'this is st. george and the dragon over again,' remarked a critic in the _british quarterly review_; 'and you might as well blame ariosto or dante, or great mediæval painters and sculptors, for their innumerable elaborate creations of such monstrous objects, as blame the modern who has, by his study of modern science, seen and restored much that our ancestors conceived. the pieuvre, moreover, is an ugly symbol of the evil spiritual powers with which man contends. for the rest, hugo may revel in his strength of creation in this region, as ariosto and dante revelled before him, as the builders, too, of our great gothic cathedrals revelled in their gargoyles and hobgoblins. but before we quit this romance, observe the perfect unity of it as a work of art.' the career of gilliatt, the hero of this romance, is important from certain social and philosophical aspects, as well as from the individual point of view. the work is a dissertation upon the dignity, duty, and power of labour, the french writer thus endorsing the dictum of carlyle on this great question. gilliatt, hand to hand with the elements, grapples with the last form of external force that is brought against him. it has been well observed that the artistic and moral lesson are worked out together, and are, indeed, one. gilliatt, alone upon the reef at his herculean task, offers a type of human industry in the midst of the vague 'diffusion of forces into the illimitable' and the visionary development of 'wasted labour' in the sea, and the winds, and the clouds. it is man harassed and disappointed, and yet unconquered. in appeared a fourth important romance by victor hugo, the strange and grotesque _l'homme qui rit_. in this book there is a good deal to make the reader restive, for in some parts it is unquestionably repulsive. but when this has been borne with, there is still much invested with that peculiar interest which only the author can weave round his creations. the movement of life plays a subordinate part in the story, and the real purpose of the work is seen to be a description of the battle waged in the individual breast, first with fate, and then with those ancient enemies of man, the world, the flesh, and the devil. criticizing this book, mr. swinburne remarked: 'has it not been steeped in the tears and the fire of live emotion? if the style be overcharged and overshining with bright sharp strokes and points, these are no fireworks of any mechanic's fashion; these are the phosphoric flashes of the sea-fire moving in the depths of the limitless and living sea. enough that the book is great and heroic, tender and strong, full from end to end of divine and passionate love, of holy and ardent pity for men that suffer wrong at the hands of men; full, not less, of lyric loveliness and lyric force; and i, for one, am content to be simply glad and grateful: content in that simplicity of spirit to accept it as one more benefit at the hands of the supreme singer now living among us the beautiful and lofty life of one loving the race of men he serves, and of them in all time to be beloved.' yet, notwithstanding its evidences of power, _l'homme qui rit_ failed to obtain that deep hold upon the public mind which was secured by its predecessors. a writer in the _cornhill_ pointed out that it was hugo's object in this romance to denounce the aristocratic principle as it is exhibited in england. satire plays a conspicuous part, but the constructive ingenuity exhibited throughout is almost morbid. 'nothing could be more happily imagined, as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the aristocratic principle, than the adventures of gwynplaine, the itinerant mountebank, snatched suddenly out of his little way of life, and installed without preparation as one of the hereditary legislators of a great country. it is with a very bitter irony that the paper, on which all this depends, is left to float for years at the will of wind and tide.' there are also other striking contrasts. 'what can be finer in conception than that voice from the people heard suddenly in the house of lords, in solemn arraignment of the pleasures and privileges of its splendid occupants? the horrible laughter, stamped for ever "by order of the king" upon the face of this strange spokesman of democracy, adds yet another feature of justice to the scene; in all time, travesty has been the argument of oppression; and, in all time, the oppressed might have made this answer: "if i am vile, is it not your system that has made me so?" this ghastly laughter gives occasion, moreover, for the one strain of tenderness running through the web of this unpleasant story: the love of the blind girl dea for the monster. it is a most benignant providence that thus harmoniously brings together these two misfortunes; it is one of these compensations, one of these after-thoughts of a relenting destiny, that reconcile us from time to time to the evil that is in the world; the atmosphere of the book is purified by the presence of this pathetic love; it seems to be above the story somehow, and not of it, as the full moon over the night of some foul and feverish city.' this last sentence exhibits a misapprehension of victor hugo's method. it is part of his plan to discover that which would be accounted as the most vile, the most contemptible, the most loathsome in human nature, and to show that it has some point of contact with the most educated, the most refined, the most beautiful. critics may complain that he sacrifices art sometimes in doing so, but his reply would be that there can be no sacrifice of art where truth is concerned. falsehood alone is destructive of art. i must pause here to note some interesting dramatic reproductions which took place in paris in connection with the exhibition of . existing dramatic literature was at a very low ebb, when the emperor felt that this important international occasion ought to be further distinguished by the production of some new dramas. the managers were nonplussed, for they had nothing worth producing, and the minister of fine arts ventured to hint as much to his majesty. ultimately the name of victor hugo was brought forward, and it was decided to bring out _hernani_ at the théâtre français, and _ruy blas_ at the odéon. on the th of june, accordingly, _hernani_ was produced, and performed by a brilliant company, including delaunay, bressant, and mademoiselle favart. twenty thousand applications had been made for tickets for the first performance. the audience was a very mixed one, and as it was feared that political disturbances might occur, the most rigid precautions were taken by the authorities. but there was no need for this--the piece was received with a favour that was practically unanimous; and although m. francisque sarcey (who was not then numbered amongst hugo's admirers) hinted that the applause was not precisely genuine, his insinuations were soon rudely scattered to the winds. on the next night, and for eighty succeeding nights, this remarkable play drew forth the most genuine and vociferous applause. a number of young authors, including françois coppée, armand silvestre, and sully prudhomme, were so delighted with the success of _hernani_ that they addressed the following letter to the poet: 'master most dear and most illustrious, we hail with enthusiastic delight the reproduction of _hernani_. the fresh triumph of the greatest of french poets fills us with transports. the night of the th of june is an era in our existence. yet sorrow mingles with our joy. your absence was felt by your associates of ; still more was it bewailed by us younger men, who never yet have shaken hands with the author of _la légende des siècles_. at least they cannot resist sending you this tribute of their regard and unbounded admiration.' writing from brussels, hugo thus replied: 'dear poets, the literary revolution of was the corollary of the revolution of ; it is the speciality of our century. i am the humble soldier of the advance. i fight for revolution in every form, literary as well as social. liberty is my principle, progress my law, the ideal my type. i ask you, my young brethren, to accept my acknowledgments. at my time of life, the end, that is to say the infinite, seems very near. the approaching hour of departure from this world leaves little time for other than serious meditations; but while i am thus preparing to depart, your eloquent letter is very precious to me; it makes me dream of being among you, and the illusion bears to the reality the sweet resemblance of the sunset to the sunrise. you bid me welcome whilst i am making ready for a long farewell. thanks; i am absent because it is my duty; my resolution is not to be shaken; but my heart is with you. i am proud to have my name encircled by yours, which are to me a crown of stars.' the writer who thus contemplated an early departure from the stage of human life was to accomplish much more before that event, and to witness many startling changes in his beloved france. the third napoleon seems to have been inspired by a bitter jealousy of the genius of victor hugo, whose great influence he dreaded; and the poet answered this by an unconquerable distrust of the emperor. after the representations to which i have drawn attention, hugo declined to allow his play to be acted, and it was only at the close of napoleon's reign that he could be prevailed upon to allow the production of _lucrèce borgia_ at the porte st. martin. george sand was present on this occasion, and thus wrote to the dramatist: 'i was present thirty-seven years ago at the first representation of _lucrèce_, and i shed tears of grief; with a heart full of joy i leave the performance of this day. i still hear the acclamations of the crowd as they shout, "vive victor hugo!" as though you were really coming to hear them.' hugo's sympathy with garibaldi--for whom he had a profound admiration--found vent in , in a poem entitled _la voix de guernesey_. it severely condemned the mentana expedition, and encouraged garibaldi under the check he had sustained at the hands of the pope and napoleon iii. garibaldi replied with some verses styled 'mentana,' and this interchange of friendship and goodwill between the two patriots stirred the worst blood of the french clerical party. the poems were circulated by some means throughout france in considerable numbers, the result being an imperial order to stop the representations of _hernani_, while the following letter was also despatched to the poet in guernsey: 'the manager of the imperial théâtre de l'odéon has the honour to inform m. victor hugo that the reproduction of _ruy blas_ is forbidden.--chilly.' from guernsey came this pithy reply, addressed to the tuileries: 'to m. louis bonaparte.--sir, it is you that i hold responsible for the letter which i have just received signed chilly.--victor hugo.' the emperor would doubtless have given much could he have quenched the genius and subdued the patriotism of the exile. but though the former affected security in his power, and the latter looked for the triumph of the people, neither could anticipate the dawning of that day of humiliation and blood which in the course of a few years was to break over unhappy france. chapter xiii. paris and the siege. having vowed never again to visit the land that was 'the resting-place of his ancestors and the birthplace of his love' until she had been restored to liberty, it is not surprising that victor hugo rejected the renewed amnesty offered him by napoleon in . the past ten years had wrought in him no signs of relenting, and when he was urged by his friend m. félix pyat to accept this new offer of a truce, he replied, '_s'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-là_' ('if there remain only one, i will be that one'). when the republican journal _le rappel_ was started, with charles and françois hugo, auguste vacquerie, and paul meurice as its principal contributors (joined subsequently by m. rochefort), he wrote for the opening number a congratulatory manifesto addressed to the editors. by every means in his power, indeed, he endeavoured to advance republican principles. early in napoleon was so impressed by the spread of republican feeling that he resolved to test the stability of his power and the magic of his name by a _plébiscite_. this step was condemned by hugo, who asked why the people should be invited to participate in another electoral crime. he thus gave vent to his burning indignation at the proposal: 'while the author of the _coup d'État_ wants to put a question to the people, we would ask him to put this question to himself, "ought i, napoleon, to quit the tuileries for the conciergerie, and to put myself at the disposal of justice?" "yes!"' this bold and stinging retort led to the prosecution of the journal and the writer for inciting to hatred and contempt of the imperial government. but the poet went on his course unmoved, now engaged in writing his study of _shakespeare_, and now in responding to the appeals made to him from various quarters, including those from the insurgents of cuba, the irish fenians who had just been convicted, and the friends of peace at the lausanne congress. he had suffered another domestic grief in by the death of his wife, his unfailing sympathizer and consoler in his early struggles, and other sorrows were impending. the war with prussia in led to the disaster of sedan, and the collapse of the empire. hugo at once hastened to france, where he was welcomed with heartfelt enthusiasm by his friends of the revolutionary government formed on the th of september. m. jules claretie, who accompanied the poet on the journey from brussels to paris, has written a graphic account of his return to the beloved city. at landrecies hugo saw evidences of the rout and the ruin which had overtaken france. 'in the presence of the great disaster, whereby the whole french army seemed vanquished and dispersed, tears rolled down his cheeks, and his whole frame quivered with sobs. he bought up all the bread that could be secured, and distributed it among the famished troops.' the scene in paris on hugo's arrival was a memorable one. 'through the midst of the vast populace,' continues the narrator, 'i followed him with my gaze. i looked with admiration on that man, now advancing in years, but faithful still in vindicating right, and never now do i behold him greeted with the salutations of a grateful people without recalling the scene of that momentous night, when with weeping eyes he returned to see his country as she lay soiled and dishonoured and well-nigh dead.' concerning this scene, m. alphonse daudet also wrote: 'he arrived just as the circle of investment was closing in around the city; he came by the last train, bringing with him the last breath of the air of freedom. he had come to be a guardian of paris; and what an ovation was that which he received outside the station from those tumultuous throngs already revolutionized, who were prepared to do great things, and infinitely more rejoiced at the liberty they had regained than terrified by the cannon that were thundering against their ramparts! never can we forget the spectacle as the carriage passed along the rue lafayette, victor hugo standing up, and being literally borne along by the teeming multitudes.' at one point, in acknowledging his enthusiastic reception, hugo said: 'i thank you for your acclamations. but i attribute them all to your sense of the anguish that is rending all hearts, and to the peril that is threatening our land. i have but one thing to demand of you. i invite you to union. by union you will conquer. subdue all ill-will; check all resentment. be united, and you shall be invincible. rally round the republic. hold fast, brother to brother. victory is in our keeping. fraternity is the saviour of liberty!' addressing also the crowd assembled in the avenue frochot, the place of his destination, the poet assured them that that single hour had compensated him for all his nineteen years of exile. installed at the house of his friend paul meurice, hugo remained in paris all through the siege. the empire having fallen, the cause of strife had ceased, and hugo addressed a manifesto to the germans, in which he said: 'this war does not proceed from us. it was the empire that willed the war; it was the empire that prosecuted it. but now the empire is dead, and an excellent thing too. we have nothing to do with its corpse; it is all the past, we are the future. the empire was hatred, we are sympathy; that was treason, we are loyalty. the empire was capua, nay, it was gomorrha; we are france. our motto is "liberty, equality, fraternity;" on our banner we inscribe, "the united states of europe." whence, then, this onslaught? pause a while before you present to the world the spectacle of germans becoming vandals, and of barbarism decapitating civilization.' but the victorious germans did not share the peaceful sentiments of the writer, and it would have gone ill with him if, like his manifesto, he had fallen into the hands of the prussian generals. the siege went on, and the poet laid the funds from his works at the feet of the republic. readings were given of _les châtiments_, and other poems, and the proceeds expended in ammunition. it was a brave struggle on the part of the parisians. gambetta called on hugo to thank him for his services to the country, when the latter replied: 'make use of me in any way you can for the public good. distribute me as you would dispense water. my books are even as myself; they are all the property of france. with them, with me, do just as you think best.' the poet kept up a brave heart during the privations of hunger, and cheered many of the younger spirits at his table by his pleasantry and wit, which relieved the gloom that pressed so heavily over all. when the great and terrible time of peril and suffering was past, he left it on record: 'never did city exhibit such fortitude. not a soul gave way to despair, and courage increased in proportion as misery grew deeper. not a crime was committed. paris earned the admiration of the world. her struggle was noble, and she would not give in. her women were as brave as her men. surrendered and betrayed she was; but she was not conquered.' one can scarcely wonder that men who loved paris as a woman loves her child can never forget the humiliation she was called upon to pass through. in the list of the committee of public safety, which was responsible for the insurrectionary movement of the st of october, the name of victor hugo appeared; but he disavowed its use, and on the ensuing th of november he declined to become a candidate at the general election of the mayors of paris. nevertheless, , suffrages were accorded him in the th arrondissement. in the elections of february, , he was returned second on the list with , votes, louis blanc coming first with , , and garibaldi third with , votes. speaking on the st of march in the national assembly--which met at bordeaux--hugo strongly denounced the preliminaries of peace. the treaty, however, was ratified. interposing in the debate which subsequently took place on the election of garibaldi, he said: 'france has met with nothing but cowardice from europe. not a power, not a single king rose to assist us. one man alone intervened in our favour; that man had an idea and a sword. with his idea he delivered one people; with his sword he delivered another. of all the generals who fought for france, garibaldi is the only one who was not beaten.' a strange scene of tumult arose upon this speech, many members of the right gesticulating and threatening violently. rising in the midst of an uproar that was indescribable, hugo announced that he should send in his resignation. this he accordingly did, and remained firm, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties to withdraw it on the part of the president, m. grévy. next day, in consequence, there was nothing for the president to do but to announce the resignation, which was couched in these terms: 'three weeks ago the assembly refused to hear garibaldi; now it refuses to hear me. i resign my seat.' louis blanc expressed his profound grief at the resignation; it was, he said, adding another drop of sorrow to a cup that seemed already over-full; and he grieved that a voice so powerful should be hushed just at an emergency when the country should be showing its gratitude to all its benefactors. garibaldi thus wrote to hugo: 'it needs no writing to show that we are of one accord; we understand each other; the deeds that you have done, and the affection that i have borne for you make a bond of union between us. what you have testified for me at bordeaux is a pledge of a life devoted to humanity.' it was at this juncture that the poet was called upon to mourn the loss of his son charles, who died suddenly from congestion of the brain. there had been an unusually close bond between the two, and the shock came with great force upon the father. the body of the deceased was brought to paris for interment, hugo following the hearse on foot to the family vault at père la chaise. funeral orations were delivered by auguste vacquerie and louis mie. from brussels, whither he had gone after his son's death, the poet protested against the horrors of the commune. he also vainly tried to preserve the column in the place vendôme from destruction. he wrote his poem, _les deux trophées_, referring to the column and the arc de triomphe, with the object of staying the hands of the destroyers, but the mad work went forward. nevertheless, it was characteristic of him that after the insurrection was at an end, he pleaded for mercy towards the offenders. in his house at brussels many fugitives found shelter, until the belgian government banished them from the country. in reply to this edict hugo published an article in _l'indépendance_. he declared that although belgium by law might refuse an asylum to the refugees, his own conscience could not approve that law. the church of the middle ages had offered sanctuary even to parricides, and such sanctuary the fugitives should find at his home; it was his privilege to open his door if he would to his foe, and it ought to be belgium's glory to be a place of refuge. england did not surrender the refugees, and why should belgium be behindhand in magnanimity? but these arguments were of no avail with the exasperated belgians. a few of the more ruffianly spirits of brussels actually made an attack upon the poet's house, which they assaulted with stones, to the great danger of madame charles hugo and her children. defeated in their attempts to break in the door or to scale the house, the assailants at length made off. so far at first from any redress being granted to hugo for this outrageous assault, or any punishment being meted out to the offenders, the poet himself was ordered to quit the kingdom immediately, and forbidden to return under penalties of the law of . a debate took place in the chamber, and as the result of this debate and various protests, the government did not order the indiscriminate expulsion of all exiles, as they had contemplated. they also made some show of satisfaction to hugo by ordering a judicial inquiry into the attack upon his residence. in the end a son of the minister of the interior was fined a nominal sum of francs for being concerned in the outrage. hugo now made a tour through luxemburg, and afterwards visited london, returning to paris at the close of the year . after the trial of the communists he pleaded earnestly, but in vain, for the lives of rossel, lullier, ferré, crémieux, and maroteau. in the elections of january, , he got into a difficulty with the radicals of paris in consequence of his refusal to accept the _mandat impératif_. this, he explained, was contrary to his principles, for conscience might not take orders. he was willing to accept a _mandat contractuel_, by which there could be a more open discussion between the elector and the elected. hugo was defeated, receiving only , votes, as against , given to his opponent, m. vautrain, a result partly accounted for by hugo's amnesty proposals. the poet published, in september, , _la libération du territoire_, a poem which was sold for the benefit of the inhabitants of alsace and lorraine. in it the writer strongly condemned the adulation poured upon the shah of persia, then on a visit to france, and respecting whose cruelty and barbarism many anecdotes were current. on the morning following christmas day, , the poet was again called upon to bear a great loss by the death of his only remaining son, françois victor. at the funeral louis blanc delivered a short address, in which he extolled the literary ability, the integrity, and the virtues of the deceased. to the shouts of '_vive victor hugo! vive la république!_' the weeping poet was led away from the grave-side. during the siege of paris, hugo kept a diary of this lurid history, and upon this he constructed his poem _l'année terrible_--the events celebrated extending from august, , to july, . speaking of this work, a writer whom i have already quoted remarked that 'the poems of the siege at once demand and defy commentary; they should be studied in their order as parts of one tragic symphony. from the overture, which tells of the old glory of germany before turning to france with a cry of inarticulate love, to the sad majestic epilogue which seals up the sorrowful record of the days of capitulation, the various and continuous harmony flows forward through light and shadow, with bursts of thunder and tempest, and interludes of sunshine and sweet air.' the variety of note in these tragic poems has also been well insisted upon. 'there is an echo of all emotions in turn that the great spirit of a patriot and a poet could suffer and express by translation of suffering into song; the bitter cry of invective and satire, the clear trumpet-call to defence, the triumphal wail for those who fell for france, the passionate sob of a son on the stricken bosom of a mother, the deep note of thought that slowly opens into flower of speech; and through all and after all, the sweet unspeakable music of natural and simple love. after the voice which reproaches the priest-like soldier, we hear the voice which rebukes the militant priest; and a fire, as the fire of juvenal, is outshone by a light as the light of lucretius.' mr. dowden sees in these poems the work of a frenchman throughout, not a man of the commune, nor a man of versailles. 'the most precious poems of the book are those which keep close to facts rather than concern themselves with ideas. the sunset seen from the ramparts; the floating bodies of the prussians borne onward by the seine, caressed and kissed and still swayed on by the eddying water; the bomb which fell near the old man's feet while he sat where had been the convent of the feuillantines, and where he had walked in under the trees in aprils long ago, holding his mother's hand; the petroleuse, dragged like a chained beast through the scorching streets of paris; the gallant boy who came to confront death by the side of his friends--memories of these it is which haunt us when we have closed the book--of these, and of the little limbs and transparent fingers, and baby-smile, and murmur like the murmur of bees, and the face changed from rosy health to a pathetic paleness of the one-year-old grandchild, too soon to become an orphan.' but other critics, while acknowledging the force of the writing and the noble aspirations of the author, place the work on a considerably lower level as a whole. yet no one who knows the work can surely deny that the poet has thrown a halo of glory round the concrete facts of a disastrous and momentous period. while the language of despair was held by many of his friends at this dark crisis in french history, victor hugo never once wavered in his hopes for the future of his country. so far from being annihilated, he predicted that france would rise to enjoy a greater height of prosperity, and a more durable peace, than she had ever enjoyed under the empire. chapter xiv. 'quatre-vingt-treize.'--politics, etc. in appeared the last of victor hugo's great romances, _quatre-vingt-treize_. it was published on the same day in ten languages. this grand historical and political novel was a fitting close to a series of works unexampled in scope and breadth of conception. a great prose epic upon that terrible year in french history, , it excited the liveliest interest throughout europe, and critics of all shades of opinion hastened to do justice to its extraordinary merits. even those warm admirers of the author's superb imaginative genius, who had looked forward with misgiving to this daring excursion into the historic field, admitted that his complete success had justified the effort. they extolled the work as 'a monument of its author's finest gifts; and while those who are, happily, endowed with the capacity of taking delight in nobility and beauty of imaginative work will find themselves in possession of a new treasure, the lover of historic truth, who hates to see abstractions passed off for actualities, and legend erected in the place of fact, escapes with his praiseworthy sensibilities unwounded.' the work is on a colossal scale, exhibiting great breadth of touch, while the style has now the power of the lightning, and now the calm and the depth of the measureless sea. 'with la vendée for background, and some savage incidents of the bloody vendean war for external machinery, victor hugo has realized his conception of ' in three types of character--lantenac, the royalist marquis; cimourdain, the puritan turned jacobin; and gauvain, for whom one can as yet find no short name, he belonging to the millenarian times.' it was said that there is nothing more magnificent in literature than the last volume of this work, and while its author had no rival in the sombre, mysterious heights of imaginative effect, he was equally a master in strokes of tenderness and the most delicate human sympathy. rapidity and profusion are the pre-eminent characteristics of this work--'a profusion as of starry worlds, a style resembling waves of the sea, sometimes indeed weltering dark and massive, but ever and anon flashing with the foamy lightning of genius. the finish and rich accurate perfection of our own great living poet tennyson are absent. hugo is far more akin to byron; but his range is vaster than byron's. he has byron's fierce satire, and more than byron's humour, though it is the fashion to generalize and say that the french have none. he is both a lyrical and epic poet. he is a greater dramatist than byron; and whether in the dramas or prose romances, he shows that vast sympathy with, and knowledge of, human nature which neither byron, shelley, coleridge, nor wordsworth had. scott could be his only rival. in france they had lived dramatic lives for the last ninety years; we have lived much more quietly in england, and in france there is a real living drama.' as this book, full-hearted in its passion, and deeply-veined with human emotion, is the last of victor hugo's prose romances, some brief general allusions to him as a novelist will be appropriate. taking the five books (which have been referred to in the order of their publication) alone, viz., _notre-dame_, _les misérables_, _les travailleurs_, _l'homme qui rit_, and _quatre-vingt-treize_--they would have made the fame of any writer; and yet, it has been justly remarked, they are but one façade of the splendid monument that victor hugo has erected to his own genius. i am not one of those who would contend that hugo's style is everywhere immaculate. on the contrary, he sometimes sins greatly; but these occasions are rare compared with his mighty triumphs. still, justice must not be extinguished in admiration. my own view of hugo's literary gifts, as expressed more especially in his romances, has been so fairly put by another writer that i shall transfer, and at the same time in the main adopt, his language: 'everywhere we find somewhat the same greatness, somewhat the same infirmities. in his poems and plays there are the same unaccountable protervities that have already astonished us in the romances; there, too, is the same feverish strength, welding the fiery iron of his idea under forge-hammer repetitions; an emphasis that is somehow akin to weakness; a strength that is a little epileptic. he stands so far above all his contemporaries, and so incomparably excels them in richness, breadth, variety, and moral earnestness, that we almost feel as if he had a sort of right to fall oftener and more heavily than others; but this does not reconcile us to seeing him profit by the privilege so freely. we like to have in our great men something that is above question; we like to place an implicit faith in them, and see them always on the platform of their greatness: and this, unhappily, cannot be with hugo. as heine said long ago, his is a genius somewhat deformed; but, deformed as it is, we accept it gladly; we shall have the wisdom to see where his foot slips, but we shall have the justice also to recognise in him the greatest artist of our generation, and, in many ways, one of the greatest artists of all time. if we look back, yet once, upon these five romances, we see blemishes such as we can lay to the charge of no other man in the number of the famous; but to what other man can we attribute such sweeping innovations, such a new and significant view of life and man, such an amount, if we think of the amount merely, of equally consummate performance?' it is in the nature of the human intellect, finite as it is, to relax sometimes from its highest strain, and if victor hugo failed at times to scale his loftiest note of thought or expression, it may be remembered also that even shakespeare was not always in the mood for producing _hamlets_. there appeared, in , hugo's pathetic sketch 'mes fils,' containing a tribute of affection to his own dead children; and in - was published his _actes et paroles_. this justificatory work was in three parts, which dealt respectively with the period before exile, the period of exile, and the period since exile. 'the trilogy is not mine,' said the author, 'but the emperor napoleon's; he it is who has divided my life; to him the honour of it is due. that which is bonaparte's we must render to cæsar.' although he first strongly countenanced resistance, the writer concluded with an exhortation to clemency, holding that resistance to tyrants should not be deemed inconsistent with mercy to the vanquished. we have here a complete collection of hugo's addresses, orations, and confessions of faith, etc., during the preceding thirty years. _pour un soldat_, a little brochure written in favour of an obscure soldier, appeared in . its publication not only resulted in saving the life of the soldier, who had been condemned for a venial crime, but the sufferers in alsace and lorraine reaped the pecuniary fruits of its popularity. the second part of _la légende des siècles_ was published in . at this time the poet was living in the rue de clichy, no. , sharing part of the house with madame charles hugo, who, after a widowhood of some years, married m. charles lockroy, deputy for the seine, and also known as a man of letters. madame drouet, who had befriended the poet when he was proscribed in , placed her salon in this house at the poet's disposal for the reception of his friends. m. barbou, who saw much of hugo in this residence, thus describes the man and his habits: 'the hand, no doubt, is too slow for the gigantic work that the poet conceives. and yet no moment is ever lost. generally up with the sun, he writes until mid-day, and often until two o'clock. then, after a light luncheon, he goes to the senate, where, during intervals of debate, he despatches all his correspondence. he finds his recreation generally by taking a walk, although not unfrequently he will mount to the top of an omnibus just for the sake of finding himself in the society of the people, with whom he has shown his boundless sympathy. at eight o'clock he dines, making it his habit to invite not only his nearest friends, but such as he thinks stand in need of encouragement, to join him and his grandchildren at their social meal. at table victor hugo relaxes entirely from his seriousness. the powerful orator, the earnest pleader, becomes the charming and attractive host, full of anecdote, censuring whatever is vile, but ever ready to make merry over what is grotesque.... hale and vigorous in his appearance, precise and elegant in his attire, with unbowed head, and with thick, white hair crowning his unfurrowed brow, he commands involuntary admiration. round his face is a close white beard, which he has worn since the later period of his sojourn in guernsey as a safeguard against sore throat; but he shows no token of infirmity. his countenance may be said to have in it something both of the lion and the eagle, yet his voice is grave, and his manner singularly gentle.' the same writer devotes a chapter to hugo's love of children, _à propos_ of his _l'art d'être grand-père_. it is perfectly true that women, and children also, stirred in the poet an element of chivalrous devotion. he also strove to exalt woman as something far beyond the mere passion and plaything of man; while as to children, 'he is pathetic over an infant's cradle, he is delighted at childhood's prattle, and to him the fair-haired head of innocence is as full of interest as the glory of a man.' nor was there anything derogatory to his genius in this, or in his making georges and jeanne, his two grandchildren, the hero and heroine of the work above named. when the wisdom of his indulgence was questioned, he replied that he agreed with m. gaucher, who held that 'a father's duties are by no means light; he has to instruct, to correct, to chastise; but with the grandfather it is different, he is privileged to love and to spoil.' but he taught the oneness of humanity even to his grandchildren; and once, when they were about to enjoy the good and pleasant things of this life, he bade the children fetch in some houseless orphans who were crouching under the window, in order to share their appetizing dishes. unconquered by his opponents, hugo confessed himself a captive to the children, and he defined paradise as 'a place where children are always little, and parents are always young.' towards the close of his eighth decade, the poet seemed to have almost abandoned political life, but he had not forgotten his friends and the electors of paris. innumerable letters published in the public press proved this, as well as his presence as chairman at a number of democratic conventions, and the delivery of a number of public discourses, such as those pronounced at the obsequies of m. edgar quinet and madame louis blanc. preparatory to the first senatorial elections, m. clémenceau, president of the municipal council of paris, waited upon the poet, and in the name of the majority of his colleagues offered him the function of delegate. hugo accepted, and at once issued his manifesto, entitled 'the delegate of paris to the delegates of the , communes of france,' in which he reiterated, with redoubled energy, his old idea of the abolition of monarchy by the federation of the peoples. on the th of january, , he was elected senator of paris, but only after a keen struggle. he was fourth out of five, and was not returned until after a second scrutiny, when it was found that he had secured votes out of a total of . soon after his election, hugo introduced a proposal in the senate for granting an amnesty to all those condemned for the events of march, , and to all those then undergoing punishment for political crimes or offences in paris, including the assassins of the hostages. on the nd of may he delivered an eloquent oration in support of his motion. towards the close of his address, he described the state of the prisoners in new caledonia. having painted their agony, and deplored the continuation of the prosecutions and the last transport of convicts, he said: 'that is how the th of march has been atoned for. as for the nd of december, it has been glorified, it has been adored and venerated, it has become a legal crime. the priests have prayed for it, the judges have judged by it, and the representatives of the people, at whom the blows were dealt by this crime, not only received them, but accepted and submitted to them, acting with all rigour against the people and all baseness before the emperor. it is time to put a stop to the astonishment of the human conscience; it is time to renounce that double shame of two weights and two measures. i ask a full amnesty for the events of the th of march.' the motion was rejected, only about seven hands being held up for the amnesty. the poet-orator again pleaded the same cause in january, , but his proposal was coldly received. nevertheless, in the following month an amnesty bill was passed by the chamber of deputies. early in appeared the second part of the _légende des siècles_; and it is pleasant to recall an interchange of courtesies which took place in this year between victor hugo and our own greatly-honoured poet, lord tennyson. in the month of june, , there appeared in the _nineteenth century_ the following sonnet, addressed to hugo by the poet laureate: 'victor in poesy, victor in romance, cloud-weaver of phantasmal hopes and fears, french of the french, and lord of human tears; child-lover; bard whose fame-lit laurels glance, darkening the wreaths of all that would advance, beyond our strait, their claim to be thy peers; weird titan, by the winter-weight of years as yet unbroken, stormy voice of france; who dost not love our england--so they say; i know not--england, france, all man to be will make one people ere man's race be run: and i, desiring that diviner day, yield thee full thanks for thy full courtesy to younger england in the boy, my son.' to this sonnet the french poet returned a reply which i may translate as follows: 'my dear and eminent _confrère_, i read with emotion your superb lines. it is a reflection of your own glory that you send me. how shall i not love that england which produces such men as you! the england of wilberforce, the england of milton and of newton! the england of shakespeare! france and england are for me one people only, as truth and liberty are one light only. i believe in the unity of humanity, as i believe in the divine unity. i love all peoples and all men. i admire your noble verses. receive the cordial grasp of my hand. it made me happy to know your charming son, for it seemed to me that while clasping his hand i was pressing yours.' in - appeared hugo's _l'histoire d'un crime_. it possessed special interest from its autobiographical character, and, like many of its predecessors, it was instinct with energy and passion. by way of preface to this history, the author remarked, 'this work is more than opportune; it is imperative. i publish it.' then came the following explanatory note: 'this work was written twenty-six years ago at brussels, during the first months of exile. it was begun on the th of december, , and on the day succeeding the author's arrival in belgium, and was finished on the th of may, , as though chance had willed that the anniversary of the death of the first bonaparte should be countersigned by the condemnation of the third. it is also chance which, through a combination of work, of cares, and of bereavements, has delayed the publication of this history until this extraordinary year, . in causing the recital of events of the past to coincide with the events of to-day, has chance had any purpose? we hope not. as we have just said, the story of the _coup d'État_ was written by a hand still hot from the combat against the _coup d'État_. the exile immediately became an historian. he carried away this crime in his angered memory, and he was resolved to lose nothing of it: hence this book. the manuscript of has been very little revised. it remains what it was, abounding in details, and living, it might be said bleeding, with real facts. the author constituted himself an interrogating judge; all his companions of the struggle and of exile came to give evidence before him. he has added his testimony to theirs. now history is in possession of it; it will judge. if god wills, the publication of this book will shortly be terminated. the continuation and conclusion will appear on the nd of december. an appropriate date.' when the second part of the work was issued at the beginning of , france had fortunately passed through a time of great political excitement without those fearful consequences which have frequently followed such periods in her history. the continuation of victor hugo's work did not consequently create such popular fervour as it might otherwise have done. but the author was as scathing as ever in his invectives, and no one knew such strong depths of bitterness and indignation as he. the satellites of louis napoleon were sketched with the pen of a swift, and in the delineation of their master we find such touches as this: 'louis napoleon laid claim to a knowledge of men, and his claim was justified. he prided himself on it, and from one point of view he was right. others possess discrimination; he had a nose. 'twas bestial, but infallible.' as for the members of his court, 'they lived for pleasure. they lived by the public death. they breathed an atmosphere of shame, and throve on what kills honest people.' there are many interesting episodes in a momentous period dealt with throughout this work, which, like everything else by its author, is instinct with his strong personality. chapter xv. poems on religion. victor hugo's attitude on religion was the subject of frequent comment. it is now known that so far from being a sceptic, as was frequently declared, he had a firm belief in god and immortality. when a rationalist on one occasion said to him that though he himself had a dim belief in immortality, he doubted whether the outcasts of society could have any belief in their own immortality, the poet replied, 'perhaps they believe in it more than you do.' arsène houssaye has left an interesting sketch of certain religious confidences with which hugo favoured him some years before his last illness. 'i am conscious within myself of the certainty of a future life,' the poet expressly said. 'the nearer i approach my end the clearer do i hear the immortal symphonies of worlds that call me to themselves. for half a century i have been outpouring my volumes of thought in prose and in verse, in history, philosophy, drama, romance, ode, and ballad, yet i appear to myself not to have said a thousandth part of what is within me; and when i am laid in the tomb i shall not reckon that my life is finished; the grave is not a _cul-de-sac_, it is an avenue; death is the sublime prolongation of life, not its dreary finish; it closes in the twilight, it opens in the dawn. my work is only begun; i yearn for it to become brighter and nobler; and this craving for the infinite demonstrates that there is an infinity.' he denied that there were any occult forces responsible for the creation of man and nature; there was a luminous force, and that was god. continuing the thought as to his own future existence, he added, 'i am nothing, a passing echo, an evanescent cloud; but let me only live on through my future existences, let me continue the work i have begun, let me surmount the perils, the passions, the agonies, that age after age may be before me, and who shall tell whether i may not rise to have a place in the council-chamber of the ruler that controls all, and whom we own as god?' if his creed had not many doctrines, it was at least very clear upon those which he did hold. he set against the god of the papists, as he conceived him, another being whom he regarded as the personification of the true, the just, and the beautiful, who made his influence everywhere felt, but nowhere more deeply or more permanently than in the human conscience. in april, , hugo gave a concrete form to some of his religious ideas in his poem entitled _le pape_. it represented the pope--though not the existing or any particular pontiff--as having a long dream. he finds himself treading in the steps of christ, mixing with and succouring the poor and the afflicted, eschewing all pomp, interposing between two hostile armies and preventing bloodshed, saving the malefactor from the scaffold, and finally leaving rome for jerusalem. all this, of course, is a fearful mistake; his holiness wakes up, declares that he has had a frightful dream, and clings to the syllabus and worldly state more firmly than ever. the contrast was very sharply drawn between the good, ideal pastor, and the worldly and sensual father too often met with. hugo's evolvement of his own ideas led to much controversy, and his book was severely attacked. by way of reply he issued _la pitié suprême_. for those who sinned through ignorance and defective education, he inculcated pity and forgiveness; and the work generally furnished but another illustration to many which had gone before of the liberality of his mind, and his support of the doctrine of universal toleration. at a still later date, in his _l'Âne_, he once more denounced false teachers. desiring, like rabelais, to lash his kind, the poet put his denunciations into the mouth of an ass, which animal was taken to be the type of unsophisticated man. in the pages of this satire, observed louis ulbach, 'the poet at the climax of his life, dazzled though he is by the nearness of the dawn beyond, glances back at those whom he has left behind, addresses them with raillery keen enough to stimulate them, but not stern enough to discourage them, and from the standpoint of his severity, puts a fool's cap upon all false science, false wisdom, and false piety.' nevertheless, the work was regarded as a failure, in spite of its scintillations of genius, the satiric power of victor hugo being one rather of fierce denunciation than that which consists in the perception of the incongruous in humanity. another work in which hugo endeavoured to place the false and the true in religion side by side, was his _religions et religion_, issued in . 'this book,' said the author in a prefatory note, 'was commenced in , and completed in . the year gave infallibility to the papacy, and sedan to the empire. what is the year to bring forth?' _religions et religion_ was an attack not only upon various systems of religion, but also upon those who attack all religion. the writer made an assault upon the system of milton, and established a system of religion of his own, which in its catholicity should embrace all spirits who love the good. the work was regarded as part of the great epic _le fin de satan_, which had been foreshadowed many years before. but, as one of his critics remarked, if hugo had fallen into the mistake of thinking that this book was not only a poem full of the loveliest sayings and the noblest aspirations, but a valuable treatise on theology and philosophy, it was but a mistake which he had been making ever since he began to write. hugo's new poem 'is an emphatic, not to say a violent, answer to two different systems of poetic religion, each of which is itself at war with the other--the system of dante and the system of milton. without hell, dante would never have been able to write a line of the inferno; and without the devil, milton would have been in a condition equally forlorn. yet m. hugo's book is an attack upon both these venerable beliefs, and also upon the positivists who are trying to undermine them.' hugo, in short, gave his support to the unconscious humourist who complained of _paradise lost_ that it proved nothing. as a polemic in verse, the poet was not very successful; but no one would turn to the poems of victor hugo in order to find the successful controversial theologian. no doubt he made the mistake of believing that he was eminently fitted for grappling with abstruse religious theories, and he was not the first literary genius who has done so. but if he failed in polemics in the work at which i have just glanced, there still remained, in all his energy and fulness, hugo the poet and the philanthropist. chapter xvi. public addresses, etc. victor hugo was unquestionably a great orator, or rather i ought perhaps to say he exhibited the powers of a great orator on special occasions. if eloquence is to be measured by the effect which it has upon the audience, he had the electrical force of the orator in no small degree; for in connection with certain persons and topics he was successful in enkindling an enthusiasm in his hearers which was almost unparalleled. but his oratory was not of that even kind which, if it never passes beyond a given elevation, never sinks on the other hand into bathos or commonplace. hugo had a wonderful gift of language, and he was an orator when his heart was thrown into his subject, and he pressed into its service all the wealth of rhetoric he had at command. nevertheless, some of his public utterances were far from being successful--a result due in some instances to extravagance of language and quixotism of idea, and in others to the absence of that 'sweet reasonableness' which dispassionately weighs and considers the opinions of others, and judges righteous judgment. at the celebration of the voltaire centenary in paris in may, , hugo was the chief speaker. the great meeting was held in the gaîté theatre, which was crowded to suffocation. one who was present stated that while all the speakers at the demonstration were warmly applauded, it was only when victor hugo arose that the full tempest of acclamation burst forth. 'can a grander, a more striking, a more exaggerated scene be conceived than this association of victor hugo and voltaire, of the most eloquent and the most touching of french orators exhausting his mines of highly coloured epithets and colossal antitheses on the ironical head of voltaire? a report of his speech does not suffice; the white head and apostle's beard, the inspired eye, the solemn voice, rolling as if it would sound in the ears of posterity; the involuntarily haughty attitude in vain striving to seem modest; the imperturbable seriousness with which he piles antithesis upon antithesis--all this must be realized.' hugo was enthusiastically cheered on taking the chair. waving his arm he exclaimed, '_vive la république!_'--a cry which was then taken up with equal fervour by every person in the audience. after the other speakers had been heard, the distinguished chairman delivered his oration. he rapidly sketched the work accomplished by voltaire, and concluded thus: 'alas! the present moment, worthy as it is of admiration and respect, has still its dark side. there are still clouds on the horizon; the tragedy of peoples is not played out; war still raises its head over this august festival of peace; princes for two years have persisted in a fatal misunderstanding; their discord is an obstacle to our concord, and they are ill-inspired in condemning us to witness the contrast. this contrast brings us back to voltaire. amid these threatening events let us be more peaceful than ever. let us bow before this great dead, this great living spirit. let us bend before the venerated sepulchre. let us ask counsel of him whose life, useful to men, expired a hundred years ago, but whose work is immortal. let us ask counsel of other mighty thinkers and auxiliaries of this glorious voltaire--of jean jacques, diderot, montesquieu. let us stop the shedding of human blood. enough, despots. barbarism still exists. let philosophy protest. let the eighteenth century succour the nineteenth. the philosophers, our predecessors, are the apostles of truth. let us invoke these illustrious phantoms that, face to face with monarchies thinking of war, they may proclaim the right of man to life, the right of conscience to liberty, the sovereignty of reason, the sacredness of labour, the blessedness of peace. and as night issues from thrones, let light emanate from the tombs.' there are probably no two great french writers who present more marked points of contrast than voltaire and victor hugo; yet the latter, not only in praising his predecessor, but on many other occasions, gloried in being grandly inconsistent if he could thereby, as he believed, advance the interests of humanity. victor hugo presided at the international literary congress held in paris in june, . his speech on that occasion, though by no means confined to business details, was accepted by the congress as forming the basis of its decisions. the speaker urged that a book once published becomes in part the property of society, and that after its author's death his family have no right to prevent its reissue. he held that a publisher should be required to declare the cost and the selling price of any book he intended to bring out; that the author's heirs should be entitled to or per cent. of the profit, and that in default of heirs the profit should revert to the state, to be applied to the encouragement of young writers. passing to more general questions, and dwelling on the memorableness of the year , hugo defined the exhibition as the alliance of industry, the voltaire centenary as the alliance of philosophy, and the congress then sitting as the alliance of literature. 'industry seeks the useful, philosophy seeks the true, literature seeks the beautiful--the triple aim of all human forces.' he welcomed the foreign delegates as the ambassadors of the human mind, citizens of a universal city, the constituent assembly of literature. peoples, he remarked, were estimated by their literature; greece, small in territory, thereby earning greatness, the name of england suggesting that of shakespeare, and france being at a certain period personified in voltaire. he next showed that copyright was in the interest of the public, by securing the independence of the writer; and, glancing at the former dependent position of men of letters, he remarked that paternal government resulted in this--the people without bread and corneille without a sou. deriding the alleged dangerousness of books, and urging the real dangers of ignorance, he described schools as the luminous points of civilization. he ridiculed as harmless archæological curiosities those who wished mankind to be kept in perpetual leading-strings, and who anathematized , liberty of conscience, free speech, and a free tribune. he exhorted men of letters to recognise as their mission conciliation for ideas and reconciliation for men. they should war against war. 'love one another' signified universal disarmament, the restoration to health of the human race, the true redemption of mankind. an enemy was better disarmed by offering him your hand than by shaking your fist. in lieu of _delenda est carthago_, he proposed the destruction of hatred, which was best effected by pardon. after showing her industry and hospitality, france should show her clemency, for a festival should be fraternal, and a festival which did not forgive somebody was not a real festival. the symbol of public joy was the amnesty, and let this be the crowning of the paris exhibition. in the august following this congress, a great working-men's conference was held in the french capital in favour of international arbitration. victor hugo being unable to attend and preside at the gathering, as originally announced, sent a communication expressing his approbation of the objects of the meeting. 'i demand what you demand,' he wrote. 'i want what you want. our alliance is the commencement of unity. let us be calm; without us, governments attempt something, but nothing of what they try to do will succeed against your decision, against your liberty, against your sovereignty. look on at what they do without uneasiness, always with serenity, sometimes with a smile. the supreme future is with you. all that is done, even against you, will serve you. continue to march, labour, and think. you are a single people; europe and you want a single thing--peace.' two or three months subsequent to this meeting, the english working-men's peace association waited upon victor hugo in paris, and presented him with an address, magnificently illuminated and framed, as a token of admiration for the services he had rendered to the cause of humanity and peace. in reply, hugo said: 'as long as i live i shall oppose war, and defend the cause which is dear and common to us all--the cause of labour and peace.' as honorary president of a secular education congress in , victor hugo thus addressed that body: 'youth is the future. you teach youth, you prepare the future. this preparation is useful, this teaching is necessary to make the man of to-morrow. the man of to-morrow is the universal republic. the republic is unity, harmony, light, industry, creating comfort; it is the abolition of conflicts between man and man, nation and nation, the abolition of the law of death, and establishment of the law of life. the time of sanguinary and terrible revolutionary necessities is past. for what remains to be done the unconquerable law of progress suffices. great battles we have still to fight--battles the evident necessity of which does not disturb the serenity of thinkers; battles in which revolutionary energy will equal monarchical obstinacy; battles in which force joined with right will overthrow violence allied with usurpation--superb, glorious, enthusiastic, decisive battles, the issue of which is not doubtful, and which will be the hastings and the austerlitz of humanity. citizens, the time of the dissolution of the old world has arrived. the old despotisms are condemned by the providential law. every day which passes buries them still deeper in annihilation. the republic is the future.' another address, in which hugo expounded his views of the future of humanity, of labour and progress, etc., was delivered at château d'eau, on behalf of the workmen's congress at marseilles. differentiating the achievements of the centuries, he remarked that 'for four hundred years the human race has not made a step but what has left its plain vestige behind. we enter now upon great centuries. the sixteenth century will be known as the age of painters; the seventeenth will be termed the age of writers; the eighteenth, the age of philosophers; the nineteenth, the age of apostles and prophets. to satisfy the nineteenth century it is necessary to be the painter of the sixteenth, the writer of the seventeenth, the philosopher of the eighteenth; and it is also necessary, like louis blanc, to have the innate and holy love of humanity which constitutes an apostolate, and opens up a prophetic vista into the future. in the twentieth century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, animosity will be dead, royalty will be dead, and dogmas will be dead; but man will live. for all there will be but one country--that country the whole earth; for all there will be but one hope--that hope the whole heaven.' it will be seen that there was a sweeping breadth and magnificence about victor hugo's prophecies for the twentieth century. but that epoch is so near that we may well doubt whether the seer's extensive programme will so speedily be realized. still, the prophecy is lofty, generous, noble, and i will not attempt to destroy the horoscope. passing on to the great question of the day, that of labour, the orator observed: 'the political question is solved. the republic is made, and nothing can unmake it. the social question remains; terrible as it is, it is quite simple; it is a question between those who have, and those who have not. the latter of these two classes must disappear, and for this there is work enough. think a moment! man is beginning to be master of the earth. if you want to cut through an isthmus, you have lesseps; if you want to create a sea, you have roudaire. look you; there is a people and there is a world; and yet the people have no inheritance, and the world is a desert. give them to each other, and you make them happy at once. astonish the universe by heroic deeds that are better than wars. does the world want conquering? no, it is yours already; it is the property of civilization; it is already waiting for you; no one disputes your title. go on, then, and colonize.' this is no doubt grand, but it is vague. however, the men of highest aspiration have frequently proved themselves ill-fitted for the practical development of their own theories. it is the penalty which the brain has to pay for being stronger than the hand that it must often call in the services and co-operation of the latter. hugo was exceedingly happy in dealing with cavillers at material progress. he showed that those who make the worst mistakes are those who ought to be the least mistaken. 'forty-five years ago m. thiers declared that the railway would be a mere toy between paris and st. germain; another distinguished man, m. pouillet, confidently predicted that the apparatus of the electric telegraph would be consigned to a cabinet of curiosities. and yet these two playthings have changed the course of the world. have faith, then; and let us realize our equality as citizens, our fraternity as men, our liberty in intellectual power. let us love not only those who love us, but those who love us not. let us learn to wish to benefit all men. then everything will be changed; truth will reveal itself; the beautiful will arise; the supreme law will be fulfilled, and the world shall enter upon a perpetual fête-day. i say, therefore, have faith! look down at your feet, and you see the insect moving in the grass; look upwards, and you will see the star resplendent in the firmament: yet what are they doing? they are both at their work; the insect is doing its work upon the ground, and the star is doing its work in the sky. it is an infinite distance that separates them, and yet while it separates, unites. they follow their law. and why should not their law be ours? man, too, has to submit to universal force, and inasmuch as he submits in body and in soul, he submits doubly. his hand grasps the earth, but his soul embraces heaven; like the insect he is a thing of dust, but like the star he partakes of the empyrean. he labours and he thinks. labour is life, and thought is light!' some idea of victor hugo's social and humanitarian ideas may be gained from these addresses. in the course of a conversation with m. barbou, however, he supplemented these views and theories by explicit statements upon various questions. france, he said, was in possession of a _bourgeoise_ republic, which was not an ideal one, but which would undergo a slow and gradual transformation. he regarded himself and his contemporaries as having been pioneers and monitors, whose advice was worth obtaining, because they had gained their knowledge by experience, having lived through the struggles of the past; but whose theories could not be put into practice by themselves. the future solution of the social question belonged to younger men, and to the twentieth century. that solution, he maintained, would be found in nothing less than the universal spread of instruction; it would follow the formation of schools where salutary knowledge should be imparted. by educating the child they would endow the man, and when that had been accomplished, society might proceed to exercise severe repression upon anyone who resisted what was right, because he would have been already so trained that he could not plead ignorance in his own behalf. but hugo was careful to add that he did not expect a utopia to follow this universal dissemination of knowledge. when man had proceeded well on the path of advancement, he would require land to cultivate. he would go out and colonize, and the whole interior of africa was destined, he believed, before long to be conquered by civilization. frontiers would disappear, for the idea of fraternity was making its way throughout the world. as the whole earth belonged to man, men must go forth and reclaim it. for the whole race he saw a brighter future, and his watchwords in this respect would seem to have been--labour, progress, peace, happiness, and enlightenment. chapter xvii. 'la lÉgende des siÈcles,' etc. i have reserved this poem for somewhat fuller mention than i have been able to accord to victor hugo's other works. this is called for by reason of the inherent grandeur of the work, and because upon this noble achievement the greatness of the poet's fame must ultimately rest. mr. swinburne holds it to be the greatest work of the century, and many critics who have not his _perfervidum ingenium_ incline to the same view. when the first part of the _légende_ appeared, in , it excited so much interest that every poet of any note in france wrote warm letters of congratulation to the author. to one of these, penned by baudelaire, and typical of the rest, hugo characteristically replied. regarding humanity in two aspects--the historical and the legendary, and maintaining that the latter was in one sense as true as the former, hugo took up the legendary side of the question in this legend of the ages. it was intended to be followed by two other sections under the respective titles of 'the end of satan' and 'god.' the first part of this great trilogy was far more striking than any of its author's previous poems. its brilliancy and energy, its literary skill and its powerful conceptions, enchained the attention. the poet divided his work into sixteen cycles, extending from the creation to the trump of judgment. a full and on the whole discriminating criticism of this remarkable poem has been given by the bishop of derry, who also, with some success, has translated passages from it. but victor hugo's french is too peculiar and impassioned to be brought within the trammels of english verse. nevertheless, i will quote from the bishop the last three stanzas of that beautiful poem, _booz endormi_, one of the first set of poems, all of which are devoted to scriptural subjects. the rich man boaz sleeps, quite unconscious of the moabitess ruth, who lies expectant at his feet: 'asphodel scents did gilgal's breezes bring-- through nuptial shadows, questionless, full fast the angels sped, for momently there pass'd a something blue which seem'd to be a wing. 'silent was all in jezreel and in ur-- the stars were glittering in the heaven's dusk meadows. far west among those flowers of the shadows, the thin clear crescent, lustrous over her, 'made ruth raise question, looking through the bars of heaven, with eyes half-oped, what god, what comer unto the harvest of the eternal summer, had flung his golden hook down on the field of stars.' the second section deals with the decadence of rome, and here the poet's imagination has full sway. the well-known story of androcles and the lion is the subject of a beautiful poem. the third section is islam, and then come the heroic christian cycle, the day of kings, etc. but perhaps the most important composition in the work is eviradnus, a poem in praise of the true and gentle knight. the thrones of the east, ratbert, sultan mourad, the twentieth century, and some other sections, all bear evidence of intense poetic realism, and show the mastery of the author over pictorial and dramatic effects. the bishop of derry raises a question upon which a good deal might be said, when he propounds a theory to the effect that victor hugo possesses fancy rather than imagination. it may not be possible to produce passages from hugo which, for sustained grandeur and breadth of conception, would be equal to isolated passages that could be cited from dante and milton; yet there are as unquestionably scores of other passages in the works of victor hugo in describing which it would be wholly inadequate to use the term fancy. they are either grandly and powerfully imaginative, or they are nothing. this writer no doubt too frequently distorts his conceptions, while his treatment sometimes falls from sublimity into caricature; but it is incontestable, i think, that in spite of all _bizarrerie_, and every other exception or qualification, he possesses a mobile and an impressive imagination. in appeared the second part of _la légende des siècles_. although it scarcely rose to the level of the first part, it was not without those exalted passages which gave supremacy to the poet. 'once again the seer surveys the cycle of humanity from the days of paradise to the future which he anticipates; he takes his themes alike from the legends of the heroic age of greece, and from the domains of actual history, and after singing of the achievements of the great, he dedicates his lay to the little ones, and in a charming poem entitled _petit paul_ he depicts with fascinating pathos all the tenderness and all the sorrows of childhood.' the third and final part of the work was published in . discussing the unity of tone which entitles this strange work, with its multitude of separate characters and incidents, to be called a poem, a writer in the _athenæum_ observed: 'it is an apprehension, at once profound and tender, of the pathos of man's mysterious life on the earth; a pity such as has never before been expressed by any poet; a beautiful faith in god such as, in these days, can only find an echo in rare and noble souls; and an aspiration for justice and the final emancipation of man such as seems an anachronism, indeed, in a time which has given birth to gautier and to baudelaire on the one hand, and to zola and his followers on the other.' yet, notwithstanding its unity, it is not a little curious that the legend was as finished a work at the end of the first instalment as it was at the end of the whole. as to the poetic qualities of the closing part of the work, there was no decadence of true poetic impulse, nor any subsidence of that marvellous brilliance which dazzled europe when the first part of the poem appeared. but neither was there any growth of those highest poetic characteristics 'in which hugo's magnificent poetry was always weak--such as self-dominance, serenity, and that wise sweetness of a balancing judgment, equitable alike to the slave in the field and to the king on his throne, which belongs to the mind we call dramatic, whether the dramatist be the writer of _oedipus_ or the writer of _hamlet_.' the _légende des siècles_ offers a bewildering maze of things, sweet, beautiful, and sublime. it scintillates with the brilliant lights of genius as the vault of heaven is fretted with the glittering stars. yet what is perhaps nobler still, as mr. swinburne has said, 'over and within this book faith shines as a kindling torch, hope breathes as a quickening wind, love burns as a changing fire. it is tragic, not with the hopeless tragedy of dante, or the all but hopeless tragedy of shakespeare. whether we can or cannot share the infinite hope and inviolable faith to which the whole active and suffering life of the poet has borne such unbroken and imperishable witness, we cannot in any case but recognise the greatness and heroism of his love for mankind. as in the case of Æschylus, it is the hunger and thirst after righteousness, the deep desire for perfect justice in heaven as on earth, which would seem to assure the prophet's inmost heart of its final triumph by the prevalence of wisdom and of light over all claims and all pleas established or asserted by the children of darkness, so in the case of victor hugo is it the hunger and thirst after reconciliation, the love of loving-kindness, the master-passion of mercy, which persists in hope and insists on faith, even in face of the hardest and darkest experience through which a nation or a man can pass. hugo's poetic masterpiece, to translate his own language concerning it, had its rise in the past, in the tomb, in the darkness and the night of the ages; but permeating all is the regenerating light of a mighty hope.' the poet published in _les quatre vents de l'esprit_. the work which bore this fanciful title of the four winds of the spirit was divided into four distinct sections--the book satiric, the book dramatic, the book lyric, and the book epic. the wind of victor hugo, however, is chiefly of the lyric kind. it 'is like a fine sou'wester, warm and bright, but deeply charged with tears. over the bitter and eager wind of satire, for instance, he has no real command, and none over that bracing north wind of masculine thought and intellectual strength which is necessary to vitalize epic and drama.' so it was complained, and not without force or reason, that while it would be impossible to praise the lyrical portions of his work too highly, the satirical lacked subtlety and delicacy to make it effective; the epic wanted a larger freedom of natural growth; while situations intended to be dramatic rarely rose above the merely theatrical. the play in which these situations occur is concerned with the absolute equality of all men in regard to the great human passions. cynicism or conventionality may for a long period encrust a man, but there comes a time when the heart will have its way. hugo's latest illustrator of this truth, duc gallus, rescues a peasant girl from a proposed marriage with a brutal fellow whom she loathes, but rescues her with the deliberate intention of making her his mistress. though surrounded with splendour, the girl soon pines and breaks her heart through sheer loneliness, and at last in despair she kills herself by means of a poisoned ring. the nemesis of remorse now overtakes the duc. beneath this pretended cynicism there has been all the while smouldering a real passion, which, now that it is too late, breaks out into a fierce and inextinguishable flame; it was in depicting these heights and depths of emotion that hugo found his keenest delight. the book epic deals with the great french revolution, but it is in the book lyric that the poet achieves his finest triumph. in considering the substance and variety of hugo's lyrical efforts, every reader will agree with the judgment that amongst poets of energy, as distinguished from the poets of art and culture, shelley's is the only name in nineteenth-century literature which can stand beside that of victor hugo. in was published _torquemada_, a drama written chiefly during victor hugo's exile in guernsey. the poet himself regarded it as one of his best efforts, and it certainly exhibits his glowing imagination and his power of depicting human misery at their highest. the great inquisitor is drawn as a single-minded enthusiast who, following relentlessly to their conclusion the doctrines upon which he has been nourished from childhood, burns and tortures people out of pure love of their souls--that is, fastens their bodies to the stake for the purpose of saving from the everlasting fires of hell both their souls and their bodies. the poet shows how the idea gradually mastered him until it became irresistible as fate. the chief point in the plot well illustrates this. torquemada having been condemned as a fanatic by the bishop of urgel, is ordered to be bricked up alive in a vault. he is rescued from his living tomb by two lovers, don sanche and donna rosa. torquemada swears to be their eternal friend, and subsequently saves them from the wrath of the king. sanche and rosa are just being freed when the former relates the manner of the deliverance of torquemada from his tomb. sanche had used as a lever on that occasion an iron cross which hung upon the tottering wall. 'o ciel! ils sont damnés!' exclaims torquemada, when he hears this. in his view the lovers are now condemned to eternal perdition, but in order to save their souls he sends their bodies to the stake. it need scarcely be said that the author, in ascribing honesty and other characteristics to the bloodthirsty inquisitor, gives a more exalted view of him than is taken by impartial history. but the play must be read for its poetry and its scenic effects, which are magnificent. a prose work by hugo, to which considerable interest attaches, was published in , under the title of _l'archipel de la manche_. as its title implies, it deals with the channel islands, in one of which the author found for so long a time his home. from the literary aspect, the work suffers when compared with its author's verse, which alone can be grandly descriptive--at least since the production of his earlier romances. but for its glimpses of the inhabitants of guernsey, and its occasional touches of rich local colour, this work may be turned to with pleasure and advantage. chapter xviii. honours to victor hugo. unlike many other great men, victor hugo was not compelled to wait for a posthumous recognition of his powers. his genius was incontestable; he towered far above all his contemporaries; and the universal acknowledgment of his talents left no room for jealousy. hence writers and artists of all classes, and of varying eminence, combined with their less distinguished fellow-countrymen in paying homage to one who has shed undying lustre upon the french name. the chief ovations accorded to the poet i must briefly pass in review. several revivals of his best-known dramas have taken place of recent years, but the most striking of these celebrations was undoubtedly that at the théâtre français, on the th of february, . it was the fiftieth anniversary of the original representation of _hernani_, and that play was again produced to mark 'the golden wedding of hugo's genius and his glory.' after the termination of the play the curtain was lifted, when a bust of the dramatist was seen elevated on a pedestal profusely decorated with wreaths and palm-leaves. the stage was filled with actors dressed to represent the leading characters in hugo's various plays. mademoiselle sarah bernhardt came forward in the character of doña sol, and recited with much feeling and energy some laudatory verses by m. françois coppée, which roused anew the enthusiasm of the audience. in response to the call of m. francisque sarcey, the vast assembly rose, and filled the air with their congratulatory vociferations. '_ad multos annos!_ long live victor hugo!' such were the cries from all parts of the house, which so affected the venerable poet that he was compelled to retire. a few days subsequent to this performance the members of the parisian press gave a grand banquet to victor hugo at the hôtel continental. the speech of welcome and honour to the poet was delivered by m. Émile augier, himself a writer of considerable reputation. after referring to the marvellous vitality of victor hugo's poems and romances, the speaker said: 'time, o glorious master, takes no hold upon you; you know nothing of decline; you pass through every stage of life without diminishing your virility; for more than half a century your genius has covered the world with the unceasing flow of its tide. the resistance of the first period, the rebellion of the second, have melted away into universal admiration, and the last refractory spirits have yielded to your power.... when la bruyère before the academy hailed bossuet as father of the church, he was speaking the language of posterity, and it is posterity itself, noble master, that surrounds you here, and hails you as our father.' at the word 'father' the whole audience rose, and took up the salutation. when quiet was restored m. delaunay suggested that the poet should be solicited for a new dramatic work. the enthusiasm was renewed at this suggestion, and it may well be imagined that the acclamations reached their culminating point when sarah bernhardt rose and embraced the aged author of _hernani_. on this occasion victor hugo read his address of thanks, which was brief and pregnant in its allusions. 'before me i see the press of france,' said hugo. 'the worthies who represent it here have endeavoured to prove its sovereign concord, and to demonstrate its indestructible unity. you have assembled to grasp the hand of an old campaigner, who began life with the century, and lives with it still. i am deeply touched. i tender you all my thanks. all the noble words that we have just been hearing only add to my emotion. there are dates that seem to be periodically repeated with marked significance. the th of february, , was my birthday; in it was the time of the first appearance of _hernani_; and this again is the th of february, . fifty years ago, i, who am now here speaking to you, was hated, hooted, slandered, cursed. today, to-day--but the date is enough. gentlemen, the french press is one of the mistresses of the human intellect; it has its daily task, and that task is gigantic. in every minute of every hour it has its influence upon every portion of the civilized world; its struggles, its disputes, its wrath resolve themselves into progress, harmony, and peace. in its premeditations it aims at truth; from its polemics it flashes forth light. i propose as my toast the prosperity of the french press, the institution that fosters such noble designs, and renders such noble services.' on the th of december, , there was a grand festival at besançon in honour of the poet, its most illustrious son. the chief inhabitants of the town, and the visitors from paris, assembled at the mairie, and proceeded thence to the place st. quentin. the mayor was accompanied by m. rambaud, chief secretary to the minister of public instruction, and general wolff, commander of the _corps d'armée_. there were also present deputations from the senate and the chamber of deputies, officers, university professors, a representative of the president of the republic, the rector of the academy, the prefect, the municipal councillors, and a large body of members of the press. the poet was represented by m. paul meurice. the whole of besançon was _en fête_. in a street facing the place st. quentin a large platform had been erected, and here the proceedings took place. a beautiful medallion affixed to a house near the platform was uncovered by the mayor. this medallion represented a five-stringed lyre with two laurel branches of gold, and there was an inscription which, by the poet's express desire, consisted simply of his name and the date of his birth--'victor hugo: th of february, .' the lyre was surmounted by a head typical of the republic, encircled by rays. the procession adjourned from the place st. quentin to the stage at the besançon theatre, in the centre of which had been placed david's bust of victor hugo. at the request of the mayor, m. rambaud delivered an address upon the poet's character and genius. he recited the history of his struggles and of his literary conflicts, and of the gradual attainment of victory over thought and intellect; descanted upon his ever-increasing influence, his development as a politician, his internal conflicts, and his final triumph; described his prolonged duel with the empire, and his ultimate success; reviewed the leading characteristics of his lyrical, dramatic, and historical writings; and finally demonstrated how, after a life fraught with conflicts, trials, and sorrows, he found his reward in the revival of france, in the progress of democracy; and last, though not least, in the peaceful joys of domestic life and the society of his grandchildren. to this address m. paul meurice responded, and read the following letter from victor hugo himself: 'it is with deep emotion that i tender my thanks to my compatriots. i am a stone on the road that is trodden by humanity; but that road is a good one. man is master neither of his life nor of his death. he can but offer to his fellow-citizens his efforts to diminish human suffering; he can but offer to god his indomitable faith in the growth of liberty.' the marble bust of the poet was crowned with a wreath of golden laurel, and while the whole audience stood, a band of one hundred and fifty musicians performed the _marseillaise_. cries of '_vive victor hugo! vive la république!_' were heard as the audience left the theatre. an ovation such as few sovereigns have ever received was accorded to victor hugo by the city of paris on the th of february, . the day before, the poet had completed his seventy-ninth year, and by the french people this is regarded as entitling to octogenarian honours. a celebration took place which was compared with the reception of voltaire in . the avenue d'eylau, where victor hugo resided, was densely thronged, and the poet, being recognised with his children and grandchildren at an upper window of his house, was cheered by a vast multitude, estimated by unsympathetic observers at , . the municipality had erected at the entrance to the avenue lofty flagstaffs decorated with shields bearing the titles of his works, and supporting a large drapery inscribed ' , victor hugo, .' early in the morning the avenue was thronged with processions consisting of collegians, trades unions, musical and benefit societies, deputations from the districts of paris and from the provinces, etc. a deputation of children, bearing a blue and red banner with the inscription, '_l'art d'être grand-père_,' and headed by a little girl in white, arrived at the house, and was received by victor hugo in the drawing-room. the little maiden, who recited some lines by m. mendès, was blessed by the venerable poet. among other incidents of the day, the paris municipality drew up in front of the house, and victor hugo read to them the following speech: 'i greet paris, i greet the city. i greet it not in my name, for i am naught, but in the name of all that lives, reasons, thinks, loves, and hopes on earth. cities are blessed places; they are the workshops of divine labour. divine labour is human labour. it remains human so long as it is individual; as soon as it is collective, as its object is greater than its worker, it becomes divine. the labour of the fields is human; the labour of the towns is divine. from time to time history places a sign upon a city. that sign is unique. history in , years has thus marked three cities, which sum up the whole effort of civilization. what athens did for greek antiquity, what rome did for roman antiquity, paris is doing to-day for europe, for america, for the civilized universe. it is the city of the world. who addresses paris addresses the whole world, _urbi et orbi_. i, a humble passer-by, who have but my share in your rights, in the name of all cities, of the cities of europe, of america, of the civilized world, from athens to new york, from london to moscow; in thy name, rome; in thine, berlin--i praise, with love i hail, the hallowed city, paris.' a stream of processions then filed past the house, many of them bearing imposing bouquets, which were deposited in front of hugo's residence. the musical societies alone exceeded ; strains of the _marseillaise_ were now and again audible, and the entire avenue, nearly a mile long, was thickly lined with spectators, while that part of it commanding a view of the poet's house was densely packed, except for a passage-way for the processions. medals and photographs of the hero of the day were to be seen everywhere, and the behaviour of the enormous assemblage was most exemplary. victor hugo, whose love of the fresh air always made him careless of exposure, remained at the open window for several hours bareheaded, acknowledging the greetings of the successive deputations and of the multitude. at the trocadéro a musical and literary festival was held, when selections from victor hugo's works were sung or recited by some of the leading paris _artistes_, and the _marseillaise_ was performed by a military band. m. louis blanc, who presided, said that few great men had entered in their lifetime into their immortality. voltaire and victor hugo had both deserved this, one for stigmatizing religious intolerance, the other for having, with incomparable lustre, served humanity. he commended the committee for inviting the co-operation of men of different opinions, for genius united in a common admiration men otherwise at discord, and the idea of union was inseparable from a grand festival. 'there were enough days in the year given to what separated men. it was well to give a few hours to what brought them together, and there could be no better opportunity than the festival of an unrivalled poet, an eloquent apostle of human brotherhood, whose use of his genius was greater than his genius itself, the oneness of his life consisting in the constant ascent of his spirit towards the light.' in the evening of the day there was a victor hugo concert at the conservatoire, and at many of the theatres verses were recited in his honour. on the night of the th a special performance was given at the gaîté of _lucrèce borgia_, which had not been produced for ten years. the house was filled, all the notabilities of paris being present, while the poet himself also appeared for a short time. the celebration generally was one triumphant success. in honour of hugo's eightieth birthday, on the th of february, , the french government ordered a free performance of _hernani_ at the théâtre français. crowds stood outside for hours waiting for admission, and , persons managed to squeeze themselves into seats intended to accommodate only , . the poet and his grandchildren were present during the last act, and were loudly applauded. hugo's bust was placed on the stage at the close of the piece, and verses in his honour by m. coppée were recited. on the preceding evening , persons had attended his reception, when the committee of the previous year's grand celebration presented him with a bronze miniature of michael angelo's 'moses.' in acknowledging the gift, the poet said, 'i accept your present, and i await a still better one, the greatest a man can receive: i mean death--death, that recompense for the good done on earth. i shall live in my descendants, my grandchildren, jeanne and georges. if, indeed, i have a narrow-minded thought it is for them. i wish to ensure their future, and i confide them to the protection of all the loyal and devoted hearts here present.' yet one more celebration i must notice. on the nd of november, , the théâtre français gave a brilliant performance of victor hugo's _le roi s'amuse_. it has already been seen that this piece was first produced on the nd of november, , amid such a scene of disorder and tumult that the government forbade its further representation. from that time forward it had never been produced until this fiftieth anniversary in . it was the subject of preliminary conversation for weeks in paris, and great anxiety was manifested on the subject of seats. it was stated that if the house, which had only provision for , persons, could have been made to accommodate , , there would still have been an insufficiency of places to satisfy all the supplications with which the théâtre français was besieged. the intrinsic value of the work, however, was not the first thought of those who engaged in the feverish quest for seats, which for a full month possessed all fashionable, artistic, literary, political, diplomatic, and financial paris. it was chiefly the desire to do honour to the veteran poet. with regard to the representation itself, the splendour of the mounting, the beauty of the accessories, and the historical fidelity of the costumes, transcended all expectation. never was a piece placed on the stage with greater, or indeed probably equal, art. chapter xix. personal and miscellaneous. in private life and character, it is well known that victor hugo was one of the noblest and most unselfish of men. numberless are the anecdotes related of his generosity and kindliness of disposition. his children's repasts at hauteville house, guernsey, and his hospitality to the suffering and distressed in paris, i have already alluded to. he had a special talent for organizing christmas parties, and was never happier than when surrounded by his grandchildren. he mingled in all their games, and even shared their troubles and their punishments. when his favourite little grandchild was put on dry bread for bad conduct, the grandfather was so unhappy that he would take no dessert. his pleasures were as simple as his mind was great. the writer who furnishes me with these details warmly contradicted the statement that victor hugo was an infidel; on the contrary, he was a firm believer in god and in a future state; and this, as we have seen, the poet himself confirmed. even when in his octogenarian period it was the poet's habit to rise with the day, summer and winter, and to work until nine. he then allowed himself an hour's rest for breakfast and his morning constitutional, after which he again sat at his desk, mostly pursuing his intellectual labours, till five in the afternoon. work being concluded, he dined at half-past six, and invariably retired to rest at ten. on one occasion, speaking of his future works, the poet said, 'i shall have more to do than i have already done. one would think that with age the mind weakens; with me it appears, on the contrary, to grow stronger. the horizon gets larger, and i shall pass away without having finished my task.' on one occasion, a poor old woman was so delighted with the poetry of her grandson, aged eighteen, that in the fulness of her heart she sent his verses to victor hugo. the poet thus spoke of this incident to a friend--'in spite of myself, i must hurt this worthy woman's feelings by not replying to her letter; the verses of her grandson are simply mine, taken from _les contemplations_. i can't anyhow write to say i find my own verses beautiful--i can't encourage plagiarism; and i won't tell the grandmother that her grandson is a liar.' much has been written concerning hugo's skill as a draughtsman. it appears that this own discovery of his powers in this direction was made in a little village near meulan, where he stopped to change horses, when travelling with a lady in a diligence. he went inside the village church, and was so struck by the graceful beauty of the apse that he made an attempt to copy some of the details, using his hat as an easel. he obtained a fair _souvenir_ of the place, and for the first time realized how beneficially copying from nature might be combined with his literary pursuits. after that he always delighted in sketching architectural peculiarities of fabrics which remained in the original design, and had not been 'improved' by modern handling. he never took artistic lessons, but by constant practice he acquired considerable facility in representing a certain class of subjects, ruined castles with deep shadows, gloomy landscapes, stormy skies, etc. m. ph. burty and several writers and artists of the first class have expressed their admiration of his artistic work, and its striking effects. his drawings were chiefly illustrative of his own thoughts. they were employed either to develop his poems, or to serve as pictorial commentaries upon his own literary creations. théophile gautier wrote: 'm. hugo is not only a poet, he is a painter, and a painter whom louis boulanger, c. roqueplan, or paul huet would not refuse to own as a brother in art. whenever he travels he makes sketches of everything that strikes the eye. the outline of the hill, a break in the horizon, an old belfry--any of these will suffice for the subject of a rough drawing, which the same evening will see worked up well-nigh to the finish of an engraving, and the object of unbounded surprise even to the most accomplished artists.' m. castel collected many of hugo's early drawings into an album, and published them with the object of furthering the poet's work among poor children. théophile gautier supplied an introduction to the album, and it had an excellent sale. a number of land and sea pieces, bearing hugo's signature, passed into the possession of m. auguste vacquerie. the poet prepared a set of illustrations for his _les travailleurs de la mer_, and a second album, consisting of miscellaneous illustrations by hugo, has also been prepared. many of his sketches were left in hauteville house, and m. paul meurice, madame lockroy, and madame drouet came into possession of others. victor hugo himself sat for a great number of portraits between his twenty-fifth and his seventy-seventh year, and he was likewise the subject of numerous caricatures. these portraits and caricatures were edited and published by m. bouvenne. a very sumptuous volume is m. blémont's _livre d'or_ of victor hugo, containing beautiful illustrations by eminent artists, suggested by his poems and romances. during the latter years of his life victor hugo resided in the quarter already mentioned, the avenue d'eylau (near the bois de boulogne), whose name, out of compliment to the poet, has been changed by the municipality of paris into the avenue victor hugo. the house is semi-detached, and adjoins that occupied by m. and madame lockroy and georges and jeanne. a communication between the two residences, however, brought the whole of the family practically under the same roof. the house is three stories high, and the poet's study was on the first floor, where he lived in a kind of bower, looking out upon one side in the direction of the avenue, and on the other towards a pleasant garden, with a lawn surrounded by flowers and shaded by noble trees. the daily post to hugo's house was an important matter, for he had a stream of communications from all parts of the world. if a poetaster in america or australia thought he possessed immortal genius he could not rest content until he had received, or at least attempted to obtain, victor hugo's imprimatur. there were many things the kindly veteran would smooth over in order not to wound sensitive minds bitten with the _cacoëthes scribendi_. the poet was also very accessible to personal callers, so much so that it was said you had only to put on a black coat, pull at his bell, and there you were. sometimes his good-nature was imposed upon, as will happen with all men, little or great. an amusing story is told of a cabman who, after driving the poet one day, refused to take the fare, on the ground that the honour of having victor hugo in his vehicle was a sufficient reward. the author of _notre-dame_ asked his admiring jehu to dinner; but when the meal was over, and hugo might naturally have thought they could cry quits, the guest drew a manuscript from his pocket with the ominous words, 'i also am a poet!' greatness is thus not without its penalties. a good deal of interest attaches to victor hugo's manuscripts. madame drouet was the poet's literary secretary for thirty years, and during all that period she copied with her own hand the manuscripts of his various works as he wrote them. this was done to guard against the danger of the originals being lost, or mangled by printers. a writer in the _pall mall gazette_ has furnished some interesting details respecting the manuscripts, which will be valuable as showing how the poet worked. what he effaced, he says, was so covered with ink, applied in a horizontal direction, that nobody will ever be able to make it out. when he wanted to get a subject well into his mind's eye he drew it sometimes with great finish of detail on the margin. there is something in several of the manuscripts reminding one of doré's illustrations of the _contes drôlatiques_; while others bring to mind albert dürer's orfèvrerie. all victor hugo's important manuscripts have been bequeathed to the bibliothèque nationale. the writer to whom i have just referred further adds these personal details respecting the poet and his habits: 'victor hugo occupied the room looking on the garden in which he died. the window of his chamber is framed with ivy, and opens on an ivy-clad balcony. a vast old-fashioned four-post bed, with a flat, short drapery of antique brocade round the roof, stands in an alcove. the poet's body lay on it after death. a dressing-room is at the head, and a small closet used as a wardrobe at the foot. the desk is massive, and made with shelves, on which precious books are placed. one of them is the volume of the _contemplations_, paid for by public subscription when victor hugo was in exile, and presented to madame victor hugo. the vignettes and other illustrated portion of the work were done by the artists who had known, admired, and loved her husband. between every second page there was a blank sheet, upon which a literary celebrity wrote a thought, good wish, or sentiment. michelet led off; louis blanc, jules janin, théophile gautier, dumas père, and other celebrities of the time filled blank pages. lamartine shines by his absence. he was always jealous of victor hugo, and querulously attacked _les misérables_ soon after that strange _chef d'oeuvre_ was published. there is also a tall desk in victor hugo's bedroom. it was the one that he most used. he was up every morning at six, when he washed in cold water, and then took a cup of black coffee and a raw egg. this refection kept up strength and did not draw blood from the brain, as must a less easily digested one. if ideas did not come rapidly he went to the window, which was all day open, winter and summer, sought inspiration by gazing thence, returned to the desk, sketched, and then wrote. if his "go" slacked, he walked about, and again looked out and drew. at eleven he breakfasted. his pegasus, he used to say, was the knifeboard (impérial) of an omnibus, and he generally mounted it early in the afternoon. if he had nothing particular to do he did not get down till he had been to the terminus and back again. the objective faculties were not more active in these rides than the subjective. he used to observe, reflect, and dream simultaneously.' when not riding, hugo was equally fond of walking about paris, revisiting old sites associated with personal or historic events. it will have been seen in the course of this volume that victor hugo was much tried by domestic affliction. both his sons died young, charles leaving the two children, georges and jeanne, of whom their grandfather was so fond. madame charles hugo, the mother of these children, married afterwards, as already stated, m. lockroy, the extremist deputy and journalist. the poet's second daughter, adèle hugo, fifty years of age, is in an asylum in the neighbourhood of paris; and from the paris correspondent of the _times_, and other sources, i glean the following information concerning her: thirty years ago she married an officer of the english navy, while her father was living at guernsey. the marriage was contrary to the wishes of victor hugo, who refused to have further intercourse with his daughter. she went to india with her husband. some years afterwards she came back to europe insane, under the care of a negro woman, who had become attached to her. her father secured her admission to an asylum, and visited her there every week. on these journeys to st. mandé to see his daughter, he would take the muette-belville omnibus, with a correspondence to vincennes, and every christmas he sent francs to the conductors of these lines. his pockets were stuffed with bonbons and little articles of finery which it gave adèle pleasure to receive. it is stated that her madness takes the gentle and childish form. she would always know victor hugo, but did not understand why he did not take her to live with him. he placed her under the guardianship of his and her old friend vacquerie, and made no attempt to evade the law, in virtue of which she comes, as alleged, into a fortune of £ , , and half the income which may be derived from the copyright of victor hugo's works. the poet is said to have regretted during his later years his harshness in connection with his daughter's marriage, and her melancholy history cast over him one of the few sorrowful shadows that visited his life. hugo possessed one valuable piece of landed property, a plot of ground bought by him for , francs in the avenue which bears his name. it is covered with trees, which surround a bright patch of lawn, and throw deep shadows over the ground, grateful to the eyes of those accustomed to the dusty streets of paris. it says not a little for his vigour and apparent hold upon life, that after he had passed his eighty-second year he intended to superintend the erection of his new house, which was to be built entirely from his own designs. a large portion of hugo's fortune--which was estimated altogether at about four million francs--was invested in belgian national bank shares, english consols, and french rentes. for several years before his death victor hugo had renounced public speaking, his latest efforts in this direction having brought on an indisposition which obliged him to go to guernsey for rest and quiet. he had also ceased to issue political appeals and manifestoes, though agitators of all shades of opinion (including the irish nationalists) endeavoured to enlist his sympathies. occasionally he would give the weight of his name to a movement with whose ramifications he was not very familiar; but it was only for a time that he yielded to such blandishments. he attended the senate periodically until the very last, although his deafness prevented him from following the course of the discussions. the relation of the poet's life begun by madame hugo, has been completed by m. paul meurice, who includes in his work reprints of early poems and criticisms by hugo, which are useful as strengthening the view taken in the earlier part of this narrative of his youthful political opinions. the poet is stated to have bequeathed his theatrical copyrights to m. meurice, and the copyrights of his other works to m. vacquerie. a magnificent national edition of the whole of victor hugo's works is now being issued in paris. when completed, the work will contain etchings executed from original designs by fifty-seven of the chief french painters of the day, including bonnat, boulanger, baudry, cabanel, constant, comerre, cormon, gérôme, harpignies, henner, moreau, and rochegrosse. there will also be no fewer than , ordinary illustrations. the edition, which will extend to forty volumes, will contain unpublished, as well as all the published, works of the poet, and it will be completed by the opening day of the universal exhibition of . no other monument could more fitly, or more worthily, commemorate this distinguished writer. chapter xx. the poet's death and burial. when the news that victor hugo had been seized with a serious illness was made known on the th of may, it excited a painful sensation not only in paris and throughout france, but also in london, vienna, and other european capitals. the great age of the sufferer caused the gravest apprehensions, notwithstanding his well-known vigour and robustness of constitution. the last public act of the poet was to stand sponsor to m. de lesseps at the academy reception, held towards the close of april, . in accordance with his customary practice he was thinly clad, although the weather was inclement, and the rain fell while he stood for a considerable time in the quadrangle. his friends dreaded the result of this exposure. it seems that the spectators, as if with the presentiment that they would not see him again, gave him a prolonged cheer, 'which he acknowledged with the seriousness of a man already looking back, as from a distance, on the world's transient satisfactions. he then sat down, apparently absorbed in listening to what he called the inner voices, scarcely raising his head to respond to the plaudits evoked by the passage in his honour.' a fortnight after this incident, hugo received his friend lesseps and his family to dinner, according to his weekly custom. it was noticed by the poet's relatives, though it escaped the attention of his godson of the academy, that the host was far from being in his usual health. nevertheless, he exerted himself with his wonted courtesy, and remained with his guests until they departed at a late hour. he was already suffering from a cold, caught, it is said, on the th of may, when he took one of those omnibus rides to which, as we have seen, he was very partial. overtaxed by his exertions in entertaining his friends, and unable to shake off the effects of the cold, serious symptoms began to develop themselves. in addition to an affection of the heart, congestion of the lungs set in. although for some time he battled heroically with the disease, he at length looked for and anticipated death. a correspondent of the _daily news_, reporting a conversation with an intimate friend of the hugo family upon the poet's last illness, said: 'he tells me that he never heard of a more terrible struggle between organic vitality and the morbid causes that are at work. victor hugo would like to die, so that it cannot be said it is his strength of will that enables him to resist the disease from which he is suffering. contrary to what some of the journals have said, he is a very bad patient. last night, when after straining his whole body to breathe, he had fallen into a prostrate state, a strong blister was prescribed, and the three doctors agreed to stay and watch its effects. as one of them was going to apply it, victor hugo jumped up and not only pushed him away but the others also, with a muscular force that astounded them. he rushed to and fro, convulsively throwing up his arms, and clutching the furniture. in the intervals between the crises, the poet likes to have his granddaughter near him. he feels that death has come to summon him, and that medical help is impotent to save him. he chafes at having to lie in bed. his voice is very weak, but remains audible to those near him. he was greatly affected on hearing that numbers of working people come in the evening to stand mutely and respectfully at a short distance from his house, so as to hear from those who call, as they are walking away, how he is. with his characteristic politeness, he has ordered that a direct notification is to be made to the humble watchers in the street of his decease, and wishes it to be known that his last thoughts have been about his friends the poor of paris, with whom he has long been in brotherhood by feeling.' on hearing of victor hugo's alarming illness, cardinal guibert, the archbishop of paris, wrote to madame lockroy: 'i have the deepest sympathy with the sufferings of m. victor hugo and with the anxieties of his family. i have prayed much at the holy sacrifice of mass for the illustrious patient. should he desire to see a minister of our holy religion, although i am myself still weak, and in a state of convalescence from a disease much resembling his, i should make it my very pleasing duty to bring him the succour and consolation so much needed in these cruel ordeals.' m. lockroy at once replied as follows: 'madame lockroy, who cannot leave the bedside of her father-in-law, begs me to thank you for the sentiments which you have expressed with so much eloquence and kindness. as regards m. victor hugo, he has again said, within the last few days, that he had no wish during his illness to be attended by a priest of any persuasion. we should be wanting in our duty if we did not respect his resolution.' as the correspondent of the _times_ observed, the archbishop could scarcely have expected an acceptance of his offer, for victor hugo was not the man to play the revolting death-bed farce of talleyrand; and to have died a catholic would not even have been a reversion to the creed of his childhood, for, strictly speaking, he was not brought up a catholic. his mother, though a vendéan royalist, was a voltairian; and when she entered her sons at the monastic college of madrid, she declared them protestants in order to exempt them from the confessional. but all through life hugo was a theist, and ran the gauntlet of much criticism from sceptical friends in consequence of his firm belief in the deity. there seemed at one time a possibility of the poet's recovery, though he did not himself share this view. 'i only wish that death may come quickly,' he exclaimed the day before his death; and again, in passing through a severe spasmodic fit, he said: 'it is the struggle between day and night.' the patient's sufferings were very great, and those about him could desire nothing but his release. for several days he was kept alive only by injections of morphia. on the evening of the st he rallied sufficiently from his lethargy to embrace his two grandchildren, both in their 'teens, and to utter a few words. his breathing was temporarily easier, though the action of the heart continued to be very feeble. at five o'clock on the following morning the last agony commenced. almost his last words, addressed to his granddaughter, were, 'adieu, jeanne, adieu!' his final movement of consciousness was to grasp his grandson's hand. the pulse gradually grew weaker and weaker, and at half-past one o'clock he raised his head, made a gesture as if bowing, and fell back lifeless. in the afternoon m. nadar attended, to photograph the death-bed. m. bonnat, whose striking portrait of hugo was one of the features of the salon a few years ago, took a sketch, and m. dalou, the sculptor, made a cast of the head. m. and madame jules simon were the first amongst a long list of notabilities to pay a visit of condolence to the family. early on the morning of the poet's death a crowd had assembled in the avenue victor hugo, and the painful news of his decease rapidly spread through their midst, and was soon known throughout paris. when the senate met, shortly after the melancholy event, the president, m. le royer (a protestant), said: 'victor hugo is dead. he who for more than sixty years has excited the admiration of the world and the legitimate pride of france has entered into immortality. i will not sketch his life; everyone knows it. his glory is the property of no party or opinion; it is the appanage and inheritance of all. i have only to express the deep and painful emotion of the senate, and the unanimity of its regret. in sign of mourning, i have the honour to ask the senate to adjourn.' m. brisson then said: 'the government joins in the noble words of the president of the senate. to-morrow the government will have the honour of submitting to the chamber a bill for a national funeral to victor hugo.' the senate then rose. the municipal council paid similar homage to the man whose name was imperishably associated with that of paris. the council also resolved upon attending the funeral in a body. for some days the poet's death was the only subject of conversation in paris. foreign visitors delayed their departure in order to be able to say that they had witnessed his funeral. the mayor of the th arrondissement declared the house where he died to be sacred, and the property of the city of paris, and it was decided to give his name to new streets in the capital. for the first time, it was said, since lafayette's death--and even this comparison proved to be inadequate--france was to celebrate a truly national funeral. the funerals of thiers and gambetta, though the most striking in france for at least a generation, aroused sympathy in one section of the people, and drew forth protests from the rest; but all france felt that it could bow the head with unanimous respect and veneration before the remains of victor hugo. a doubt which had troubled all persons holding religious beliefs in france was set at rest by the publication of the following unsealed memorandum handed by the poet to m. vacquerie on the nd of august, :--'i give , francs to the poor. i wish to be carried to the cemetery in their hearse. i refuse the prayers (_oraisons_) of all churches: i ask for a prayer (_prière_) from all souls. i believe in god.--victor hugo.' though rejecting creeds, it was seen that the illustrious departed had not rejected belief. on one point m. renan expressed the universal feeling when he wrote as follows:--'m. victor hugo was one of the evidences of the unity of our french conscience. the admiration which enveloped his last years has shown that there are still points upon which we are agreed. without distinction of class, party, sect, or literary opinion, the public, for some days past, has hung upon the heartrending narratives of his agony; and now there is nobody who does not perceive a great void in the heart of the country. he was an essential member of the church in whose communion we dwell--one might say that the spire of that old cathedral has crumbled into dust with the noble existence which has carried the banner of the ideal highest in our century.' at the opening of the french chamber on the rd, m. floquet pronounced an eloquent eulogium upon victor hugo. he spoke of france as having lost one of her best citizens, who had enriched the treasure of national glory, had restored courage in adversity, and after having suffered everything for the republic had inculcated concord and tolerance. he described him as a hero of humanity, who for sixty years had been the champion of the poor, the weak, the humble, the woman, and the child, and as the advocate of inviolable respect for life, and of mercy to those who had gone astray. his name ought to be proclaimed, not only in the academies of artists, poets, and philosophers, but in all legislative assemblies, on which he had sought to impress the inspirations of his all-powerful and benevolent genius. in proposing a vote of , francs for a national funeral, m. henri brisson said:--'victor hugo is no more. while living he became immortal. death itself, which often adds to the reputation of men, could not add to his glory. his genius dominates our century. through him france irradiated the world. it is not letters alone that mourn, but our country and humanity--every reading and thinking man in the whole world. as regards us frenchmen, for the last sixty-five years his voice has entered into our inner moral life and our national existence, bringing into them all that is sweetest and brightest, most touching and most elevated, in the private and public history of that long series of generations which he has charmed, consoled, kindled with pity or indignation, enlightened, and warmed with his own fire. what man of our time is not indebted to him? our democracy laments his loss. he has sung all its grandeurs; he has wept over all its miseries. the weak and lowly cherished and venerated his name. they knew that this great man had their cause in his heart. it is a whole people that will follow him to the grave.' loud acclamations followed this speech, and the proposal was adopted by votes to . the news of the poet's death excited as much emotion in the french provinces as in the capital. the municipal councils of lyons, marseilles, and toulon closed their sittings as a mark of grief, after having appointed delegates to represent them at the funeral. the municipal council of besançon sent the following address to the hugo family:--'the native town of victor hugo, through the council, places at the feet of the departed its sentiments of profound grief. the glory of the greatest of her children will for ever irradiate her and the whole world. by his genius he was foremost among men of letters and poets. by his love of his country and of liberty he was the enemy of usurpers and despots, and the power of his heart and his zeal for the welfare of humanity place him at the head of the protectors of the oppressed, the humble, and the weak.' the mayor of nancy addressed the following letter to m. lockroy:--'the town of nancy has always felt proud of having been the birthplace of general hugo, the father of the man of genius for whom france mourns. she claimed as a glory for the blood of lorraine, which ran in his veins, the renown of the great poet. i am an inadequate but sincere interpreter of the general grief.' at algiers the municipal council closed its sittings, and from london, vienna, and st. petersburg messages of sympathy were despatched. on the day following the poet's death it was computed that at least ten thousand letters and messages of condolence reached the avenue victor hugo. a desire having been expressed that victor hugo should be buried in the panthéon, the feeling spread rapidly through almost all classes. in pursuance of this wish, m. anatole de la forge moved in the chamber of deputies that the panthéon, known as the church of st. geneviève, should be secularized, in order that victor hugo's remains might be buried there. urgency was voted for the motion by against votes, but the minister of the interior requested the house to postpone the vote upon it until the next sitting. it may be here stated that the panthéon was commenced in as a church, completed in as a walhalla, was a church from to , and again from until . the interments in it of mirabeau, voltaire, rousseau, and marat are matters of history, as are also the expulsions which followed. mirabeau's body was publicly expelled by the terrorists; marat's by the anti-terrorists; and voltaire's and rousseau's clandestinely by the legitimists. in the last french chamber passed a bill secularizing it; but this did not pass through the senate. two days after the discussion upon m. de la forge's motion, the _journal officiel_ published a series of documents which summarily disposed of the matter. ministers having advised president grévy that an opportune moment had arrived for accomplishing the wish expressed by the chamber in , and for restoring the building to its original destination as a burial-place for illustrious frenchmen, two presidential decrees were made, one declaring the panthéon to be henceforth a mausoleum for great men who should have merited the gratitude of the nation, and the other directing that the body of victor hugo should be laid there. in the chamber an order of the day was proposed by the comte de mun, condemning the presidential decree as a provocation to catholics and as an act of feebleness; but this was rejected by to . another motion expressing the chamber's entire approval of the letter and spirit of the decree was then submitted, and carried by to . hugo's family consented to the body being taken to the panthéon, but insisted on its being carried in a pauper's hearse from the arc de triomphe, where it was to lie in state, to the national mausoleum. at six o'clock on the morning of the st of may the remains of the poet were transferred to the arc de triomphe, where waggon-loads of flowers and memorial wreaths had been constantly arriving. all the shops, cafés, and restaurants in the avenue victor hugo, and near the triumphal arch, had remained open all night. 'there was nothing disorderly,' wrote a correspondent, 'and the impression everything gave was one of sadness, though all day the aspect of the place de l'Étoile had been really festive. the cenotaph was visible from the tuileries. the coffin was covered with a silver-spangled pall, which rose from a base covered with black and violet cloth, violet being regal mourning, and victor hugo having attained an intellectual and moral sovereignty over france.' early in the day the crowds of human beings in all the avenues leading to the place de l'Étoile were very dense. as evening drew on the aspect was like that of some great fair. medals bearing _les châtiments, napoléon le petit_, and other legends, were offered for sale, as well as medallions and numberless other memorials of the dead. the display of flowers was wholly unparalleled. at night a flood of electric light poured upon the place de l'Étoile, revealing the coffin with dalou's powerfully modelled bust at the foot, and bringing out the flowers and the names of victor hugo's works on shields. the effect of the horse guards with torches and veiled lamps was very striking. twelve schoolboys, relieved every hour, formed a picket in front of the cenotaph, round which there was an outer circle of juvenile guards, and an inner one of hugo's intimate friends. english literature and the fine arts were worthily represented in the votive offerings laid at the feet of the great poet. wreaths, flowers, and memorial cards were sent in great abundance. lord tennyson wrote under his name the word 'homage,' and at the top of his card, '_in memoriam celeberrimi poetæ_.' mr. browning also was represented, as well as sir frederick leighton, the president of the royal academy. archdeacon farrar sent the message, 'in honour of one who honoured man as man.' sir f. burton, director of the national gallery, wrote, 'honour to the memory of the great master;' and similar tributes were paid by many men of letters, poets, royal academicians, and others. the funeral ceremony took place on the st of june, and it was of such a character as to live in the memory of all who witnessed it. what distinguished the procession in honour of victor hugo from the only one comparable with it, that of gambetta, observed the correspondent of the _times_, was not only its vast size, which was without precedent, but also the distinct sentiment which dominated both its members and the crowd. it was at once the triumph of the democracy and an illustration of its power. in the case of gambetta, france beheld a statesman cut off in his prime, with all the dreams of hope and ambition before him. in the case of victor hugo, it was a veteran in letters entering into his rest. 'at the tidings of his death, all france, all parties, seemed to claim him; and it was the loss of the poet, the thinker, the humanitarian, which was first deplored. then, by degrees, party claims were put forth. the poet and thinker disappeared, and this made his funeral less sublime. the crowd paid homage to the political weaknesses of his latter years, to the democratic philanthropist, to the extremist senator, to a hugo, in fact, whom posterity will ignore, while honouring him with a place among great literary geniuses.' the struggle over his remains ended by other parties giving way, and the people for whom he had laboured claiming him as their especial champion and prophet. but certainly, whether for king, priest, statesman, or man of letters, paris and the provinces never before turned out in such vast multitudes. the wreaths arriving from all parts were placed on twelve cars, drawn by four or six horses each, and they formed a brilliant spectacle. before six o'clock in the morning there were already four rows of spectators assembled on each side of the champs Élysées. 'the authorities, with considerable skill and foresight, had directed most of the societies likely to bear what might be qualified as seditious banners to meet in the avenue du bois de boulogne. here accordingly, at a little before nine o'clock, were massed various free-thought societies, nearly all of them bearing red flags or banners, from boulogne, asnières, argenteuil, suresne, bicêtre, sèvres, puteaux, and other places. some of the banners were ornamented with phrygian caps. close by, in the avenue de la grande armée, the proscripts of - had also a red banner. by ten o'clock there were fifteen red flags close to the arc de triomphe. at the corner of the rue brunel m. lissagaray, m. martin, and some thirty well-known anarchists had responded to the call of the revolutionary committee. they seemed, however, lost in the crowd. twice this little group of anarchists tried to unfurl a red flag, but being so closely watched, they had not time to hoist the colour in the air before flag-bearer and flag were both captured. by half-past ten the anarchists, having already lost two flags, abandoned the rue brunel. a little before eleven o'clock a commissioner of police, in plain clothes, accompanied by half-a-dozen policemen and a company of republican guards, marched down the avenue du bois de boulogne, and, accosting the bearer of every red flag that seemed at all objectionable, lifted his hat, and demanded that the emblem should be covered over.' although disturbances had been feared none occurred. the red republicans and anarchists (whom victor hugo had more than once condemned) were but as a drop in the bucket, compared with the myriads of other citizens assembled to do honour to the dead. although some arrests were made, the greatness of the whole occasion dwarfed their significance, and the most imposing spectacle within living memory became a veritable popular triumph, and one reflecting credit upon the french nation. vivid descriptions were penned of the ceremony. according to one of these, by eleven o'clock the sight at the foot of the arc de triomphe became more and more impressive. the dull, grey sky, the roll of the muffled drums, the mournful strains of chopin's _funeral march_, combined with the hushed tones of conversation, helped to impress the numerous audience gathered round. the bright red robes of the judges and the sombre gowns of the barristers made a picturesque contrast with the very plain, unpretending dress of the members of the government and of the foreign diplomatic corps, who sat in the most favoured places at the foot of the arc. in the background the glitter of cuirassier armour and the gold braiding of the representatives of the army gave tone and vivacity to the scene. much interest was manifested at the presence of the french cabinet, of both houses, and of the english ambassador, sitting side by side with m. de mohrenheim, the russian ambassador. when the mourning family had taken their places, ministers went to pay them their condolences. the funeral addresses were then delivered from a tribune erected on the left of the catafalque. the first speaker, m. le royer, president of the senate, described victor hugo as the most illustrious senator, whose olympian forehead, bowed on his breast in an anticipated posture of immortality, always attracted respectful homage from all his colleagues. he never mounted the tribune but to support a cause always dear to him--the amnesty. amidst apparent hesitations, he had all his life consistently pursued a high ideal of justice and humanity, and his moral action on france was immense. he unmasked the sophisms of crowned crime, comforted weak hearts, and restored to honest men right notions of moral law, which had been momentarily obscured. the speech of the day, however, was delivered by m. floquet, president of the chamber of deputies. in tones which could be distinctly heard throughout the vast arena, and with much eloquence of gesture, the orator said: 'what can equal the grandeur of the spectacle before us, which history will record! under this arch, constellated with the legendary names of so many heroes, who have made france free, and wished to render her glorious, we see to-day the mortal remains, or rather, i should say, the still serene image, of the great man who so long sang the glory of our country and struggled for her liberty. we see here around us the most eminent men in arts and sciences, the representatives of the french people, the delegates of our departments and communes, voluntary and spontaneous ambassadors, and missionaries from the civilized universe, piously bending the knee before him who was a sovereign of thought, an exile for crushed right and a betrayed republic, a persevering protector of all the weak and oppressed, and the chosen defender of humanity in our century. in the name of the nation we salute him, not in the humble attitude of mourning, but with all the pride of glorification. this is not a funeral, but an apotheosis. we weep for the man who is gone, but we acclaim the imperishable apostle whose word remains with us, and, surviving from age to age, will conduct the world to the definite conquest of liberty, equality, and fraternity. this immortal giant would have been ill at ease in the solitude and obscurity of subterranean crypts. we have elevated him there, exposed to the judgment of men and nature, under the grand sun which illuminated his august conscience. whole peoples realize the poetical dream of this sweet genius. may this coffin, covered with the flowers of the grateful inhabitants of paris, which victor hugo loved to call the _cité mère_, and of which he was the respectful son and faithful servant, teach the admiring multitude duty, concord, and peace.' m. floquet concluded by reciting the verses beginning '_je hais l'oppression d'une haine profonde_' ('i hate oppression with a profound hatred'). this address, which elicited enthusiastic approval, was followed by one from m. goblet, minister of public instruction. the minister said that victor hugo, while living, figured in the glorious pleiad of great poets--with corneille, molière, racine, and voltaire. he would always remain the highest personification of the nineteenth century, the history of which, with its contradictions, its doubts, its ideas, and aspirations, had been best reflected in his works. the speaker laid stress upon the profoundly human character of victor hugo, who represented in france the spirit of toleration and peace. m. Émile augier, who appeared in the uniform of the academy, said: 'the great poet that france has lost vouchsafed me a place in his friendship. hence the honour i have to be chosen by the academy to express our grief, which is as nothing to that of the whole nation. to the sovereign poet france renders sovereign honours. she is not prodigal of the surname great. hitherto it has been almost the exclusive appanage of conquerors; but one preceding poet was universally called the great corneille, and henceforth we shall say the great victor hugo. his long-acquired renown is now called glory, and posterity commences. we are not celebrating a funeral, but a coronation.' m. michelin, president of the municipal council of paris, delivered the last speech of the day. on the conclusion of the addresses, the drums beat the salute, and then the band of the republican guard struck up the _marseillaise_. just as they had reached the chorus of the stirring french national anthem, the coffin was brought out from the catafalque, and at that precise moment the sun, bursting through the grey clouds, threw a ray of brilliant light on the mountain of flowers whence the remains of victor hugo had emerged. now the march commenced, the school battalions and the representatives of the press taking the lead, amid clapping of hands. chopin's _marche funèbre_ was the music played at the opening of the ceremonial. after this came in slow movement the strains of the _marseillaise_, which were soon followed by the _chant du départ_, and then by the girondins' celebrated chant, _mourir pour la patrie_. faithful to the stipulation of his will, victor hugo's body was conveyed to its last resting-place in the poor man's hearse--that is to say, the cheapest hearse which the pompes funèbres provide. as the corpse was being removed from the cenotaph every head was uncovered. the artillery of the invalides and of mont valérian boomed out a farewell salute. 'the procession,' wrote a correspondent of the _daily news_, 'had for vanguard a squadron of mounted gendarmes, followed by general saussier, the governor of paris, and the cuirassiers, with band playing; twelve crown-laden cars, the band of the republican guard, the delegates of besançon carrying a white crown, the french and foreign journalists, the society of dramatic authors, and the delegates of the national and other theatres. the cars were surrounded by the children of the school battalion. there was no crown on the pauper's hearse. the friends of the deceased held the cords of the pall, and georges hugo walked alone, behind. he was in evening dress, and looked a young man. his face is handsome, and his air distinguished. his mother, sister, and different ladies and other friends of the family walked at a short distance behind him. the crowd of people was astounding round the arch of triumph, and in the champs Élysées' side-ways the windows, balconies, house-roofs, and even the chimney-tops were crowded.' the very trees seemed to bud with human beings; and the crowd of spectators in the streets was so deep and serried that it was impossible for any wearied senator, savant, or other venerable person to get out if once imprisoned. all along the route of the procession heads were religiously uncovered as the hearse passed. the school battalion guarded it, and then came many companies of boyish militia. gymnastic societies in white, blue, and red flannel shirts, with white trousers, gaiters, and caps; delegations of the learned societies, political clubs, printers, publishers, newspapers, foreign radicals, literati, philanthropical societies, fire brigades, humane societies, trades unions, came in processional order. each group was distinctly separated from the other. down the broad champs Élysées the procession moved with great facility, as all carriages had been cleared away before eight o'clock in the morning. all the available standing-room of the broad causeway was filled with an eager throng; but the most sublime sight was presented at the place de la concorde. the corner from the champs Élysées to the bridge was walled off by the troops, so that an innumerable multitude was able to collect at this point. not content with this, the banks of the seine, down to the water's edge, on both sides of the bridge, were thickly studded with people, and every floating barge or boat was dangerously loaded with spectators. far up the broad stretch of the avenue the procession, with its thousand crowns and banners, could be seen slowly descending. many groups had not yet left the arc de triomphe when the head of the procession reached the panthéon. a dense mass of spectators had gathered in and around the place de la concorde; but perhaps no portion of the route was so crowded as the rue soufflot, which leads from the boulevard st. michel to the panthéon. windows, ladders, roofs, and chimneys were all utilized by those eager to witness the passing of the procession. shortly after half-past one the head of the procession reached the steps of the panthéon, and at two o'clock the coffin was brought up the front steps, and placed on the catafalque. the representatives of the family, of government, and the various authorities took their places on either side of the main entrance. once more a grand spectacle was offered by the artistic grouping of crowns, flowers, uniforms, and colours under the majestic pillars of the panthéon. speeches were again delivered, and these continued while the procession, with, bands and banners, filed past. the working-class corporations followed in their various order, and these were succeeded by the secular technical school for girls, the republican socialist alliance, the comedians of paris, the montmartre choral society, the women's suffrage society, the radical socialist club, and many other bodies. 'a few minutes after six o'clock,' remarked the _times_ correspondent, 'the last crowns and banners passed by, and after a short interval the troops representing the army of paris commenced their march-past. dragoons, republican guard, and line were in their turn acclaimed by the multitude, pleased by their martial appearance and their light tread after the fatigues of the day. then came the blare of the artillery trumpets, followed by those of the dragoons, and at precisely a quarter to seven the last soldier made the last salute to the remains of victor hugo. a statue of hugo in his famous posture of reverie fronted the panthéon. this papier-mâché statue represented victor hugo watching the long procession that did him honour. it was a trifle; but there was a touch of tender thoughtfulness in this reminder to the surging multitude that they must not forget the man who was being borne to the grave.' thus ended a funeral pageant worthy, on the whole, of the poet and the nation--a pageant in which were to be found representatives of all classes of the french community. victor hugo, whose genius recalled the elder glory of french literature, now sleeps in the panthéon. while he differed from the illustrious men of the past, having neither the wit of rabelais nor molière, the classic dignity of corneille, nor the philosophic depth of voltaire, he had a greatness, though of a different kind, equal to their own. he therefore joins them as an equal. he has given to french literature a new departure; for every book he has written, while wet with human tears, is yet stamped with the terrible earnestness which possessed his spirit, and made immutable by the herculean strength of his genius. chapter xxi. genius and characteristics. victor hugo, though simple in nature, was many-sided in intellect. as i approach the conclusion of my task, i feel how truly great the sum of this man's work was, notwithstanding the flaws which disfigured it. and in proportion to its greatness is the difficulty of appraising, or even of approximately appraising, its value. this task belongs to a writer or writers yet unborn; for neither in his own nor even in the next generation does such a man of genius as hugo--an author _sui generis_, one utterly unlike all others--assume his distinctive niche in the walhalla of literature. but there are some suggestions of a general character which may be offered respecting his work, and these will naturally fall under four headings--political, social, moral or religious, and literary. it has been said that hugo failed in politics; but as he never posed for being a practical politician, the charge does not possess the significance that would have attached to it had he come forward as a political saviour--of whom france has had so many. for the sinuosities and compromises of party politics, however wise and necessary at times, he had no aptitude. he had no political creed; or, if he had, it might be summed up in one article. he individualized humanity, and declared it to be miserable. the whole of his creed, therefore, consisted in the destruction of monopolies and abuses, and the uplifting of the masses. but he was certainly unfitted for the debates of such a body as the french chamber, and it was probably one of the best things he ever did in his life when he shook the dust from under his feet, and bade the assembly an indignant farewell. yet he was more successful than scores of other politicians who have set up a claim to superior political wisdom. the french chamber has been too frequently suggestive of a _maison d'aliénés_. the modern gallic politician is about the most impulsive creature of which we have any knowledge. he lacks the phlegmatic nature of the german and the logical hardheadedness of the briton. he is hypersensitive and emotional, not argumentative and judicial. he only knows that he has ideas, and that every man who opposes those ideas is an enemy of the human species, and must be put out of the way. this was proved again and again in that terrible year of revolution, , when the friends of reason sent each other to the block as they successively gained the upper hand. one would think that this was a sufficient baptism of blood; but it was not so; the tale has been renewed at intervals, and the communistic horrors of added another fearful page to the grim catalogue. french politics are a succession of storms; the lightning breaks, the thunder rolls, and the deluge follows; then, for a time, the sky clears and the sun shines brilliantly: but the clouds return after the rain; the barometer becomes demoralized; and electrical disturbance is once more the order of the day. but in the intervals of sanity in the french political world--i use the word 'sanity' in its larger sense--great and noble work is done, work worthy of the world's admiration. when the french mind conceives projects of amelioration, it conceives them with boldness and generosity. in this lies the safety-valve of the people, and also the best hope for the future of the race. men like hugo are the men to suggest and to push forward these great conceptions for the national welfare. they may have few political principles as such, but the political sympathies of such a man as victor hugo have more force and weight than the most orthodox and irreproachable doctrines of a hundred smaller men. while politicians may be struggling for unimportant details, men of great sympathies are mighty to the moving of mountains. as a practical politician, then, let it be frankly admitted that hugo was a failure; that in his speeches he was frequently rhapsodical; and that he could take no initiative in practical legislation. all these are matters in which lesser intellects might, could, should, would, and do succeed. but in that higher region where the eternal principles of justice come into play, where sublime benevolence holds her seat, where by a quick and living sympathy universal humanity is made to feel a universal brotherhood, then victor hugo had a political illumination to which none other of his contemporaries could lay claim. from the political to the social is but a step, and that a natural one. it cannot be said of hugo that he was liberal in his social theories and aristocratic in his practice. he had a courteousness of nature that made him equally esteemed, and had in reverence, by such an one as a king or an emperor, and the meanest of his compatriots who called upon him for advice or aid. if he endeavoured to teach the higher social life to others, he at least led the way by setting before himself only such aims as were noble and humane. he was the very soul of truth in all his relations, and if he were not the equal of rousseau as a great social teacher, he far transcended the author of the _contrat social_ in his irreproachable life and his deep personal sympathies. one writer has said that 'victor hugo's own strongest influence is but a breath of the influence of rousseau.' this is a deliverance as unhappy as it is dogmatic. there is neither necessity nor appositeness in placing the two writers in such juxtaposition. france before rousseau was not the france of victor hugo; the former had work of an originative character to do in the social sphere, as victor hugo had in that of literature. but while hugo was not the creator of a new social system, one of the primary causes of his influence was of a social character. his intense and genuine sympathy with the humble and the poor and the suffering gave him a place in the affection of thousands who knew little of social theories. the key, indeed, to hugo's personal character and influence, as distinguished from the literary, was that human sympathy which led to his untiring efforts to protect the weak against the strong. he would have no parleying with oppression and violence, and notwithstanding his passionateness he really exercised a salutary and calming influence in the main, and one which told for goodness. to him the orphan's rags, the shame of woman, and the anguish of the toiler never appealed in vain. i can imagine him doing what sturdy old samuel johnson did when he rescued the outcast woman in the strand, and himself bore her away to a place of safety. hugo had a clear enough insight into those social reforms which are still a necessity even in this enlightened age. he did not believe in the perfection of the poor, though he did believe in the absolute imperfection of kings and priests. by setting the latter in the full blaze of publicity, he believed he was doing a great social work, and helping on that golden age of happiness for which he laboured. in his earnestness and enthusiasm, he might commit, and doubtless did commit, errors of judgment; but then without these very qualities of earnestness and enthusiasm all the great things associated with his name could have had no birth. where we gain much, we can easily forgive a little. victor hugo had a conscience, and as a man amongst men, pleading for men, he threw it all into his social work. in jean valjean he will never cease to plead, though he himself is dead. he has given to the sufferings of humanity a voice which will continue to speak in tones of pathos and of sadness until the last of those sufferings and social wrongs shall have passed away. of many devastating spirits has the world been called upon to say that they made a solitude and called it peace; but of victor hugo we may say that he found humanity a bleak and cheerless wilderness, and endeavoured to make it blossom as the rose. yet loving the world and humanity as he did, and feeling that the earth was 'bound by gold chains about the feet of god,' hugo, as i have before said, has been claimed by some as an unbeliever. as though any great poet who had come to years of discretion could be a materialist or an infidel. so far from seeing no god in the universe, the poet as a rule is god-intoxicated. i shall be reminded, perhaps, of lucretius and shelley, but even these, as the exceptions, would only serve to prove the rule. the roman, however, was philosopher first, and poet afterwards; while as for the atheism of shelley, it was a spasmodic experience due to a revolt against authority--not a deep-settled conviction--and an experience out of which he was rapidly growing at the time of his death. no poet of the first order has ever been an atheist, and victor hugo was no exception to the rule. while discarding religious systems, he was, in fact, profoundly religious. he never swerved in this matter from the position he held in , and which he thus explained at the close of a speech on public instruction, 'god will be found at the end of all. let us not forget him; and let us teach him to all. there would otherwise be no dignity in living, and it would be better to die entirely. what soothes suffering, what sanctifies labour, what makes man good, strong, wise, patient, benevolent, just, and at the same time humble and great, worthy of liberty, is to have before him the perpetual vision of a better world throwing its rays through the darkness of this life. as regards myself, i believe profoundly in this better world, and i declare it in this place to be the supreme certainty of my soul. i wish, then, sincerely, or, to speak more strongly, i wish ardently for religious instruction.' there is surely nothing vague or nebulous about this. no man could express himself more clearly or emphatically if directly questioned upon the great and momentous topics of god and immortality. as a religious teacher, then, hugo may be justly claimed; for the whole weight of his name and influence was thrown upon the side of those profound religious convictions which have been the consolation of the human race, and which have knit man in indissoluble bonds to the divine. what shall i say of victor hugo from the literary point of view? his true glory is that he revivified french literature--created it afresh, as it were--and was himself the best representative of its new excellences. but this subject is so great that i scarcely dare venture upon it. the poet carried out in his own person and work the advice he once gave to some younger spirits, 'act so that your conscience will approve, and your works praise you; and, like those great unknown, you will leave the world better than you found it; while, in virtue of the justice which i believe to be the law of the universe, you will rise high elsewhere in the scale of creation. a man is splendidly praised when he is praised by his works.' of course, he had his detractors--such men as charles maurice, who believed himself to be a greater writer than victor hugo, and who only perceived in _hernani_ the effects of 'an intolerable system of style destructive of all poesy.' the world has since regulated this matter adversely to maurice. then there were others not so unjust as this writer, but men who were so strongly impressed by the defects of hugo that they scarcely gave him due credit for his manifest powers of literary expression. heine and amiel may be taken to represent this type. to set against these are the hugolâtres, as théophile gautier called them. in england the most enthusiastic admirer of the poet is undoubtedly mr. swinburne, and from his numerous tributes i may select one passage that is a kind of triumphant summary of the rest. it is the last stanza from his new-year ode to hugo, in the _midsummer holiday, and other poems_: 'life, everlasting while the worlds endure, death, self-abased before a power more high, shall bear one witness, and their word stand sure, that not till time be dead shall this man die. love, like a bird, comes loyal to his lure; fame flies before him, wingless else to fly. a child's heart toward his kind is not more pure, an eagle's toward the sun no lordlier eye. awe sweet as love and proud as fame, though hushed and bowed, yearns toward him silent as his face goes by; all crowns before his crown triumphantly bow down, for pride that one more great than all draws nigh: all souls applaud, all hearts acclaim, one heart benign, one soul supreme, one conquering name.' making allowance for the fervour which a peculiarly fervid singer throws into his admiration, there is much truth in this metrical tribute to the literary and personal worth of the great poet. substantially the same high view of hugo is held by lord tennyson and other literary men in this country. but, with regard to criticism in particular, the writer from whom i have just quoted was even happier still in his prose comparisons. he remarked in his essay on _la légende des siècles_ that 'hugo, for all his dramatic and narrative mastery of effect, will always probably remind men rather of such poets as dante or isaiah than of such poets as sophocles or shakspeare. we cannot, of course, imagine the florentine or the hebrew endowed with his infinite variety of sympathies, of interests, and of powers; but as little can we imagine in the athenian such height and depth of passion, in the englishman such unquenchable and sleepless fire of moral and prophetic faith. and hardly in any one of these, though shakspeare perhaps may be excepted, can we recognise the same buoyant and childlike exultation in such things as are the delight of a high-hearted child--in free glory of adventure and ideal daring, in the triumph and rapture of reinless imagination, which gives now and then some excess of godlike empire and superhuman kinship to their hands whom his hands have created, and the lips whose life is breathed into them from his own.' and again, 'in his love of light and freedom, reason and justice, he not of jerusalem, but of athens; but in the bent of his imagination, in the form and colour of his dreams, in the scope and sweep of his wide-winged spiritual flight, he is nearer akin to the great insurgent prophets of deliverance and restoration than to any poet of athens, except only their kinsman Æschylus.' even the most superficial reading of hugo must leave an impression of magnificent powers, of powers which in given circumstances might have produced many and different forms of greatness. he had that exaltation of the intellect and imagination, that lofty range of mental force, which moulds centuries and moves the world. but there are special literary qualities in hugo which should be noticed. first among them is his extreme conscientiousness. his natural eloquence has sometimes been regarded as a snare to him, and yet in all the details of his work he was rigidly exact, so far as the most minute search could enable him to be. this was apparent in _notre-dame_, and especially so in _les misérables_, where he devoted a volume to a description of the battle of waterloo, or mont st. jean, as the french designate it. before writing on this, he lived for some time in the vicinity of the scene, and closely noted every item in connection with the fight on that great battlefield. he wrote to a correspondent, 'i have studied waterloo profoundly; i am the only historian who has passed two months on the field of battle.' this same feeling of conscientiousness he also carried into other matters. another point which must be borne in mind in endeavouring to get at the source of victor hugo's influence upon literature is the extent and flexibility of his vocabulary. 'no one,' wrote m. edmond about, shortly after the appearance of _quatre-vingt-treize_, 'can fail to recognise the power of hugo's invention, the wealth of his ideas, the grandeur of his oratorical flights, and that sublimity which is the mark of a man of genius; but it is not known in europe, nor even in france, that victor hugo is the most learned of men of letters. he possesses an enormous vocabulary. out of the , words which the dictionary of the academy contains, and , of which have an individuality of their own, the language of common life employs at most about a thousand. i could mention illustrious publicists, popular dramatists, novelists, whose books are much read and much liked, none of whom has more than , words at his disposal. théophile gautier, a studious man and a dilettante, used to boast to his friends of possessing , . "but," he used to add, "i might toil to the last day of my life without attaining to the vocabulary of hugo." genius apart, merely by his knowledge and use of his mother-tongue, hugo is the rabelais of modern days. this is the minor side of his glory, i allow; but critics ought not to neglect it, or they will lead people to form false ideas.' as to hugo's human passion, it agonizes in almost every page of his writings. he is nothing if not intensely human. and his weird and powerful effects are heightened by that undertone, that minor chord of music which he touches more often than the more jubilant major notes. 'the still sad music of humanity' is for ever beating in his ear, and he translates its moving pathos into words. a mind of this stamp feels that it can rarely turn to the humorous, and accordingly it is objected that he has no sense of humour. the charge is true in the main, for the grim humour of some of his situations may be better expressed by the epithet of grotesque. he lacked just this saving sense of humour to place him on a level with the greatest writers--or rather with those writers who are greatest in the delineation of human nature and its passions; for we have great writers, such as dante and milton, who are equal strangers with hugo to the humour which plays about the pages of shakspeare. but hugo is pre-eminent in other qualities. he is firmly and uncompromisingly veracious. no special correspondent who ever described a battlefield could be more vivid and telling in his reminiscences. there is the stamp of reality and truthfulness upon all that he has written. with a gloomy magnificence of imagery he has described scenes and events that are now immortal in literature. there is a grand spontaneity in his utterances--an eloquence that springs from the heart as much as from the head; while over all his poems and romances a noble halo has been thrown which is the reflex of the innate nobility of the man. m. Émile montégut has observed that hugo is master of all that is colossal and fearful. his imagination prefers sublime and terrible spectacles: war, shipwreck, death, and primitive civilizations, with their babels and convulsions--these attract him. how well, also, can he imitate the plaintive cries of the ocean under the tempest which torments it! let him but paint a feudal ruin and you will be made to feel all its imposing horrors; or a palace of babylon, and you will realize its massive splendours. he knows the secrets of the sphinx, and of the monstrous idols; he is familiar with the burning deserts of africa, and the horrors of hyperborean countries. in the domain of the weird he is sovereign king, and no one will dispute with him. in other fields he may have rivals, but in the region where the fantastic mingles with the superhuman he has no equal. but there is yet another side to hugo which english critics have been just to note--it is that concerned with his human creations. while he may revel in the scenes which m. montégut depicts, his heart is mostly in his human creations. and with regard to his treatment of these, it has been observed that the spectator is put outside the scene, and can do nothing but look on breathless, while amid mist and cloud, with illuminations fiery or genial, as the case may be, the great picture rises before him, each actor detached and separate, some in boldest relief, with a force which is often tremendous, and always forcibly dramatic. the giant and the child are treated with equal care and conscientiousness. though first in massive effects, in deep broad lines, hugo is also first in the most delicate shades of tenderness. 'the babes are as distinct as the heroes, every pearly curve of them tender and sweet as rose-leaves, yet complete creatures, nowhere blurred or indefinite, even in the most delicious softness of execution.' i quote from a writer in _blackwood_, who had the candour (not always displayed by critics) to acknowledge that neither in france nor upon our own side of the channel is there a contemporary writer who can with any show of justice be placed by the side of victor hugo. 'his genius is too national, his workmanship too characteristic, to be contrasted with the calmer inspiration of any englishman.... his subject, the character he is unfolding, possesses the writer: he throws himself upon it with a glow and fervour of knowledge, with a certainty of delineation which is not the mere exercise of practised powers, but with that something indescribable, something indefinable, added to it, swelling in every line, and transforming every paragraph. the workmanship is often wonderful; but it is not the workmanship which strikes us most--it is the abundant, often wild, sometimes unguided and undisciplined touch of genius which inspires and expands and exaggerates and dilates the words it is constrained to make use of--almost forcing a new meaning upon them by way of fiery compulsion, to blazon its own meaning upon brain and sense, whether they will or not. we know no literary work of the age--we had almost said no intellectual work of any kind--so possessed and quivering with this indescribable but extraordinary power.' hugo's works are undoubtedly in parts eccentric, and all too frequently extravagant; but this is the nodding of homer. his conceptions are gigantic, and his figures truly dramatic; and these are the chief things with which we have to do. in his superb excellences he stands alone--he is unique. his table is weighted with intellectual sustenance; so great is his abundance that a myriad writers could be fed from the crumbs which fall from his table. from the literary point of view we must not forget his chief distinction--that he effected the most brilliant and complete revolution that has been witnessed in the history of french literature. he changed the whole face of art in french poetry, and destroyed for ever the poetry of conventionality. he has endowed his native language with new nerve and sensibility; he has given it a fresh and vital force, and the effects of his influence upon the nation and literature of which he was the brightest ornament must be radical and abiding. one quality only, or so it seems to me, hugo lacked to place him on a level with the few great master spirits of the world. he wanted the universality of homer and shakspeare. whenever the _iliad_ is read, the power of that mighty story is felt, and methinks that had i been born of any other than that english nationality of which i can boast, there is still something in shakspeare which would have moved me as no other writer does. it is that secret power which draws all hearts to him--'that touch of nature which makes the whole world kin,' and unites all men in admiration of his singular genius. hugo is great also, but he has not that shakspearean greatness which compels the tribute of all other peoples, as it receives the willing homage of his own. his noble poems and romances, with their sonorous eloquence, their rapid changes, their varied effects, remind me of nature on an autumn day. the gloomy cloud gathers in the heavens, the lurid lightning darts from its bosom, the thunder rolls and reverberates in the mountains; but anon the tempest passes, the heavens open, and the glorious and beneficent sun once more smiles upon the world. so hugo is a mixture of thunder and sunshine; of smiles and tears. no man had ever a greater heart--shakspeare, and few others only, a more expansive intellect. he lacks the grand impartiality and the majestic calm of the author of _hamlet_; but his soul is filled with the same love of his species, and it is large enough to embrace all the sons of humanity. his is a name which any nation, might well hold in everlasting honour. though his life be ended, the splendour of his fame has but just begun; for the works infused and moulded by his genius, and into which he threw so much of passionate energy, of a noble idealism, of radiant hope, of moral fervour, and of human sympathy, will assuredly confer upon him glory and immortality. billing and sons, printers, guildford. [illustration: photo. by pach _mansfield as cyrano de bergerac._] cyrano de bergerac an heroic comedy in five acts _translated from the french of_ edmond rostand by charles renauld _with an introduction by_ adolphe cohn _professor of the romance languages and literatures in columbia university._ [illustration: publisher's device] new york frederick a. stokes company publishers copyright, by charles renauld copyright, by frederick a. stokes company _all rights reserved._ _introduction._ the phenomenal success of "cyrano de bergerac" is undoubtedly one of the most important literary events of the last quarter of a century. it at once placed edmond rostand, a young man of twenty-eight, at the head of the small band of french dramatic writers, all men of marked ability, maurice donnay, georges de porto-riche, françois de curel, paul hervieu, henri lavedan, etc., who had been struggling for supremacy since the disappearance of the two great masters of modern french comedy, Émile augier and alexandre dumas, fils. there was no hesitation on the part of the public. it was at once recognised that what had just been produced upon the stage was not simply better than what had been seen for a long time, but was also, to a certain extent, of a different nature. and the verdict rendered by the french public in december, , has since then been approved by readers and theatre-goers in nearly every one of the countries belonging to western civilisation. can it be said, however, that to an american, or an englishman, "cyrano" is all that it is to a frenchman, that its production would have been possible outside of as well as in france, and its success as significant in london as in paris? if "cyrano" is really a great work these questions must be answered negatively, for it is in the nature of great literary works that they consist of a combination of what is purely human with what belongs to the time and place where they have had their birth. they must have enough of what is purely human to make it possible for them to be universally accepted, understood and admired. but they must be also strongly national, so that their universal acceptance may help in spreading all over the world part of the national ideal which prevails in their birthplace. and to these elements may be joined a third one, which is sure to add greatly to their success, and which "cyrano" possesses in a very high degree, viz: timeliness. as soon as "cyrano" appeared it seemed to the french that this was just what they had been waiting for. two things especially appealed to them, one of a purely literary nature, the other one a part of the basis of moral feelings and ideas upon which the play is built. first of all, it was a clear play, full of light and sunshine. edmond rostand hails from the south of france, and the atmosphere of his play is as translucid as the atmosphere of his native provence. it is as far removed from symbolism and mysticism as the shores of the mediterranean are from the fogs of scandinavia. every incident in the play rests upon some trait of character or combination of circumstances which has been explained at some previous moment. every one of the leading characters, and "cyrano" most of all, stands out in bold relief, and there is no mistaking what they stand for. but this clearness is mainly for the countrymen of the author. it depends partly upon the previous possession by the audience of a number of notions which are part of the intellectual inheritance of the race. the play, although quite modern in its style and construction, is in some respects for the french a resurrection of a portion of their glorious past. for them the _hôtel de bourgogne, les précieuses_, cardinal de richelieu, etc., are more than mere names. the earlier part of the seventeenth century was for france a period of wonderful national energy. it is then, and not later, that france acquired that supremacy over the european continent which is usually associated with the name of louis xiv, but which was already established when that monarch assumed the reins of government. the timeliness of rostand's great play was shown exactly in this, that it called the attention of the french back to a time when the nation was full of youthful and vigourous ambition, when a frenchman would hardly believe that there was anything that he could not do if he set his mind to it, when it became the fashion to say that "impossible was not a french word." ever since the war of the pall of defeat had hung over the french. the stage showed this in a striking manner. the plays that were produced presented on the whole a stern or a pessimistic conception of life. the great periods of history, especially, in which french valour carried everything before it, remained neglected, for fear of the painful contrast which they would present with the humiliated condition of a vanquished country. the men who wrote these plays belonged to a generation in which, using the words of a french academician, "the mainspring of joy had been broken." but the young men who now come to the front, and who have no more brilliant representative than edmond rostand, belong to another generation. they have not known the pangs of defeat; the mutilation of the beloved fatherland was an accomplished fact when they began to feel and to think. they viewed french history not as concentrated in its last and heart-rending episode, but as spreading through centuries of heroic deeds, oftener illuminated by the dazzling sunshine of victory than darkened by the gloom of defeat. they were growing tired of hearing it repeated on all tones that life was not worth living, and they longed for some one who would shout in a voice loud enough to be heard by the whole world, "let the dead past bury its dead." in the acclaim that greeted "cyrano de bergerac" on december th, , therefore, there was something more than applause for a great dramatic work: there was gratitude for the poet who had dispelled at last the atmosphere of sadness which had come to be stifling for the young frenchmen of our time. the period of deep mourning was proclaimed to be over. glances towards the past were again declared to be indulged in only as inspirations for the future. the glory, the joyfulness of action again appeared as living realities, not as the deceptive dreams of unsuspecting ignorance. thus "cyrano" presented to the french a play such as they had not seen for a long time. there had been plenty of problem plays, or _pieces à thése_, as the french say; "cyrano" was a _piece à panache_. seldom has, indeed, the purpose of a dramatist been more clearly pointed out than in "cyrano." when the hero of the play breathes his last, after an imaginary fight with all the unworthy traits of human nature and society which he had antagonized during his checkered life, the one thing which he informs his friends cannot be taken from him, which he will proudly carry to the very presence of god, is his _panache_, and this is the last word, and, as it were, the affabulation of the drama. now, what is this _panache_ upon which "cyrano" sets such a high value? to understand it is to appreciate, to miss it is to miss the meaning of the play. an explanation of it is, therefore, not out of place in this introduction. the _panache_ is an external quality which adds colour and brilliancy to internal things already worth having for their own intrinsic value. its main justification is personal bravery. to take an example, the generals of the french revolution, the marshals of napoleon's army, all possessed personal bravery to a high degree. they were not all distinguished by the _panache_. some of them, indeed, marshal davout, for instance, were strikingly devoid of it. the representative of the _panache_ among them was essentially murat. the _panache_ is literally a high plume, or bunch of plumes, that waves high above a commander's head-gear. murat was bravery itself. but he had to be as conspicuous as possible. he dressed as gorgeously as he could. he rode a superb charger, and rode it superbly. his fur cap was always surmounted by a high and richly coloured plume, which was always discerned just where the battle most fiercely raged. not his the deeply laid and skilfully carried out plans, but the brilliant and heroic cavalry charge. his eyes, his very voice, irrespective of what he said, were an inspiration to his men, and dispelled all fear of death. there is magnetism in the _panache_, and readers may remember that a few years ago an american statesman whom his friends proclaimed to be magnetic if nothing else, was known throughout the land as the plumed knight. "rally round my white panache," henry the fourth said to his soldiers; "you will find it always on the path of honour and duty." the _panache_, too, is essentially joyful. "cyrano" is joyful, in spite of a life that would breed discouragement and bitterness in almost any heart but his. if reality denies him his share of happiness, then he will find it in the domain the ideal. he will not have to go without it. and here we strike another cause of "cyrano's" success. it is not simply a play, it is a poem, and poetry always leads us towards the ideal. this is undoubtedly one of the reasons underlying the love of the french for a verse play. the very swing of its verbal development lifts us above the trivialities of daily life. one might almost say that the verse play is as characteristic of the french as the wagnerian lyric drama is of the germans. corneille, racine, hugo, molière himself in such a play as _le misanthrope_, are idealists, and their message to the world at large, to which must now be added that of the brilliant author of "cyrano," tells of things better than those we see around us, of things of beauty which it lies in every one of us to bring somewhat nearer to our touch, if we will only have the courage to live up to them. a few words now about the new rendering of the play which is here presented to the english-reading public. a number of translations of "cyrano" have appeared before this one. if the facts were known, however, it would perhaps appear that mr. charles renauld's is the earliest of all. it was undertaken by its author under the spell cast upon the french mind by the sudden revelation of rostand's genius, the nature and causes of which it has been the purpose of this production to elucidate. the shakespearian character of the play, displayed in the freedom with which the author brings in everything that seems to him likely to complete the portrait of his hero, has been recognised by the translator, as is shown by his use of a combination of prose and verse passages. a real translator must be equally at home in the language of the work translated and in the language into which he translates it. he must be in thorough sympathy with the mental attitudes of the two nations whose speeches he is transmuting one into the other. he must be able to be a component atom of that collective being, the public, on one side as well as on the other of the national frontiers that divide them. thus only will he be able to discover the means that will produce upon the reader of the translation the impression first received by contact with the original. the readers of mr. renauld's translation will, it is thought, acknowledge that he possesses in a high degree the above-described qualifications, and that he has been peculiarly felicitous, when the text did not lend itself to translation proper, in devising what may be termed adequate equivalents. of the faithfulness of his rendering those acquainted with the french language will easily judge, as they can have under the same cover the english of the translator and the french of the dramatist, and they will thus, it is hoped, acquire a clear and adequate conception of the beautiful picture, which, thanks to edmond rostand, has restored life and brilliancy to the somewhat faded features of that eccentric philosopher, poet, hero and gentleman, savinien hercule de cyrano bergerac. adolphe cohn. _preface._ the author of this translation trusts that he is not presuming too much if, despite his aversion for anything akin to offensive thought and mention of self, he claims the privilege of prefacing the result here presented of his labours with a few remarks, not as a plea _pro domo sua_, but as an explanation relating to the motives and to the methods by which he was guided in his work. first of all, he desires to state that this, his version of edmond rostand's "cyrano de bergerac" was written in the early part of , and copyrighted in washington long before any other rendering in english of the beautiful and now celebrated play was either published or performed. why did he withhold it until now? simply because mr. edmond rostand, with whom he was not in touch, had innocently, or under insufficient advice, neglected to copyright in the united states, and had meanwhile made arrangements for the performance of the play in america. was the writer, who has long been, and is still, battling for a better protection of literary property, to interfere with, or even seem in any way to invade these arrangements? he thought not, despite solicitations to the contrary. true that, armed with the valid copyright of his own work, and with many technicalities at his disposal, he could have brought about considerable litigation in his own behalf, that would possibly have resulted in an indirect defence of mr. rostand's moral rights still subsisting. but in the face of a very doubtful issue in the courts, with a possible charge of officiousness out of them, he thought it wiser to abstain, allowing time meanwhile to accomplish its work of adjustment. others, however, apparently satisfied with safety for a justification, have not treated with the same respect mr. rostand's moral rights and the arrangements made by him for the american production of his "cyrano de bergerac." the play has been mutilated, adapted, or "improved" to suit. there are just now, it is said, some twenty so-called stock companies presenting it in different cities throughout the united states. the original in french has been openly reprinted here, likewise its british translation, and other translations (so-called) have been offered to the public. mr. rostand did not copyright. hence the result of his labours, of his genius, belongs, it would seem, to whoever chooses to pick it up! in these circumstances and now, there certainly can be no impropriety in the publication of this work, the more so as mr. rostand is to receive in this instance the royalties to which he is morally entitled. further even. who knows but that this royalty-paying version in book form, or produced on the stage (the right to perform it having been expressly reserved by the writer), may not assist in setting aside the different versions that now interfere with mr. rostand's moral rights, as well as with the arrangements he chose to make for stage production in america? diffidence would prevent the translator, were it not for the valuable encouragement he has received, from adding that the present version of "cyrano de bergerac" may, perchance, better than any of the renderings in english now extant, lead to an adequate conception of the beauties of the work in french. at all events, those who were consulted, including the eminent publishers, and the distinguished writer of the introduction to this book, freely agreed with the author in his opinion that publication under the foregoing conditions could do no harm, while it might effect considerable good, were it only as an example in many respects, proving, among other things, that there are those, even in america, for whom impunity does not constitute right. but enough "talk of shop," perhaps too much, for the _genus irritabile vatum_. at this point, the author feels that, if he expatiated on his methods of translation, he might with some justice be accused of tiresome insistence, or, to put it more gently, of obduracy in esoterism. he will, therefore, confine himself to a few statements, and make them as short as possible. this version of "cyrano de bergerac" was written originally for the stage, where, according to opinion behind as well as before the curtain, in america at least, verse may be acceptable for the expression of occasional flights of thought, but not through the whole of a play, and especially not for such portions of a play as are necessarily colloquial. to explain this alleged distaste for verse on the stage would lead us far beyond the limits of a preface. suffice it, then, to say, reserving developments for some future occasion, that, for poetic emotion, english verse is more than the french dependent on form, on expression. in other words, english verse is less than the french free to consider only thought, or substance, irrespective of words, or construction. as a rule, then, it would seem in english that dress comes first and figure next; while in french the order appears to be reversed. in consequence (and setting aside the fact that there exists a "magic of words," that has been an all-time and frequent deceiver of men), the average reader or listener instinctively expects from english verse a somewhat conventional language, diversified with unusual words and exceptional contractions, inversions, etc. it follows that, when this special phraseology and peculiar construction are applied to everyday thoughts, facts, occurrences and sentiments, the effect produced is not an agreeable one, by reason of a sort of clash, the appearance of a thing of prose, straight-laced and overdressed in verse, in a word, unnaturalness. further, the majority of english-speaking actors, unavoidably imbued with the same spirit, so soon as they deal with verse, unconsciously resort to a stilted diction that is distressingly far-removed from the art that consists, through tedious and patient work, in being natural. natural, unconstrained verse can, with proper care, it is thought, be written in english, and can certainly, with appropriate training, be delivered with naturalness. this done, our audiences would no doubt take kindly to the rhythm of plays in verse. but, as this does not yet seem to have been fully accomplished, the undersigned translator of "cyrano de bergerac" reluctantly decided to use both verse and prose. for this liberty, though justified as above, he feels that he owes the french poet an apology, adding, however, that the deed brought its own punishment, since, strange as it may appear to some, it would have been much easier to render the play all in verse. as to verse and metrics, on which, in this instance, a book could (and later, may) be written, the author of this translation must now rest satisfied with the following brief remarks. enlightened by considerable experience, the result of many experiments and after much thought, he adopted blank pentameter as the true equivalent in english of french riming alexandrine verse. first, because in english, frequent elisions making many syllables heavy, and "run on" lines practically adding to the number of syllables, the ten-syllable line of english verse is in reality the counterpart of the twelve-syllable verse in french. and second, because the object of rime being, not to repeat a given sound, but to _beat time_, the strongly accentuated syllables of english, as compared with the very much more even enunciation of french, are quite sufficient, without rime or assonance, to _mark rhythm_. thus he avoided at least one criticism, to wit: rime is monotonous! touching metrics, the writer will here go only one step in the ways of heresy, by stating that, in his opinion, such words as "our," "hour," "fire," etc., should be, as in french, "duel," "hier," etc., counted for one syllable, or for two syllables, according to rhythm as influenced by the stronger or weaker emphasis called for by the _sense_ of the word. this could be elucidated by examples, the place of which, however, is not here. more generally as to methods, the writer makes free to state that, exerting himself to avoid _literal_ translation (too often productive of laughable nonsense), and _free_ translation (frequently a substitution of the translator's for the author's thoughts), he endeavoured, as in previous works of the same nature, to give what he has termed an _equivalent_ translation. in other words, he strove to remain really true to the original by creating in detail, as well as in a general way, in english words on english minds the _impression_ caused by french words on french minds. some examples of the _equivalence_ at least sought for will be found in the foot-notes on several pages of this book. as to "le panache" that surmounts this masterpiece, "cyrano de bergerac," of which it is the main feature, sending through it a breath of joyful daring "quand même," the writer sought, as will be seen, to describe it in triolets. these, too, might need to be explained, were it not for the able commentary to be found in the introduction so kindly written for this book by one of the most learned and esteemed professors of our columbia university. the writer trusts that he may be pardoned for going at such length into some of the minutiæ of his task, and he certainly should be acquitted if he thereby succeeded in showing how much labour must be expended to produce even a tolerable translation, and consequently, how little justice is very often done to translators in general. he commends these details to his friends as an inducement to think a while before they leap, or rather jump at conclusions. were he less charitably disposed, or more eager for a practical demonstration, he could say to them simply: "try the task!" charles renauld. new york, february, . "_le panache._" triolets. (_after the fashion of rostand's in act ii: "ce sont les cadets de gascogne."_) o'er truth and daring floats a plume that is no flaunting feather vain! in knightly grace and flower's bloom, o'er truth and daring floats a plume! in festive hall, by silent tomb, it waves aloft without a stain. o'er truth and daring floats a plume that is no flaunting feather vain! we'll call it, if you will, a broom; but how it sweeps with proud disdain! it sweeps the skies, and not a room! we'll call it, if you will, a broom. it is a symbol, not of gloom, but of a dash that scorns to gain. we'll call it, if you will, a broom; but how it sweeps with proud disdain! o'er truth and daring floats a plume that is no flaunting feather vain! it marks for ay the hero's doom! o'er truth and daring floats a plume. it nods o'er chisel, brush and loom, and consecrates the poet's strain. o'er truth and daring floats a plume that is no flaunting feather vain! charles renauld. new york, th july, . _cast of characters._ thÉÂtre de la porte st. martin, paris, th dec., (_first night_). cyrano de bergerac mr. coquelin. christian de neuvillette mr. volny. count de guiche mr. desjardins. ragueneau mr. jean coquelin. le bret mr. castillan. captain carbon of haughty-hall[ ] mr. gravier. { mr. pericaud. { mr. demey. { mr. noizeux. cadets of gascony { mr. terval. { mr. kirtal. { mr. armand. { mr. hossard. ligniÈre mr. rebel. de valvert mr. nicolini. a marquis mr. walter. second marquis mr. laumonier. third marquis mr. hemery. montfleury mr. pericaud. bellerose mr. davril. jodelet mr. cartereau. cuigy mr. godeau. brissaille mr. borges. an intruder mr. person. a musketeer mr. carlit. second musketeer mr. durand. a spanish officer mr. albert. a cavalryman mr. doubleau. the janitor mr. jourdan. a tradesman mr. loiseau. tradesman's son mr. bourgeois. a spectator mr. samson. a guard mr. dannequin. bertrandou, the fife-player mr. g. monpeurt. a capuchin monk mr. ravart. two musicians { mr. gaston henry. { mr. damon. { mr. williams. the poets { mr. leroy. { etc. { mr. mallet. the pastry-cooks { mr. bercha. { etc. roxane mme. marie legault. sister martha mme. esquilar. lise mme. blanche miroir. waiting-girl mme. kerwich. mother margaret of jesus mme. bouchetal. the duenna mme. bourgeois. sister claire mme. pannetier. a comedienne mme. lucinne. a lady's maid mme. varennes. { mme. marthe marty. the pages { mme. loisier. { mme. bertha. { etc. the flower-girl the people, tradesmen, musketeers, thieves and pickpockets, pastry-cooks, poets, gascon cadets, comedians, violin-players, pages, children, spanish soldiers, spectators of both sexes, euphuistic ladies ("précieuses,") comediennes, tradeswomen, nuns, etc. (_the first four acts in ; the fifth in ._) [ ] note. as to translation of the name carbon de castel-jaloux (such _was_ the name of cyrano's captain) see note page . [illustration: _coquelin as cyrano de bergerac._] cyrano de bergerac. _act i._ a performance at the hotel de bourgogne theatre. _the interior of the hotel de bourgogne theatre, in . a sort of racket-court arranged and decorated in view of performances. the auditorium is a long square. it runs diagonally, and forms the background, one of its sides beginning at first entrance, right, and ending at last entrance, left, where it forms a right angle with the stage, that is thus seen canted. on each side of this stage, benches along the wings. the curtain is in two pieces of tapestry, that can be drawn apart. above the proscenium, the royal arms. wide steps lead from the stage to the auditorium. on either side of these steps, seats for the violin-players. foot-lights composed of candles._ _two galleries, one above the other, running along the side of the auditorium (that forms the diagonal background). the upper gallery is divided into boxes. no seats in the pit. in the rear of this pit, really front first entrance right, a few benches in tiers. under a staircase leading to the galleries, and only the lower part of which can be seen, a refreshment side-board bearing lights, flowers, glasses, plates of cakes, decanters, etc._ _in the rear, centre, under the galleries, the entrance to the house. a wide door, half opened now and then to admit the audience. near this door, as well as near the side-board and in other places, red posters giving the name of the play about to be performed: "la clorise."_ _as the curtain rises, the house is empty and rather dark._ _the chandeliers have been lowered into the pit, but are not yet lighted._ _scene i._ _the audience enters gradually. gentlemen, tradesmen, lackeys, pages, pickpockets, the janitor, etc._ the marquises, cuigy, brissaille, _the waiting girl, the violins, etc._ _noise outside the door, then a gentleman bursts in._ the janitor (_pursuing him_). here! your fifteen sols! the gentleman. i pay nothing for admission. the janitor. why so? the gentleman. king's guard! the janitor (_to another gentleman just come in_). you, sir? second gentleman. free admission. the janitor. but .... second gentleman. musketeer! first gentleman (_to second gentleman_). it's not two o'clock yet, and the pit is empty. suppose we fence a bit? (_they begin fencing with foils they have brought along._) a lackey (_entering_). pst----flanquin! another lackey (_just in_). hallo, champagne! first lackey (_taking cards and dice from out his doublet_). cards? dice? let's play. (_seats himself on the floor._) second lackey. certainly, you rascal. (_takes a candle out of his pocket, lights it, and after seating himself near first lackey, plants it on the floor._) guard (_taking flower-girl by the waist_). how sweet in you to come before the lights do! one of the fencers. touched! one of the card-players. clubs! guard (_to flower-girl trying to escape_). a kiss! a man (_sitting on the floor, with a basket of provisions_). i come early, so as to eat in peace. a knowing fellow, when he is at the hôtel de bourgogne, should drink his burgundy. (_drinks._) tradesman (_to his son_). it's as bad as a low tavern.--(_showing the man drinking_): drunkards!--(_one of the fencers backs up against him_): cut throats!--(_he is pushed on to the card-players_): gamblers! guard (_still pursuing the flower-girl_). a kiss! tradesman (_hearing him_). and worse!--for shame! to think that walls like these, my son, have seen the plays of rotrou! the son. and corneille's! a troop of pages (_coming in, dancing and singing, holding each other by the hand, so as to form a string_). tra la la la la la la la la la la lère!.... janitor (_to pages severely_). no practical jokes, mind! first page (_with great dignity_). sir, your suspicion is an offense!.... second page (_to first page_). i have some string. haven't you a fish-hook? first page. of course i have! we can do some fine angling from up stairs. (_to the other pages who are already in the gallery_). we're coming! third page (_in gallery_). we're ready! (_blows dried peas at him through hollow stick._) a pickpocket (_drawing around him some suspicious-looking characters_). now, youngsters, try to learn something. you see, the first time you steal.... (_driven away by dried peas blown in showers by the pages above._) tradesman (_to his son_). the play we are going to see: "la clorise" .... son. the author, please? tradesman. balthazar baro. pickpocket (_continuing his instructions_). mind the lace around the knees![ ] how you cut it! tradesman (_to his son_). i was at the first performance of "le cid,"--(_pointing up_)--there! pickpocket. as to watches.... and kerchiefs.... tradesman. you are going, my son, to see illustrious actors. (_enumerating_) montfleury! the pages. light the chandeliers! waiting-girl (_offering her refreshments_). oranges! milk! raspberry water! cedar water! a marquis (_entering_). make way there, fellows! a lackey. what! a marquis in the pit! marquis (_to other marquises who have followed him in_). the house is empty! why, we enter like tradesmen, disturbing nobody, treading on nobody's toes! disgraceful! (_meeting other noblemen just come in_). cuigy! brissaille! (_they salute and embrace each other with great affectation._) cuigy. patrons of art so faithful, yes, that we get here even before the candles are lighted! marquis. do not mention it! i'm terribly out of humour! cuigy (_seeing lamplighter enter_). be consoled! here is the lamplighter. all the house (_satisfied_). ah.... (_groups around the chandeliers while they are being lighted. lignière enters the pit, leaning on the arm of christian de neuvillette. lignière, somewhat untidy, has the appearance of a gentlemanly drunkard. christian, dressed with care, but somewhat out of fashion, seems thoughtful, and examines the boxes._) [ ] note. "la dentelle des canons."--"canons" were ornamental lace, embroidery or ribbons around the lower edge of knee-breeches.--not, as one translation has it: "the canonical gentlemen's lace." _scene ii._ _the same_, christian, ligniÈre, _then_ ragueneau _and_ le bret. cuigy. why, here's lignière! brissaille (_laughing_). and not yet drunk?.... ligniÈre (_aside to christian_). shall i present you? (_christian nods assent. lignière presents._) baron de neuvillette. (_general salutations._) the audience (_as the first chandelier goes up_). ah!.... cuigy (_to brissaille, looking at christian_). a beautiful head! first marquis (_who has overheard_). oh! so, so!.... ligniÈre (_presenting to christian_). mr. de cuigy, mr. de brissaille. christian (_bowing_). delighted! first marquis (_to second_). he is good looking, but not dressed according to the latest fashion. ligniÈre (_to cuigy_). baron de neuvillette has just arrived from touraine. christian. yes, i've been in paris only a few days. to-morrow i join the guards, the cadets. first marquis (_looking up to the boxes_). there is the wife of president aubry. the waiting-girl. oranges, milk .... the violins (_tuning_). la, la, la, la, la. cuigy (_to christian, looking around_). quite an assemblage! christian. yes, indeed! first marquis. the cream of fashion. (_he seems to give the names of the different ladies who occupy the boxes, in full dress. bows, nods, answers, smiles._) second marquis. mesdames de guéménée.... cuigy. de bois-dauphin.... first marquis. whom we loved .... brissaille. de chavigny .... second marquis. for whom our hearts are toys! ligniÈre. there is monsieur de corneille, just from rouen. tradesman's son (_to his father_). the academy is here?.... tradesman. i see several of its members. here are boudu, boissat, cureau de la chambre, porchères, colomby, bourzeys, bourdon, arbaud .... so many names that can never die! how grand! first marquis. attention! here are our lovely "précieuses,"[ ] they of wondrous names: barthénoïde, urimédonte, cassandace, félixérie .... second marquis. delightful names! marquis, you know them all? first marquis. i know them all, marquis. ligniÈre (_aside to christian_). i came in to do you service. the lady comes not. so i return to my tavern. christian (_imploringly_). do not. you, who in your songs depict both town and court, can tell me the name of one for whom i am dying of love. remain! (_the violins begin to play._) i fear she may be something of a coquette and too subtle in her refinement. i dare not speak to her, for my wit is dull and the language of to-day confuses me. i am but a good soldier. she generally occupies that box to the right--that empty one. ligniÈre (_as if to leave_). i must go. christian (_holding him_). remain, please. ligniÈre. i cannot. d'assoucy expects me at the tavern. one might die of thirst here. waiting-girl (_passing_). lemonade! ligniÈre. fie! waiting-girl. milk! ligniÈre. ugh! waiting-girl. wine! ligniÈre. (_to christian_). (_to waiting-girl_). i'll stay a while. let me taste your wine. (_takes a seat near the buffet. waiting-girl serves wine to him._) shouts in the audience (_on the entrance of a short, plump and jovial looking man_). here's ragueneau! ligniÈre (_to christian_). the celebrated poulterer and pastry-cook! ragueneau (_in his best pastry-cook clothes, going up to lignière_). sir, have you seen monsieur de cyrano? ligniÈre (_presenting ragueneau to christian_). the caterer of comedians and poets! ragueneau (_bowing low_). flattered, indeed!.... ligniÈre. come, come, you mæcenas! ragueneau. they honour me with their custom .... ligniÈre. but seldom pay. a good poet himself .... ragueneau. they say so. ligniÈre. enthusiastic for verse! ragueneau. the fact is that for a short poem .... ligniÈre. you willingly give a pie. ragueneau. a small tart only! ligniÈre. good fellow, he excuses himself!.... and for a triolet did you not give .... ragueneau. only a few rolls! ligniÈre (_sternly_). milk-rolls!.... and the stage? you like it? ragueneau. i love it. ligniÈre. and you buy your way in with your cakes. ragueneau. oh, so few! (_looking around._) but i am surprised not to see monsieur de cyrano! ligniÈre. why so? ragueneau. because montfleury plays! ligniÈre. that talking hogshead? true. to-night he plays phédon. but what cares cyrano? ragueneau. don't you know? monsieur de cyrano has taken an aversion for him, and, gentlemen, has forbidden him to appear on the stage for a whole month. ligniÈre (_emptying his fourth glass_). well, then? ragueneau. oh! i only came to see what is going to happen. first marquis (_who has come up meanwhile with cuigy_). who is this cyrano? cuigy. a capital swordsman. second marquis. of noble birth? cuigy. sufficiently so. he is a cadet in the guards. (_indicating a gentleman who appears to be seeking somebody._) but here's his friend le bret.... (_calling_) le bret! (_le bret comes down._) you are looking for bergerac? le bret. yes, and with some anxiety.... cuigy. am i not right in stating that he is no ordinary man? le bret (_moved_). he is the most exquisite of creatures sublunary. ragueneau. a rimester! cuigy. a swordsman! brissaille. a scientist! le bret. a musician! ligniÈre. but how strange is his appearance! ragueneau. no solemn painter, like philip de champaigne, probably, will ever give us a portrait of him. but he is so odd, extravagant, wild and strange, that he could well have served jacques callot as a model for the most erratic of his fighting heroes. three-plumed hat, astounding doublet, cloak whose folds a sword draws up behind, in stateliness, like the saucy tail of a cock.[ ] prouder than the proudest of gascony's numberless haughty sons, he wears, above his pulcinella ruff, a nose!.... ah! mylords, what a nose is that nose! it is impossible, in presence of such a nose-bearer[ ] not to think: "this, really, is exaggeration!" then you will smile, and think: "of course, he'll take it off." but monsieur de bergerac never takes it off. le bret. never--but whoever notices that nose he wears is sure to get a swordthrust for the attention. ragueneau. his sword is one of the two blades of the fatal sisters' scissors! first marquis (_shrugging his shoulders_). he will not come. ragueneau. oh! yes, he will. i'll bet.... a chicken....à la ragueneau. (_murmurs of admiration as roxane appears in her box, where she takes a seat in front, while her duenna sits behind her. christian, busy paying the waiter-girl, does not notice her entrance._) second marquis (_affectedly_). oh! gentlemen, she is frightfully lovely! first marquis. a peach divine, smiling in a nest of strawberries.[ ] second marquis. so refreshing that she might give one a cold in the heart! christian (_perceiving roxane, and clutching lignière's arm_). it's she! ligniÈre (_looking up_). so this is your deity! christian. yes, speak quickly. i tremble. ligniÈre (_slowly sipping his wine_). magdeleine robin, otherwise roxane. refined and quick. a "précieuse." christian. alas! ligniÈre. independent. an orphan. cousin of cyrano, whom you heard mentioned just now. (_a gentleman, very finely dressed, wearing a blue ribbon crosswise from shoulder to waist, enters the box, and remains engaged in conversation with roxane._) christian (_starting_). that man?.... ligniÈre (_slightly intoxicated, winking_). ha, ha! the count de guiche. very much in love with her. but he is the husband of richelieu's niece. and he is urging roxane to marry rather a sorry fellow, monsieur de valvert, who is both of noble birth and.... accommodating. she resists, but guiche has influence. i wrote a song on the subject. no doubt he bears me a grudge for it. the end is cutting. just listen: (_he rises, holding up his glass, ready to sing._) christian. no, stop.--i must leave. ligniÈre. and you are going?.... christian. to seek this valvert. ligniÈre. take care. perhaps it's he that might kill you. (_indicating roxane._) see! she is looking at you. christian. true. (_he remains, looking up as if transfixed. the pickpockets get close around him._) ligniÈre. 'tis i who leave. i'm thirsty and i must be expected--in some tavern! (_exit unsteadily._) le bret (_who has been walking, to ragueneau_). i feel relieved. cyrano has not come. ragueneau (_incredulous_). i'd be astonished.... the audience. the play! the play! the play! [ ] query.--might it not be argued that the "précieuses" were perhaps spiritual daughters of the _euphuists_, disciples of john lyly, who flourished in england under queen elizabeth, about half a century before the time of action here? [ ] note.--not "an insolent cocktail," as one translation has it. [ ] note.--literal translation of "nasigère," a word invented by ragueneau, would be euphuist. [ ] note.--the play on the word "fraise" (both "strawberry" and "ruff") could not be reproduced. _scene iii._ _the same, except_ ligniÈre; guiche, valvert, _then_ montfleury. second marquis (_seeing guiche, as he comes from roxane's box, crossing the pit, surrounded with fawning friends, among whom valvert_). guiche! ff! another gascon! first marquis. yes, of the cool and supple breed, the one that thrives. we had better greet him, believe me. (_both go up to meet guiche. general salutations._) second marquis. beautiful ribbons! what colour, count? "kiss-me-darling," or "roe's-breast?" guiche. colour? "sickly-spaniard." first marquis. the colour is fast and true; for soon, thanks to your valor, the spaniard will be worse than uneasy in flanders! guiche. i am going to my seat on the stage. are you coming? (_he and his followers walk up on to the stage. guiche turns and calls._) come along, valvert! christian (_who has heard, starting_). that viscount! now i'll fling at him!.... (_puts his hand to his pocket and finds there the hand of a thief._) (_holding on to the pickpocket_). i was looking for a glove! pickpocket (_smiling_). and you find a hand. (_aside and rapidly._) let me go and i'll tell you a secret. christian (_still holding him_). what secret? pickpocket. lignière, who has just left you, is going to his death. a song of his gave offence to.... some great man, and one hundred men, i know it, will lie in wait for him to-night.... christian (_still holding on_). one hundred! paid by whom? pickpocket. discretion.... christian (_shrugging his shoulders_). oh! pickpocket (_with great dignity_). professional discretion.... christian. where? pickpocket. at the porte de nesle, his way home. warn him in time. christian (_freeing the pickpocket_). where can i find lignière? pickpocket. in one of the taverns near here: "the golden wine-press," "the fir-cone," "the bursting-belt," "the two torches," "the three funnels." go the rounds and leave a note in each. christian. i'll do it! the wretches! a hundred men against one! (_looking up toward roxane._) but to leave her! (_with a look of fury toward valvert._) and him! but i must save lignière! (_he rushes out. guiche and his followers have gone on to the stage behind the curtain, to take their seats. the pit is full; so are the galleries and boxes._) the audience. the play! the play! curtain! tradesman (_whose wig flies up hooked by one of the pages above_). my wig! (_shaking his fist at the pages._) scoundrels! (_all the audience laughs. sudden silence._) le bret (_astonished_). what is it? tradesman (_near le bret_). the cardinal.... there.... in a screened box. a page. good-bye, fun! (_raps on the stage. order in the audience. wait._) a marquis (_behind the curtain, during silence_). snuff that candle! other marquis (_passing through the split in the curtain_). a chair, please! (_a chair is passed, from hand to hand, over the heads of the audience. the marquis takes it and disappears behind the curtain, after sending a few kisses up into the boxes._) (_three raps on the stage. curtain is drawn aside. tableau. marquises seated on either side of the stage, in impertinent attitudes. drop represents a bluish pastoral scene. low music by the violins._) le bret (_aside to ragueneau_). montfleury comes in at once, does he not? ragueneau (_aside to le bret_). yes. monsieur de cyrano is not here, and i have lost my bet. le bret. i am glad of it. (_a bag-pipe air, and montfleury appears, a very powerful man in a poetic shepherd's dress: his hat ornamented with roses and his bag-pipe with ribbons._) the pit (_applauding_). bravo, montfleury! montfleury! montfleury (_after bowing, begins his part of phédon_). "oh! happy he who far from courts, in solitude,[ ] self-banished, has cast off the chains of servitude, and who, when zephyr sighs and rustles through the leaves...." a voice in the pit. you rascal, did i not suspend you for a month? (_astonishment. everybody eager to see who spoke. murmurs._) several of the audience. what? what is it? who? why? (_people in the boxes rise, to see better._) cuigy. it's he! le bret (_frightened_). cyrano! the voice in the pit. king of clowns, get off the stage! the house. oh! montfleury. but.... the voice in the pit. you recalcitrate?[ ] voices in the pit (_and in the boxes_). silence! enough! go on, montfleury! montfleury, have no fear!.... montfleury (_in shaking tone_). "oh! happy he who far from courts, in sol...." the voice in the pit (_more threatening_). well, you king of knaves, shall i be forced to plant a grove of these upon your shoulders? (_a stick is seen to rise in the pit._) montfleury (_in still weaker tones_). "oh! happy he...." (_the stick is shaken threateningly._) the voice in the pit. get off, i say! the pit. oh! montfleury (_almost breathless_). "oh! happy he who far ...." cyrano (_in the pit, standing on his chair, arms folded, hat cocked on the side of his head, his mustache bristling and his nose terrible_). i am going to let my temper loose! (_excitement in the audience._) [ ] note.--alexandrine verse adopted here and further on (beginning of act ii) as being more pompous. [ ] note.--the words "you kick," in the place of "tu récalcitres," were suggested by a friend, as a better translation. but the good critic failed to realise that cyrano does not use slang, and is almost always, on the contrary, somewhat hyperbolic, addicted to willful oddity of speech.--"récalcitrant," adj.-part. (doggedly resisting), is frequently used in french. but the infinitive "récalcitrer," though it exists, and the other forms of the verb are seldom, if ever, heard.--cyrano, therefore, calls up a smile, if not a laugh, by resorting to the verb in the second person, singular, present, indicative.--_to recalcitrate_ is a good english word (see longfellow), but it is so seldom used that it creates on the english ear the same impression of amused surprise that is induced by the original. _scene iv._ _the same_, cyrano, _then_ bellerose, jodelet. montfleury (_to the marquises_). protect me, gentlemen! a marquis (_languidly_). play on! play on! cyrano. now mind me, corpulence! if you play, i'll have to spank your cheeks. the marquis. enough! enough! cyrano. let the gentlemen remain silent on their benches. otherwise their ribbons will have a taste of my stick. all the marquises (_rising_). this is too much, indeed! montfleury! cyrano. montfleury must go, or i shall crop his ears and disembowel him! a voice. but .... cyrano. he must go! another voice. we cannot .... cyrano. what! not gone yet! (_as if he were going to turn up his sleeves_). then must i go upon the stage to cut up this overgrown sausage into slices? montfleury (_with an attempt at dignity_). by insulting me, sir, you insult the muse thalia! cyrano (_with great courtesy_). if the muse thalia, with whom you are not related, sir, had the honour of your acquaintance and saw you so fat and so silly, she would certainly give you a lift with her buskin. the pit. montfleury! montfleury! the play. cyrano (_to the noisy ones around him_). have pity on my scabbard! if you continue thus, it will lose control of its blade. (_the circle around him widens._) (_to montfleury_). get off the stage! (_the crowd closes in on him, muttering._) (_turning suddenly_). any objection made? (_crowd falls back again._) a voice (_in the rear_). monsieur de cyrano is a tyrant. "la clorise" shall be played. the audience. "la clorise!" "la clorise!" cyrano. if i hear that again, i'll slaughter you all. tradesman. you are not samson! cyrano. i will be, my dear sir, if you'll lend me your jaw. a lady (_in one of the boxes_). disgraceful disturbance! a gentleman. scandalous! a page. oh! what fun! the pit. kss! kss! montfleury! cyrano! cyrano. silence! such is my order. i challenge the whole pit! now for the names! come up here, young heroes. take the line, please; i'll distribute numbers. well, who'll be number one? you, sir? no! you, then? no! i'll favour number one by prompt attendance. let any one who desires to die hold up a hand. (_silence around him._) oh! i see. you are prudish and would not like to see a blade naked. not a name? not a hand?--very well, then, i continue. (_turning again to the stage, on which montfleury is waiting in agony_). i desire to see the stage cured of a monstrous tumor. and, if necessary, i'll use ... (_putting his hand to his sword_) a lancet! montfleury. but i .... cyrano (_gets off his chair and sits down on it, comfortably, with a wide circle around him_). attention, full moon! i'll clap my hands thrice. the third time, there must be an eclipse. the pit (_amused_). ah! good! cyrano (_striking his hands together_). one! montfleury. but i .... a voice (_from the boxes_). stay, montfleury! the pit. will stay, will not! will stay, will not! montfleury. i believe, gentlemen .... cyrano. two! montfleury. it would be far better .... cyrano. three! (_montfleury disappears as if by magic. general laughter, whistling, etc._) cyrano (_leaning back in his chair, and crossing his legs_). let him return if he dares! the audience. the company's orator! (_bellerose advances and bows._) the boxes. ah! here is bellerose! bellerose (_with great elegance_). noble lords .... the pit. no! no! jodelet! jodelet (_with a nasal twang_). disturbers of the peace! the heavy tragedian whose bulk suits your fancy, felt.... the pit. he is a coward! jodelet. suddenly unwell ... and was compelled to retire. the pit. let him return!--no!--yes!-- a young man (_to cyrano_). but, after all, sir, what reason is there for your hating montfleury? cyrano (_very courteous, still seated_). young gosling, there are two, either one of which is sufficient in itself. first: he is a bad actor; he rants, and seems to lift with a derrick lines that have wings of their own. second: but that is _my_ secret. tradesman (_behind cyrano_). but, sir, you deprive us of the pleasure of hearing "la clorise." i insist.... cyrano (_turning in his chair toward the tradesman respectfully_). venerable mule, baro's verse is worthless. i interrupt without the slightest remorse. the "prÉcieuses" (_in the boxes_). baro! our baro! heavens! is it possible? cyrano (_turning his chair to the boxes, with great courtesy_). fair beings .... irradiate and bloom, be hebes, all, dispensing dream; with smile make death a feast to us----inspire verse.... but judge it not! bellerose. how about the money we'll have to return? cyrano (_turning his chair toward the stage_). bellerose, you have said the only intelligent thing yet heard to-day. i would not for the world make holes in the cloak of thespis. (_he rises and throws a small bag upon the stage_). catch this purse and hold your tongue! the audience (_bewildered_). ah!.... oh!.... jodelet (_picking up the purse and weighing it_). for the same price, sir, you may daily prevent the performance of "la clorise"!.... the audience. hu!.... hu!.... jodelet. even if we are to be hooted .... clear the house! (_the audience begins to leave. cyrano looks on with great satisfaction. the crowd, however, soon stops as the following discussion begins. the ladies in the boxes, who had already risen to go, and put on their wraps, resume their seats_). le bret (_to cyrano_). you are insane! an intruder (_who has come up to cyrano_). a comedian like montfleury! scandalous! why! he is a favourite of the duke de candale's! what powerful patron have you? cyrano. none! the intruder. no patron? cyrano. no! the intruder. what! no high-born gentleman whose name can shield you? cyrano (_impatient_). i've said no twice already. a third time: no! i've no protector.... (_his hand on his sword_) but this! the intruder. you are going to leave town, then? cyrano. hardly probable. the intruder. but the duke has a long reach! cyrano. not so long as mine .... (_showing his sword_) with this extension! now, go about your business. the intruder. but allow me.... cyrano. go! or, rather, tell me why you look so sharply at my nose. the intruder (_abashed_). what! i.... cyrano. is there anything extraordinary about it? the intruder. your lordship mistakes.... cyrano. is it soft and swinging like an elephant's trunk? the intruder. i did not say.... cyrano. or crooked like the beak of an owl? the intruder. no; i.... cyrano. is there a wart on the end of it? or a fly? what's amiss with it? or is it a phenomenon? the intruder. why, i didn't even look at it! cyrano. why shouldn't you look at it? is it repulsive? the intruder. my dear sir.... cyrano. in colour unhealthy? in shape indecent? the intruder. not at all! cyrano. why, then, seem to revile it? perhaps the gentleman finds it rather large? the intruder (_stammering_). i find it small, very, very small. cyrano. how small? ridiculously then? my nose small! why, my nose is enormous! remember, vile flat-nose and flat-head, that i am proud of such an appendix! for a large nose properly indicates a man that is affable, kind, courteous, witty, liberal and brave, such as i am, and such as you, miserable knave! can never be; for the inglorious face that my hand is about to seek above your collar is as destitute ..... (_he slaps intruder's face_). the intruder. oh! cyrano. of pride, of flight, of poesy, of picturesqueness, of fire, of magnificence, of nose, in fact, as the one.... (_cyrano seizes the intruder by the shoulders and kicks him in the seat_) that my boot now reaches at the base of your back. the intruder (_escaping_). help! guards! cyrano. fair warning, then, to idle lookers on who criticise the centre of my face! the critic, if a gentleman, will get,-- before he flies,--in front and higher too, my custom's such, some steel instead of leather! guiche (_who with the marquises, has come down from the stage_). the gentleman is getting very tiresome! vicomte de valvert (_shrugging his shoulders_). he is a braggart! guiche. and no one answers him?.... the vicomte. no one? just wait. such a retort as i'm going to send him! (_he advances toward cyrano, who has been looking at him, and draws himself up with an air of foppish vanity._) you.... you have a nose.... hum! a nose, sir, that is.... very large. cyrano (_very quietly and seriously_). very large, indeed! vicomte (_laughing_). ha! ha! cyrano (_with great self-possession_). is that all? vicomte. well, i.... cyrano. no, no, that's a little too short, young man! you might have said.... well.... many things.... in different keys. for instance, listen: _aggressive_: "i, sir, had i such a nose, would at once have it amputated."--_friendly_: "it must dip into your glass. to drink with comfort, you should have a hanap constructed!"--_descriptive_: "it is a rock!... a peak!!.... a headland!!! more than a headland, a whole peninsula!"--_inquisitive_: "what may this oblong thing be used for? a writing-desk or a tool-chest?"--_pleasant_: "do you love birds so much that you feel bound to offer them so comfortable a resting place?"--_fierce_: "when you use tobacco, sir, can you emit smoke from that nose without your neighbours' crying that there is a chimney on fire?"--_thoughtful_: "be careful; so much top-hamper might cause you to fall!"--_affectionate_: "have a parasol made for it; the sun might fade its colour!"--_pedantic_: "for so much flesh on so much bone beneath the forehead, we must go back, sir, to the animal aristophanes calls hippocampelephantocamelos!"--_flippant_: "why! man, is that the fashion for hooks? certainly convenient for hanging up a hat!"--_emphatic_: "masterly nose, no wind can make you catch aught but a fractional cold! none but a northern hurricane!"--_dramatic_: "when it bleeds, we have the red sea!"--_admiringly_: "for a perfumer, what a sign!"--_lyric_: "is it a shell trumpet, and are you a triton?"--_innocent_: "when is this monument open to visitors?"--_respectful_: "this is really owning a mansion with a gable on it!"--_countrylike_: "that be not a nose, but a big turnip, or a young melon!"--_military_: "point against cavalry!"--_practical_: "will you put it up in a lottery? it will surely be the largest prize!"--finally, to parody the grief of pyramus: so here we have the nose that on its master came to ruin harmony! the traitor's red for shame! that is about what you might have said, dear boy, if you had a sprinkling of letters and a bit of humour. of humour, though, lamentable being, you never had an atom; and, as to letters, you never had but the four that spell the word fool!--some invention is requisite for extravagant jests before such an audience, but, even if you had it, you could not have uttered a quarter of the half of the beginning of what i said; for i may be willing to serve such sport myself, but i allow nobody to serve it to _me_. guiche (_endeavouring to lead away the vicomte_). vicomte, pay no attention to him! vicomte (_overwhelmed_). such arrogance! an insignificant little squire .... who .... who .... doesn't even wear gloves!....and who sallies forth without ribbons, bows or trimmings! cyrano. 'tis morally i have my elegance, i do not dress as does a fop, but i am better groomed than some more richly clad. i'd not set forth with traces of neglect about me, say: an insult left unwashed, a conscience still confused and half asleep, my honour soiled, or scruples out of shape. when i proceed, i do so clean and bright, with truthful independence for a plume. 'tis not my form i lace to hold it up, it is my soul i try to elevate! the ribbons that i wear are only deeds; i twist perhaps my wit like a mustache; but then i cause, as i go through your groups, above the clash of spurs, the truth to ring! vicomte. but, sir .... cyrano. i have no gloves on?.... what matters it? i did have one left from a very old pair! one day i found it somewhat in the way .... and i left it on somebody's face. vicomte. knave, puppy, flat-footed ridiculous bully! cyrano (_taking off his hat and bowing, as if the vicomte had just presented himself_). ah! delighted!.... and i: cyrano, savinian, hercules de bergerac. (_laughter around._) vicomte (_exasperated_). buffoon! cyrano (_uttering a cry as if he had a cramp_). ay!.... vicomte (_who was leaving, returning_). what is it now? cyrano (_grinning as if in pain_). i must move it, for it is asleep.... what a mistake to let it remain inactive.... ay!.... vicomte. what ails you? cyrano. it's my sword that's tingling! vicomte (_drawing his sword_). be it so! cyrano. i'll show you a neat little thrust. vicomte (_disdainfully_). poet! cyrano. yes, sir, a poet! so much so that, while we play swords here, i mean--hop!--on the spur of the moment, to improvise for you a ballade. vicomte. a ballade? cyrano. yes. i'll wager you do not know what is a ballade. vicomte. but.... cyrano (_as if reciting a lesson_). well, then, a ballade is composed of three stanzas of eight lines each.... vicomte (_stamping impatiently_). oh! cyrano (_continuing_). plus an envoy of four lines. twenty-eight lines in all, with only three rimes.... vicomte. you.... cyrano. i am going to compose one while fighting, and when i come to the last line, sir, i'll touch you! vicomte. you'll not! cyrano. be sure, i shall! (_declaiming._) ballade of the duel between monsieur de bergerac and a coxcomb. vicomte. what is that, if you please? cyrano. that is the title. the audience (_greatly excited_). make room there!.... capital!.... stand back!.... be silent!.... (_tableau.--circle of lookers-on in the pit,--marquises and officers, with the tradesmen and common people. pages on each others' shoulders for a better view. all the women standing in the boxes. to the right, guiche and his followers. to the left, le bret, ragueneau, cuigy, etc._). cyrano (_closing his eyes for a moment_). wait....i'm selecting my rimes....there now, i'm ready! (_he does as he says while speaking the verses._) my hat with grace i cast aside; next, watch me, please, i slowly free the cloak in which i'm wont to stride; and then i draw my sword, you see. a celadon[ ] you have in me, a scaramuccia very much; but, pygmy, moderate your glee, for, when i close th' envoy, i'll touch! 'twere better you had slept or died. o goose, where shall i puncture thee? beneath the ribs? above? decide! or through the breast, where ribbons be? the hilts are ringing. one, two, three! my sword, beware! is not a crutch. i'll strike according to decree, for, when i close th' envoy, i'll touch! i seek in vain a rime in _ide_. you back--and whiten--let's agree upon a word, say: trembling hide, so, tac! i parry, just a wee, your vicious thrust. now finish we! i open--quart--or something such---- hold well that spit, you dog, or flee,[ ] for, when i close th' envoy, i'll touch! (_he announces with solemnity_). envoy.[ ] now, prince, may heaven hear your plea! i follow, though you break and clutch. i cut--i feint--be ready--hee! (_he lunges._) (_vicomte staggers; cyrano bows._) for now i close th' envoy.... (_pointing to vicomte_) i touch! (_applause in boxes. flowers and handkerchiefs are thrown. officers surround and congratulate cyrano. ragueneau dances for joy. le bret seems both overjoyed and dejected. the vicomte's friends support him and bear him off._) a musketeer (_most cordially shaking cyrano's hand_). allow an expert to congratulate you, sir, most heartily. (_he leaves._) cyrano (_to cuigy_). who is this gentleman? cuigy. d'artagnan! le bret (_passing his arm through cyrano's_). now let us talk!.... cyrano. wait till the crowd has left. (_to bellerose_). may we stay a while? bellerose (_to cyrano_). certainly, sir. (_giving orders to janitor_). close the house, but do not put out the lights. we'll return after dinner for a rehearsal. (_jodelet and bellerose bow to cyrano, then exeunt._) janitor (_to cyrano_). you are not going to dinner, sir? cyrano. i?.... no. (_exit janitor._) le bret (_to cyrano_). why not? cyrano (_proudly_). because.... (_changing his tone, when he sees that the janitor has gone_). because i have no money!.... le bret (_as if throwing a purse_). how about that bag of coin? cyrano. monthly allowance, thou wert short lived! one day! le bret. for a whole month, then.... cyrano. i have nothing left. le bret. to throw away thus your purse, what folly! cyrano. yes, but what a gesture! the waiting-girl (_behind the counter_). hum! (_cyrano and le bret turn around. she advances timidly._) sir .... i cannot bear.... to see you fast.... (_showing the buffet_). i have here several things.... take some! cyrano (_taking off his hat_). my dear child, gascon pride forbids my accepting from you the smallest of your delicacies. but, on the other hand, i would not for the whole world offend you, as my refusal might do. so i will with pleasure accept.... (_goes up to the buffet and chooses._) oh! the smallest thing!.... ah! one grape from this bunch. (_she tries to make him take the bunch, but he picks out a single grape._) only one.... a glass of water.... (_she tries to pour some wine, but he prevents her._) pure water!.... and half a maccaroon. (_he breaks a maccaroon in two, and returns one of the pieces._) le bret. what nonsense! waiting-girl. do have something more! cyrano. yes, your hand to kiss. (_he kisses her hand as if she were a princess._) waiting-girl. thank you, sir! (_curtsies._) a very good evening! (_exit waiting-girl._) [ ] note.--one of the translations that have appeared in the new york daily press renders "céladon" by reference to lord chesterfield! the time of action (first four acts) of "cyrano de bergerac" is , and lord chesterfield was _born_ only years _later_. [ ] note.--in the original, cyrano calls his opponent "laridon." this is the name of a degenerate _dog_. see fables of la fontaine ("l'education"). [ ] note.--"l'envoi," as often written, supposedly in french, is incorrect. it is, in french, when heading the last four lines of a ballade, "envoi," without the article, l' (le). _scene v._ cyrano, le bret, _later_ janitor. cyrano (_to le bret_). now, i'll listen to you. (_he goes to the buffet, on which he places the half maccaroon._) dinner! (_then the glass of water._) drink! (_and the one grape from the bunch._) dessert! (_takes a seat by the buffet._) now for the feast! my dear friend, i feel very hungry.... (_eating_) well? you were saying?.... le bret. that all these bellicose doings and the admiration they elicit will warp your judgment. go ask people of sense what they think of this last prank of yours, of its effect. cyrano (_finishing his half maccaroon_). enormous!.... le bret. the cardinal!.... cyrano (_beaming with delight_). he was there? the cardinal? le bret. yes, and he must have found you.... cyrano. anything but commonplace. le bret. nevertheless.... cyrano. he's an author. and he must have enjoyed seeing another's play crushed. le bret. you are, really, making too many enemies! cyrano (_munching his one grape_). how many do you estimate i have made to-day? le bret. forty-eight, without counting the women. cyrano. enumerate them. le bret. montfleury, the tradesman, guiche, the vicomte, baro, the academy.... cyrano. you give me infinite joy! le bret. what will all this lead you to? what system is yours? cyrano. i was really meandering, and i found so many conclusions to adopt, through so many complications, that i came to this decision.... le bret. which is?.... cyrano. oh! the simplest of all, by far. i decided to show myself admirable in all, and for all! le bret (_shrugging his shoulders_). so be it!.... but come now, tell me, tell _me_, the true reason of your hatred for montfleury. cyrano (_rising_). this silenus, with a stomach like a hogshead, still believes himself a danger to womankind. see him, while he stammers on the stage, ogling like a carp, with his frog's eyes! i hate him since he dared, once, to set those eyes of his upon her.... oh! i felt as if i saw a long slug crawling over a flower! le bret (_astounded_). what, is it possible?.... cyrano (_with a bitter laugh_). that i love? (_changing to a solemn tone_). i do love. le bret. whom? may i enquire? you never told me. cyrano. whom i love? come now, reflect. the dream of being loved, even by a homely girl, is one forbidden me. forbidden by this nose of mine that precedes me everywhere by fifteen minutes. so, then, i love .... whom? why! it is most natural! i love .... it could not be otherwise, the loveliest of the lovely! le bret. the loveliest?.... cyrano. exactly .... in the world! the most brilliant, the most exquisite, (_crushed_) the blondest! le bret. this woman is?.... cyrano. a deadly danger, though she knows it not; a snare that nature made unconscious, like a sweetly budding rose whose leaves conceal,--in ambush lurking, love. who sees her smile knows what perfection is: her slightest touch engenders loveliness; she moves as if all heaven's grace were hers, and venus ne'er embarked in any shell, nor did diana tread the sylvan paths as my adored can step into a chair! le bret. i understand! quite clear. cyrano. transparent, say. le bret. it's magdeleine, your cousin? cyrano. yes, roxane. le bret. well, where's the harm? you love her? tell her so! she witnessed here just now your valiant deed! cyrano. why! look at me, good friend, and say what hope there can be with .... such a protuberance! i clearly see the truth. but, then, of course, my heart will beat, perchance, at eventide, if, with this nose, i scent the breath of spring. or else, i see, along some moonlit path, a whisp'ring pair of lovers slowly move; and then i think what rapture would be mine if on my arm a gentle creature leaned. i dream: but suddenly, i'm brought to sense. by what? alas! my profile on the wall! le bret. dear friend!.... cyrano. yes, friend, it's hard indeed to feel so homely and forlorn at times.... le bret (_taking his hand_). you weep! cyrano. weep? never! oh! a sorry sight, indeed, if down this nose a tear should take its course! i will not have, so long as i command, the saintliness of tears polluted by this homeliness of mine. remember, friend, that nothing's more sublime than flowing tears. so would i not allow a single one to cause a laugh, or seem ridiculous! le bret. come, come, do not be sad. in love there is hazard, remember. cyrano (_shaking his hand_). no! i love cleopatra: do i resemble a cæsar? i adore berenice: do i look like a titus? le bret. but, friend, your bravery, intelligence and wit!.... take that girl there who just now offered you your dinner. did her eyes seem to detest you? cyrano (_struck_). it's a fact. le bret. well, then, hope!.... why! roxane was pale and trembling, ghastly pale, while she followed your duel here!.... cyrano. ghastly pale? le bret. her heart and mind were certainly struck. pick up courage and speak to her, so that.... cyrano. so that she bursts out laughing into my face .... under my very nose? no, no!.... that is the only thing in the world that i fear! the janitor (_bringing in the duenna, to cyrano_). somebody for you, sir. cyrano (_seeing the duenna_). great heavens! her duenna! _scene vi._ cyrano, le bret, the duenna. the duenna (_with a long curtsy_). a fair cousin would like to know where a valiant cousin can be seen, in private. cyrano (_greatly disturbed_). i be seen, in private? duenna (_with another curtsy_). yes, be seen. there are things to be said. cyrano. there are things.... duenna (_another curtsy_). to be said. cyrano (_staggering_). heavens! duenna. we'll hear to-morrow early mass, at the church of saint-roch. cyrano (_leaning on le bret_). heavens! duenna. as we go out, we can chat a bit, i fancy. cyrano (_bewildered_). where?.... i .... but .... heavens! duenna. decide. cyrano. i'm thinking.... duenna. where?.... cyrano. at.... at.... ragueneau's.... the pastry-cook's.... duenna. where's that?.... cyrano. rue.... rue.... heavens! rue st.-honoré! duenna (_leaving_). we'll be there by seven sharp. be punctual. cyrano. i shall! (_exit duenna._) _scene vii._ cyrano, le bret, the comedians _and_ comediennes, cuigy, brissaille, ligniÈre, the janitor, the violins. cyrano (_falling into the arms of le bret_). i!.... she.... an appointment!.... le bret. so, now your sadness is no more? cyrano. no! for, whatever the reason, she knows that i exist! le bret. and now you will be cool? cyrano (_beside himself_). no, i'll be frantic and invincible! i would i had an army to defeat! i have ten hearts and twenty arms. what are dwarfs to me?.... (_he shouts._) i must have giants to vanquish! (_for the last few minutes, on the stage, in the rear, actors and actresses have been going and coming: a rehearsal is on. the violins have taken their seats._) a voice (_from the stage_). silence there, please! we're rehearsing. cyrano (_laughing_). very well. we're leaving. (_as cyrano is about going, enter, by the wide door in the rear, cuigy, brissaille, and several officers, supporting lignière, who is completely intoxicated._) cuigy. cyrano! cyrano. what is it? cuigy. a friend of yours. cyrano (_recognising lignière_). lignière!.... why! what is the matter? cuigy. he was looking for you. brissaille. he cannot get home. cyrano. why not? ligniÈre (_thick-tongued, showing a note soiled and torn_). this note warns me .... a hundred men are posted .... on account of a song .... i'll be murdered .... at the porte de nesle .... there i must pass .... to get home .... offer me shelter .... under your roof! cyrano. one hundred men, you say? you'll sleep under your own roof. ligniÈre (_terrified_). but how can i?.... cyrano (_in fierce tones, showing him the lighted lantern held by the janitor, who has been listening_). take that lantern! (_lignière seizes the lantern._) and walk on boldly. i swear to you that i to-night will make your bed for you. (_to the officers._) you, gentlemen, be good enough to follow .... at a distance. you'll be witnesses. cuigy. yes, but one hundred men!.... cyrano. to-night i would not have them fewer by a single man! (_the comedians and comediennes, who have, in their costumes, come down from the stage into the pit, crowd around cyrano._) le bret. but why protect this.... cyrano. there's le bret grumbling again! le bret. this commonplace drunkard?.... cyrano (_playfully striking lignière on the shoulder_). because this drunkard, this cask of muscatel, this barrel of rossoli, once did something exceedingly handsome: his lady-love, as she was leaving church, after mass, having properly dipped her dainty finger into the holy water near the door, he, though he has a horror for water, ran up to the stoup, leaned over it and drank it dry! comedienne (_in soubrette's dress_). a pretty deed, i think. cyrano. was it not, soubrette? comedienne (_to the others_). but why a hundred men against a poor poet? cyrano. let us on!.... (_to the officers_) .... and you, gentlemen, when you see me charge, please do not follow; simply look on, whatever danger i may be in! comedienne. but we wish to see too! cyrano. come along, then! comedienne (_to the troop_). let us all go? cyrano. come, all of you, the doctor, isabella, leander, all! come as a bevy pleasant and frolicsome! come, and let the fantasy of italian farce tinkle through the rumble of to-night's spanish drama, surrounding it with jingles like a tambourine! the women (_jumping for joy_). bravo! quick, a wrap! a hood!.... jodelet. let us proceed! cyrano (_to the violins_). will the violins supply the music? (_the violins join the formation. candles are taken from the footlights and distributed; and thus a torch-light procession is prepared._) cyrano. bravo! officers, gentlemen and women in fancy dress! now, ten steps ahead .... (_he places himself as he speaks_) i, alone, beneath the plume that glory itself stuck into this hat .... proud as a scipion thrice nasica!.... understood?.... all assistance to me is forbidden! ready?.... open the door! (_janitor opens the door, through which can be seen a bit of old paris, picturesque in the moonlight._) ah! paris in the dimness of the night, with moonlight trickling down the bluish roofs. for coming deed how exquisite the frame! 'neath mist as light as gauze, behold! the seine, as if it were a magic mirror there, is trembling .... and you'll see what you shall see! all. to the porte de nesle! cyrano (_on the threshold_). to the porte de nesle! (_turning, before going out, to the soubrette_). did you not ask, madamoiselle, why against this one rimester a hundred men were sent? (_he draws his sword and continues very quietly._) because he is known to be a friend of mine! (_exit cyrano. the procession--lignière with unsteady head--the comediennes hanging upon the arms of the officers, then the comedians dancing and capering--moves out into the night, with the violins for music, and with candles for light._) _curtain._ [illustration: _first act._] _act ii._ the poet's cook-shop. _the shop of ragueneau, poulterer and pastry-cook, a large establishment in paris, on the corner of the rue st.-honoré and the rue de l'arbre-sec. in the rear, through the wide glazed door, the streets are plainly seen, grey in the light of dawn._ _to the left, first entrance, a counter, above which is an iron frame, from hooks on which are suspended geese, ducks and white peacocks. large crockery vases containing ordinary plants, principally sunflowers. on the same side, second entrance, a wide fireplace, before which, between two monumental andirons, on each of which a pot is hung, several roasts, the fat of which is dripping into pans._ _to the right, first entrance, a door. second entrance, a staircase leading up to a small inside room, the interior of which is visible through its open blinds; a table is there, with cover set, lighted by a flemish chandelier. a wooden gallery at the top of the staircase leads seemingly to other rooms of the same sort._ _in the centre of the shop, an iron ring is hung: it can be lowered by means of a pulley, and on it are large pieces of game, meat, hams, etc. it forms a peculiar sort of chandelier._ _under the staircase, the glow of several ovens. copper saucepans shine. spits are turning. morning activity. cook-boys run in and out. fat chefs are seen now and then. loads of cakes and meat-pies are brought in on willow trays._ _tables are garnished with cakes and eatables. other tables, with chairs around, are prepared for customers. a small table in a corner is covered with papers. before it is seated ragueneau, who is writing, as the curtain rises._ _scene i._ ragueneau, pastry-cooks, _then_ lise. ragueneau _is writing and counts on his fingers_. first pastry-cook (_bearing a dish_). candied fruits! second pastry-cook (_with another dish_). pie! third pastry-cook (_with a roast_). peacock! fourth pastry-cook (_with a tray_). cakes! fifth pastry-cook (_with an earthen bowl_). stewed beef! ragueneau (_stops writing and looks up_). the copper's yellow sheen is silvered by the dawn[ ] now smother, ragueneau, the godly notes you love! sweet poesy must wait--just now is cooking time! (_he rises. to one of the cooks_). look here! your sauce is thick, and you must lengthen it. cook. how much? ragueneau. three feet. (_passes on._) o muse, keep thou aloof, or else your pleading eyes will suffer from the glare of vulgar fires here! (_to one of the pastry-cooks_). these loaves are badly set, the split should not be thus, cesuras should be placed between the hemstitches. (_to another, pointing to an unfinished meat-pie_). this palace made of crust is fine, but needs a roof. (_to an apprentice boy who, seated on the floor, is running a fowl on a spit_). the spit is long enough for chickens, turkeys, all, but alternate, my boy, and imitate malherbe: his lines the longest were relieved by shorter ones. do you the same, prepare real stanzas on the spit! another apprentice (_carrying a tray over which is a large napkin_). dear master, this for you was in the oven cooked. we wish to please you, sir! ragueneau. a lyre! the apprentice. made of paste! ragueneau (_moved_). of candied fruits besides! and strings of sugar, too! the apprentice. to give a sweeter tone! ragueneau (_handing him some money_). it's fine; go drink my health (_seeing lise, as she enters_). my wife! be silent--skip! (_to lise, showing her the lyre_). fine work! lise. ridiculous! (_she lays on the counter a bundle of paper bags._) ragueneau. some bags; i thank you, dear. (_looks at the bags._) the manuscripts i love! the verses of my friends! all mutilated! torn! to serve as wrappers for .... such prosy things as cakes! it's orpheus once again pursued by the bacchantes! lise (_harshly_). i use the only thing your friends in payment give; your sorry scribblers bent on not completing lines! ragueneau. the ant should not insult the magic cricket's song! lise. before these crickets thus possessed you wholly, dear, you never said to me: bacchante, or even: ant! ragueneau. treat verses thus! lise. why not? ragueneau. what would you do with prose? [ ] note.--alexandrines were adopted, instead of pentameter, here and further on, with the poets, for the reason that they seem more pompous and better in keeping with the affectation shown by the personages. _scene ii._ _the same_, two children _come in to buy cakes_. ragueneau. what is it, little ones? first child. we want three patties, please. ragueneau (_serving them_). here they are, well-browned, just out of the oven. second child. please wrap them up for us. ragueneau (_aside_). alas! my bags! (_to the children_). oh! wrap them up, hey?.... (_takes one of the bags to use it, but first reads from it_). "as was ulysses when he left penelope...." not this one!.... (_puts the bag aside, and takes up another, from which also he reads_). "blond phoebus...." not this one! (_sets the bag aside._) lise (_out of patience_). well, what are you waiting for? ragueneau. coming! coming! (_takes up a third bag and then with resignation_). the sonnet to philis!.... pretty hard too! lise. you were long enough about it! (_shrugging her shoulders_). goose! (_she climbs upon a chair to arrange dishes and plates on a shelf._) ragueneau (_taking advantage of the fact that her back is turned, calls back the children who were just passing out_). pst!.... little ones!.... return me the bag and instead of three patties i'll give you six. (_the children give him the bag, take the cakes and leave. ragueneau smoothes the paper and reads_). "philis!" .... on this sweet name, a grease spot!.... "philis!" (_cyrano enters abruptly._) _scene iii._ ragueneau, lise, cyrano, _then_ a musketeer. cyrano. what time is it? ragueneau (_bowing low to him_). six o'clock. cyrano (_excited_). in one hour! (_walks to and fro through the shop._) ragueneau (_following him_). bravo! i witnessed.... cyrano. what? ragueneau. your fight. cyrano. which one? ragueneau. the one at the hôtel de bourgogne. cyrano (_disdainfully_). oh!.... that duel!.... ragueneau (_admiringly_). yes, your duel in verse. lise (_aside_). in verse!.... his mouth seems to him too small for the words! cyrano (_to ragueneau_). ah!.... so much the better! ragueneau (_lunging with the spit he has seized_). "for, when i close th' envoy, i'll touch!...." "for, when i close th' envoy, i'll touch!...." how beautiful!.... (_with growing enthusiasm_). "for, when i close th' envoy,...." cyrano. ragueneau, what time is it? ragueneau (_remaining with arm and leg outstretched, simply turning his head to look at the clock_). five minutes after six!.... "i touch!" (_he rises._) oh! to write a ballade! lise (_to cyrano, who, on passing near her, has absent-mindedly shaken hands with her_). why! what is the matter with your hand? cyrano. oh! nothing! a scratch. ragueneau. were you exposed to any peril? cyrano. no peril! lise (_threatening him with her finger_). i fear you are not telling the truth! cyrano. what! did my nose move? what an enormous lie that would indicate! (_becoming serious_). i expect somebody here. if that somebody comes--you never can tell,--please leave us here alone. ragueneau. that is hardly possible; my rimesters[ ] are coming.... lise (_ironical_). for their first meal. cyrano. you will have to take them away when i make a sign to you.... what time is it? ragueneau. ten minutes after six. cyrano (_sitting down nervously at ragueneau's table, and taking some paper_). a pen, please!.... ragueneau (_offering him the one that he has behind his ear_). a swan quill. a musketeer (_with an enormous mustache and stentorian voice_) _enters_. good morning! (_lise goes rapidly up to him._) cyrano (_turning around_). who is this? ragueneau. a friend of my wife's. a terrible warrior,--at least so he says!.... cyrano (_taking up the pen and motioning away ragueneau_). silence!.... write--fold,--(_to himself_) hand it to her,--and run away.... (_throwing away the pen_). coward!....but may i die if i dare speak to her, even a single word.... (_to ragueneau_). what time is it? ragueneau. a quarter past six!.... cyrano (_striking his breast_). but i have plenty of words here, and by writing.... (_takes up the pen._) so be it then! i'll write.--this letter fraught with love, i've thought it out a hundred times; it's ready, and, to close it, i have but to read my soul, and copy what i read. (_he writes. behind the glazed door, a movement of lean and hesitating forms._) [ ] note.--the spelling _rime_ seems preferable to _rhyme_, since rime and rhythm are two very distinct things. _scene iv._ ragueneau, lise, the musketeer, cyrano, _by the table, writing_, the poets, _clad in black, bedraggled_. lise (_entering, to ragueneau_). here are your bedraggled friends! first poet (_entering, to ragueneau_). brother-poet!.... second poet (_shaking ragueneau by the hand_). dear brother-poet! third poet. eagle of pastry-cooks! (_sniffing_) it smells good in your nest. fourth poet. o phoebus-caterer! apollo master-cook!.... ragueneau (_somewhat bewildered_). how soon one feels at ease with them! first poet. we were delayed a bit by something of a crowd, close by the porte de nesle!.... second poet. by sword both slashed and pierced, eight cut-throats bleeding fast illustrated the street. cyrano (_looking up_). eight?.... i thought seven. (_continues writing._) ragueneau (_to cyrano_). who fought so bravely? do you know? cyrano (_treating the matter lightly_). i?.... no! lise (_to the musketeer_). do you? musketeer (_curling his mustache_). perhaps. cyrano (_writing--mutters a word now and then, aside_). i love you.... first poet. a single man, they say, put all the band to flight!.... cyrano (_writing_). your eyes!.... second poet. why! spears and hats were found a hundred yards away! cyrano (_writing_). your lips!.... first poet. quite fearless must be he who fought so many thus. cyrano (_writing_). and i am like to faint, outdone, when you appear. second poet (_helping himself to a cake_). what new rimes can you give us, ragueneau? cyrano (_writing_). who loves you!.... (_he stops just as he was going to sign, rises, folds the letter and puts it into his doublet._) signature unnecessary. i'll hand her the letter myself. ragueneau (_to second poet_). i have put a recipe into verse. third poet (_settling near a tray of tarts_). oh! let us hear the lines. fourth poet. this cake is crooked. make it straight. (_eats it._) second poet. we are listening. third poet. this tart will lose its cream. we'll save it. (_eats the tart._) second poet (_breaking off and eating a piece of the candied lyre_). the only time perhaps a lyre's fed its man. ragueneau (_who has been preparing to recite, coughing, settling his cap and striking an attitude_). a recipe in verse.... second poet (_to first poet_). why! you are breakfasting! first poet (_to second poet_). and you are dining, friend! ragueneau. how to make almond tarts. beat up to foam, discarding dregs, your choice of eggs. add carefully into the foam some citron juice that's new and stout; then lengthen out with milk of almonds made at home. next, coat with dough, both fresh and sound, below, around, such moulds as pastry-cooks prepare. add sweetening to suit your taste into the paste. then pour quite slowly and with care your foam into each well[ ], so well that ev'ry well, when it is baked to blondness, starts to seek the walks that pleasure sings. these seemly things are rightly christened: almond tarts. the poets (_mouths full_). most exquisite! divine! one of the poets (_choking_). humph! (_they go to the rear, still eating. cyrano, who has been watching them, goes up to ragueneau._) cyrano. they seem to drink your verse, my friend; but see you not how they assimilate your stock of eatables? ragueneau (_in low tone, smiling_). i see, but notice not, for fear i'd trouble them; and reading so my lines affords me double joy, since thus i satisfy a weakness that i own, and feed the while poor souls whose pressing need is food! cyrano (_striking him on the shoulder_). i like you, ragueneau!.... (_ragueneau joins his friends, the poets. cyrano looks at him for a while, then suddenly says:_) tell me there, lise! (_lise, who seems to be engaged in a very animated flirtation with the musketeer, starts and comes down to cyrano._) this captain.... seems to be besieging you? lise (_offended_). oh! my eyes have a look haughty enough to vanquish all who attack my virtue. cyrano (_very firmly_). i like ragueneau very much. for this reason, mistress lise, i forbid that anybody should make him ridiculous.[ ] lise. but you mistake.... cyrano (_speaking loud, so as to be heard by the musketeer_). a word to the wise.... (_he bows to the musketeer, and, after looking at the clock, goes to the door, where he stands looking out._) lise (_to the musketeer, who simply returned cyrano's bow_). really, you surprise me!.... why do you not answer?.... speak of his nose.... the musketeer. his nose.... his nose.... that is easily said.... (_retires rapidly, lise following._) cyrano (_from the door, signals to ragueneau to draw away the poets_). pst!.... ragueneau (_pointing out to the poets the door to the right_). we shall be much more comfortable in there.... cyrano (_getting out of patience_). pst!.... pst!.... ragueneau (_pushing the poets along_). we'll read some more verses. first poet (_in despair, with his mouth full_). but the cakes!.... second poet. let us take them along. (_they all go out, following ragueneau, in a sort of procession, after having loaded themselves with cakes._) [ ] note.--the miserable pun on "puits" (well) was found possible to reproduce. needless to add that this is ambitious confectioner's verse, intentionally nonsensical. [ ] note.--_ridicuckoldulous_ would be an exact translation. _scene v._ cyrano, roxane, the duenna. cyrano. i shall hand her my letter if i feel that there is any hope, however slight!.... (_roxane, masked, and followed by the duenna, appears behind the glazed door, that cyrano opens eagerly._) be pleased to enter!.... (_walking up to the duenna_). as to you, duenna, one word! duenna. four words, if you will, sir. cyrano. are you fond of cake and such? duenna. to and beyond excess.[ ] cyrano (_taking paper bags from the counter_). good! here are two sonnets.... duenna. ugh! cyrano. ....that i fill with tartlets. duenna (_looking pleasant_). ah! cyrano. are you fond of cream cakes? duenna. more than fond when they contain too much cream! cyrano. here are six for you, wrapped in a poem. do you like all cakes? duenna. all, all, all. cyrano (_loading her with paper bags full of cakes_). here are a few. go now and eat them.... outside. duenna. but i.... cyrano (_pushing her out_). and do not return until you have eaten them all. (_he closes the door, comes down toward roxane, takes off his hat, and stops, respectfully, at a distance._) [ ] note.--the duenna, like roxane, is a "précieuse," an euphuist. _scene vi._ cyrano, roxane, _and, a moment_, the duenna. cyrano. among all moments be the present blessed, since, ceasing to forget that i exist,-- however humbly--you have come to say.... to say.... roxane (_who has unmasked_). to say: i thank you heartily. for, know you now, the fop, the brainless wretch you vanquished yesterday in noble strife, was being forced upon me.... (_bashfully_) ....as a mate for life, by one who says he loves me.... cyrano. guiche!.... who's good at scheming thus.... (_saluting_) so then i fought, not for my nose, but for your smiling eyes. roxane. and then i wished.... but the admission needs that i should find in you.... the brother that you were of yore....when we were children both. cyrano. when bergerac was our summer ground.... roxane. and reeds made up your goodly stock of swords.... cyrano. while waving corn gave flowing hair for dolls. roxane. what happy days! for you my will was law.... cyrano. you're now roxane; you then were madeleine. roxane. and pretty? cyrano. you were not a sorry sight. roxane. how often, romping, you would get a hurt! then, motherly, i'd say, in sternest voice: "another frolic and another scratch!".... (_she stops astonished._) the same to-day! what's this? (_cyrano tries to withdraw his hand._) no, let me see! you're still a boy, it seems.--say when and how! cyrano. at play just now, around the porte de nesle. roxane (_taking a seat at one of the tables, and wetting her handkerchief in a glass of water_). your hand! cyrano (_taking a seat near her_). how gently thoughtful you've remained! roxane. how many foes? cyrano. not quite a hundred. roxane. oh! do tell me all! cyrano. what for? it's better far you tell me what you did not dare to say.... roxane. but now i dare. the memories of yore assist me. i'm....in love with somebody. cyrano. indeed! roxane. who knows it not.... cyrano. indeed! roxane. .... not yet. cyrano. indeed! roxane. but he shall know it soon. cyrano. indeed! roxane. poor fellow, he has loved me timidly, and from afar, and never dared to speak! cyrano. indeed! roxane. your hand is feverish.... oh! i easily could see the truth beneath his bashfulness! cyrano. indeed!.... roxane (_as she finished bandaging his hand_). and see what a coincidence, dear cousin! he belongs to your regiment! cyrano. indeed!.... roxane (_laughing_). why, of course, he is a cadet in your company!.... cyrano. indeed! roxane. he bears on his brow the mark of intelligence, of genius! he is haughty, noble, young, intrepid, handsome,.... cyrano (_rising, very pale_). handsome! roxane. why! what is the matter? cyrano. the matter? nothing .... it is .... it is .... (_showing his hand and smiling_). this little scratch. roxane. oh! well, i really love him. i must say, however, that i have seen him only at the theatre .... cyrano. then you have not spoken to each other? roxane. our eyes alone have done the talking. cyrano. well, then, how do you know? roxane. beneath the linden trees of the place royal there is some gossipping .... and information has reached me .... cyrano. he is a cadet, you say? roxane. yes, a cadet in the guards. cyrano. his name? roxane. baron christian de neuvillette. cyrano. how?.... there is nobody of that name among the cadets. roxane. oh! yes, there is, since this morning. his captain is carbon of haughty-hall. cyrano. and so, quick, quick, we throw away our little heart?.... but my poor child.... the duenna (_looking in at the door_). monsieur de bergerac, i have finished the cakes! cyrano. well, then, read the verses that you will find on the bags! (_duenna disappears._) .... my poor child, for you who are accustomed to refined language, to subtle thoughts,--suppose he were thoroughly uninitiated, in fact, a savage! roxane. oh! no, he has the hair of a hero! cyrano. suppose he were as poor in speech as rich in hair. roxane. no, all his words are choice; i can tell by seeing him. cyrano. of course, all words are choice when they come through a mustache that is well curled.--but suppose he were a dunce!.... roxane (_striking the floor with her foot, impatiently_). well, it would kill me! there! cyrano (_after a pause_). and it is to tell me this that you asked me to meet you here? i fail to see the necessity of the appointment, madam. roxane. the fact is that somebody frightened me yesterday by telling me that you are all gascons in your company.... cyrano. and that we challenge any beardless hero who, through influence, and not being really a gascon, manages to get assigned to our gascon company? that is what you were told. roxane. and you imagine how i tremble for him? cyrano (_between his teeth_). not without good reason! roxane. but then i was reminded of you, and of your skill and courage, your great achievements; and i thought: if he, cyrano, whom everyone respects, would.... cyrano. 'tis well. i'll answer for your little baron. roxane. yes, defend him always, please. and many thanks! you know how fond of you i've always been? cyrano. oh! yes, i know. roxane. you'll be his friend? cyrano. i will. roxane. and he shall have no duels to fight. cyrano. none; you have my promise. roxane. ah! you are my dearest friend.--but i must go. (_she puts on her mask again, throws a lace scarf over her head, and then, in an unconcerned way says:_) but you did not relate to me your battle of last night. you must have been grand!.... tell him to write me. (_sends him a kiss with her hand._) dear, dear friend! cyrano. all is understood. roxane. one hundred men against one: you!--so, good bye!--we are the best of friends, are we not? cyrano. assuredly, we are! roxane. tell him to write!.... one hundred men!.... you'll tell me all about it later. to-day i cannot listen. one hundred men! how brave! cyrano (_bowing_). oh! i have done better since. (_exit roxane. cyrano remains motionless, his eyes on the floor. silence. the door to the right opens, and ragueneau passes in his head._) _scene vii._ cyrano, ragueneau, the poets, carbon of haughty-hall, the cadets, the crowd, _etc._, _later_ le bret, _and then_ guiche. ragueneau. the coast is clear? cyrano (_motionless_). yes. (_ragueneau makes a sign, and his friends come in. at the same moment appears in the doorway carbon of haughty-hall, in full uniform of captain of the guards; he lifts his arms on discovering cyrano._) carbon. here he is at last! cyrano (_raising his eyes_). captain!.... carbon (_rejoiced_). our hero! we heard it all. thirty at least of the cadets are here!.... cyrano (_falling back_). but, captain.... carbon (_trying to take him along_). come! they wish to see you! cyrano. no, i cannot! carbon. they are over the way, at the inn of the cross. cyrano. i cannot. carbon (_going to the door and shouting outside_). our hero refuses. he is out of sorts! a voice (_outside_). sandious![ ] (_noise outside. sound of swords and boots drawing near._) carbon (_rubbing his hands_). they are crossing the street!.... the cadets (_invading the shop_). milledious!--capededious!--mordious!--pocapdedious! ragueneau (_retreating in terror_). why, gentlemen, are you all from gascony? the cadets. everyone of us! a cadet (_to cyrano_). bravo! cyrano. baron, yours!.... another cadet (_shaking cyrano's hand_). bravo! cyrano. yours, baron! third cadet. allow me to embrace you! cyrano. baron, baron! several cadets. let us all embrace him! cyrano. baron.... baron.... spare me!.... ragueneau. but, gentlemen, are you all barons? the cadets. all of us! first cadet. with our coronets alone you could build a tower. le bret (_enters and runs up to cyrano_). an enthusiastic crowd is looking for you! cyrano (_frightened_). you didn't tell them where i am? le bret (_rubbing his hands_). of course i did! (_the street is crowded with pedestrians, chaises and coaches, all stopping before the door._) you saw roxane? cyrano (_rapidly_). be silent! the crowd (_outside_). cyrano! cyrano! (_they invade the shop, pushing each other, and shower cyrano with congratulations._) ragueneau (_standing on a table_). my shop is taken by storm! and almost wrecked! beautiful! beautiful! people around cyrano. dear friend!.... brave friend.... heroic friend!.... cyrano. yesterday i had nothing like as many friends!.... le bret (_delighted_). success, you see! success! a marquis (_running up with extended hands_). if you only knew, dear boy.... cyrano. dear boy? dear boy? on what field did we ever camp together? marquis. i should be pleased to present you, sir, to some ladies who are outside in my coach. cyrano. but, first, you--who will present you to me? le bret (_dumbfounded_). why! friend, what ails you? cyrano. be silent, please! a man of letters (_with pen and tablets_). may i not gather some details.... cyrano. you may not! le bret (_aside to cyrano_). but this is theophraste renaudot, who invented the gazette! cyrano. i care not! le bret. .... that sheet in which are found so many things of interest. the idea, it is said, has before it a great future. a poet. dear sir, i desire to build upon your name a pentacrostic. another poet. i desire, dear sir,.... cyrano. enough! enough! (_movement. the crowd becomes more orderly and opens. guiche appears, with an escort of officers: cuigy, brissaille, the officers who accompanied cyrano at the close of act i._) cuigy (_running up to cyrano_). here is monsieur de guiche! he is sent by marshal de gassion! guiche (_bowing to cyrano_). .... who desires to express to you, sir, his admiration for the wonderful prowess that we have just heard of. the crowd. bravo! bravo! cyrano (_bowing_). the marshal is a connoisseur in deeds of valour. guiche. he never would have believed the feat possible, if these gentlemen had not sworn that they witnessed it. cuigy. with our own good eyes! le bret (_aside, to cyrano, who seems lost in thought_). my good friend.... cyrano (_to le bret_). be silent! le bret (_aside to cyrano_). you seem to suffer! cyrano (_awakening and drawing himself up_). before all these people!.... i .... suffer!.... watch, and you shall see. guiche (_to whom cuigy has whispered a few words_). all know that you have accomplished wonders before this. you are serving the king with these hare-brained gascons, are you not? cyrano. yes, with the cadets. a cadet (_in stentorian tones_). with us! guiche (_looking at the gascons, who have aligned behind cyrano_). ah! ah!.... so these haughty-looking gentlemen are the famous.... carbon. cyrano! cyrano. captain? carbon. since my company is all here, i believe, present it to the count, if you please. cyrano (_taking two steps toward guiche, and pointing to the cadets_). fair gascony's cadets are they, with carbon--he of haughty-hall;[ ] they fight and lie without dismay, fair gascony's cadets are they! in heraldry they've all to say, and pedigrees like theirs appall. fair gascony's cadets are they, with carbon--he of haughty-hall! with eagle eye, in crane's array, with cat's mustache, and tooth for all, through rabble growling as they may, with eagle eye, in crane's array, they strut with hats in sad decay beneath their plumes so bright and tall! with eagle eye, in crane's array, with cat's mustache, and tooth for all! abdomen-blade and slash-away are names to them of pleasant fall. they thirst for glory night and day abdomen-blade and slash-away! in every battle brawl, or fray.... they congregate as for a ball.... abdomen-blade and slash-away are names to them of pleasant fall! fair gascony's cadets are they to husbands....writing on the wall! o woman, wench of godly clay, fair gascony's cadets are they! though jealous masters fume and bray, let trumpet sound! let cuckoo call! fair gascony's cadets are they, to husbands, writing on the wall! guiche (_comfortably seated in an armchair that ragueneau promptly brought in_). a poet is one of our choice luxuries to-day. will you be mine? cyrano. no, sir, nobody's! guiche. your ready wit, yesterday, caused much amusement to my uncle richelieu. i shall take pleasure in recommending you to him. le bret (_dazzled_). what a good fortune! guiche. you certainly must have rimed some five-act tragedy? le bret (_whispering to cyrano_). your "agrippine!" you'll have it played! guiche. yes, take your work to the cardinal. cyrano (_delighted and tempted_). but, really.... guiche. he is quite an expert, but will not make too many corrections! cyrano (_whose face has immediately resumed its severe look_). impossible, sir! my blood curdles at the thought of my verse being improved by the displacement or the addition of a single comma. guiche. but, on the other hand, my dear fellow, when a line pleases him, he pays for it a large price. cyrano. not so large a one as i myself pay. when i have written a line and then i fall in love with it, i buy it from and sing it to myself. guiche. your disposition is a proud one! cyrano. really, you noticed it? a cadet (_enters with, strung on a sword, a number of hats, crushed, pierced and very much dejected as to plumes_). behold, cyrano! this morning, on the quay, we found this sorry feathered game. the hats of those you put to flight!.... carbon. spolia opima! (_everybody laughs ._) cuigy. whoever paid these cut-throats must to-day regret his bargain. brissaille. does anyone know who it is? guiche. it is i! (_laughing stops short._) i had hired them--a nobleman is above doing these things himself--to chastise--a drunkard rimester. (_general embarrassment._) the cadet (_aside to cyrano, pointing to the hats_). what shall we do with them? they are greasy enough to make a stew. cyrano (_taking the sword on which the hats are strung, and allowing them, as he salutes, to slip off at the feet of guiche_). you may desire, sir, to return them to your friends. guiche (_rising and in sharp tones_). my chair, immediately! (_to cyrano, angrily_). as to you, sir!.... a voice (_in the street_). the chair of his lordship count de guiche. guiche (_who has conquered his feelings and now smiles_). no doubt you've read don quixote? cyrano. yes, and, when i hear the name of this enthusiast, i doff my hat. guiche. then kindly meditate the windmill chapter.... cyrano (_bowing_). yes,--i know--thirteenth. guiche. when windmills are attacked it happens oft.... cyrano. have i attacked some noble weather-vane? guiche. that, if their mighty arms revolve, a man is dashed to earth!.... cyrano. or lifted to the stars! (_exit guiche, who enters his chair. his friends, whispering. crowd withdraws._) _scene viii._ cyrano, le bret, the cadets, _who have taken seats at the tables, and are eating and drinking_. cyrano (_bowing out in an affectedly polite way those who are leaving without taking any further notice of him_). gentlemen--delighted--delighted--gentlemen-- le bret (_lifting his arms in despair_). a pretty mess you've made of it! cyrano. oh! of course! as usual, you must growl! le bret. come, now, you must admit that this constant assassination--that is the word--of every passing opportunity is, to say the least, a gross exaggeration. cyrano. well, yes, i do exaggerate. there! le bret (_triumphant_). you see! cyrano. but i do so as a matter of principle, for the sake of example. in my opinion, such exaggeration is good. le bret. suppose you set aside, a while, your soul heroic and success.... cyrano. what should i do?.... set out to find a power, influence, a master, then? a lowly ivy be that licks the trunk it uses for support? creep up by stealth, instead of rising strong? i thank you, no!--inscribe the verse i write to money bags, and play the low buffoon, to cause, on lips that i despise, a smile? i thank you, no! for breakfast eat a toad? wear out, or soil, especially my knees? forever prove how pliant is a spine? i thank you, no! give--only to exact? have ready praise for all, and strive to be a pygmy hero in a puny ring? i thank you, no! ask publishers to print my verse--at my expense? i thank you, no! seek favour from the solemn councils held by pompous fools in taverns and the like? i thank you, no! or try to build a name upon a single sonnet, sooner than write other sonnets? no. i thank you, no! be terrorized by journals vague and small, and hope the while they'll not forget me? no, i thank you! ever weigh, observe and fear? place gossip far above poetic lines? solicit, beg, crave notoriety? i thank you, no! i thank you, nay!.... but, oh!.... to sing, to dream, to laugh, to be alone and free, with eyes that naught will cause to turn, and with a voice that naught will cause to shake! to cock your hat, if you feel so disposed: for this, or that, to fight--or write a verse! to plan, without a thought of gold or fame, a novel trip, perhaps unto the moon! to write but what is honestly your own, and, diffident for once, reflect: my boy, be satisfied with flower, fruit.... or leaf, if they have grown on soil that's strictly yours! then, if perchance a bit of fame is earned, to feel that none of it to cæsar's due! the truth is there, and so is honesty: despise to ape the ivy-parasite, and try to be an oak, or elm, to rise, not very high, perhaps, but rise alone! le bret. alone, you're right! but not opposing all! why should you make so many enemies? cyrano. because i see you make so many friends, and smile on them with mouths i'll not describe.[ ] i'm glad to pass with fewer greetings met, and proud to think: another enemy! le bret. you are insane! cyrano. perhaps. my vice is such. i'm pleased if i displease. indeed, i love to gather hatred. friend, you've never felt the thrill that's caused by walking on erect, while fifty pairs of eyes are sending shot, as if they were so many guns! and then.... how comical the spots on doublets made by envy's gall and cowardice's slaver! --loose friendships like to those you cultivate resemble the italian collars, soft and open-worked, that feminize your necks. they're easy and of tranquil-going mien; your head with them can bend to any will. not so with me! for hatred, every morn, makes stiff the ruff that forces up my head! an enemy i gain's another fold that straightens me the more, perhaps, but adds a beam to my renown. the spanish ruff, though sitting on the neck as would a yoke, with some can be a halo 'round the head! le bret (_after a pause, passing his arm through cyrano's_). speak out aloud your pride and bitterness, but whisper to me then: she loves me not! [ ] note.--this is a gascon oath. like the similar oaths following, it would if translated literally (blood of god,) lose its picturesque and really innocent character. all of these are oath-sounds rather than oaths, and somewhat oath-evading, after the fashion of "goldarn it," in america. [ ] note.--the name "castel-jaloux," in the original, being indicative of gascon pride and superlativeness, it was thought better to translate it in order to preserve colour. but here arose the question: "him" or "he" of haughty-hall? both cases have their champions, with most excellent reasons. it was thought, however, that argument might be avoided and the line be made more effective by the insertion of a dash after "carbon," thus leaving time for the imaginary interrogation: "what carbon?" following which suspension, the answer is. "he of haughty-hall" is the carbon meant. [ ] note.--the text here, justified by a current french expression, would be too broad in english. _scene ix._ cyrano, le bret, the cadets, christian de neuvillette. a cadet (_seated at a table in the rear, drinking_). cyrano! (_cyrano turns._) that narrative, please. cyrano. yes, presently! (_he takes the arm of le bret, going up and speaking in low tone to him._) the cadet (_rising and coming down_). the details of the fight! they will make the best kind of lesson.... (_stopping near the table before which christian is seated_) for a timid apprentice! christian (_looking up_). apprentice! another cadet. just so, sickly northerner! christian. sickly! first cadet (_sneeringly_). monsieur de neuvillette, there's something you must learn, to wit: there exists a thing that, with us, must never be even alluded to--no more than a rope in the house of one who was hung. christian. and what is that? another cadet (_in terrifying tone_). look at me! (_with his finger he, three times, strikes his nose._) you understand? christian. oh! you mean the.... another cadet. hush!.... the word is never pronounced.... (_pointing to cyrano, who, in the rear, is talking with le bret_). .... or else trouble is sure. another cadet (_who, while christian was looking the other way, took a seat on the table_). two men were killed by him because they spoke through the nose--a subject he dislikes! another cadet (_springing up from underneath the table, where he had crawled_). those who desire to die young have but to come here and speak of the fatal cartilage. another cadet (_placing his hand on christian's shoulder_). one word's enough. did i say: a word? one motion, just one, suffices. and drawing out one's handkerchief is equivalent to weaving one's shroud! (_silence. all the cadets remain, with folded arms, staring at christian. christian goes up to carbon of haughty-hall, who has been conversing with an officer and affecting not to notice the proceedings._) christian. captain! carbon (_turning, and with a severe look_). sir? christian. when one encounters southerners possessed of too much braggadocio.... carbon. the right thing to do? prove to them that you may come from the north and still be brave. (_carbon turns._) christian. captain, i thank you. first cadet (_to cyrano_). and now your narrative! other cadets. yes, his narrative! cyrano (_coming down to them_). my narrative? well, here it is! (_they gather around him, some seated, some standing. christian straddles a chair._) well, then, i was walking along so as to meet them. the moon, in the sky, looked like a big silver watch; when suddenly some zealous watch-maker, i suppose, began passing over it, with a view to making it shine, no doubt, some cloudy cotton. in consequence, the night became as dark as possible, and, mordious! i could not see further.... christian. than the end of your nose. (_silence. everybody rises slowly, frightened, and looking at cyrano, whom the interruption has astounded. general expectancy._) cyrano. who is this man? a cadet (_in subdued tone_). one who joined this morning. cyrano (_going toward christian_). this morning? carbon. his name is baron de neuvillette. cyrano (_rapidly, stopping_). oh! very well then!.... (_he turns pale, then reddens, and appears ready to throw himself upon christian._) i must.... (_restraining himself, however_). that is different. (_resuming_). as i was saying.... (_with ill-concealed fury_). mordious!.... (_continuing in a natural tone_).... i could not see very far. (_general stupefaction. all take their seats again, looking at cyrano._) so, i was walking on, thinking how i was going to disappoint some mighty lord desirous of pulling.... christian. your nose!.... (_everybody rises again, while christian rocks on his chair._) cyrano (_half choking_). my ears!.... and how imprudent some people might find me for thus poking.... christian. your nose.... cyrano. no, my finger, between the tree and the bark. for this great lord might be powerful enough to rap me.... christian. on the nose.... cyrano (_wiping the perspiration from his forehead_). no, on the fingers. but i said to myself: go ahead, gascon; do your duty! on, cyrano! then, abruptly, out of the dark, somebody made a lunge at me. i parried: when suddenly, i found myself.... christian. nose to nose.... cyrano (_bounding toward him_). ventre--saint--gris!.... (_all the gascons advance to witness the scene. but cyrano, on coming up to christian, masters himself, and continues:_) confronted by a hundred drunken rascals.... smelling.... christian. with their hundred noses.... cyrano (_pale as death, but smiling_). ....strongly of onion and garlic! i rushed forward blindly.... christian. without nosing.... cyrano. and charged them! down went two of them. a third i ran through. they lunged, i parried, and struck down, how many?.... christian. who knows!.... cyrano (_bursting with rage_). thunder and lightning! clear the room! (_the cadets rush toward the door._) first cadet. the tiger wakes! cyrano. all out! leave me alone with this man! second cadet. we'll find the fellow in mince-meat. ragueneau. mince-meat. not fit, though, for my pies. (_all go out, by the rear, the sides and the staircase. cyrano and christian remain face to face staring at each other fiercely._) _scene x._ cyrano, christian. cyrano. embrace me! christian. sir!.... cyrano. you are brave. christian. perhaps. but.... cyrano. very brave. i prefer it so. christian. kindly explain.... cyrano. embrace me! i am her brother! christian. whose brother? cyrano. her's! roxane's! christian (_running up to him_). you! the brother of roxane? cyrano. well, very much the same: a brotherly cousin. christian. and she?.... cyrano. told me all! christian. does she love me? cyrano. perhaps! christian (_taking cyrano's hands_). how happy i feel, sir, to know you! cyrano. rather a sudden sentiment, is it not? christian. forgive me, but.... cyrano (_looking well at him, and laying his hand on christian's shoulder_). it's a fact. a fine-looking fellow, this rascal! christian. i only wish you knew, sir, how much i admire you. cyrano. yes? but what of all those noses that you.... christian. i withdraw them, sir! cyrano. roxane expects a letter to-night. christian. that is the trouble. cyrano. how so? christian. i am lost if i remain silent!.... cyrano. well then?.... christian. but, i am ashamed to own it, i am too stupid to write. cyrano. stupid? you are not, friend, since you realise your inability. moreover, your attack upon me was not that of a dunce. christian. oh! it is easy enough to find words for a fight! yes, perhaps i have a sort of easy, military wit; but, facing women, i am struck dumb. oh! their eyes seem favourable enough as i pass them.... cyrano. are not their hearts the same when you stop? christian. no, for i belong to those--and i know it--who tremble, and know not how to speak of love. cyrano. strange!.... it seems to me that, if i were better looking, i should belong to the other class: those who know and dare. christian. oh! that i could with elegance express my feelings! cyrano. or be a pretty little musketeer! christian. roxane is a "_précieuse_," and, in her eyes, i shall be disgraced! cyrano (_looking at christian_). oh! that for the feelings of my soul i had such an interpreter! christian (_despairing_). what would i not give for eloquence! cyrano (_eagerly_). i'll lend you some! lend you to me your physical attraction, and the two combined will constitute the hero of a romance. christian. what then? cyrano. would you feel equal to repeating the daily lessons i could give you? christian. what is it you propose? cyrano. in roxane's eyes you shall not be disgraced. together, if you will, we can gain her love. will you allow the soul so ill-restrained by my buckskin here to breathe and sing beneath your embroidered doublet?.... christian. but cyrano.... cyrano. .... christian, will you? christian. would it give you so much pleasure? cyrano (_enraptured_). it would.... (_returning to his senses, and lightly_) it would amuse me! a trial this to tempt a poet. come! we shall complete each other, if you will. you'll walk, and i'll be near you in the shade! i'll be the breath, and you shall be the form! christian. but that letter she expects. i cannot write it.... cyrano (_taking from his doublet the letter he wrote a while before_). your letter?.... here it is! christian. how is this? cyrano. it lacks nothing but the address. you may send it. feel no anxiety. it is as it should be. christian. but how is it that you?.... cyrano. we poets have about us, as a rule, fine letters to the women we adore.... in our dreams. for we belong to those whose love is but a fleeting fancy blown into the rainbow-bubble of a name! take this and make a truth of what is feigned. my rambling words of rapture flutter like bewildered birds; you'll cause them to alight. the letter shows, itself--now take it!--that my eloquence was born of artifice. christian. but there may be a few words to change. thus, written at random, will it fit roxane? cyrano. it will fit her like a glove! human vanity is so credulous that roxane will never doubt the letter was written for her! christian. you are my dearest friend! (_he throws himself into cyrano's arms. they remain embracing._) _scene xi._ cyrano, christian, the gascons, the musketeer, lise. a cadet (_half opening the door_). complete silence.... the silence of death.... i fear to look around! (_after a survey_) what!.... several cadets (_entering and looking at cyrano and christian locked in each other's arms_). ah!.... oh!.... impossible!.... (_consternation._) the musketeer (_jeeringly_). well, well!.... carbon. our quarrelsome demon has become as lamblike as an apostle! struck on one of his nostrils--he offers the other! the musketeer. so, now we may speak of his nose!.... (_calling lise, triumphantly_). lise, just come and see!.... (_sniffing with affectation_). why!.... why!.... this is surprising! it smells here of.... (_going up to cyrano_). but you, sir, must have noticed it? it smells of.... cyrano (_slapping musketeer's face_). five-leaf clover! (_general rejoicing, cyrano is himself again. cadets turn somersaults._) _curtain._ [illustration: _second act._] [illustration: _second act._] _act iii._ the kiss of roxane. _a small public square in the old marais quarter of paris. old houses, narrow streets. to the right roxane's house and garden, over the wall of which spread and hang the branches of large trees inside. above the door, a window and a balcony. by the door a stone bench._ _ivy creeps up the wall, and a jasmine twines around the balcony. by means of the bench and of stones projecting from the wall, it is comparatively easy to climb up to the balcony._ _over the way, an old house in the same style, brick and stone, with a door, the knocker of which is wrapped with rags like a sore finger._ _as the curtain rises, the duenna is seated on the bench. the window on roxane's balcony is wide open. standing near the duenna is ragueneau, wearing a sort of livery. he is concluding a story, and wiping his eyes._ _scene i._ ragueneau, the duenna, _later_ roxane, cyrano, _and two pages_. ragueneau. .... and then she left with a musketeer! deserted and ruined, i hung myself, and i was already off for another world, when enter monsieur de bergerac. he unhung me and offered me to his cousin for a steward. the duenna. but how were you ruined so? ragueneau. lise had a weakness for the military, and i for poets. mars ate all the cakes that apollo left. oh! they made short work of it! the duenna (_rises and calls toward the window_). roxane! are you ready? we'll be late. voice of roxane (_through the window_). i'm putting on my cape! the duenna (_to ragueneau, pointing to the door of the house over the way_). we are expected over there, at clomire's. she holds her literary assizes. there will be a reading. subject: the tender passion! ragueneau. the tender passion, indeed! the duenna (_smirking_). the tender passion. why not? (_calling toward the window_). roxane, come down! or we shall miss the discourse on the tender passion. voice of roxane. i am coming! (_sound of string instruments growing gradually nearer._) voice of cyrano (_singing in the wings_). la, la, la, la! the duenna (_surprised_). music for us! cyrano (_followed by two pages each with an archlute_). i say again that it's a demi-semi-quaver, you triple fool! first page (_with irony_). so then, sir, you have thorough knowledge of quavers? cyrano. i am a musician, as are all the disciples of gassendi. the page (_playing and singing_). la, la! cyrano (_snatching from him the archlute and continuing the music_). i can go on! la, la, la, la! roxane (_appearing on the balcony_). so, it is you? cyrano (_continuing the same air_). yes, i who come to celebrate the lily, and to extol the glory of the ro....se! roxane. i'll be down in a moment. (_she leaves the balcony._) the duenna (_to cyrano, pointing to the two pages_). and who may be these two songsters? cyrano. oh! they are part of a bet i won. d'assoucy and i had a discussion on a point of grammar. no! yes! no! yes! of a sudden he points to these two scarecrows here, his constant escort, great in the art of scratching a string with a claw, and he says: "i'll bet you a whole day of music!"--he lost. and now, until to-morrow comes, i must enjoy both the strains and the presence of these two harmonious witnesses of all my acts!.... pleasant, if you like, in the beginning, but now the pleasure is growing less. (_to the musicians_). hep!.... just go and play a pavan--with my compliments--for that actor montfleury! (_pages go up. to the duenna_). i've come this evening--as on previous evenings-- (_to the pages who are leaving_). play long,--and out of tune! (_to duenna_). to ask roxane if the friend of her soul is still as faultless as before. roxane (_coming out of the house_). how beautiful, how clever he is! and how i love him! cyrano (_smiling_). indeed! and is christian so very clever?.... roxane. yes, dear friend, more so even than yourself! cyrano. so be it, then! roxane. to my mind, it would be impossible for anyone to deliver with more elegance and wit than he does these pretty trifles that are nothing, if you will--and still are everything. at times, it is true, he seems quite absent-minded; but, suddenly, he recovers and says the most charming things! cyrano (_incredulous_). you surprise me! roxane. you men are really astonishing! because christian is handsome, he _must_ be stupid! cyrano. i doubt if he can speak of hearts and love. roxane. he does not speak of, he lectures on them, sir! cyrano. and he writes? roxane. still better. just listen. (_reciting_). "the more you take of what's my heart, the more i've left." (_triumphantly_). what think you of that? cyrano. so! so! roxane. and of this? (_reciting_). "since i must suffer and, to suffer, have a heart, if you would keep the heart that's mine, then send me yours." cyrano. at first he had too much heart; now he has not enough. it would be interesting to know exactly how much heart would satisfy him. roxane. you are exasperating! true jealousy!.... cyrano (_moved_). what?.... roxane. an author's jealousy! and is not this just as lovely as possible? listen! "t'ward you my heart, i swear, has but a single cry, and, if in written lines fond kisses could be sent, o madam, you would read this letter with your lips!" cyrano (_with an unconscious smile of satisfaction_). ha! ha! the lines are.... hum! hum!.... (_recovering and disdainfully_). .... really pretty weak! roxane. indeed! and this? cyrano. why! do you remember all his letters? roxane. every one of them! cyrano. undoubtedly, this is quite a compliment! roxane. he is a master! cyrano (_with modesty_). oh!.... a master!.... roxane (_with decision_). a master, i say! cyrano. so be it! a master! the duenna (_returning from the rear_). monsieur de guiche! (_to cyrano, pushing him toward the house_). get into the house. it is better he should not see you here--or else he might suspect.... roxane (_to cyrano_). yes, discover my secret. he loves me; he is powerful, and he must not know of my love. he could destroy it! cyrano (_entering the house_). very well, then, very well! (_enter guiche._) _scene ii._ roxane, guiche, the duenna, _at a distance_. roxane (_to guiche, with a curtsey_). i was just going out. guiche. and i have come to take leave, before starting for the front. roxane. oh!.... guiche. i am ordered to the siege of arras.... roxane. oh!.... guiche. .... and i go to-night. roxane. oh!.... guiche. my departure does not seem to distress you greatly.... roxane. oh!.... guiche. .... but i seriously grieve over it. shall i ever see you again?.... when?.... by the way, i have been given a high command. roxane (_indifferent_). i congratulate you! guiche. the guards regiment. roxane (_interested_). oh! the guards? guiche. yes, the regiment in which is your cousin, the man of boastful words. i'll have my revenge when i get him at the siege. roxane (_overcome_). what! the guards are going there? guiche (_laughing_). of course, since they are now my regiment. roxane (_sinking on the bench--aside_). christian! guiche. what ails you? roxane (_moved_). this.... departure.... grieves me sorely. to know that those you.... care for.... are going to battle! guiche (_surprised and pleased_). why is it i hear words so sweet only on the day of my departure? roxane (_changing her manner and using her fan_). so, then, you mean to seek revenge on my cousin cyrano? guiche (_surprised_). do you take his part? roxane. i? not at all. i am against him. guiche. do you see him often? roxane. very seldom. guiche. i meet him everywhere.... with one of those cadets.... this neu.... vil.... neuvil.... roxane. a tall man? guiche. a blond. roxane. red-haired, rather. guiche. handsome!.... roxane. for some, perhaps, but.... guiche. but very stupid. roxane. so it struck me! (_changing her manner_). ....your revenge as regards cyrano no doubt consists in holding him under fire, which he relishes. so i hardly see great vengeance for you in that. i can tell you, though, what would wound him to the quick!.... guiche. and that is?.... roxane. to have his regiment and his dear cadets remain, so long as there is war, right here, in paris, inactive! the only way to punish him is to deprive him of danger. guiche. woman! woman! no one but a woman would think of such a scheme! (_getting closer to roxane_). you have then some regard for me? (_she smiles._) the fact that you take sides with me, roxane, is, in my eyes, a proof of love. roxane. it is one. guiche (_showing several sealed papers_). i have the orders here for every company, and they shall be sent immediately, except.... (_he takes one out of the batch_) this one! it is for the cadets, and (_puts it into a pocket_) i hold it back! ha! ha! cyrano....so eager for the fray! and so you play with people as with mice, roxane? roxane. sometimes! guiche (_quite close to her_). you enthrall me! roxane, listen. to-night--yes, i know, i must depart. but leave you when i feel that you are moved!....i cannot. hear me! close by here is the convent of the capuchin fathers. laymen cannot enter it; but, as the fathers serve my uncle richelieu, they have some regard for his nephew, and they will give me a place of concealment. officially, i shall have left for the front, but i shall return to you under the cover of a mask. allow me to delay my departure a few hours, dear waywardness! roxane. but if you are discovered! your reputation.... guiche. i'll risk it. roxane. but the siege.... arras.... guiche. i care not. grant me your permission! roxane. no! guiche. do! roxane (_affectionately_). my duty says that i must forbid! i beseech you, go! (_aside_). christian remains here! (_aloud_). i would have you be a hero--antoine! guiche. celestial word!--and so you love the one.... roxane. for whom i tremble? yes! guiche (_enraptured_). 'tis well, i leave! (_kisses her hand._) are you satisfied? roxane. yes, dearest friend! (_exit guiche._) the duenna (_curtseying mockingly behind guiche_). yes, dearest friend. roxane (_to duenna_). not a word, if you please. cyrano would never forgive me for stealing his war from him! (_calling toward the house_). cousin! _scene iii._ roxane, the duenna, cyrano. roxane (_pointing to door of house opposite hers_). we are going to clomire's. alcandre is to speak, so is lysimon. duenna. yes, but my little finger says that we shall be late. cyrano. make haste lest you miss part of their monkey talk. duenna (_looking at knocker_). that's right, they have gagged this noisy little wretch. it might have interrupted the finest speeches. (_she knocks very gently. door opens._) roxane (_about to pass in. to cyrano_). were christian to come, as is likely, request him to wait for me, please. cyrano. i shall. (_as she is passing in the door, she turns, on hearing cyrano speak._) and what question do you intend, as is your wont, to propound to him to-day? roxane. the question of.... cyrano (_eagerly_). of?.... roxane. but you'll remain silent! cyrano. as a prison wall. roxane. no question at all!.... i shall simply say to him: proceed--without a rein!--extemporise. speak of love. be grand! cyrano (_smiling_). excellent idea! roxane. hush! cyrano. hush! (_roxane enters, closing the door._) cyrano (_bowing to the door_). very many thanks! (_the door opens and roxane passes out her head._) roxane. he might try to prepare!.... cyrano. that would never do!.... together. hush! (_door closes._) cyrano (_calling_). christian! _scene iv._ cyrano, christian. cyrano. now i'm informed! prepare your memory. there is glory in store for you.--drop your bad humour, and let us haste to your house, where i shall coach you. christian. no! cyrano. what! christian. i'll wait for roxane here. cyrano. have you gone mad? come, come! christian. no! i said. i am weary of committing to memory my letters, my speeches.... weary of playing a part....weary of trembling lest i fail! all good and well in the beginning! but now i feel that she really loves me! many thanks, i fear nothing now. i'll speak unprompted. cyrano. so, indeed! christian. probably you think that i cannot?.... after all, i'm not so stupid! you shall see! your lessons have improved me. i'll speak unaided. and--speak or not--i'll know enough to clasp her in my arms! (_perceiving roxane coming out of clomire's house_). it is she! cyrano, for pity's sake, do not leave me! cyrano (_bowing to him_). you'll speak unprompted, sir. (_he disappears behind the garden wall._) _scene v._ christian, roxane, the duenna, _a moment_. roxane (_coming out of clomire's house, in company with several ladies and gentlemen.--curtsies_). barthénoïde!--alcandre--grémione!.... duenna (_in despair_). we missed the discourse on the tender passion! (_enters house of roxane._) roxane (_going up to christian_). oh! here you are!.... twilight is coming, the air is balmy, and there is nobody about. let us be seated. speak. i'm listening. (_she takes a seat on the bench. christian sits near her. silence._) christian. i love you! roxane (_closing her eyes_). yes, speak of love! christian. i love thee! roxane. yes, that is the theme. amplify! christian. i love.... roxane. expatiate! christian. so deeply!.... roxane. of course.... and then?.... christian. and then?.... i should feel so happy if you loved me! roxane, do say that you love me! roxane (_pouting_). you offer me porridge when i expected cream! now, say _how_ you love me. christian. i love you....very much. roxane. uncloud your sentiments a little! christian. your neck! ah! that i could press my lips to it! roxane. christian, for shame! christian. i love you! roxane (_about to rise_). again! christian (_restraining her_). no! i do _not_ love you.... roxane (_settling again into her seat_). that is better! christian. i adore you! roxane (_rising and from a distance_). oh! the same thing! christian. yes--i feel that i am getting stupid! roxane. yes, and it displeases me. no more should i like to have you lose your good looks. christian. but.... roxane. come, call up all your eloquence, just now put to flight. christian. i.... roxane. yes, i know, you love me. farewell! (_she goes toward the door._) christian. do not go! let me tell you.... roxane (_opening her door_). that you adore me?.... but i know it already. no! no! you had better leave me! christian. but hear me, roxane.... (_she closes the door in his face._) cyrano (_who has just appeared without being seen_). quite a success! _scene vi._ christian, cyrano, the pages, _a moment_. christian. help! help! cyrano. no, sir! christian. i'll die if she does not this moment relent.... cyrano. what can i do? this very moment drum into you.... christian (_clasping cyrano's arm_). see! there she comes! (_light in the balcony window._) cyrano (_moved_). her window! christian. help me! or i'll die! cyrano. speak lower! christian (_whispering_). it is life or death to me! cyrano. the night is dark.... christian. well, speak! cyrano. the harm can be undone. you do not deserve it, you wretch!....but stand there before the balcony! i'll remain beneath it--and prompt you! christian. but, my friend.... cyrano. obey orders! the pages (_in the rear, to cyrano_). hep! cyrano (_silencing them_). hush! first page (_in a whisper_). we have serenaded montfleury. cyrano (_in a whisper, quickly to pages_). you, stand on this corner....and you, on that one. if anyone comes along, play an air. second page. what sort of air would suit gassendi? cyrano. lively for a woman; for a man a sad one! (_pages disappear, taking two different streets._) (_to christian_) now, call her! christian (_calling_). roxane. cyrano (_picking up a few pebbles that he throws against the window_). wait! a few pebbles. roxane (_half opening her window_). who calls me? christian. i. roxane. who is i? christian. i, christian. roxane (_scornfully_). oh! you! christian. i must speak to you. cyrano (_under the balcony, to christian_). good! lower your voice. roxane. no! you speak too clumsily. better go! christian. be pitiful!.... roxane. no! you love me no more! christian (_prompted by cyrano_). you accuse me....merciful gods!....of loving no more....when....i love more! roxane (_stopping as she was going to close the window_). why! you are improving. christian (_still prompted_). love grows stronger in the restless soul--mine--that he has chosen....cruel child!....for a cradle! roxane (_coming out on the balcony_). better still!....but, since this love is so cruel, you were foolish, indeed, not to smother it at its birth! christian (_prompted_). i tried....but without success: this new-born babe, madam, is a little hercules. roxane. still better! christian (_prompted_). in fact, he....strangled without an effort....two serpents....pride and....doubt.... roxane (_leaning on the balcony railing_). very good indeed! but why do you speak so....deliberately? has your imagination the gout, that it limps so? cyrano (_drawing christian under the balcony, and noiselessly taking christian's place before it_). hush! the task is getting too difficult!.... roxane. to-night you waver in your speech. why so? cyrano (_speaking in a low tone as christian did before him_). because night has come, and, in the dark, my words must wander in search of your ear. roxane. but my words meet with no such difficulty. cyrano. yours find a resting-place immediately. oh! very naturally, since i receive them into my heart. remember that my heart is large, while your ear is very small. moreover, your words descend! thus have they speed. while mine must rise, madam: they require more time! roxane. but they have been rising much better for the last few moments. cyrano. they are getting trained to climbing! roxane. the fact is that i am speaking to you from quite a height! cyrano. assuredly, and you would kill me if, from such an elevation, you allowed a sharp word to drop upon my heart! roxane (_moved_). i'll come down. cyrano (_quickly_). no! roxane (_pointing to the stone bench under the balcony_). step upon the bench, then, and climb up here! cyrano (_frightened and retreating_). no! roxane. you surprise me.... why not? cyrano (_more and more moved_). let us rather improve.... this opportunity of.... speaking softly together.... without seeing each other. roxane. what! to each other almost invisible? cyrano. as now.--let us enjoy the bliss there is in seeking to distinguish one the other. for you, i'm but the darkness of a cloak; for me, you are the whiteness of a robe. i'm shadow only, you are blessèd light! if ever you have thought me eloquent.... roxane. i have. cyrano. remember now that my words never yet came from my true heart. roxane. why not? cyrano. because.... until now.... i have spoken to you through.... roxane. through what? cyrano. the spell that you cast upon those who bask in the light of your eyes!.... and so, this night, to me it seems as if i were about to speak to you for the first time! roxane. ah! that is why your voice seems different. cyrano (_feverish, and coming up closer to the balcony_). yes, different; for, now that darkness shields me, i dare to be myself at last, i dare.... (_he stops, bewildered._) where was i?.... i forget.... pardon my confusion.... all this is so exquisite.... so new to me!.... roxane. so new! cyrano (_quite bewildered, and trying to explain_). so new!.... why! yes.... it's new to be sincere. and then.... a fear of ridicule.... roxane. ridicule? for what? cyrano. my emotional flights! my heart, through diffidence, forever calls upon my mind to shield it from disdain: i start to cull a star, and then i halt, for fear of ridicule, to pick a floret. roxane. a floret has its charms. cyrano. disdain them now! roxane. you never spoke to me as now you speak! cyrano. oh! let us set aside the pygmy things, the superannuated niceties of love as it is understood to-day! why sip by drops the waters of a spring, when from a river we can freely quaff? roxane. but mind and wit? cyrano. they serve to make you stay. but now 'twould be an insult to the night, to fragrance, and to fate, and nature too, if we should hold unto affected style. one look above, and artifice disarms! i fear that, with this subtle alchemy, the truth of sentiment might vapourise, the soul exhaust itself in futile play, and niceties be carried to a point so pointed that it end in nothingness! roxane. but mind and wit? cyrano. i hate them now. it is a crime to force sweet love to bandy words! there comes a time, moreover, be assured-- oh! how i pity those who feel it not!-- when our breast o'erflows with noble love, a love that pretty words must desecrate! roxane. since now for both of us the time has come, what words shall i expect from you? cyrano. all, all, all those i know; accept them scattered loose, unsought, unbound. i love you--let me breathe!-- i love thee[ ], and i rave. 'tis joy too much! thy name is in my heart as in a bell, roxane, and, as my heart forever throbs, the bell is e'er the sounder of thy name. of thee there's nought i do not hoard and love: i mind me that, last year, the twelfth of may, a twist was changed in what's a crown, thy hair! thy glowing hair to me is truly light. when we have gazed too long upon the sun, we see on things around a halo reign; 'tis thus when i have lost the light thou shedst: my dazzled eyes are filled with golden sparks! roxane. yes, this is love-- cyrano. the passion in my heart is jealous, fierce, with sadness tainted, but it's really love--love shorn of selfish thought. would i could give my happiness for thine-- e'en shouldst thou ne'er suspect whose gift it was-- if i could hear, perchance and from afar, the music of thy bliss, my offering! from every glance of thine fresh virtue springs, fresh valour, too. oh! say i'm understood, and that thou feelst my soul ascend to thee! all is to-night too beautiful and sweet! and still it's true! i speak, at last, to thee. yes, i to thee! 'tis bliss too great! my hopes, my wildest hopes ne'er leaped to such a height; my dream's no dream, and i can die content. because of me she quivers with the trees! for, leaf divine, you tremble with the leaves! thou tremblest, for, against thy will or not, i feel, oh, bliss! the tremour of thy hand descending now along these flowery vines. (_he imprints a passionate kiss upon one of the branches._) roxane. i tremble, yes; i weep, i love, i'm thine! i am enthralled! cyrano. may death then come along, since rapture's born of me, of me alone! what more can i expect of life?-- christian (_under the balcony_). a kiss! roxane (_falling back_). what? cyrano. oh! roxane. you claim?-- cyrano. yes--i-- (_aside to christian_). you go too far. christian (_aside to cyrano_). now she is moved, it's time for me to act. cyrano (_to roxane_). yes, i.... i asked.... it is true.... but now i realise how more than bold i was. roxane (_somewhat disappointed_). and you do not insist? cyrano. insist? of course i do.... but with reserve!.... yes, i know your modesty's offended. so, i withdraw the kiss.... refuse it to me! christian (_with a tug at cyrano's cloak_). why so? cyrano. be silent, christian! roxane (_leaning over the balcony_). what are you muttering? cyrano. i was reproving myself for going too far. i was saying: be silent christian!.... (_sound of archlute._) one moment please!.... some one comes. (_roxane closes her window. cyrano listens to the archlutes; one of them plays a lively air, and the other a sad one._) lively?.... sad?.... a woman or a man? no, a monk! (_enter monk holding a lighted lantern. he goes from house to house, looking at the doors._) [ ] note.--in this tirade, and in the following one, _you_, _thou_ and _she_ are intentionally interwoven. when cyrano is carried by his emotion, he passes from _you_ to _thou_, which latter is, in french, familiar and endearing much more than in english. then, reclaimed by reason and fearing that he has overstepped the bounds, he returns to the (in french) more formal _you_, or resorts to a discreet _she_, only to forget himself again and to resume the caressing _thou_. _scene vii._ cyrano, christian, _a_ capuchin monk. cyrano (_to the monk_). are you a new diogenes? monk. i'm looking for the house of madam magdeleine robin. cyrano (_pointing to one of the streets_). that way--straight ahead--as far as you can go.... monk. thank you, sir!--i'll tell my beads for you. (_exit monk._) cyrano. peace be with you! i bid you godspeed! (_comes down toward christian._) _scene viii._ cyrano, christian. christian. obtain for me that kiss! cyrano. no, sir! christian. but, sooner or later, you know.... cyrano. true, the time will come, that time of bliss intense, when each will fall into the other's arms, and blond mustache to rosy lips will go! (_aside_) 'twas better that at least i cause the bliss. (_window above opens. christian conceals himself beneath the balcony._) _scene ix._ cyrano, christian, roxane. roxane (_coming out on the balcony_). is it you?--yes.... what were we speaking of?.... oh! of a.... well, of.... cyrano. a kiss! the word is soft. why hesitate? the name, be sure, will not maltreat your lips, however burning be the thing itself.-- just now, you left the trifling mood, to glide, to steal from smile to sigh, and sigh to tears. glide on!.... from tear to kiss there's but a thrill! roxane. be silent! cyrano. after all, what is a kiss? an oath that's given closer than before; a promise more precise; the sealing of confessions that till then were barely breathed; a ruby o to spell the verb: i love![ ] a secret that's confided to a mouth and not to ears; a precious moment of infinity that buzzes like a bee; communion with the fragrance flowers have; a gentle way for heart to breathe a heart, for soul from fervid lips to drink a soul! roxane. be still! cyrano. a kiss is oft a thing so grand that once a queen of france permitted one unto a happy lord. i said: a queen! roxane. and then? cyrano (_excited_). like buckingham, i've suffered long; like him i love a queen, the one that's you! like him, i'm sad and faithful.... roxane. and like him you've beauty. cyrano (_aside, abashed_). yes.... i've beauty.... i forgot! roxane. well, then, come up, to cull the flower.... cyrano (_pushing christian toward the balcony_). go! roxane. whose fragrance.... cyrano (_to christian_). go! roxane. the buzzing of the bee.... cyrano (_to christian_). go up! christian (_hesitating_). but now, it really seems a crime! roxane. a moment of infinity.... cyrano (_pushing christian_). you fool, go up! (_christian, by aid of bench, vines and posts, reaches the balcony and steps over the railing._) christian. roxane!.... (_he clasps her to his breast and kisses her on the lips._) cyrano (_aside_). what pinches so my heart?.... that kiss!.... a feast where i'm the lazarus!.... sweet feast, from thee there falls to me a crumb, since on the lips roxane mistakes, alas! she drinks the words that i just now pronounced! (_sound of instruments._) an air that's sad, a lively air!--the monk! (_affecting to run as if coming from a distance. in clear tone:_) hello! roxane. what is it? cyrano. it is i, cyrano. i was passing.... is christian still here? christian (_as if astonished_). why! it's cyrano! roxane. how do you do, cousin? cyrano. cousin, how do you do? roxane. i'll come down. (_she disappears into the house. by the rear, enter the monk._) christian (_perceiving him_). what! he again! (_he follows roxane._) [ ] note.--"un point rose qu'on met sur l'i du verbe aimer." "a ruby o"...., as above, may prove, it is thought, a good example of _equivalence_, the _i_, impossible here in english, finding in o a good substitute, calling up, if not exactly the very same image, at least a kindred one fully as good. _scene x._ cyrano, christian, roxane, the monk, ragueneau. the monk. she must live here--i insist--magdeleine robin! cyrano. why! you said _ro-lin_. monk. no! _bin_. b, i, n, _bin_! roxane (_appears in the doorway, followed by ragueneau, carrying a lighted lantern, and by christian_). what is it? monk. a letter. christian. what's this? monk (_to roxane_). oh! it can but be a saintly thing! a worthy gentleman.... roxane (_to christian_). evidently guiche! christian. he would dare?.... roxane. oh! he cannot long annoy me! i love you, and.... (_she opens the letter, and, by the aid of ragueneau's lantern, she reads to herself, in a low voice:_) "mademoiselle, "the drums are beating and my regiment is about to start. all think that i have already gone; but i have remained, thus disobeying you. i am here in the convent. i'll come to you forthwith, but i give you notice of my visit, through an innocent monk who knows not what message he is carrying. your lips smiled to me just now; i must see them again. dismiss whoever is near you, and condescend to hear the bold suitor whom you have, i trust, already forgiven, and who remains your most.... et cetera...." (_to the monk_). father, listen! here is what the letter says: (_all come up and listen, as she reads aloud:_) "mademoiselle, "you must submit to the will of the cardinal, however hard it may appear to you. and that is why i send this message by a saintly, most intelligent and discreet capuchin. we desire you to receive his blessing....(_turning the page_) his nuptial blessing immediately. christian must be married to you secretly. i send him to you, though i know you like him not. be resigned, remembering that heaven will bless your zeal. be assured, mademoiselle, of my respect, for i have been and shall ever be your most humble and very.... et cetera." monk (_delighted_). worthy gentleman! i knew he could suggest but a saintly thing! roxane (_aside to christian_). do you not think i read letters well? christian. it depends.... roxane (_aloud, in despair_). ah!.... this is terrible! monk (_throwing the light of the lantern upon cyrano_). are you the groom? christian. i am the one! monk (_turning the light upon christian and as if he was in doubt on seeing christian's handsome looks_). but, my son.... roxane (_eagerly_). there is a post scriptum: "donate to the convent one hundred and twenty pistoles." monk. worthy, worthy gentleman! (_to roxane_) be resigned! roxane (_with a martyr's look_). i am! (_while ragueneau shows the monk into the house, on christian's invitation, roxane, in low tone, says to cyrano_). guiche is coming. detain him here until.... cyrano. i understand. (_to the monk_). to give them your blessing will take you.... how long? monk. a quarter of an hour. cyrano (_pushing them all into the house_). go in, go in! only one must remain here: i! roxane (_to christian_). come! (_they all go into the house._) cyrano. how can i detain guiche fifteen minutes? oh! i have a plan! (_he climbs upon the balcony. the archlutes play a sort of dirge._) this time it must be a man, most certainly. it is! (_he is on the balcony, with his hat well down over his eyes. takes off his sword, wraps himself in his cloak, leans over the railing and observes._) no! really not too high! (_straddles the railing, seizes a long branch of one of the trees and makes ready to drop._) i'll only slightly disturb the atmosphere! _scene xi._ cyrano, guiche. guiche (_masked, and hesitating in the dark_). what can this infernal monk be doing? cyrano. by the way--my voice?--he might recognise it! (_he loosens a hand and makes the motion of turning a key._) cric! crac! (_solemnly_) now, cyrano, resume the accent of bergerac! guiche (_looking at the house_). here's the house! (_he is about to enter, but cyrano springs from the balcony while holding on to the branch; the latter bends and lets him down between guiche and the door. he affects to fall heavily, as if from a great height, remaining crushed and dazed. guiche jumps back._) what is this? (_when guiche recovers from his astonishment the branch has sprung up again, so that cyrano appears to have fallen from the sky._) from where did this man drop? cyrano (_speaking with a gascon's accent_). from the moon! guiche. the moon!.... cyrano (_as if dazed_). what time is it? what country is this? what month? what day? guiche. but, my dear sir.... cyrano. i feel quite dizzy.--like a bombshell, i have just dropped from the moon! guiche (_out of patience_). look here, sir!.... cyrano (_rising, and in thundering tone_). i say that i dropped! guiche (_falling back_). so be it, then! you dropped!.... (_aside_) he is no doubt insane! cyrano (_walking toward him_). and my drop is not metaphorical!.... one hundred years, or one minute ago--i cannot tell how long i was on the way--i was up in that saffron-coloured ball! guiche (_shrugging his shoulders_). quite so! but allow me to pass! cyrano (_stopping him_). be frank now! where am i? where have i fallen like a meteorite? guiche. zounds, sir!.... cyrano. during my fall, i could make no selection as to my point of arrival. is it upon a moon or an earth that my dead weight has just landed? guiche. but i repeat to you, sir!.... cyrano (_with a cry of horror that causes guiche to fall back_). good heavens!.... in this country are people's faces black? am i in algiers, and are you a native? guiche (_touching his mask_). no doubt, this mask.... cyrano (_seemingly less frightened_). oh! then, it's venice.... or genoa! guiche (_trying to pass_). a lady is waiting for me!... cyrano (_completely reassured_). then i must be in paris! guiche (_reluctantly smiling_). the rascal is amusing! cyrano. you are laughing. guiche. yes,--but i must pass. cyrano (_apparently overjoyed_). so i have dropped in paris!.... (_quite at his ease, laughing, dusting himself, and bowing._) i have just arrived--pardon me--by the last cyclone, and i must brush off the ether that is still on me. i've travelled! my eyes are still full of astral dust, and my spurs have caught planet hairs. (_picking something off his sleeve_). here, on my doublet, is one from a comet!.... (_he blows, as if to cast off the hair._) guiche (_enraged_). now, look here, sir!.... (_as guiche is going to pass, cyrano stretches out his leg as if to show something that is on it._) cyrano. in the calf of this leg, sir, i have a tooth of the great bear,--and, as nearing the trident, i managed to avoid its three lances, i fell in a lump upon the balance--where my weight up there is still registered! (_preventing guiche from passing and holding him by one of his buttons._) if you were to press my nose, sir, you would cause a flow of milk!.... guiche. milk, indeed! cyrano. yes, sir.... from the milky way! guiche. oh! by satan!.... cyrano. no! i dropped from heaven! (_crossing his arms_). would you believe it? i noticed it as i was going by there: sirius, at night actually wears a turban! (_confidentially_) the other bear, the little one, is still too small to bite! (_laughing_) as i was passing through the lyre, i broke one of its strings! (_proudly_) but i intend to write a book on the subject; and the golden stars that i gathered into my scorched cloak, regardless of peril, shall be used by my printer for asterisks! guiche. once more, i must insist.... cyrano. oh! sir, i know what you desire! guiche. you do?.... cyrano. yes. you desire to hear from me how the moon is made, and if any one inhabits the rotundity of this cucurbit![ ] guiche (_very loud_). no! no! i desire.... cyrano. to learn how i got up there? easily. through an invention of mine. guiche (_discouraged_). a madman, certainly! cyrano (_disdainfully_). i copied not the stupid eagle of regiomontanus, or the timid pigeon of archytas!.... guiche. a madman--but a learned one. cyrano. no, sir. i imitated nothing ever done. (_guiche, having managed to pass, is nearing roxane's door, but cyrano follows, ready to seize him._) i invented six different ways of assaulting the virgin blue! guiche (_turning_). six? cyrano (_with increased fluency_). i could, with body as bare as a taper, have comparisoned it with crystal phials o'erflowing with tears from the morning skies, and my person, then, if exposed in the sun, would have been aspirated by the luminary along with the dew! guiche (_astonished, goes toward cyrano_). true! that is one way! cyrano (_backing, so as to draw him further away_). again, i could have created a powerful gust of wind, to lift me, if i had rarefied the air in a cedar box, by means of heated mirrors forming an icosahedron! guiche (_following cyrano_). two ways! cyrano (_still backing_). or else, being both a machinist and an artificer, have straddled a steel-legged grasshopper, and caused myself, through successive explosions of saltpetre, to be projected into the azure fields where the stars are wont to graze! guiche (_still following him, and counting on his fingers_). that is three! cyrano. since smoke persists in rising, i might have blown into a globe enough of it to carry me up! guiche (_more and more astonished_). four! cyrano. since phoebe, when her bow is the thinnest, loves to draw, o beeves! your marrow,.... anoint myself with the same! guiche (_stupefied_). five! cyrano (_who has managed, while talking, to press guiche over to the other side of the square, near a bench_). last: i could have placed myself upon an iron plate, taken a magnet and thrown it up into the air! this is a capital way. as soon as the magnet starts, the iron rushes in pursuit of it. the magnet is thrown up again; the iron plate follows--and, cadedis! there is nothing to prevent the ascension from lasting indefinitely. guiche. six!--all excellent systems. and, tell me, sir, which one of the six did you adopt? cyrano. a seventh one! guiche. astonishing! and what was it, please? cyrano. you would never dream of it!.... guiche (_aside_). the fellow is really interesting! cyrano (_very mysterious and imitating the sound of waves on a beach_). houüh! houüh! guiche. what's that? cyrano. you cannot imagine? guiche. no! cyrano. the tide!.... as it was running out, in obedience to the attraction of the moon, i lay on the sands--head foremost, so that my hair--hair, you know, does not dry fast--so that my hair was kept bathed in the receding waves. and, thus i was, by the moon's attraction, drawn up, up, erect, like an angel. and up i went, gently, without an effort, until suddenly, i felt a shock!.... then!.... guiche (_interested, takes a seat on the bench_). then?.... cyrano. then.... (_resuming his natural tone_). the fifteen minutes have elapsed, sir, and now i grant you your freedom. the marriage is accomplished! guiche (_jumping up_). am i intoxicated?.... that voice! (_the door of roxane's house opens; lackeys come out with lighted candelabra. cyrano takes off his hat that he had kept well down over his face._) and that nose!.... cyrano! cyrano (_bowing_). in person.... cyrano! they have just exchanged their marriage rings. guiche. they!.... who? (_he turns. tableau. behind the lackeys, roxane and christian holding each other by the hand. the monk, smiling, follows them. ragueneau is behind, also holding a light. and last is the duenna, bewildered, half dressed, as if she had been hurried out of bed._) merciful heavens! [ ] note.--_cucurbit_ ("cucurbite") for moon is, in french, as odd as it appears in english. the oddity of the expression, that assimulates luna to the rotund melon, pumpkin, etc., of the genus of plants known as _cucurbita_, is in keeping with cyrano's intentional extravagance of speech. _scene xii._ _the same._ roxane, christian, the monk, ragueneau, lackeys, the duenna. guiche (_to roxane_). you, roxane! (_astounded on recognising christian_) and he? (_bowing admiringly to roxane._) you are admirably shrewd! (_to cyrano_) my compliments to you, sir, as an inventor. your narrative would have stopped a saint at the gate of heaven! do not forget to write that book! cyrano (_bowing_). i promise, sir, to follow your advice. the monk (_with an air of satisfaction calling guiche's attention to the two lovers_). a beautiful couple, my son, and good work of yours! guiche (_very coldly_). yes. (_to roxane_) be good enough to bid farewell, madam, to your husband. roxane. how so? guiche (_to christian_). your regiment is about to march. join it immediately! roxane. is it going to the war? guiche. of course it is. roxane. but you said, sir, that the cadets were not going! guiche. they shall go! (_drawing from his pocket the paper he had put into it._) here is the order. (_to christian_) bear it yourself, baron. roxane (_throwing herself into the arms of christian_). oh! dear christian! guiche (_chuckling, to cyrano_). a still very distant honeymoon! cyrano (_aside_). a fact not so annoying to me as he thinks! christian (_to roxane_). another kiss! your lips again! cyrano. come, that is enough! enough! christian (_still kissing roxane_). it is very hard to leave her.... you do not know.... cyrano (_endeavouring to draw him away_). oh! yes, i do! (_drums beating a march, in the distance._) guiche (_who has gone up to the rear_). the troops are leaving! roxane (_to cyrano, who is drawing away christian while she is trying to hold him back_). oh!.... i entrust him to you! promise me that nothing shall endanger his life! cyrano. i shall do my best.... but i can hardly promise.... roxane (_still holding on to christian_). promise me that he shall be very prudent! cyrano. i'll try, but as to promising.... roxane (_still holding on_). that during this terrible siege he shall never be cold! cyrano. if it is at all possible, but.... roxane (_still holding on_). that he shall remain true to me! cyrano. yes! of course! but i cannot.... roxane (_still holding on_). that he shall write to me often! cyrano (_halting_). oh! that--i promise you! _curtain._ [illustration: _third act._] _act iv._ the cadets of gascony. _the post occupied by the company of carbon of haughty-hall at the siege of arras. in the rear, an embankment running across the stage. beyond, a plain, extending as far as the horizon, covered with siege works. in the distance, the walls of the city of arras, with the outline of its roofs against the sky. tents; arms strewn around; drums, etc.--day is about to dawn; gold in the east. sentinels here and there. camp fires.--rolled up in their cloaks the cadets of gascony are sleeping. carbon of haughty-hall and le bret are watching. they are very pale and thin. christian is asleep, in front, his face lighted by a fire. silence._ _scene i._ christian, carbon of haughty-hall, le bret, the cadets, _later_ cyrano. le bret. it's awful! carbon. yes, nothing left to eat. le bret. mordious! carbon (_motioning to him to speak lower_). deaden your oaths! or you'll wake the men. (_to the cadets_). sleep on! (_to le bret_). he who sleeps eats! le bret. yes, but waking starves! (_a few musket reports are heard in the distance._) carbon. confound the muskets!.... they'll wake up my children. (_to several of the cadets who lift up their heads_). sleep! (_more musketry, nearer_). a cadet (_tossing_). the devil! again? carbon. it's nothing! only cyrano coming back! (_the lifted heads lie down again._) a sentinel (_outside_). who goes there? cyrano (_outside_). bergerac! a sentinel (_on the embankment_). ventrebieu! who goes there? cyrano. bergerac, you idiot! (_he comes down and is met by le bret._) le bret. what, you! wounded? cyrano (_raising his hand_). hush! you know that they miss me regularly every morning. le bret. what! risk your life thus, every day, just to carry a letter without the camp! that is going too far. cyrano (_stopping in front of christian_). i promised that he would write often! (_looking at him_). he sleeps. how pale! if sweet roxane knew that he is starving! but he has not lost his good looks. le bret. go get some sleep! cyrano. don't growl, le bret!.... remember this: to pass through the spanish lines, i long ago selected a place where they are invariably drunk. le bret. why don't you once bring back some provisions? cyrano. a load would not leave me light enough to pass through. but there is going to be a change. we, the french, shall soon eat.... or die,--if my eyes did not deceive me.... le bret. how soon? cyrano. you'll see!.... i'm not sure enough to speak. carbon. isn't it shameful that the besiegers should be the ones to starve! le bret. an extraordinary siege this! we are besieging arras, and the spanish are besieging us. cyrano. somebody should come now to besiege the spanish. le bret. do not joke so.--when i think that a life, precious as yours is, can be risked daily just to carry.... (_cyrano walks toward one of the tents._) where are you going? cyrano. i am going to write another letter. (_enters tent._) _scene ii._ _the same, less_ cyrano. _day is dawning. rosy tints in the sky, and golden ones on the distant city. a gun is heard, then drums beat in the distance, to the left. other drums are heard, successively, nearer, and nearer, until they sound on the stage, the noise then receding gradually, toward the right. awakening of the camp. officers' commands in the distance._ carbon (_sighing_). reveille!.... alas! (_the cadets begin rising._) their dream of dinner is finished.... i know what their cry will be now. a cadet (_rising_). i'm hungry! another cadet. i'm half dead! other cadets. we are dead! quite! carbon. get up! several cadets. can't! first cadet (_using his breastplate as a looking-glass_). my tongue is yellow. indigestion! another cadet. as to me, if my gastric organ gets not wherewith to produce a pint of chyle, i'll retire into my tent--like achilles. several cadets. bread! something to eat! now! carbon (_going to the tent of cyrano and speaking low to him_). cyrano, help! come with your ready wit, and put some life into them. give them new courage. a cadet (_to another who is chewing something_). what are you nibbling at? the other cadet. cannon wad fried in axle grease! there is but little game around arras. another cadet (_entering_). i've been out shooting. still another cadet (_likewise entering_). and i've been fishing in the scarpe. all the cadets (_rushing up to them_). what have you killed? what have you caught?--a pheasant?--a carp?--quick, quick, show them! the fisherman. a gudgeon! the huntsman. a sparrow! all the cadets (_exasperated_). enough, enough! too much!--let us mutiny! carbon. help, cyrano. (_daylight has come._) _scene iii._ _the same_, cyrano. cyrano (_leaving his tent, perfectly tranquil, a pen over his ear, book in hand_). hey!.... (_silence. to the first cadet_). what makes you drag your feet along so? the cadet. something in my heels that should not be there!.... cyrano. what's that? the cadet. my stomach! cyrano. mine's the same. what of it? the cadet. isn't it inconvenient? cyrano. no, it heightens me. second cadet. my teeth are very long. cyrano. well, you can bite off a larger piece. another cadet. my skin sounds empty. cyrano. we'll use it as a drum, for the charge. another cadet. there is a humming in my ears. cyrano. not that; an empty stomach has no ears. impossible! other cadet. oh! for something to eat,--with good oil! cyrano (_taking off the helmet of the cadet, in whose hand he places it_). eat your salad. another cadet. what could we find to devour? cyrano (_throwing to him the book he holds in his hand_). the iliad! other cadet. meanwhile, the minister in paris has his four meals a day! cyrano. he ought certainly to send you at least a partridge. same cadet. why not? and some wine with it too! cyrano. richelieu, some burgundy, if you please! same cadet. by one of his capuchins! cyrano. the grey eminence is so intoxicating! other cadet. i'm as hungry as a bear! cyrano. well, bear it![ ] first cadet (_shrugging his shoulders_). forever words, a point! cyrano. a point and words! 'tis true; and i should like to die--at eve, the sky aglow--as the defender of a noble cause, a soldier and a poet too, with, on my lips, the thrill of daring words, and in my heart a sword's ennobling point! all. we're hungry! cyrano (_crossing his arms_). so--you think of naught but food! come up here, then, bertrandou, with your fife. seek shepherds' notes, and let these gluttons feast upon some old and ne'er forgotten tune each sound of which is like a sister's voice; an air that slowly winds its way aloft, as does the smoke from lowly cottage roofs, a lay of youth, of waiting hearts and home! (_bertrandou prepares his fife._) let fife a while forget the battle note, remembering that it was born a reed. (_bertrandou begins playing some gascony airs._) ye gascons, list! 'tis war no more, but peace. 'tis hill and dale, 'tis wood and meadow-land, with red-capped lads beside their gentle herds; 'tis smiling riverbank and sunny sea. o gascons, hark! you are in gascony! (_all have bowed their heads and are dreaming: many brush away a tear._) carbon (_to cyrano, aside_). but, instead of giving them courage, you make them weep! cyrano. i've made them homesick!.... a noble sort of suffering .... nobler than hunger. it is a comfort to see their pain change organs, and pass from their stomachs to their hearts! carbon. but you will weaken them! cyrano (_motioning to a drummer to come up_). never mind! the heroes' blood that is in them will soon arouse them! (_he motions to the drummer, who begins beating his drum._) all the cadets (_rushing to their arms_). hey!.... what?.... what is it?.... cyrano (_smiling, to carbon_). you see that, at the sound of the drum, dreams, longings, thoughts of home, of love,....all fly away. what comes by the fife goes by the drum.[ ] a cadet (_from the rear_). ha! ha! here is monsieur de guiche! all the cadets (_murmuring_). hou.... cyrano (_smiling_). quite complimentary! a cadet. he is a bore, with his lace collar over his armour. he comes here to exhibit himself! other cadet. as if lace were in keeping with iron! other cadet. good if one has a boil on his neck! other cadet. too much of the courtier! other cadet. the nephew of his uncle, the cardinal. carbon. and still he's a gascon! first cadet. not a true one!....beware! because gascons, you know, must be madcaps. there is nothing more dangerous than a reasonable gascon. le bret. how pale he is! a cadet. he is hungry.... just as much as we poor devils. but his breastplate gives a lustre to his cramps! cyrano (_quickly_). we should not appear to suffer more than he does! here! all of you, take up your cards, your pipes and your dice.... (_they all rapidly begin playing, on benches, drums, or on their cloaks spread out on the ground, meanwhile lighting long pipes._) .... and i ... will read descartes. (_he walks up and down, reading a small book that he has taken out of his pocket.--tableau.--guiche enters; everybody seems busy and satisfied. he is very pale; goes up to carbon._) [ ] note.--"tu croques le marmot" (literally "you are eating the baby") is an allusion to ogres' proverbial taste for infants, coupled with the somewhat slangy meaning: "you are waiting long and impatiently." this in english would be meaningless, and was perforce replaced by what seems to be a fair equivalent. [ ] note.--a french proverb. _scene iv._ _the same_, guiche. guiche (_to carbon_). ha! good morning! (_aside, after looking at carbon, with satisfaction_). his face is green! carbon (_aside_). there is nothing left of him but his eyes. guiche (_looking at the cadets_). so, here are these soreheads!.... yes, gentlemen, i understand that i am jeered at plentifully here; that cadets, nobility and gentry, barons all, are not over-burdened with respect for their colonel; that they charge me with intrigue and court-flattery, that my lace collar over my breastplate is an eye-sore to them,--and that it is distressing to them to find that one can be a gascon and still not out at the elbow! (_silence. the cadets continue to play and smoke._) shall i have you punished by your captain? no. carbon. well, i am free and i punish only.... guiche. ah!.... carbon. i paid for my company, and it belongs to me. i obey only to war commands. guiche. ah!.... well, that is sufficient. (_speaking to the cadets_). i can afford to scorn your bluster. everybody knows how i behave under fire. even yesterday, there were enough witnesses to the spirit with which i routed count de bucquoi; leading my people against his men like an avalanche, i charged him three successive times! cyrano (_without lifting his eyes from his book_). how about your white scarf? guiche (_surprised and satisfied_). you know of this trifle?.... true, it happened, while i was circling to gather my people for the third charge, that a party of runaways forced me too close to the enemy; i was in danger of being taken or shot, when, happily, i bethought me to untie and to drop the scarf that told my rank. in this way, and without attracting notice, i managed to get away from the spaniards, and to turn back upon them with all my men, beating them terribly!--now, what do you say to this? (_the cadets affect not to listen, but they have stopped playing, and they hold back the smoke of their pipes. a wait._) cyrano. i say that henry iv, even surrounded by a host of foes, never would have consented to diminish himself by casting off his plume of snowy white. (_silent joy. playing and smoking are resumed._) guiche. the device was successful, however! (_playing and smoking again suspended._) cyrano. possibly! but who would abdicate the honour of being a target? (_playing and smoking resumed. growing satisfaction._) had i been present when the scarf slipped off,--see how ideas of bravery can vary, sir,--i should have picked it up and put it on. guiche. yes, gascon boasting again! cyrano. boasting?.... lend it to me. i offer to hang it on my shoulder and, this very night, to scale with it the enemy's fortifications. guiche. a gascon's offer! you know full well that the scarf remained on the enemy's ground, near the river scarpe, a place so well covered by spanish guns that nobody can venture there to get it! cyrano (_taking a white scarf from his pocket and handing it to guiche_). here it is! (_silence. the cadets restrain their laughter and affect to be very busy playing. guiche turns and looks at them; they assume an air of great gravity; one of them, in an absent-minded way, half whistles one of the airs the fife played a while before._) guiche (_taking the scarf_). thank you! i can use this white fabric to make a signal,--that i hesitated to give. (_he goes to the embankment and waves the scarf several times._) all. what is this? the sentinel (_on the embankment_). a man, over there, who is running away!.... guiche (_coming down from the embankment_). one who plays the part of a spanish spy. he is very useful to us; takes over to the enemy information that i give him, so that we can influence their decision. cyrano. he is a blackguard! guiche (_slowly tying on his scarf_). yes, but a great convenience. what were we saying?.... ah!.... i was going to apprise you of something. last night, in a desperate attempt to revictual us, the marshal left for dourlens; he took with him so many men that an attack upon us just now would certainly be successful. half of the army is away from the camp! carbon. but the spanish do not know of it. guiche. yes, they do. they are going to attack us. my false spy came to tell me of it. he added: "i can have the attack made wherever you prefer." i answered: "good. leave the camp and watch it. the point to attack will be the one from which i make a signal to you." carbon (_to the cadets_). gentlemen, make ready! (_the cadets rise and busy themselves preparing for the fight._) guiche. the attack will take place in an hour from now. a few cadets. oh!.... that is different! (_they sit down and resume playing._) guiche (_to carbon_). you must gain time, pending the marshal's return. carbon. and, in order to gain time, what shall we do? guiche. you will have the goodness to get killed, all of you, in defense of the camp. cyrano. ah! this is his vengeance! guiche. i will not pretend that, if i loved you, i should have selected you; but, as your bravery has no equal, by using you i am serving my king as well as my ill-will. cyrano. allow me, sir, to be thankful for the honour. guiche. oh! i know that you love to fight one against a hundred. you certainly cannot complain, then, that i leave you inactive. (_he goes toward the rear with carbon._) cyrano (_to the cadets_). well, then we will add to the gascon coat of arms, proud of its six chevrons of azure and gold, gentlemen, another chevron, still lacking, one of blood! (_guiche speaks, aside, with carbon in the rear. orders are given. preparations against attack. cyrano goes up to christian, who has remained motionless with folded arms._) cyrano (_placing his hand on christian's shoulder_). christian! christian (_shaking his head_). roxane. cyrano. alas! christian. at least, i should like to condense all the loving farewells of my heart into a beautiful letter!.... cyrano. i thought it might be for to-day, and.... (_he draws a letter from his doublet_) .... i have written your farewell. christian. let me see!.... cyrano. you desire to?.... christian (_taking the letter_). yes, certainly! (_he opens the letter, reads, and stops._) what is this?.... cyrano. what? christian. this little round spot?.... cyrano (_taking the letter and looking at it with an air of innocence_). a little round spot?.... christian. yes, a tear! cyrano. oh!.... yes!.... we poets are caught in our own trap, through the swing of our art. you understand.... this letter,--was heart-rending; i drew tears from my own eyes as i was writing it. christian. tears?.... cyrano. yes.... because.... to die is not so terrible .... but ....never to see her again, that is the torture! for the fact is, i shall never.... (_christian looks at him._) we shall never.... (_quickly_). you shall never.... christian (_snatching the letter from him_). give me the letter! (_a murmur is heard in the rear._) a sentinel. ventrebieu! who goes there? (_a few musket shots. voices. sound of carriage bells._) carbon. what is it? sentinel (_on the embankment_). a coach! (_all rush up to look._) cries. what! in the camp?--coming in!--it seems to come from the enemy!--diantre! fire!--no! the coachman shouted!--shouted what?--shouted: "service of the king." (_they are all on the embankment, looking into the distance. the sound of carriage bells grows nearer and nearer._) guiche. what? of the king!.... (_all come down again and form in line._) carbon. hats off, all! guiche (_to those in the distance_). of the king! i said.--make way, you rabble, so that he can swing around in state. (_the coach enters on a full trot. it is covered with mud and dust. the curtains are closed. two lackeys behind. it stops short._) carbon (_shouting_). salute! (_drums beat._) guiche. lower the step! (_two men advance rapidly. the coach door opens._) roxane (_jumping out of coach_). how are you all? (_on hearing a woman's voice, they all, from a profound inclination, suddenly straighten up. stupor._) _scene v._ _the same_, roxane. guiche. service of the king! you? roxane. certainly, of the only king there is: love! cyrano. great god. christian (_rushing up to her_). you, roxane! wherefor? roxane. oh! this siege was entirely too long. christian. but the reason?.... roxane. i'll tell you later. cyrano (_he has remained motionless, without daring to look at her_). heavens! shall i face her? guiche. you cannot remain here! roxane (_gayly_). oh! yes, i can! will you be kind enough to bring up a drum? (_one of the cadets brings up a drum, on which she sits._) there! thank you. (_laughing_). do you know that they fired on my coach? it looks like a squash, does it not? as in the fairy tale; and the lackeys like rats. (_sending a kiss to christian_). how are you, dear? (_looking around at them all_). you don't seem to be very merry here! i didn't know that arras was so far off. (_looking at cyrano_). cousin, delighted! cyrano (_advancing_). roxane, tell me how?.... roxane. how i managed to find the army? oh! my dear friend, it was the simplest thing in the world: i drove on so long as i saw the country laid waste. such horrors must be seen to be believed! if that is the service of your king, gentlemen, my service is a better one. cyrano. come, this is foolhardiness! how could you pass? roxane. how? why! right through the spanish army. first cadet. oh! women. they are knowing ones! guiche. but how could you get through their lines? le bret. it must have been very difficult! roxane. why! no. i just went along, in my coach, on a trot. whenever one of the dons showed his haughty face, i put on and displayed through the window my most fascinating smile, and these gentlemen being, whatever the french may say, the most courteous people in the world, i passed! carbon. yes, you have a most excellent passport in that smile! but you must frequently have been called upon, madam, to declare whither you were going. roxane. oh! yes, quite frequently. i answered simply: "i am going to see my lover."--immediately the most ferocious spaniard would gravely close the door of my coach, with a knightly wave of the hand order up the muskets already pointed at me, and, with as much grace as haughtiness, the plume of his hat proudly floating on the breeze, bow low and say: "pass on, senorita!" christian. but, roxane.... roxane. i said: my lover. yes, husband, you must forgive! you will surely understand that, if i had said my husband, nobody would have let me pass! christian. but.... roxane. well, what? guiche. you must be gone immediately! roxane. i? cyrano. yes, and sooner! christian. yes, at once. roxane. but how can i get away? christian (_embarrassed_). the fact is.... cyrano (_likewise embarrassed_). in forty-five minutes.... guiche (_also embarrassed_). or fifty.... carbon (_embarrassed too_). it would be preferable.... le bret. you might.... roxane. i remain, for there is going to be fighting. all. fighting? nothing of the kind. roxane (_throwing herself into the arms of christian_). he is my husband! and if he is killed, i must be killed too! christian. but what is the matter with your eyes? roxane. i will tell you later! guiche. but the post is a most dangerous one. roxane (_turning_). what! so dangerous? cyrano. yes, and the proof is that he assigned it to us. roxane (_to guiche_). so, you desire to make a widow of me? guiche. i swear to you.... roxane. no! now i am determined and i will not leave!.... moreover, it is very exciting. cyrano. what! will the "précieuse" turn out to be a heroine? roxane. monsieur de bergerac, i am your cousin. a cadet. moreover, we will defend you desperately! roxane (_growing more and more excited_). i believe it, my friends! another cadet (_elated_). a perfume of iris pervades the camp. roxane. just so! i put some on this hat, which will be very becoming in the fray!.... (_looking at guiche_). but perhaps it is time the count should leave: the fight might begin. guiche. ah! this is too much! i will inspect the guns and return .... you have a little time left still,....change your mind! roxane. never! (_exit guiche._) _scene vi._ _the same, except_ guiche. christian (_supplicating_). roxane!.... roxane. no! first cadet (_to the others_). she remains! all (_rushing around hurriedly, and brushing up_). a comb!--soap!--my doublet is torn: a needle!--a bright bow!--your looking glass!--my cuffs!--your curling iron!--a razor! roxane (_to cyrano, who continues begging her to leave_). no! i will not budge from here! carbon (_after having, like the others, tightened his belt and arranged his cuffs, advances toward roxane and says ceremoniously:_) such being the case, it may not seem improper for me to present to you a few of the gentlemen who will have the honour of dying before your eyes. (_roxane bows, and waits leaning on the arm of christian. carbon makes the presentations._) baron de peyrescous de colignac! a cadet (_bowing_). madam.... carbon (_continuing_). baron de casterac de cahuzac!--baron de malgouyre estressac lesbas d'escarabiot!--chevalier d'antignac-juzet!--baron hillot de blagnac--salechan de castel crabioules! roxane. but how many names has each of you. baron hillot. more than many. carbon (_to roxane_). kindly open the hand that holds your handkerchief. roxane (_opens her hand; her handkerchief falls_). what for? (_the whole company darts forward to pick it up._) carbon (_heading them off and seizing it_). my company had no flag! now it will have the finest in the camp! roxane (_smiling_). it is rather small! carbon (_tying the handkerchief to his lance_). it is lace.... and yours! a cadet (_to the others_). i would die most willingly for eyes so beautiful, if only i could have a crust of bread or two. carbon (_indignant_). for shame! how can you think of eating before so exquisite a woman?.... roxane. but he is right. the morning air is sharp, and i myself am famished. meat-pie,--cold game and jelly, some good wine,--i'll have nothing else, thank you! suppose we have them now? there is still time. a cadet. but where shall we get all these good things? roxane (_quietly_). in my coach. all. what!.... roxane. but somebody must serve and carve. look at my coachman more attentively, gentlemen, and you will see that he is a very valuable man. the cadets (_running up to the coach_). why! it's ragueneau! roxane (_looking at them_). poor hungry fellows! cyrano (_kissing her hand_). what a kind fairy you are! ragueneau (_standing on his seat_). gentlemen!.... the cadets. speech! speech! ragueneau. the spaniards, when so much beauty passed, did not see the repast. (_applause._) they are so bony that they did not notice the boned turkey. (_he takes a dish from under his seat and passes it down._) cyrano (_aside to christian_). a word with you for pity's sake!.... ragueneau. they were so busy with venus that they allowed diana's spoils to pass. (_he hands down a stag's leg._) cyrano (_aside to christian_). i must speak to you! roxane (_to the cadets who come up loaded with eatables_). place all that on the ground. (_she spreads a table-cloth on the grass, and, with the assistance of the two lackeys, prepares the cover._) (_to christian, whom cyrano is endeavouring to draw aside_). come, make yourself useful. (_christian helps her. cyrano looks anxious._) ragueneau. a stuffed peacock! a cadet (_cutting for himself a large slice of ham_). jupiter's thunder! we'll not die without previously ....stuffing our....(_noticing roxane_) your pardon.... feasting! ragueneau (_tossing to them the coach's cushions_). these cushions are stuffed with ortolans! (_confusion. cushions ripped open. laughter. joy._) third cadet. ah! viédaze! ragueneau (_handing out bottles of red wine_). liquid rubies!.... (_bottles of white wine._) melted topaz!.... roxane (_throwing a table-cloth that falls on cyrano's head_). attend to this!.... be nimble! ragueneau (_handing down one of the lanterns_). each one of the lanterns is a diminutive larder! cyrano (_unfolds the table-cloth, getting near to christian, who assists him_). i must speak to you before you speak to her! ragueneau (_growing lyrical_). the handle of my whip is a sausage from arles! roxane (_passing the dishes and filling glasses_). since we are ordered to die, what care we for the rest of the army?--yes! all for the gascons!--and, if guiche comes, we'll not invite him! (_going from one to the other_). come, you have plenty of time. do not eat so fast! drink a little.--why have you tears in your eyes? first cadet. because it's all too good!.... roxane. hush!--red or white?--bread, monsieur de carbon!--a knife?--your plate!--meat pie?--champagne wine?--chicken? cyrano (_following her, loaded with eatables, and helping her to serve. aside_). how i love her! roxane (_going up to christian_). and what will _you_ have? christian. nothing. roxane. yes, just a cake and a little muscatel! christian (_endeavouring to detain her_). oh! tell me why, why you came? roxane. hush! let me first give these poor starving fellows something to eat.... i'll tell you by and by.... le bret (_who had gone to the rear, to pass, on the end of a lance, a loaf of bread to the sentinel on the embankment_). here is guiche! cyrano. make haste, hide bottles, dishes, plates, baskets, everything! be lively there! let him notice nothing!.... (_to ragueneau_). you, get up to your box again!--be quick! everything out of the way! (_it has taken only a few seconds to conceal everything, under tent, doublet, cloak or hat.--enter guiche. he stops and sniffs the air.--silence._) _scene vii._ _the same_, guiche. guiche. it smells good here! a cadet (_humming an air, unconcernedly_). to lo lo!.... guiche (_stopping and looking at him_). why! what is the matter?.... you are as red as a beet! the cadet. i?.... oh! nothing. merely my blood. we are going to fight. it boils! another cadet. poum.... poum.... poum.... patapoum.... guiche (_turning to him_). what is this, now? the cadet (_slightly feeling the effects of wine_). that, oh! nothing. just a little song! guiche. you are of a lively disposition, my boy! the cadet. oh! the approach of danger! guiche (_calling carbon to give an order_). captain,.... (_looking at him with astonishment_). zounds! you, too, have an over-healthy look! carbon (_very red in the face, and hiding a bottle behind his back_). oh! constitution.... guiche. i had a field-piece left and i ordered it placed in that corner (_pointing to the wings_). your men may have occasion to use it. one of the cadets (_with an affectation of thankfulness_). delightful attention! another cadet (_smiling gracefully_). exquisitely thoughtful! guiche (_aside_). why! they have all gone mad!-- (_sternly_). as you are not accustomed to using cannon, beware of the recoil. first cadet. who cares for recoil? guiche (_going up to him, in rage_). look here, sir!.... the cadet. gascon guns never move backward. guiche (_taking him by the arm and shaking him_). you are intoxicated, sir!.... with what? the cadet (_proudly_). with the smell of gun powder! guiche (_shrugs his shoulders, pushes him, and goes up to roxane_). you must decide quickly. what will you be pleased to do? roxane. i remain! guiche. no, better escape! roxane. fly? never. guiche. such being the case, give me a musket! carbon. what for? guiche. i, too, will remain. cyrano. at last, sir, you show your courage! first cadet. so you are a true gascon, after all, in spite of your lace? guiche. i never abandon a woman in danger! second cadet (_to the first cadet_). say! don't you think he deserves something to eat? (_eatables and drinkables instantly reappear._) guiche (_whose eyes brighten_). provisions! third cadet. every doublet covers some! guiche (_mastering himself, proudly_). i eat nobody's leavings! cyrano (_bowing_). you are improving, sir! guiche (_proudly and forgetting to master his natural gascon accent_). i know how to fight on an empty stomach! _a jeung!_ first cadet (_overjoyed_). he said it with the gascon accent! guiche (_laughing_). did i? the cadet. he is one of us! (_they all begin to dance._) carbon (_who has been away a moment behind the embankment, reappearing on top of it_). my men are placed, and determined! (_he points to a row of lances that show over the crest of the embankment._) guiche (_to roxane, bowing_). will you accept my hand to pass them in review?.... (_she gives her hand and they go up to the embankment. hats come off, and everybody follows._) christian (_going up to cyrano_). now! speak quickly! (_as roxane appears on the crest, the lances disappear in a salute; she bows._) the men (_outside_). hurrah! christian. what is your secret?.... cyrano. in case roxane... christian. well? cyrano. should speak to you of letters.... christian. yes, yes, i know!.... cyrano. do not be silly enough to appear surprised.... christian. surprised by what? cyrano. oh! i must tell you.... the simplest thing in the world .... and i happened to think of it only to-day, on seeing her. you have.... christian. i have what? cyrano. you have....written to her more often than you think. christian. how so? cyrano. well! i had undertaken to speak for you, and i interpreted your love. sometimes i wrote without saying to you: i'm writing! christian. oh! you did? cyrano. yes, the simplest thing in the world, as i said! christian. but, since we have been hemmed in, how did you manage to.... cyrano. oh!.... before dawn i could pass through the lines.... christian (_folding his arms_). ah! another very simple matter, i suppose? and how many times a week did i write?.... twice?--three times?--four times?-- cyrano. more. christian. every day? cyrano. yes, every day,--twice. christian (_with violence_). and this enraptured you, and the rapture was such that each day you faced death.... cyrano (_noticing roxane, who is returning_). hush! not in her presence! (_exit rapidly, under his tent._) _scene viii._ roxane, christian; _in the rear_ cadets, _going and coming_: carbon _and_ guiche _giving orders_. roxane (_running up to christian_). and now, dear christian!.... christian (_taking both her hands_). and now tell me why, over impassable roads, why, through the ranks of brutal soldiery, you joined me here. roxane. on account of your letters. christian. my letters? roxane. yes, and it is your fault if i took so many risks. your letters intoxicated me. ah! remember how many you wrote me, during this last month, and all so beautiful! christian. what! do you mean to say that for a few short love letters?.... roxane. your letters, yes! my ardent love for you, love passionate, was born that night of bliss when, from beneath my willing balcony, in accents that to both of us were new, a soul revealed itself to me....'twas yours.... so that, each time your letters came, it seemed as if i lived those minutes once again, and, rapture-bound, i heard your voice itself, those tender tones that twined around me then. so here am i! penelope would not have persevered in waiting labour if ulysses could have written grandly so; but, daft as helen, she, to join him, would have flung away her tedious worsted balls. christian. but.... roxane. yes, i read and read, while every thrill confirmed me yours. each leaflet that i held was like a petal wafted from your soul, each word was one of love sincere and strong.... christian. indeed, sincere and strong?--you felt it so?.... roxane. oh! yes, so strongly! christian. and, roxane, you came.... roxane. i came because.... o christian, dearest conqueror, you'd bid me rise, if i should clasp your knees; so 'tis my soul that's at your feet. my soul you never can remove from reverence. i came to seek forgiveness (and the time is meet, indeed, since death is near, perhaps!), your pardon for--how frivolous i was!-- once loving you for beauty's sake alone. christian (_frightened_). roxane! roxane. but later, dear, with growing sense, --a bird will hop before it learns to soar-- i marked your soul outshining e'en your looks, and then i loved you more for both. christian. and now? roxane. you have, in short, yourself outshone yourself, and now i love you for your soul alone. christian. roxane! roxane. rejoice! what is a love we owe to passing gifts, to beauty doomed to fade? it's torture for an eager, noble heart. my thoughts of you recall no handsome face; your beauty that, at first, had captured me, now that my eyes are opened, strikes me not. christian. oh! roxane. doubt you not what victory is yours! christian. roxane! roxane. i understand. such love as this is past belief. christian. 'tis not the love i seek. i wish to be belovèd simply for.... roxane. for what some others prized before to-day? oh! let your heart make room for better love! christian. roxane, your former love was better. roxane. nay! 'tis now i love you better, most and well! 'tis what is really you that now i love, and i should love you still if you should cease.... christian. oh! hush, roxane. roxane. yes, cease to look so grand. christian. if i were homely? roxane. even hideous! christian. roxane!.... roxane. the thought should give you joy profound. christian (_in a husky voice_). yes.... roxane. what troubles you? christian (_gently pushing her off_). nothing. i have an order to give! one second, please.... roxane. but.... christian (_pointing to a group of cadets in the rear_). my love for you, my selfishness, has deprived these poor fellows of your sweet company. go smile to them a little, since they are about to die.... go! roxane (_moved_). how good you are, dear christian!.... (_she goes up to the gascons, who respectfully surround her._) _scene ix._ christian, cyrano: _in the rear_, roxane _speaking with_ carbon _and some of the cadets_. christian (_calling out in the direction of cyrano's tent_). cyrano! cyrano (_coming out armed for battle_). what is it? you are white as a ghost! christian. she loves me no more! cyrano. how so? christian. you are the one she loves. cyrano. nonsense! christian. now my soul is all she loves. cyrano. fiddlesticks! christian. i tell you it is so! you therefore are the one she loves,--and you love her. cyrano. i? christian. i know it! cyrano. well, it is true. christian. you love her madly. cyrano. more than that. christian. tell her so! cyrano. no! christian. why not? cyrano. look at my face! christian. she said she would love me even if i were homely! cyrano. she really told you so? christian. she did! cyrano. i am very glad she said so! but you must not believe anything so wild. do not lose your beauty, for then she would hate me too much. christian. that we shall see. let her choose! tell her all. cyrano. no, no! do not put me to such torture! christian. would you have me destroy your happiness because of my good looks? that would be too unjust! cyrano. and i should ruin yours because i happen, by mere chance, to have the gift of expressing.... that which no doubt you feel? christian. tell her all, i say! cyrano. you persist in tempting me. it is wrong! christian. i am tired of having a rival in myself! cyrano. oh! christian! christian. our marriage.... without witnesses.... quite secret, in fact, could be annulled.... should we survive! cyrano. how obstinate he is!.... christian. perhaps,....but i desire to be loved for myself,....or not at all!--but enough!... i had better go see how things are progressing. i'll return presently; meanwhile, speak, and let her prefer one of us two! cyrano. it shall be you! christian. well.... i hope so! (_he calls out_) roxane! cyrano. no, do not call her, please! roxane (_running in_). what is it? christian. cyrano will tell you... something.... important.... (_she runs up to cyrano. exit christian._) _scene x._ roxane, cyrano, _later_ le bret, carbon of haughty-hall, the cadets, ragueneau, guiche, _etc._ roxane. something important?.... cyrano (_bewildered_). what! he is gone!.... (_to roxane_) oh, nothing!.... he attaches--oh! well, you must know him!--a great deal of importance to trifles! roxane (_eagerly_). he doubts, perhaps, the truth of what i said?.... i could almost see he did not believe it!.... cyrano (_taking her by the hand_). but was what you said really true? roxane. certainly. i would love him even.... (_she hesitates a second._) cyrano (_smiling sadly_). you stop at the word.... in my presence? roxane. but.... cyrano. it will not hurt my feelings! you meant: even if he were homely! roxane. yes.... homely! (_sound of musketry in the rear._) cyrano (_ardently_). abominably so? roxane. yes! cyrano. disfigured? roxane. yes, disfigured! cyrano. grotesque? roxane. nothing can make him look grotesque.... to me! cyrano. and then you would love him still? roxane. more, perhaps! cyrano (_losing his self control, aside_). good god! it is true, perhaps, and happiness is there! (_to roxane_). well, then.... roxane.... listen!.... le bret (_entering rapidly and calling in a low voice_). cyrano! cyrano (_turning around_). what is it? le bret. hush! (_whispers to him a few words._) cyrano (_dropping roxane's hand_). great god!.... roxane. what has happened? cyrano (_stupefied_). it is all over! (_sounds of musketry again._) roxane. what is it? why all this firing? (_she goes up and looks beyond the embankment._) cyrano. all over! i never can tell her! roxane (_as if going to rush out_). what is going on? cyrano (_restraining her_). nothing! nothing! (_cadets enter bearing something which they conceal by forming around it a group that keeps roxane at a distance._) roxane. what are these men here for? cyrano (_leading her away_). never mind them!.... roxane. but what is it you were going to say before this disturbance? cyrano. going to say?.... nothing. oh! nothing, i swear it, madam! (_solemnly_) i swear that the spirit of christian and his soul were.... (_correcting himself_) _are_ the greatest.... roxane. you said: were! (_with a shriek_). ah!.... (_she rushes back, pushing the men aside._) cyrano. the end has come! roxane (_seeing christian laid out in his cloak_). christian! le bret (_to cyrano_). the first shot fired by the enemy! (_roxane throws herself upon the body of christian. musketry again. clash of arms. shouts. drums._) carbon of haughty-hall (_sword in hand_). the attack! to your arms! (_followed by the cadets he goes to the other side of the embankment._) roxane (_in despair_). christian! christian! the voice of carbon (_from behind the embankment_). make haste there! roxane. christian! carbon. _fall into line!_ roxane. christian! carbon. _measure.... match!_ (_ragueneau has rushed up bringing some water in a helmet._) christian (_in dying tone_). roxane!.... cyrano (_quickly and in a low tone, in the ear of christian, while roxane, frantic, dips into the water of the helmet a piece of linen which she has torn from her breast_). i told her all! and it is you she still loves! (_christian closes his eyes._) roxane. what is it, my love? carbon. _ramrods.... high!_ roxane (_to cyrano_). he is not dead?.... carbon. _open charge.... with teeth!_ roxane. i feel, here against mine, his cheek getting cold! carbon (_outside_). _take aim!_ roxane. a letter in his bosom! (_she opens the letter_) for me! cyrano (_aside_). my letter! carbon. _fire!_ (_musketry. cries. noise of battle._) cyrano (_trying to draw away his hand that is held by roxane, who is on her knees_). but, roxane, i must join in the fight! roxane (_holding him back_). stay just a little. he is dead, and you were the only one who really knew him. (_she weeps softly._) is it not true that he had an exquisite soul, a marvellous one? cyrano (_standing bareheaded_). yes, roxane! roxane. that he was a thrilling poet, an adorable one? cyrano. yes, roxane! roxane. a sublime spirit? cyrano. yes, roxane! roxane. that he had a heart large and brave, too deep to be fathomed by the crowd? cyrano (_firmly_). yes, roxane! roxane (_throwing herself upon the body of christian_). and he is dead! cyrano (_aside, as he draws his sword_). and i to-day can but die, since, though she knows it not, it is for me she is weeping over him! (_sound of trumpets in the distance._) guiche (_reappearing on the embankment, hatless, wounded in the forehead; with a voice of thunder_). it is the signal that was promised! the trumpets! our comrades come with help and food! hold fast a few minutes! roxane. on his letter blood .... and tears! a voice (_outside the embankment_). surrender! the cadets. no! ragueneau (_who has climbed upon the coach, and is looking at the battle over the embankment_). we are lost! cyrano (_to guiche, pointing to roxane_). carry her off! i will charge! roxane (_in dying tones, as she kisses the letter_). his blood! his tears!.... ragueneau (_jumping off the coach and running toward her_). she is fainting! guiche (_on the embankment, fiercely, to the cadets_). steady, for your lives! a voice (_outside_). lay down your arms! the cadets. never! cyrano (_to guiche_). you have proved your valour, sir! you can afford to fly (_pointing to roxane_) and save her! guiche (_runs to roxane and takes her in his arms_). so be it! hold fast a few moments and we shall win the day! cyrano. we'll hold to the death! (_in a voice of anguish, looking toward roxane, whom guiche and ragueneau are carrying away senseless_). farewell, roxane! (_tumult. cries. wounded cadets reappear and fall within the embankment. cyrano, rushing to the fray, is stopped on the crest of the embankment by carbon of haughty-hall, covered with blood._) carbon. we are wavering! i have received two gun shots. cyrano (_shouting to the gascons_). steady there! hold fast, you rascals! (_to carbon, holding him up_). have no fear! i have two deaths to avenge: christian's and that of my happiness! (_both come down. cyrano brandishes a lance to which is attached the handkerchief of roxane._) float bravely on, you little flag of lace that is hers! (_he plants the lance into the ground and cries to the cadets_). fall upon them now! crush them! (_to the fife player_) and you, strike up! (_the fife plays. the wounded rise to their feet. the cadets form a group around cyrano and the little flag; others climb into and upon the coach, making it look like a small fortress._) a cadet (_coming up from the outside of the embankment, backward, still fighting_). they come! they come! (_falls down dead._) cyrano. we'll give them a salute! (_the embankment is at once occupied by a troop of the enemy, with large flags waving._) fire! (_general discharge._) order (_from the enemy's ranks_). fire! (_most of the cadets fall, either wounded or dead._) a spanish officer (_taking off his hat_). who are these people dying so bravely? cyrano (_erect and proudly reciting_). fair gascony's cadets are they, with carbon,--he of haughty-hall; they fight and lie without dismay, (_he rushes on to enemy, followed by a few surviving cadets._) fair gascony's cadets.... (_the rest is lost in the noise of battle._) _curtain._ [illustration: _fourth act._] _act v._ cyrano's gazette. _fifteen years later, in . the garden of the convent of the ladies of the cross, in paris._ _beautiful shade trees. to the left, the house. wide porch on which several doors open. in the centre of the stage, an enormous overspreading tree standing alone in a sort of open circle. to the right, first entrance, backed by high box-wood bushes, a semi-circular stone bench._ _in the rear an avenue of chestnut trees leading up to fourth entrance, right, where the door of the chapel can be seen through the branches. beyond the avenue, lawns, other rows of trees, shrubbery and the sky._ _the chapel has a small side door, from which starts, running down to the right, first entrance, behind the box-wood bushes, a sort of colonnade entwined with creepers rich in hues of gold and red._ _it is autumn. the russet leaves of the trees are in bright contrast with the green lawns, except the box-wood and yew-trees that form dark spots here and there. yellow leaves beneath the trees; fallen leaves everywhere on the ground, on the porch and on the benches._ _between the stone bench to the right and the tree in the centre, a tapestry frame, and in front of it a chair. baskets full of worsted skeins and balls. on the frame, a piece of tapestry-work, unfinished._ _as the curtain rises, sisters are going and coming through the garden; some are seated on the bench, on either side of an elderly sister. leaves are falling._ _scene i._ mother margaret, sister martha, sister claire, _other_ sisters. sister martha (_to mother margaret_). sister claire looked at herself twice in the mirror. mother margaret (_to sister claire_). that was very wrong! sister claire. but sister martha pulled a plum out of the pie this morning; i saw her do it. mother margaret (_to sister martha_). very wrong, indeed, sister martha! sister claire. a little bit of a look! sister martha. a little bit of a plum! mother margaret. i'll have to tell mr. cyrano. sister claire (_frightened_). oh! please, do not, he would tease us!.... sister martha. .... say that we are vain!.... sister claire. .... or great gluttons!.... mother margaret (_smiling_). but full of goodness. sister claire. is it not true, mother, that he has been coming here, every saturday, for the last ten years? mother margaret. and more. ever since his cousin, fourteen years ago, saddened the whiteness of our caps with the darkness of her widow's veil, as would a bird of sombre hue alighting 'mid a flight of brighter birds. sister martha. and he alone can relieve with a ray of light the grief that she persists in feeding. the other sisters. he is so entertaining!--it is fun when he comes!--he teases us!--he is so kind!--we love him so!--and we make sweets for him! sister martha. but he is not a very good catholic! sister claire. we'll convert him! the other sisters. assuredly, we will! mother margaret. i forbid your tormenting him on that score, children. he might come here less often? sister martha. but.... dear mother.... god.... mother margaret. have no fear.... god knows him! sister martha. but, every saturday, as he enters, he says proudly: "sister, like a bad catholic, i ate meat yesterday!" mother margaret. is that what he says? well, the last time he came he had eaten nothing whatever for two days. sister martha. mother! mother margaret. he is very poor. mr. le bret told me so. sister martha. and no one assists him! mother margaret. he is proud and would not accept assistance. (_roxane is seen in the rear; she is in black, wearing the long veil of a widow. guiche, grown older, but magnificently clad, accompanies her. they walk slowly, mother margaret rises._) come, it is time to get in.--here is madam madeleine, with a visitor. sister martha (_aside to sister claire_). it is the marshall--duke de grammont. sister claire. yes, i think it is. sister martha. he has not come to see her for months! sister claire. the court--the army--the world--keep him away, i suppose. (_exeunt sisters. guiche and roxane come down in silence, and stop near the tapestry frame. a pause._) _scene ii._ roxane, duke de grammont (_formerly count de guiche_); _later_ le bret _and_ ragueneau. duke. and so you persist in remaining in this seclusion, uselessly lovely, forever in mourning? roxane. forever! duke. ever true to his memory? roxane. ever! duke. you have forgiven me? roxane. yes! since i am here. (_a pause._) duke. and he was truly so?.... roxane. you never really knew him! duke. probably!.... and his last letter lies on your heart always? roxane. like a blessèd talisman it hangs on this ribbon. duke. you love him even dead? roxane. at times it seems as if he'd left me not, as if our hearts still beat as one, as if his love still coiled around me, strong, alive! (_another pause._) duke. does cyrano ever come to see you? roxane. yes, often. he is a very dear old friend, and he brings me all the news. he comes regularly, every saturday. as the hour strikes, while i am at work on my tapestry, i know, without even turning around to see, that he is here, for i can hear his stick on the stone steps. if the weather is fine, he sits under this tree, where his chair awaits him. he laughs at what he calls my eternal work, relates to me the events of the week, and.... (_le bret appears on the porch._) why! here is le bret! (_to le bret, who has come down_). and how is our friend? le bret. not at all well. duke. oh! i'm sorry. roxane (_to duke_). le bret exaggerates! le bret. all as i predicted: desertion and poverty!.... his epistles have made him new enemies! he denounces mock nobility, mock piety, mock bravery, plagiarism,--in fact everybody! roxane. but the fear of his wonderful sword holds them all in respect. they'll never reach him. duke (_shaking his head_). who knows? le bret. what i fear for him is not an assault; it is solitude, hunger, winter stealthily entering his poor abode. these are the enemies that may lay him low.--each morning he buckles his belt a little tighter. his nose has now the sallowness of old ivory. his wardrobe is reduced to one suit of black. duke. ah! he at least is not a parvenu. so, do not pity him too much. he has lived free from obligations and humiliating restraint. le bret (_smiling sadly_). duke, duke!.... duke. yes, i know: i have everything, and he has nothing.... but i should very much like to shake his hand. (_bowing to roxane_). farewell. roxane. i'll see you to the gate. (_the duke bows to le bret, and goes, with roxane, towards the house._) duke (_stopping a moment_). i envy him at times. you see, roxane, when we have had too much success in life, although we've done no very wicked act-- we feel within a thousand sickly stings of self-reproach; their total is too small to constitute remorse, but large enough to keep us in a dull uneasiness. thus ducal mantles sweep, as we ascend the steps of greatness, with their fringe of furs a rustling heap of withered sentiments, as now your sombre train, upon the porch, draws in its folds a bunch of autumn leaves. roxane (_ironically_). you are in a very sentimental mood. the duke. alas! yes. (_as he is about to go out, abruptly_). monsieur le bret! (_to roxane_). by your permission, one word. (_to le bret in a low tone_). it is true; no one would dare to attack your friend. but there are many who hate him, and somebody said to me, yesterday, at the queen's reception: "this cyrano is not unlikely to meet some day with an accident." tell him not to be about too much. to be prudent. le bret (_throwing up his arms_). prudent, he! but he is coming here to-day, and i must warn him, though i doubt if that will do much good. roxane (_who has remained on the porch, to a sister coming up to her_). what is it? the sister. ragueneau wishes to see you, madam. roxane. let him in. (_exit sister._) (_to duke and to le bret_). he comes to tell his woes. he started to be an author, but became in turn a chanter.... le bret. a bath-keeper.... roxane. an actor.... le bret. a beadle.... roxane. a barber.... le bret. an archlute-teacher.... roxane. to-day what can he have become? ragueneau (_entering rapidly_). oh! madam! (_noticing le bret_). oh! sir! roxane (_smiling_). tell your misfortunes to le bret. i shall be back presently. (_exit roxane, with the duke, without listening to ragueneau, who comes down toward le bret._) _scene iii._ le bret, ragueneau. ragueneau. after all, since you are here, sir, it is just as well that she should be kept in ignorance! i was on my way to see your friend, this afternoon, when, as i was nearing his door, i saw him coming out. as i was endeavouring to overtake him, and as he was turning the corner, a window above him opened, and,--was it through accident? perhaps! a lackey dropped upon him a heavy log of wood. le bret. cowards!.... abominable! ragueneau. our friend, sir, our poet, lay there on the ground with a large hole in his head! le bret. is he dead? ragueneau. no! but in what a state! i carried him up to his room... his room! you should see what it is! le bret. he is in great pain? ragueneau. no, sir, he has not recovered his senses. le bret. you found a doctor? ragueneau. yes, one who was good enough to come. le bret. unfortunate cyrano!--we must break the news gently to roxane.--and what said the doctor? ragueneau. he spoke of fever.... meningitis. oh! if you saw him.... with his poor head bandaged!.... come quickly, sir, there is nobody with him! it would be death to him if he left his bed! le bret (_urging him toward the right_). this way is shorter; through the chapel! roxane (_appearing on the porch, and seeing le bret and ragueneau running up the colonnade to the chapel!_) monsieur le bret! (_exeunt le bret and ragueneau without answering._) no doubt another of good ragueneau's troubles. _scene iv._ roxane _alone, two_ sisters _a moment_. how beautiful these last september days! my sadness fain would smile. spring's ardour oft offends our grief, but autumn chastens it. (_she sits down before her work. two sisters sally from the house carrying a large armchair that they place under the tree._) ah! here's the chair in which cyrano sits. (_exeunt sisters._) the hour strikes.... he's coming.--where are my skeins!--he's not here yet? the first time he is late.... my thimble.... here it is. some sister preaching to him, no doubt. (_a pause._) how thickly fall the leaves!.... (_she removes some dead leaves from her work._) moreover, what could prevent his coming? a sister (_from the porch_). monsieur de bergerac. _scene v._ roxane, cyrano, _and, one moment_, sister martha. roxane (_without turning around_). why did i worry so? (_she works.--enter cyrano, very pale, with his hat well over his eyes. exit sister who announced him. he descends the steps slowly, with a visible effort to remain erect, leaning heavily on his stick._) for the first time in fourteen years, you are late! cyrano (_who has gained his chair and seated himself, speaks in a cheerful tone, in contrast with his looks_). yes, and, in truth, i boil with rage. i was delayed.... roxane. by what, by whom? cyrano. by an intruder. roxane (_distraught_). some bore? but you got rid of him, or her. cyrano. yes. "excuse me," said i, "but this is saturday, and i have a weekly engagement that nothing can prevent me from keeping. return an hour hence!" roxane (_lightly_). the person shall wait. i'll keep you here until evening. cyrano. i may be compelled to leave you sooner. (_he closes his eyes and remains silent a moment. sister martha appears in the rear going to the chapel. roxane sees her, and nods._) roxane (_to cyrano_). how is it you do not tease sister martha to-day? cyrano (_rapidly, opening his eyes_). tease? of course! (_with affected severity_). sister martha! come here. (_sister martha goes up to him._) ha! ha! your eyes are too fine to remain thus forever down! sister martha (_smiling_). but.... (_she notices his pale looks._) oh! cyrano (_aside, pointing to roxane_) hush! it's nothing. (_aloud, in boastful tone_). i ate meat yesterday! friday! sister martha. yes, i know. (_aside_). that is the reason he looks so pale! (_to cyrano rapidly and in a low tone_). come to the refectory by and by. i want to make you taste some broth..... will you come? cyrano. yes, yes, yes. sister martha. oh! you are very reasonable to-day. roxane (_who notices their whispering_). is she trying to convert you? sister martha. oh! nothing of the kind! cyrano. it is a fact! you always have an abundance of saintly sermons, and to-day, sister, you are not preaching to me. (_with affected fury_). swords and muskets! i, too, shall astonish you! see here, i will permit you.... (_affects to be thinking and to have found a good jest._) ah! this is something new.... to.... to pray for me, to-night, in the chapel. roxane. oh! oh! this is serious. cyrano (_laughing_). sister martha is dumfounded! sister martha (_gently_). i did not wait for your permission. (_exit sister martha._) cyrano (_returning to roxane, who is leaning over her work_). i verily believe there never will be an end to this task of yours. roxane. i am getting accustomed to this remark. (_just then a few dead leaves fall on roxane's work._) cyrano. oh! withered leaves! roxane (_looking at the landscape_). poor blondes of venice hue, how fast they fall! cyrano. they fall, but see how well! their race is short, and still they sweetly show how beauty e'er recoils from rottenness: for, as they drop, they do not in their grace appear to fall, but rather to alight! roxane. unusually sad thoughts for you! cyrano (_recovering his presence of mind_). sad? not at all, roxane! roxane. come, let the dead leaves fall as they will....better give me the news, be my weekly gazette. cyrano. agreed! roxane. i'm listening. cyrano (_getting paler and paler, as he struggles against pain_). saturday, the th, having over indulged in grape-jam from cette, the king was taken with fever; his indisposition was sentenced, for high treason, to be twice lanced, and the royal pulse was relieved of febricity![ ] at the queen's ball, on sunday, seven hundred and sixty-three candles of white wax were burned. our troops have been victorious, it is said, over those of john the austrian; four sorcerers have been hung! the little dog of madam d'athis was given.... roxane. monsieur de bergerac, you may omit the details! cyrano. monday.... nothing. oh! yes, lygdamire took a new lover. roxane. oh! cyrano (_whose suffering is evidently increasing_). tuesday, all the court was at fontainebleu. wednesday, the beauty montglat said to count de fiesque: no! thursday, mancini, queen of france,--or almost! the th, montglat said to fiesque: yes; and saturday, th.... (_his eyes close. his head falls upon his shoulder. silence._) roxane (_surprised at hearing nothing more, turns around, looks at him, and rises very much frightened_). has he fainted? (_runs up to him._) cyrano! cyrano (_opening his eyes and speaking somewhat indistinctly_). what is it?.... who?.... when?.... (_he sees roxane leaning over him, and, quickly securing his hat on his head, backs up into his armchair._) no! no! i assure you, it is nothing. i am quite myself again. roxane. but allow me.... cyrano. it is the old wound i received at arras.... that.... sometimes.... you know.... roxane. dearest friend! cyrano. but, it is nothing serious. soon over. (_makes an effort to smile_). quite well again now. roxane (_standing near him_). we each of us have our wound: i, too, have one, ever smarting; i feel it here, old though it be, (_placing her hand on her breast_) right here, beneath the time-worn letter on which can still be seen the trace of tears and blood! (_dusk begins to come on._) cyrano. his letter!.... did you not say that some day, perhaps, you would allow me to read it? roxane. what! you wish?.... his letter?.... cyrano. yes.... i wish.... to-day.... roxane. (_handing him the sachet she carries suspended to her neck_). here it is! cyrano (_taking it_). i may open? roxane. you may open and read!.... (_she returns to her work, folds it up and arranges her worsteds._) cyrano (_reading_). "roxane, farewell! the time...." roxane (_stopping, astonished_). you read aloud? cyrano (_reading_). "roxane, farewell! the time of death has come; this eve, i think, belovèd, is my last. my soul's still rich in unexpressèd love, and i must die! my dazzled eyes no more, my eyes for which you were...." roxane. why! how you read his lines!.... cyrano (_continuing_). ".... for which you were a thrilling feast, no more will drink your ev'ry motion, dear. there's one that i recall, so truly yours, to smooth your hair, and i would cry aloud...." roxane. how can you know?.... (_darkness comes on by degrees._) cyrano (_continuing_). "....and now i cry, indeed: farewell!...." roxane. you read as if.... cyrano (_continuing_). ".... my dearest dear, my treasure...." roxane. oh! that voice! cyrano (_continuing_). "my love!...." roxane. that voice! that voice.... i know i heard it once before! (_she passes behind him, leans over the chair, without his noticing her, and looks over the letter. darkness increases._) cyrano (_continuing_). "my yearning heart has never left you once. and i am he, and death will leave me he who loved you, dear, beyond all measure, he...." roxane (_placing her hand on his shoulder_). but how is it you still can read? night has come. (_he shudders, turns, sees her near by, moves as if greatly alarmed, and hangs his head. long silence. it is quite dark. she joins her hands, and speaks slowly:_) and during fourteen years you have played this part of an old friend who comes to amuse! cyrano. roxane! roxane. it was you. cyrano. no, no, roxane, you mistake! roxane. i should have felt it each time you said my name! cyrano. it was not i! roxane. it was! cyrano. i swear to you.... roxane. swear not, for now i understand your generous deceit. the letters were yours.... cyrano. no! roxane. the dear and tender words were yours.... cyrano. no! roxane. that voice in the night was yours! cyrano. i swear it was not! roxane. that soul was yours! cyrano. i loved you not! roxane. you did! cyrano. it was the other! roxane. you loved me! cyrano. no! roxane. you did, for each of your denials is lower than the one before! cyrano. no, no, my dearest, no, i loved you not! roxane. how many things are dead!.... how many born!.... --oh! through these years why were you silent thus, since on these lines, not his by word or thought, the tears were yours? cyrano. because the blood is his! roxane. why then allow a silence that's sublime to break as now? cyrano. roxane, oh! why, indeed? (_le bret and ragueneau enter on a run._) [ ] note.--intentional affectation, like that of "his indisposition was sentenced, for high treason." _scene vi._ _the same_, le bret _and_ ragueneau. le bret. how imprudent! i was sure of it! he is here! cyrano (_smiling and straightening himself up_). of course, i'm here! le bret. it is suicide, madam, for him to have left his bed! roxane. great god! but just now, then....this weakness?.... this fainting? cyrano. oh! by the way, i did not finish my weekly chronicle: ....and saturday, th, one hour before dinner, monsieur de bergerac was assassinated in the street. (_he takes off his hat, and his head is seen wrapped in bandages._) roxane. what did he say?--cyrano!--his poor head!.... what have they done to you? cyrano. "and in my heart a sword's ennobling point!" --so said i once!.... what mockery in fate!.... and now i'm killed ignobly from behind, o'erpowered by a lackey with a log. i missed my life; my death's a failure too! ragueneau. oh! sir....oh! sir.... cyrano. good ragueneau, grieve not so!.... (_extends his hand to him._) and what are you doing now, my brother poet? ragueneau (_through his tears_). i am the one who.... who snuffs the candles at molière's.[ ] cyrano. molière! ragueneau. but i shall leave him to-morrow. for i am indignant!.... yesterday he gave _scapin_, and i saw that he had taken from you a whole scene! le bret. entire? ragueneau. yes, sir; the famous: "what the deuce was he doing?...." le bret (_to cyrano_). molière has robbed you! cyrano. hush! hush! he did well!.... (_to ragueneau_). the scene was very effective, was it not? ragueneau (_sobbing_). oh! sir, what a laugh! what a laugh! through the whole audience! cyrano. my life, you see, is all in this: i've been the one who prompts--and ever is forgot! (_to roxane_). do you recall the night when christian spoke his love for you--beneath your balcony? the words were mine, and mine the fondest thoughts; but i remained below, unknown, in darkness, while another went aloft to gather light and love! 'tis justice, and my dying breath approves; molière has genius, christian's beauty won. (_the chapel bell sounds. sisters pass in the rear, going to evening service._) it's time for prayer; the bell that tolls is right! roxane (_rising to call_). come, sister! cyrano (_restraining her_). leave me not to call for help! on your return, you would not find me here. (_the sisters have entered the chapel, and the organ begins to play._) i yearned for harmony; and now it's come! roxane. i love you, live! cyrano. in fairy tales alone can love dispel the curse of homeliness. you'd soon discover that i cannot change. roxane. you've suffered....and through me! cyrano. through you? not so! i never knew a woman's gentleness. my mother found me homely. sister, none; and as to lady-loves, they would have laughed at me. through you, at least, i had a friend; through you i've known the spell a gown can bring! le bret (_showing the moonlight through the trees_). another friend of yours is there! cyrano (_smiling to the moon_). i see. roxane. i loved but one, and here i lose him twice! cyrano. and now, le bret, i'll mount, and reach the moon, although i've not completed that machine.... le bret. oh! speak not thus! cyrano. why not? 'tis there, i say, that i'll be sent to seek for paradise. how many souls i love are there in bliss! good socrates and galileo too! le bret (_indignant_). no! no! this is too stupid, too unjust! such a poet! a heart so big and lofty! to die thus!.... to die!.... cyrano. there is le bret growling again! le bret (_bursting into tears_). my dearest friend!.... cyrano (_rising, with wildness in his eyes_). fair gascony's cadets are they.... the elementary mass.... why! yes!....--there is the rub.... le bret. alas! delirious! cyrano. copernicus said.... roxane. dreadful! dreadful! cyrano. what the deuce was he doing, what the deuce was he doing in that galley?.... philosopher and physicist, a rimester, swordsman and musician, a man who travelled in the air as prompt with parry as reply, a lover too--alas!--here lies sir hercules, savinian de cyrano de bergerac, who compassed all and still was naught. but i must leave! i would not cause a wait. your pardon. see! the moon sends down for me! (_a ray of light from the moon is on him. he falls back into his chair. the weeping of roxane wakes him from his dreamy state. he looks at her and strokes her veil._) i would not have you weep a wit the less for christian, who was all that's good and grand. but, when the hand of ice has laid me low, i would your weeds might have a double sense of mourning: first for him....and then for me! roxane. i swear to you.... cyrano (_shaking with fever, rises suddenly_). no! never! in a chair! (_to those who advance to assist him_). no help!.... from anybody!.... (_leaning back against the tree_). .... but the tree! (_silence._) it[ ] comes!--i have already marble boots.... and gloves of lead!.... (_he straightens up._) what matters?--since it's here, i'll meet it standing and.... (_draws his sword_) ....with sword in hand! le bret. cyrano! roxane (_overcome_). god! (_all fall back aghast._) cyrano. ha! ha! i think it looks.... it dares to look--the flat face--at my nose! (_brandishes his sword._) what say you?....that it's useless?....don't i know? but valiant hearts contend not for success! it's nobler to defend a hopeless cause! --who are you all? i count a thousand....more! i know you now: my enemies of old! you're falsehood!-- (_strikes the open air with his sword._) here!--ha! ha! and compromise, and prejudice, and cowardice!.... (_he strikes._) submit? no, never! ah! here's imbecility!.... i know that, in the end, i must succumb, i dare you, though, and strike! and strike! and strike! (_strikes right and left with his sword, and stops exhausted._) you take my all, the laurel and the rose!.... well, take them!.... but, in spite of you, there is a something that i bear along with me to sweep to-night with grandeur, as i pass, the threshold and the gates of heaven's blue; a something that's unsullied and is mine.... do what you will! (_rushes forward, sword aloft._) it is.... (_sword drops out of his hand. he staggers and falls into the arms of le bret and ragueneau._) roxane (_leaning over him and kissing his forehead_). it is?.... cyrano (_opens his eyes, recognises her and smiles_). ....my plume![ ] [ ] note.--an evident anachronism, since molière did not open his paris theatre until three years later ( ). given, however, the deep knowledge of seventeenth century matters displayed throughout this drama, the anachronism must be intentional, the poet's object doubtless having been to embody the tradition according to which the "qu'allait-il faire dans cette galère?" of molière's "fourberies de scapin" (produced only in ) was taken from cyrano de bergerac's "le pédant joué." [ ] note.--"it" here is death (feminine in french). the personifying _he_ somewhat customary in english poetry, was set aside, and the _neuter_ gender was intentionally preserved, because, being more vague, it better represents the terror-striking _unknown_, and is more expressive of cyrano's daring _contempt_ and repulsion for a loathsome _thing_. cyrano, who put to flight one hundred men, could not be expected to fear a person, much less a personification. [ ] note.--see introduction, preface and prefatory triolets ("le panache"). _curtain._ [illustration: _fifth act._] transcriber's note apparent printer's errors have been retained, unless stated below. capitalization, accents and formatting markup have been normalized. please note that although ellipses as well as punctuation around brackets appear inconsistent, these have been kept true to the text. text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). illustration tags have been moved to the end of each act. page , "seige" changed to "siege". (that during this terrible siege he shall never be cold!) page , "christian" changed to "cyrano". other editions have cyrano speaking this line, and it only makes sense when it is spoken by him. (cyrano (_halting_).) page and , "ventrebieu" has been retained. it is believed that this may be a typo for "ventrebleu", however, multiple volumes in both french and english use the same term. page , "decartes" changed to "descartes". (.... and i ... will read descartes.) page , cyrano's name appeared twice in a row without a second character speaking in between. (once before his line, "we'll give them a salute!" and again before he said "fire!") this redundancy was corrected. page , "vail" changed to "veil". (roxane is seen in the rear; she is in black, wearing the long veil of a widow.) page , "youé" changed to "joué". (given, however, the deep knowledge of seventeenth century matters displayed throughout this drama, the anachronism must be intentional, the poet's object doubtless having been to embody the tradition according to which the "qu'allait-il faire dans cette galère?" of molière's "fourberies de scapin" (produced only in ) was taken from cyrano de bergerac's "le pédant joué.") page , "genuis" changed to "genius". ('tis justice, and my dying breath approves; molière has genius, christian's beauty won.) page , "roxane" changed to "le bret". other editions have le bret speaking this line, and as cyrano has just addressed him, it makes better sense. (le bret. oh! speak not thus!) transcriber's note: inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. obvious typographical errors have been corrected. italic text is denoted by _underscores_. on page , camelias is a possible typo for camellias. the index entry for the latin quarter refers to a non-existent index entry to the scholars' quarter. the stones of paris in history and letters [illustration: madame de sévigné. (from the portrait by mignard.)] the stones of paris in history and letters by benjamin ellis martin and charlotte m. martin in two volumes vol. ii _illustrated_ new york charles scribner's sons mdcccxcix copyright, , by charles scribner's sons trow directory printing and book binding company new york contents page the southern bank in the nineteenth century the paris of honoré de balzac the paris of alexandre dumas the paris of victor hugo the making of the marais the women of the marais list of illustrations _from drawings by john fulleylove, esq. the portraits from photographs by messrs. braun, clément et cie._ madame de sévigné (from the portrait by mignard). frontispiece page alphonse de lamartine (from a sketch by david d'angers, "_un soir chez hugo_") facing madame récamier (from the portrait by gros) facing the abbaye-aux-bois portal of châteaubriand's dwelling in rue du bac the court of the pension vauquer facing honoré de balzac (from the portrait by louis boulanger) facing les jardies the antiquary's shop, and in the background the house where voltaire died facing the pension vauquer the commemorative tablet to balzac the figure of d'artagnan (from the dumas monument by gustave doré) facing alexandre dumas facing the wall of the carmelites rue tiquetonne, with the hôtel de picardie facing the hôtel de toulouse alfred de musset (from the sketch by louis-eugène lami) facing the cemetery of picpus victor hugo (from the portrait by bonnat) facing the hôtel du prévôt anne de bretagne (from a portrait by an unknown artist in a private collection) facing louis xii (from a water-color portrait by an unknown artist, in a private collection) facing sully (from a portrait attributed to quesnel, in the musée condé at chantilly) facing the court of the hôtel de béthune. sully's residence the hôtel de mayenne. in the distance, the temple sainte-marie, called the church of the visitation facing the place des vosges facing the hôtel de beauvais facing the staircase of the dwelling of the marquise de brinvilliers facing the hôtel de sens facing marguerite de valois (from a portrait by an unknown artist, in the musée de montpellier) facing the hôtel lamoignon facing the tourelle of the hôtel barbette the gateway of the hôtel de clisson the southern bank in the nineteenth century the southern bank in the nineteenth century in preceding chapters we have come upon the small beginnings of the scholars' quarter; we have had glimpses of the growth of the great mother university and of her progeny of out-lying colleges; and we have trodden, with their scholars and students, the slope of "the whole latin mountain," as it was named by pantaléon, that nephew of pope urban iv., who extolled the learning he had acquired here. looking down from its crest, over the hill-side to the seine, we have had under our eyes the mediæval _pays latin_, filling up the space within its bounding wall, built by philippe-auguste and left untouched by charles v.; we have seen that wall gradually obliterated through the ages, its gate-ways with their flanking towers first cut away, its fabric picked to pieces, stone by stone; while, beyond its line, we have watched the building up, early in the seventeenth century, of the faubourg saint-germain, over the pré-aux-clercs, and in the fields beyond, and along the river-bank toward the west. in the centre of this new quarter the nobility of birth was soon intrenched behind its garden-walls, and in the centre of the old quarter the aristocracy of brains was secluded within its courts. the boundary-line of the two quarters, almost exactly defined by the straight course from the institute to the panthéon, speedily became blurred, and the debatable neutral ground between was settled by colonists from either region, servants of the state, of art, of letters. in our former strollings through long-gone centuries, we have visited many of these and many of the dwellers on the university hill; we are now to turn our attention to those brilliant lights on the left bank who have helped to make paris "_la ville lumière_" during the forenoon of the nineteenth century. through the heart of the _faubourg_ curved the narrow rue saint-dominique, from esplanade des invalides to rue des saints-pères. this eastern end, nearly as far west as rue de bellechasse, has been carried away by new boulevard saint-germain, and with it the _hôtel_ of the de tocqueville family, which stood at no. of the ancient aristocratic street. here in lived the comtesse de tocqueville, with her son, alexis-charles-henri clérel, a lad of fifteen. here he remained until the events of sent him to the united states, with a mission to study their prison systems; a study extended by him to all the institutions of the republic, which had a profound interest for the french republicans of that time. his report on those prisons appeared in , and in he put forth the first volume of "de la démocratie en amérique," its four volumes being completed in . that admirable survey of the progress of democracy--whose ascendancy he predicted, despite his own predilections--still carries authority, and at the time created a wide-spread sensation. it made its author famous, and promoted him to the place of first-assistant lion in the _salon_ of madame récamier, whose head lion was always châteaubriand. de tocqueville had settled, on his return to paris, in this same _faubourg_; residing until at rue de verneuil, and from that date to at rue de bourgogne. elected deputy in , he soon crossed the seine, and we cannot follow him to his various residences in the quarter of the madeleine. for a few months in he served as minister for foreign affairs in the cabinet of the prince-president, and was among the deputies put into cells in december, . his remaining years, until his death at cannes in , were spent in retirement from all public affairs. a notable inhabitant of the university quarter, in the early years of the nineteenth century, was françois-pierre-guillaume guizot, a young professor at the sorbonne. his classes were crowded by students and by men from outside, all intent on his strong and convincing presentation of his favorite historical themes. he lived, near his lecture-room, at no. rue de la planche, a street that now forms the eastern end of rue de varennes, between rues du bac and de la chaise. from to his home was at rue saint-dominique, where now is no. boulevard saint-germain, next to the hôtel de luynes, already visited with racine. this latter period saw guizot, after a temporary dismissal from his chair by the bourbon king, at the height of his powers and his prestige as a lecturer. he carried his oratory to the chamber of deputies in , and there compelled equal attention. in we find him, minister of public instruction, installed in the official residence at rue de grenelle, on the corner of rue de bellechasse. his work while there still lasts as the basis of the elementary education of france, and it is to him that she owes her primary schools. pushed out from this office in by the pushing thiers, he went to england as ambassador for a few months in , and in the autumn of that year he took up his abode in the ministry of foreign affairs, where he remained until he was driven out in . that ancient mansion, no longer in existence, stood on the triangle made by boulevard and rue des capucines. with his desertion of this southern bank, we lose sight of his dwellings, always thereafter in the faubourg saint-honoré. guizot and louis-philippe failed in their fight against a nation, and the men of february, , revolted against the prime minister as well as against the king of the french. that _opéra-bouffe_ monarch with the pear-shaped face, under the guise of mr. smith, with a fat umbrella, slipped out of the back door of the tuileries and away to england; guizot got away to the same safe shores in less ludicrous disguise. he returned to his own land in , and lived until , always poor, always courageous, and always at work. among his many volumes of these years, all marked by elevation of thought and serenity of style, as well as by absence of warmth and color, were his "mémoires," wherein he proves, to the satisfaction of his austere dogmatism, that he had always been in the right throughout his public career. the revolution of , that sent de tocqueville on his voyage, and that started guizot in political life, brought alphonse-marie-louis de lamartine to the public ear as an orator. he had filled the public eye as a poet since , when his "méditations poétiques" appeared. in , his "harmonies poétiques et religieuses" had made it sure that here was a soul filled with true harmony. and while he sang the consolations of religion, as châteaubriand had sung its splendors, he gave proof of his devotion to the church and throne. but he bore the revolution of , and the flight of the bourbons, with the same equanimity he always summoned for the reverses of others, as well as for his own. when a literary genius is out of work, says sainte-beuve, he takes to politics and becomes an illustrious citizen, for want of something better to do. lamartine was elected a deputy soon after the upset of , and sprang at once into the front rank of parliamentary orators. his speeches in the chamber, and his "history of the girondists"--enthralling and untrustworthy--helped to bring on the revolution of , quite without his knowing or wishing it. it was his superb outburst of rhetoric, as he stood alone on the steps of the hôtel de ville, on february th, backed by no colleague and clad in no authority, that saved to france her tricolor--"that has swept all around the world, carrying liberty and glory in its folds"--in place of the white flag of the bourbons that had gone, and the red rag of the mob that was near coming. between that month of february and june of that same year, lamartine had been on the crest of his highest wave, and had sunk to his lowest level in the regard of his parisians. their faith was justified in his genius and his rectitude, but a volcano is not to be squirted cold by rose-water, and the new republic could not be built on phrases. after his amazing minority in the election for president, lamartine sank out of sight, accepting without complaint his sudden obscurity, as he had accepted without intrigue his former lustre. the conspiracy of december, , sent him into retirement, and he lived alone with his pen, his only weapon against want--a pathetically heroic figure during these last years. george sand had seen a good deal of lamartine in the days of , and he struck her as "a sort of lafayette without his shrewdness. he shows respect for all men and all ideas, while believing in no ideas and loving no man." a more just and complete judgment is that of louis blanc: "he is incessantly laboring under a self-exalting hallucination. he dreams about himself marvellous dreams, and believes in them. he sees what is not visible, he opens his inward ear to impossible sounds, and takes delight in narrating to others any tale his imagination narrates to him. honest and sincere as he is, he would never deceive you, were he not himself deceived by the familiar demon who sweetly torments him." for twenty years he had been a resident of the faubourg saint-germain. indeed, when he came to paris for a while, in , to see to the publication of his first poems, he found rooms on quai d'orsay. from there he went to make that call on young hugo, to be narrated later. from to his apartment was in the grand mansion, "between court and garden," no. rue de l'université. his reception-room was decorated with portraits and busts of alphonse de lamartine, we are told by frederick locker-lampson, who visited him there. his host was a handsome and picturesque figure, he says, albeit with an over-refinement of manner. no keener criticism of the poet and his poetry, at this period, has been made than that by locker-lampson, in one curt sentence. his sane humor is revolted by that "prurient chastity, then running, nay, galloping, to seed in an atmosphere of twaddle and toadyism." the desolate fallen idol was rescued from oblivion and poverty by the second empire, whose few honorable acts may not be passed over. in , in its and his dying years, that government gave him money, and the municipality gave him a house. these gifts came to him in rue cambacérès, in a small hotel now rebuilt into no. of that street. where it meets with rue de penthièvre, just above, you will find the attractive old mansion, with its ancient number cut in the stone over the doorway, in which, during the years after leaving the faubourg saint-germain, he carried on his courageous struggle with his pen against debt and poverty. he had but few months' enjoyment of his last home, the gift of the people of paris, for he died there in . it was at passy, not far from the square in avenue henri-martin, named for him and holding his statue. the chair in which he is seated might be a theatrical property, perhaps humorously and fittingly so suggested by the sculptor; who has, however, done injustice to his subject, in robbing him of his natural grace and suavity, and in giving him a pedantic angularity that was never his. when lamartine writes to sainte-beuve, "i have wept, i who never weep," we are amused by the poet's naïve ignorance of his persistent lachrymose notes. the "smiling critic" accepted them simply as a pardonable overflow of the winning melancholy of that nature, in which he recognized all that was genuine and laudable. this wide-minded tolerance is perhaps the secret of sainte-beuve's strength as a critic. with his acute discernment of the soul of a book and of its author, his subtle appreciation of all diverse qualities, he was splendidly impartial. he could read anything and everything, with a keenness of appraisement that did not prejudice his enjoyment of that which was alive, amid much that might be dead. "a pilgrim of ideas, but lacking the first essential of a pilgrim--faith"--he gave all that he was to literature through all his life, and when near its end, he had the right to say: "devoted with all my heart to my profession of critic, i have tried to be, more and more, a good and--if possible--a skilful workman." [illustration: alphonse de lamartine. (from a sketch by david d'angers. "_un soir chez hugo._")] he devoted himself so entirely to his profession, that his life was like a mill, as he said, perpetually feeding and grinding. on the monday morning, he would shut himself in with the new volumes, which he was to feed into himself and assimilate, during the twelve hours of each of the five following days; on saturday he was ready to grind out the result. his sunday holiday was given to the proof-reading of his next day's "causerie du lundi." on that evening he took his only relaxation, in the theatre. his work-room was bare of all superfluities, and his daily life went in a round, with simple diet, no wine, nor coffee, nor tobacco. at the age of twenty-five, charles-augustin sainte-beuve was living, with his mother, in a small apartment on the fourth floor of no. --now --rue notre-dame-des-champs. he had given himself to letters instead of medicine, for which he had studied, and had become a regular contributor of critical papers to the press. his name was already spoken along with the names of victor cousin, villemain, guizot, mérimée. he had produced his "historical and critical pictures," his "french poetry and french theatre of the sixteenth century," and the "poems of joseph delorme"--his selected pen-name. the poet in him had abdicated to the critic, handing down many choice gifts. in this apartment he received for review a volume of poems, "by a young barbarian," his editor wrote. this was the "odes et ballades" of victor hugo, with whom the critic soon made acquaintance, and at whose house, a few doors away in the same street, he became a constant visitor. from here madame sainte-beuve removed, with her son, in , to rue du mont-parnasse, and in that street he had his home during his remaining years. his official residence, from to , as a keeper of the mazarin library, was in that building now occupied by the institute. he found installed there, among the other keepers, octave feuillet. the upheaval of february, , drove sainte-beuve into belgium. on his return in the following year, he settled in the house left him by his mother, and there he died in . this two-storied, plaster-fronted, plain little no. rue du mont-parnasse, saw his thirty years of colossal work. from here, he went to take his chair of latin poetry in the collège de france, where he was hissed by the students, who meant to hiss, not the critic and lecturer, but the man who had accepted the second empire in accepting that chair. he was no zealous recruit, however, and preserved his entire independence; and when he consented to go to the senate in , it was for the sake of its dignity and its salary. he was always poor in money. to his workroom in this house, came every french writer of those thirty years, anxious to plead with or to thank that supreme court of criticism. among those who bowed to its verdicts and who have owned to its influence, edmond de goncourt has given us the most vivid sketch of the critic in conversation: "when i hear him touch on a dead man, with his little phrases, i seem to see a swarm of ants invading a body; cleaning out all the glory, and in a few minutes leaving a very clean skull of the once illustrious one." and, in his written reviews, sainte-beuve had the supreme art of distilling a drop of venom in a phial of honey, so making the poison fragrant and the incense deadly. there is no more constant presence than his on this southern hill-side, where all his days and nights were spent. we seem to see there the short, stout figure, erect and active, the bald head covered with a skull-cap, the bushy red eyebrows, the smooth-shaven face, redeemed from ugliness by its alert intelligence. his walks were down this slope of mont-parnasse, which he thought of as the pleasure-ground of the mediæval students of the university, to the quays, where he hunted among the old-book stalls. and he loved to stroll in the alleys of the luxembourg gardens. in the poets' corner, now made there, you will find his bust along with those of henri murger, leconte de lisle, théodore de banville, and paul verlaine. crossing the street from sainte-beuve's last home to no. , we find a modest house set behind its garden-wall, in which is a tablet containing the name of edgar quinet. more than passing mention of his name is due to this fine intellect and this great soul. his mother thought that "an old gentleman named m. voltaire"--whom she might have seen in her childhood, as her village crowded about his carriage on its way to paris--was the cleverest man who ever lived. she brought up her boy to think for himself, after that philosopher's fashion, and the boy bettered her teachings. he spent his life in looking into the depths of beliefs and institutions, in getting at the essence of the real and the abiding, in letting slip that which was shallow and transitory; so that, towards the end, he could say: "i have passed my days in hearing men speak of their illusions, and i have never experienced a single one." he became, in professor dowden's apt phrase, "a part of the conscience of france," and as such, his influence was of higher value than that exerted by his busy pen in politics, history, poetry. indeed, his enthusiasms for the freedom and progress of his fellow-beings carried his pen beyond due restraint. of course he was honored by exile during the second empire, and when it tumbled to pieces, he returned to paris, and soon went to versailles as a deputy. at his grave, in , hugo spoke of him as living and dying with the serene light of truth on his brow, and he can have no happier epitaph. quinet had outlived, by only a few months, his life-long friend jules michelet, who died in . he, too, had his homes and did his work, private and public, on this same hill-side. his birth-place, far away on the northern bank, on the corner of rues de tracy and saint-denis, is now given over to business. it was a church, built about in the gardens of "_les dames de saint-chaumont_," and had been closed in , along with so many other churches. going fast to ruin, it was fit only for the poverty-stricken tenant, who came along in the person of the elder michelet, a printer from laon. he set up his presses in the nave and his household gods in the choir, where the boy jules was born on august , . the building is unchanged as to its outer aspect, with its squat columns supporting the heavy pediment of the façade, except that two stories have been placed above its main body. in these strange surroundings for a child, and in the shelters equally squalid, to and from which his father removed during many years, the boy grew up, haunted and nervous, cold, hungry and ill-clad, and always over his books when set free from type-setting. he got lessons and took prizes at the lycée charlemagne, but the pleasantest lesson and the dearest prize of his youth did not come in school. they were his first sight, from his father's windows in rue buffon, of the sun setting over beyond the trees, tuneful with birds, of the jardin du roi. grass and foliage, and a sky above an open space, had been unknown to his walled-in boyhood. when he became able to choose a home for himself, it had always its garden, or a sight of one. at an early age he went to tutoring; in he was appointed lecturer on history in the collège rollin, then in its old place on the university hill; soon after he succeeded to guizot's chair in the sorbonne, and in the collège de france made him its professor of history and moral science. in that institution, he and his colleague quinet caused immense commotion by their assaults on the church intrenched in the state, and from their halls the hootings of the clericals, and the plaudits of the liberals, re-echoed throughout france. the priesthood complained that "the lecturer on history and morals gave no history and no morals," and it began to be believed--rightly or wrongly--that he was using his professor's platform as a band-stand, and was beating a big drum for the gratification of the groundlings. he was speedily dismissed, he was reinstated soon after , and was finally thrown aside by the second empire. at this period only, he disappears from the scholars' quarter for a while. his earliest residence there was, soon after his marriage in , at rue de l'arbalète, a street named from the "_chevaliers de l'arbalète_," who had made it their archery grounds in mediæval days. the site of michelet's residence is fittingly covered by a large school, on the corner of that street and of the street named for claude bernard. after a short stay in rue des fossés-saint-victor--that street nearly all gone now--he returned to this neighborhood, and settled in rue des postes, which, in , received the name of the grammarian lhomond. otherwise, no change has come to this quiet street, lined with fifteenth and sixteenth century buildings, among which is the hôtel flavacourt, set in the midst of gardens. on its first floor michelet lived from to . at no. is the arched gateway through which he went, in its keystone the carved head of a strong man with thick beard and curling locks. above the long yellow-drab wall shows the new chapel of the priests, who, with unknowing irony, have taken his favorite dwelling for their schools. absent from this quarter during the early years of the second empire, and absent from paris during part of that time, it was in that michelet settled in his last abode. it was at rue de l'ouest, and his garden here was the great luxembourg garden. in , the street was renamed rue d'assas, and his house renumbered . after his death in the south of france in , his widow lived there until her own death in , and kept that modest home just as he had left it. she was his second wife, and had been of great help to him in his work, and had done her own work, aided by his hand, which sprinkled gold-dust over her manuscript, as she prettily said. that hand had not been idle for over fifty years. he gave forty years of labor, broken only by his other books, to his "history of france," which at his death was not yet done, as he had meant that it should be done. it is a series of pictures, glowing and colored by his sympathetic imagination, which let him see and touch the men of every period, and made him, for the moment, the contemporary of every epoch. and taine assures us, contrary to the general belief, that we may trust its accuracy. his style has a magic all its own. he had said: "augustin thierry calls history a narration, guizot calls it an analysis; i consider that history should be a resurrection." this idea is translated into durable marble on his striking tombstone in père-lachaise, done in high relief by the chisel of mercié. the life of maximilien-paul-Émile littré, a few years longer than that of michelet and equally full of strenuous labor, was passed on this same slope and ended in this same street of assas. born on february , , in the plain house of three stories and attic at no. rue des grands-augustins, he got his schooling at lycée louis-le-grand, where we have seen other famous scholars. he appears for a day and a night on the barricades of , and then settles quietly at no. rue du colombier, now rue jacob. on his marriage, in , he removed to no. rue des maçons, now rue champollion, once racine's street, in the heart of the university. in he made his home in rue de l'ouest, and in that home he remained until his death on june , . his apartment took up the entire second floor of present rue d'assas--the new name of rue de l'ouest--at the corner of rue de fleurus, and its windows on the curve opened on ample light and air. like sainte-beuve, littré gave up medicine, to which he had been trained, for journalistic work; some of which, in his early days, was done for the gazette médicale, and much of it all through life for the political press. he was an ardent liberal, and after the fall of the empire, was elected a deputy, and later a senator, of the third republic. nothing in the domain of literature seemed alien to this catholic mind, equally at ease in science and philosophy, philology and history. the enduring achievement of his life is his dictionary of the french language. it was begun in and completed in , and a supplement was added in . in his fortieth year, he was attracted by the teachings of comte, and became a leader of the positivists and a copious contributor to their review. his career is that of an earnest and a self-denying student; a teacher of unfettered thinking in science, religion, politics; a modest and disinterested fellow-worker in letters. his master in the cult that won him solely by its scientific fascinations, auguste comte, had lived for the last fifteen years of his life at no. rue monsieur-le-prince, and there he died in . we can but glance at the tablet in passing, and we cannot even glance at the altered residences, in this quarter, of the gifted amédée thierry and of his more gifted brother, augustin, the historian "with the patience of a monk and the pen of a poet." he died, in , in rue du mont-parnasse, in the house that had been quinet's, it is said. we look up, as we go, at the sunny windows, facing full south over the luxembourg gardens, of the home of jules janin, in his day "the prince of critics." they are on the first floor at the corner of rues rotrou and de vaugirard, alongside the odéon, the theatre in which he had his habitual seat. he died at passy in . this _faubourg_ has had no more striking figure than that of prosper mérimée, tight-buttoned in frock-coat, and of irreproachable starchedness; with a curiously round, cold eye behind glasses, a large nose with a square end, a forehead seamed with fine wrinkles. it was his pride to pass as an englishman in his walk. in his work, in romance equally with archæology, the gentleman prevails over the author, so that he seems to stand aloof, reserved, sceptical, correct; never showing emotion, never giving way to his really infinite wit and frisky mockery. he began his working-life in , as a painter with his father, alongside the École des beaux-arts, at no. rue des petits-augustins, now rue bonaparte. in he moved around the corner to no. rue des beaux-arts, half way between the school and his other place of work in the institute, as inspector of the historical and artistic monuments of france. from to he was to be found at rue jacob, and close at hand he found "_l'inconnue_," at of the same street. in he removed to his last residence at rue de lille, on the corner of rue du bac. the commune burned that house along with others adjacent, and until rebuilding began, long after, there stood in the ruins a marble bust on its pedestal, unharmed except for the stain of the flames. it was all that was left of mérimée's great art-collection, with which, and with his books and cats, he had lived alone since his mother's death. he had gone away to cannes to die in . so that he did not see the ruins of the empire, to which he had rallied, altogether from devotion to the empress, whom he had known in spain when she was a child. he accepted nothing from the emperor except the position of librarian at fontainebleau, and was as natural and sincere with the empress, as he had been with eugenie montijo playing about his knee. in his other office he was a loyal servant of the state, and to his alert, artistic conscience france owes the preservation of many historic structures. there are those who claim that the influence of taine on modern thought has been deeper and will be more durable than that of renan. they base their belief on the groundless notion that men are most profoundly impressed by pure reason, forgetful of that well-grounded experience, which proves that all men are touched and moved and persuaded rather by sentiment than by conviction. and the writer is irresistible, who, like renan, appeals to our emotional as well as to our thinking capacities. we are captivated by those feminine qualities in his strain that are disapproved of by his detractors; his refined fancy and his undulating grace seduce us. we are convinced by his zest in the search for truth, by his courage in speaking it as he found it; we recognize his sincerity and sobriety that do not demand applause; we respect the magnanimity that looked on curses as oratorical ornaments of his enemies, and that took no return in kind. and so we stand in the peaceful court of homelike no. rue cassette, on whose first floor hippolyte-adolphe taine died in , in respectful memory of the man who has helped us all by his dissections, his cataloguing, and his array of facts. the structure of the philosophy of history, that he raised, stands imposing and enduring on the bank of the stream of modern thought, and yet it may be that edmond de goncourt was not wholly wrong, in his characterization of taine as "the incarnation of modern criticism; most learned, most ingenious, and most frequently unsound." we turn away and follow eagerly the steps of sympathetic joseph-ernest renan. we have already seen the country boy coming to school, at saint-nicolas-du-chardonnet, in . after four years' tuition there, he passed on to higher courses in the seminary of saint-sulpice. that renowned school faces the _place_ of the same name, which it entirely covered, when built in the early years of the seventeenth century. when the revolution demolished the old structure, it destroyed the _parloir_ where the young student, the chevalier des grieux, gave way before the beguilements of his visitor, manon lescaut. the fountain in this open space flashes with that adorable creation of the abbé prévost; the original of two creations as immortal, says jules janin: "for who is the virginie of bernardin de saint-pierre but manon made pure; and who is châteaubriand's atala but manon made christian?" once a week, while at the seminary, young renan took an outing with the other pupils to its _succursale_ at issy. it is a dreary walk, along the wearisome length of rue de vaugirard, to the village to which isis gave her name, when that goddess, once worshipped in lutetia, was banished to this far-away hamlet. there "queen margot" had a hunting-lodge and vast grounds, and when these were taken by the brothers of saint-sulpice, they saved the grounds and transformed the cupids on the walls of the lodge into cherubs, and the venus into a madonna. now their new structures in caen stone face the street named for ernest renan. in the gardens is a chapel built around the grotto, roofed with shells, wherein bossuet and fénelon used to meet, toward the end of the eighteenth century. there they doubtless began that controversy over the mystical writings of madame guyon, which ended in fénelon's dismissal from the court through the influence of the imperious bossuet. under these trees that shaded them, walked renan in his long and cruel conflict between his conscience and his traditions, most dreading the pain he would give his mother by the step he felt impelled to take. he took that step in october, , when he laid aside the _soutane_--to be adorned and glorified by him, his teachers had hoped--and walked out from the seminary to a small _hôtel-garni_ on the opposite side of place saint-sulpice. supported at first only by the savings of his devoted sister, henriette, he started as a tutor, and began his life's pen-work, in a cheap _pension_, in one of the shabby houses just west of saint-jacques-du-haut-pas, in rue des deux-Églises, now renamed rue de l'abbé-de-l'Épée. his future dwellings, befitting his modest gains, were all in quiet streets of this scholarly quarter. the site of that one occupied from to , at rue madame, is covered by collége bossuet, where priests teach their dogmas. old passage sainte-marie, where he lodged for a while in , is now rue paul-louis-courier, and his lodging is gone. during the ten years from to , he lived in the plain house numbered of retired rue vaneau. then for three years, he had an apartment at no. rue guillaume; "a short street of provincial aspect," says alphonse daudet, "grass-grown, with never a wheel; of silent mansions and unopened gates, and of closed windows on the court; faded and wan after centuries of sleep." this mansion was built for denis talon, an advocate-general at the end of the seventeenth century, and described by germain brice, writing in , as having "most agreeable apartments, with outlook on neighboring gardens, and a large court, and great expense in building." he did not mention the entrance-door, which is monumental, nor the knocker, worth a pilgrimage to see. in renan removed to no. rue de tournon, so finding himself between no. , once occupied by laplace, and no. , once occupied by balzac. in he was made administrator of the collége de france, and there took up his official residence. his appointment to the chair of hebrew in that institution, on his return from the orient in , had so perturbed the church behind the state that he was dismissed after he had given but one lecture. the second empire gone, he came back, mainly through the action of jules simon, a wise and learned statesman and a most lovable man. renan the administrator remained the lecturer as well, and has left ineffaceable memories with those who saw and heard him in his declining years; when, his body disabled by maladies, he still went singing on his way, as he manfully put it. it was a gross and clumsy body; to use edmond de goncourt's words, an ungraceful, almost disgraceful body, full of the moral grace of this apostle of doubt, this priest of science. his lectures were rather readings of the scriptures, interspersed with his own exegesis. on chairs about a large table, and against the wall, in a small room of the college, were seated the few intent listeners. renan sat at one end of the table, his head--"an unchurched cathedral"--bent over a bulky copy of the scriptures as he read; then, as he talked, he would raise his head and throw back the long hair that had tumbled over his brow, the subtle humor of his mobile mouth and his dreamy eyes effacing the effect of his big nose and fat cheeks, his beardless face luminous with an exalted intellectual urbanity. his interpretations and illustrations were spoken with his perfect art of simple and limpid phrase, and in those tones that told of his dwelling with the saints and prophets of all the ages, and with the elusive spirits of mockery of our own day. he died, on october , , in his official residence in the collége de france, an apartment on the second floor of the main structure facing the front court. the austere simplicity of this breton interior was leavened by the books and the equipment of the scholar. the window of his death-chamber is just under the clock. the "touch of earth" demanded by tennyson's guinevere was a need of the nature of george sand. the three stages of her growth, shown in her work, reveal the three inspirations of her life, each most actual: the love of man, the love of humanity, the love of nature. the woman's heart in her made her, said renan, "the Æolian harp of our time"; and béranger's verse well fits her: "_son coeur est un luth suspendu; sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne._" it vibrated to the touch of outrages on woman and of injustice to man, and it pulsated with equal passion for her children and for the rural sights and scents of her birth-place. and we feel her heart in her phrases, that stir us, as thackeray puts it, like distant country-bells. this half-poet, half-mystic, came fairly by her fantastic inheritance; for she was, in the admirable phrase of mr. henry james, "more sensibly the result of a series of love affairs than most of us." on the other side, we may accurately apply to her voltaire's words concerning queen elizabeth: "and europe counts you among her greatest men." there were masculine breadth and elevation in her complex, ample nature, with divine instincts and ideal purities, that left no room for vulgar ambitions and mean avidities. balzac, of kindred qualities, wrote, after having learned to know her a little: "george sand would speedily be my friend. she has no pettiness whatever in her soul; none of the low jealousies that obscure so many contemporary talents. dumas resembles her in this." when madame amantine-lucile-aurore dudevant, a young woman of twenty-six, came, in , to paris to stay--she had already, while a girl, been a _pensionnaire_ in the convent of the "_augustines anglaises_," where, under its ancient name, we have met with mlle. phlipon--she found her only acquaintance in the capital, jules sandeau, living on quai saint-michel. he had known m. dudevant and his wife during his visit to nohant, a year or so earlier. she rented a garret in the same house, one of the old row on the quay, just east of place saint-michel. here she discovered that she could use a pen; at first with scant success and for small pay in the columns of the "figaro," and then, with not much greater power, in a romance, written conjointly with sandeau. they named it "rose et blanche," and its authors' pseudonyme was jules sand. here she assumed the male costume which enabled her to pass for a young student, unmolested in her walks in all weathers and with all sorts and conditions of men, whom she delighted to scrutinize. in a letter written in july, , she says that she is tired of climbing five long flights so many times a day, and is seeking new quarters. she found them, with the same superb outlook over the seine as that she had left, on a third floor of quai malaquais. it may have been, for she always dwelt on her royal ancestry, in the house now no. , which had been the home of maurice de saxe. that son of augustus the strong of poland and of the countess of königsmark was the father of a natural daughter, who became the grandmother and guardian of mlle. lucile-aurore. madame dudevant gave his name to her son, and this young maurice, and his sister solange, were now brought to their mother's new home. she devoted hours to their amusement and instruction, and hours to her pen-work; writing far into the night when daylight did not suffice. she improvised a study in the ground floor on the court, cool when the westering sun flooded her windows above, and quiet when too many visitors disturbed her. for she had sprung into fame with her "indiana"--its author styled george sand--and after only two months' interval with her "valentine." naturally inert, she had to push herself on to work, and then her "serene volubility" knew no pause. she had now to be reckoned with in the guild of letters, and its members met in the "poets' garret," as she termed her little _salon_. balzac came--he who discouraged her in the beginning, on quai saint-michel--and hugo and dumas and sainte-beuve and young de musset. with this last-named she went from here to italy, having persuaded his mother that his infatuation would reform the wayward youth. all the world knows, from the books on both sides, the story of the short-lived _liaison_. she returned to this home in august, , hungry for her children. then we lose sight of her for many years, in her visits to her beloved provincial scenes, and her journeys to other lands, and her temporary residences on the right bank of the seine. in the winter of and she had a _pied-à-terre_ in her son's studio, in the secluded square of cours d'orléans, its entrance now at rue taitbout. there she was visited by charles dickens, who describes her as "looking like what you'd suppose the queen's monthly nurse would be; chubby, matronly, swarthy, black-eyed; a singularly ordinary woman in appearance and manner." others describe her, at this period, when she had just passed her fortieth year, as having a wearied, listless bearing, her only notable feature being her dull, mild, tranquil eyes. in february, , she was found by mr. and mrs. browning in the small apartment attached to her son's studio, at no. rue racine. it is at the top of the house, and can be rented to-day. a curious picture of her and her surroundings is given by the brownings. she was a constant attendant at this time at the odéon--on whose stage her plays were produced--and at the restaurant in the _place_ in front of the theatre. there she used to sit among her male friends, smoking "those horrid big cigars" which so revolted rachel that she would never meet the smoker. george sand's last paris home was in rue gay-lussac, and she was one of the earliest tenants in that street, opened in . she had three or four small rooms in the _entresol_ of no. , the lease of which, after her death in , was sold by her son to a roumanian lady, along with some of his mother's furniture. this lady is delighted to chatter about her illustrious predecessor in this apartment, and allows the favored visitor to sit on the broad couch, covered in dingy and worn leather, whereon george sand was fond of reclining in her last tranquil days, at rest after stormy and laborious years. there is a hospitable little inn in the faubourg saint-germain endeared to many of us by memories, joyous or mournful. the hotel de france et de lorraine, in narrow rue de beaune, just south of the quay, was one of the earliest hotels in paris, and was an approved resort of the royalists, before emigration and after restoration. they seem still to haunt its court and halls, where there lingers that atmosphere of decayed bourbonism, which james russell lowell humorously hits off in a letter written when he was a guest here. the pervading presence is that of châteaubriand, and our amiable hosts have a pride in keeping his apartment--on the first floor, in plain wood panelling of time-worn gray--much as it was when he wrote, in its _salon_, his letter of resignation of his post in the diplomatic service, to the first consul, to be emperor within two months. châteaubriand was in paris on leave of absence at the time of the shooting of the duc d'enghien, in the ditch of vincennes on the night of march , , and he refused to serve any longer the man whom he regarded as an assassin. just seventeen years earlier these two men had arrived in paris, both sub-lieutenants, of nearly the same age, equally obscure and ambitious, equally without heart. napoleon bonaparte, coming from corsica, took a room in the hôtel de cherbourg, as we have seen; françois-auguste, vicomte de châteaubriand, coming from his natal town of saint-malo, found lodging in the hôtel de l'europe in rue du mail. this street, between porte saint-denis, by which the coaches entered, and place des victoires, where they put up, was full of _hôtels-garnis_ for travellers. installed there, châteaubriand hunted up the great malesherbes, a friendly counsellor who put him in the way of meeting men of note; among others bernardin de saint-pierre, at the top of them all, just then, with his "paul et virginie." these two, the one just fifty, the other not yet twenty, then in , strolled together in the jardin du roi, forgetting their old world and its worries, in their talks of the new world and its glories. during the next two or three years, châteaubriand came frequently to paris, an intent and disgusted onlooker at its doings. he stood, with his sisters, at their windows in rue de richelieu, open on that september day, when the mob surged by holding aloft on pikes the heads of foulon and berthier. his royalist stomach revolted, and he joined his regiment at rouen, to retire soon from the service, and to sail in for the new united states, with dreams of distinction as the discoverer of the northwest passage. he dined with george washington, to whom he carried a letter from a french officer, who had served in the colonial army. the president waved aside châteaubriand's florid compliments, and advised him to give up his futile quest. the young breton wandered far into the new country, and while resting in a clearing on the scioto, where now is chillicothe, ohio, he read in an old newspaper of the royal flight to varennes, and of the enforced return. at once he started for france, to offer his sword to his king, arriving in january, , and in the summer of that year he joined the growing train of _émigrés_ to england. for eight years he toiled and starved in london, and returned to paris in . his passport bore the name of "lassague," and he posted, in company, as far as porte de l'Étoile. thence he went on foot down the champs Élysées, finding none of the silence and desolation his fancy had pictured, but, on either hand, lights and music. on the spot where the guillotine had stood he stopped, provided with the proper emotions. he crossed pont royal, then the westernmost bridge, and betook himself to lodgings in rue de lille, in an _entresol_ of one of the dignified mansions, that seem still to stand aloof from their _bourgeois_ neighbors. from here, he stole out to his meals, hiding his face behind his journal, in which he had been reading impassioned praise of the new book, "atala," and listened to the other guests speculating as to the unknown genius who had written it. the picture is to be cherished, for it is the only known portrait of châteaubriand, modest and shrinking. he had brought the manuscript of "atala" to paris in his pocket, and had sought long before securing a publisher. the book found a public eager for novelty. it came in a period of sterility in letters, when all the virility of france had been spent in her colossal wars, and the new century was alert to greet the serene light of science and literature. that came from all points of the horizon, but the resplendent figures of these years were madame de staël and châteaubriand. these two had nothing in common, but they were not inimical, and châteaubriand was one of the minor lions at madame de staël's receptions. for this was a little earlier than , when a more beneficial air than that of paris was ordered for her by the first consul, whom she bored. this "cyclone of sentiment" must have bored mr. pitt, also, when she visited england during the terror; for he seemed to think that the lady did protest too much about the absence of an equivalent in english for the french word "_sentiment_," and he replied: "_mais, madame, nous l'avons; c'est 'my eye and betty martin.'_" and when she got to germany she bored goethe, not only with her sloppy sentimentality, but with her shapely arms, too lavishly displayed. there could be no sympathy between the woman, who, in sainte-beuve's words, "could not help being even more french than her compatriots," and the stuff of whose dreams was a union of the theories of the dead and of the newly born centuries; and châteaubriand, the hard-headed opponent of every revolutionary idea, who pompously labelled himself "a bourbon by honor, a royalist by reason, and still by taste and nature a republican"! a year after his "atala," in , his "génie du christianisme" had placed him, in the estimation of his country and of himself, on a literary throne level with the military throne of bonaparte. the rhetorical fireworks of this book, corruscating around the catholic church, lighted up the night of scepticism, when worship had been abolished and god had been outlawed. yet, as he poetized beyond recognition the north american savages in his "atala," so now he prettified the sanctuary and "gilded the host." the first consul, welcoming any aid in his scheme to use the church for his own ends, sent the author to the legation at rome. we have seen his return. after this, he moves about paris, lodging, for a while, he says, "in a garret" offered him by madame la marquise de coislin, a stanch friend and stanch royalist. "hotel de coislin" may still be read above the doorway of the stately mansion that faces place de la concorde, at the western corner of rue royale, and aggressive bourbonism speaks from its stone pillars and pediment. his garret there was no squalid lodging. on his return from the holy land in , châteaubriand planted the jerusalem pines and cedars of lebanon he had brought back, in the garden of "_vallée-aux-loups_," a little place he then purchased near aulnay, on the south of the city. here, while the empire lasted, he passed years of quiet content, with his wife, his plants, and his books, but writing no more romance after . in , having a town residence, and finding himself too poor to keep this country place, he sold it, and new buildings cover the site of his cottage and garden. recalled to active life by the restoration, châteaubriand posed as one who was more royalist than the king, with a mental reservation of his platonic fancy for a republic. he was a pretentious statesman, none too sincere. his pamphlet, "de buonaparte et des bourbons," had been worth an army to the cause, said louis xviii., who placed him in the chamber of peers, and in , after a short stay at the berlin embassy, in the ambassador's residence in london. lording it there, in all "the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power," he recalled his former years of obscurity and privation in london streets, and began his "mémoires d'outre tombe." in writing about himself he was at his ease, feeling that he had a subject worthy of his best powers, and these memoirs have little of the inflated and fantastic mannerisms of his romances about other people. as to the rest, they are a colossal monument to his conceit and selfishness. dismissed suddenly and indecently by louis xviii., from the ministry of foreign affairs, châteaubriand was made ambassador to rome on the accession of charles x., in . he refused to recognize the younger branch of the bourbons in , and when the crown was given to orleans, he strode out of the chamber of peers, and stripped himself of his peer's robe, with great theatric effect. appearing no more in public life, he was active in pamphlets and in the press as an opponent of the new royalty, which would lead to a republic, he predicted. "_châteaubrillant, vicomte de, rue de l'université _," is his address in the _bottin_ of ; a record of interest in its antiquated spelling of his name, and because this is the house, on the corner of rue du bac, which we shall visit later with alexandre dumas. this three years' lease expiring in , he removed to the fine old mansion, where he gave reception to young victor hugo, to be described later, at no. rue saint-dominique. its site is covered by the modern building numbered in boulevard saint-germain, whose southern side, just here, replaces the same side of rue saint-dominique, as has been already told. he kept other town addresses, to which we need not follow him, during his absences on diplomatic duty. from to we find him and madame de châteaubriand in their retired home, in the southern outskirts of the city. their rue d'enfer is now rue denfert-rochereau, the old street name thus punningly extended, in homage to the heroic defender of belfort. the dingy yellow front of the long wall and the low building is broken by a gate-way, and within is a small lodge on the left, wherein sits a woman in the costume of a sisterhood. she permits entrance into the cottage on the right, and you are in châteaubriand's small _salon_, the remaining portion of the cottage being now in possession of the institution des jeunes filles aveugles, alongside. his portrait in pencil, and a water-color sketch of his wife, hang on the wall. her face shows the boredom and patience that were put into it by her life with this man of irascible genius and of frequent infidelities. she is buried behind the altar of the chapel of the marie-thérèse infirmary, which she founded and carried on, in the devoutness that dwelt in her soul for the church, whose appeal to him was in its artistic endowments. a portion of the revenue that supports this institution comes from the sale of chocolate, made first to her liking by her _chef_, and made after his rule ever since. as soeur marie shows you out from the salesroom, alongside this little reception-room, you see the group of trees in the circular lawn, that was planted by husband and wife; on the farther side are the dilapidated buildings of their day, now used for the chocolate _fabrique_; behind the great court rise the walls of the infirmary for aged and invalid priests. châteaubriand had known, while in kensington during his exile, many of the impoverished _curés_ who were, like himself, refugees from the revolution; and some of them had followed him here, and had become domesticated pets of the household, together with the big gray cat given him by the pope. to them and their successors in poverty and illness, he bequeathed this comfortable retreat. there is an episode of these years that shows a kindly side of châteaubriand, that he seldom allows us to see. he was suggested for the presidency of the republic, adventured by the political clubs for a year or two after the unwelcome accession of louis-philippe. châteaubriand did not join the plotters, but he was arrested, along with many of them, and locked up for two weeks or so. now, when the bourbons had put béranger in prison, in , châteaubriand had been one of the many sympathizers who had flocked to the cell of the courageous singer. in the rôles were reversed, and béranger came in, from his cottage in rue de la tour-d'auvergne, to visit the imprisoned statesman. and after châteaubriand's release, he wrote a charming letter to béranger, thanking him for that token of fellow-feeling, and begging him not to "break his lyre," as the veteran _chansonnier_ had threatened to do, and urging him to go on "making france smile and weep; for, by a secret known only to you, the words of your _chansons_ are gay and the airs are plaintive." béranger's songs touch no chord now, their plaintiveness is commonplaceness, his philosophy has no loftiness, his sentimentality is of the earth earthy, and his lyre is, to us, a tinkling hurdy-gurdy. when the young breton officer walked through rue du mail first in , his gaze might have turned, as our gaze turns to-day, to two striking façades in that street: that of no. , built by colbert, whose emblematic serpents are carved high up in the capitals of the heavy columns; and that of no. , as stolid as the other is fantastic, its heaviness not lightened by the two balconies, and their massive supports, on the wide stone front. it was erected in by berthault, the architect whose work we see at malmaison and in the palais-royal. châteaubriand might well have been attracted by this house, for it was soon to shelter the woman who became later the lasting influence of his life. in , at the very top of the terror, jacques récamier brought to this house his bride not yet sixteen, who had been mlle. jeanne-françoise-julie-adélaïde bernard. here they lived for five years. their house is unaltered as to fabric, and the original heavy, circular, stone staircase still mounts to the upper floors. these are now divided by partitions into small rooms, and the lofty first story is cut across by an interposed floor; all for the needs of trade. the ceiling of the grand _salon_ retains its admirable cornice. like other mansions on the south side of rue du mail, this récamier house extended, behind a large court, now roofed over with glass, through to rue d'aboukir, where its rear entrance is at no. . on the first floor of this wing, in the oblong ceiling of a small room, is a deeply sunk oval panel, that holds a painting of that time, in good preservation. from here jacques récamier, just then wealthy, removed to the newest fashionable quarter of which the centre was rue du mont-blanc, now rue de la chaussée-d'antin, whose no. covers the site of his magnificent mansion. it was then a street of small and elegant _hôtels_, each in its own grounds, and m. récamier bought the one that had belonged to necker, and had been confiscated by the state. he bought also the adjoining house, and rebuilt the two into one. its furniture, fittings, bronzes, and marbles were all especially designed for this new palace of a prosperous financier. here was the scene of those balls that were the wonder of paris during the consulate and the early years of the empire. the costumes of the period, both for men and women, were picturesque in cut and coloring. among the guests shone caroline bonaparte, later to marry murat, the youngest of the sisters and most resembling her great brother in face and character. m. and mme. récamier spent their summers in a _château_ owned by him in the suburbs of clichy; and to it every man of note in the state and the army found his way. napoleon said he, too, would be glad to go to clichy, if the fair _châtelaine_ would not come to court, and sent fouché to arrange it, but with no success. she fought shy of napoleon, the man and the emperor, as madame de staël itched for his attention, personal and political. nor did madame récamier like his brother lucien, who languished about her, to the ridicule of his equally love-lorn rivals. his justification, and that of all her other adorers, speaks from david's unfinished canvas in the louvre. yet this shows only the outer shell of her loveliness; within was a lovely nature, simple and kindly, sympathetic and loyal, that made her generous in her friendships with men and women, and devoted to the welfare of her friends. the single passion of her life was her passion for goodness. her modesty kept her unconscious of her attractions of mind and body, and thus she held, almost unaware, the widest dominion of any woman of her day. the duchess of devonshire put it daintily: "first she's good, next she's _spirituelle_, and after that, she's beautiful." and so, as we come to know her, we learn infinite respect for the woman, who "with an unequalled influence over the hearts and wills of men, scorned to ask a favor, and endured poverty and ... exile, which fell with tenfold severity on one so beloved and admired, without sacrifice of dignity and independence." [illustration: madame récamier. (from the portrait by gros.)] comparative poverty, hurried by the emperor, came in , and the town house and the _château_ were sold, along with her plate and jewels. in she was exiled from paris on the pretext that her _salon_ was a centre of royalist conspiracy, and she passed the years until the restoration in the south of france, in italy, and in switzerland with her beloved madame de staël. just beyond the boulevards de la madeleine and des capucines, which show the line of the rampart levelled by louis xiv., and along the course of its outer moat, a new street had started up at the end of the eighteenth century, and was completed in the early years of the nineteenth century. it began at present rue de la chaussée-d'antin, and ended at the church of the madeleine, then in course of construction; it was built up in the best style of that period, and it was named rue basse-du-rempart. that untouched section, to the west of rue caumartin, shows us the admirable architecture of the early empire in the stately fronts, that shrink back behind the boulevard in stony-faced protest against its turmoil. eastwardly from rue caumartin, the northern side of boulevard des capucines has trampled out nearly the whole of the old street. the stones of place de l'opéra lie on the site of the modest house, at rue basse-du-rempart, taken by m. récamier after his first business reverses, and occupied by him during his wife's exile; and the florist's shop, under the grand hôtel, is on the spot of their stately residence at no. of the same street, after her return and until . in that year, his fortune regained, he moved farther west in the same street to a more sumptuous home at no. . this house has been happily saved for us, and is now numbered of boulevard des capucines; one of the three structures of the old street, which stand back from the line of modern frontage, and lower than the level of modern paving. the present no. is the récamier coach-entrance, and the huge stabling in the rear is built on the récamier gardens. their house preserves its wrought-iron balconies, and within is the circular staircase mentioned in her "mémoires." down these stairs, for the last time, she came in , leaving m. récamier to his disastrous speculations, which had at last swallowed up her own fortune, and drove to the abbaye-aux-bois. there was her home until her death in . the venerable mass of the convent is in sight behind the railed-in court at no. rue de sèvres. one portion that we see was built in for the "_annonciades_," and from them bought by anne of austria, in , for the sisterhood of the abbaye-aux-bois, who had been driven from their convent near compiègne by the civil wars of the fronde. that wing which was burned in was speedily rebuilt, and forms part of the structure before us. convents had then, and have still, rooms and apartments which are let or sold to lone spinsters and widows, and to "decayed gentlewomen who have seen better days." this abbaye-aux-bois, during the bourbon restoration, "when the sky had no horizon," was a favorite retreat for fashionable _dévotes_, mending their reputations by a temporary retirement. the life there is pleasantly described in the early letters of mary clarke--later madame julius mohl--who lived there with her mother. m. bernard, the father of madame récamier, had bought one of its grandest apartments for his daughter, after the first bankruptcy of her husband. when she came here it was occupied, and she rented a shabby upper floor for two or three years, and then went down to her own apartment on the first floor, to which she added another in the rear of the same floor. it is in the western wing, of modern construction, with windows on rue de sèvres, and on the terrace that overlooks the garden, now shorn of a goodly slice by boulevard raspail. we know all about this _salon_, famous for twenty years, the roll of whose frequenters holds every illustrious name in france during that period, as well as those of many charlatans and bores. [illustration: the abbaye-aux-bois.] it is reported that madame récamier and châteaubriand met first, in the earliest years of the century, at the receptions of madame de staël. whenever they met to become mutually attracted, this attraction grew in him until it became the dominant sentiment of his life. with all his elevation of soul and his breadth of mind, he had no depth of feeling. "i have a head, good, clear, cold," he wrote; "and a heart that goes jog-trot for three-and-one-half quarters of humanity." the other one-eighth was madame récamier, and she outcounted all the rest of the world in stirring such heart as he had. "you have transformed my nature," he tried to make her believe, and he may have believed it himself. sick with conceit as he was, spoiled by flattery, morbid from introspection, her companionship lifted him out of his melancholy and raised him into serenity. as for her, so long as madame de staël lived, she had no other affection to spare for anyone, and perhaps this incomparable creature never gave to châteaubriand more than homage to her hero, tenderness to the isolated man, and medicine to a mind diseased. he may well have written, toward the last: "i know nothing more beautiful nor more good than you." the "_chemin des vaches_" of the sixteenth century became a country road by the passage of the drays that carted stone, from the vaugirard quarries to the ferry on the southern shore, for the building of the tuileries. the pont royal of mansart has taken the place of the wooden bridge built above that ferry, and the ferry has given the name to that road, now rue du bac. along its line, on both sides, _seigneurs_ and priests took land and built thereon. there are yet, behind the huge stone blocks of houses, immense tracts of grounds and of woodland, unsuspected by the wayfarer through the narrow, noisy street. one of the most extensive of these open spaces is owned by the seminary of the missions Étrangères, whose church is near the corner of rue de babylone. for two bishops, who had charge here in the time of louis xiv., were erected two houses, exactly alike without and within, and these are now numbered and rue du bac. in the latter in the apartment on the ground floor, m. and mme. de châteaubriand installed themselves in ; having left their cottage and its domain in rue d'enfer, to the needy priests there. here, in an angle of the front court, are the low stone steps that mount to their apartment. [illustration: portal of châteaubriand's dwelling in rue du bac.] its dining-room and a chapel, arranged by them, gave on this court. the chapel has been thrown into, and made one with, the dining-room, but this is the only alteration since their time. his bedroom, and that of his wife--with her huge bird-cages behind--and the _salon_ between the two rooms, looked out on their garden, and beyond it on the vast grounds of the missions Étrangères. the enchanting seclusion was dear to him in these last years, during which his only work was the completion and touching-up of his "mémoires d'outre tombe." select extracts from the manuscript were sometimes read by him to the group that assembled in the drawing-room at the _abbaye_, between four and six o'clock of every afternoon. the hostess sat on one side of the fireplace, her form grown so fragile that it seemed transparent for the gentle spirit shining out, like a radiant light within a rich vase. châteaubriand "pontificated" in his arm-chair opposite, toying with the household cat, the while he tried to listen to the lesser men; "a giant bored by, and smiling pitifully down on, a dwarf world," is amiel's phrase. when châteaubriand spoke or read, it was with sonorous tones, and with attitude and gesture of a certain stateliness. he was always an artist in all details. his costume was simple and elegant. short of stature, he made himself shorter by his way of sinking his head--"an olympian head," says lamartine--between his shoulders. under his thick-clustering locks rose a noble forehead, power shone from his eyes, pride curled his lips--too often--and his expression gave assurance of a glacial reserve. the day came when he found himself too feeble for the short walk between his house and the _abbaye_. then his friend came to him. she and madame de châteaubriand had been sufficiently friendly, but that good lady gave her days to her prayer-books, and to reading her husband's books; which she never understood, albeit she had the finest mind of any woman he had known, he always asserted. she died in the winter of - , and her body was carried to the infirmary, the care of which had been the occupation and the happiness of her later years. jacques récamier, when in mortal illness in , had been brought to his wife's rooms in the _abbaye_, at her request and by special favor of the mother superior, and there he had died. and now, châteaubriand offered marriage to madame récamier, and she refused what she might have accepted, could it have come a few years earlier. "but, at our age," she asked, "who can question our intimacy, or prevent me taking care of you?" she was prevented only by the cataract that slowly blinded her, and she sat by his bedside, helpless, while madame mohl--who had remained mary clarke until the summer of --wrote his necessary letters. that sympathizing woman, one of the few congenial to him, had only to come down from the apartment she had taken on the third floor of this house, overlooking the gardens; the apartment which she and her learned husband, julius mohl, made the social successor of the récamier _salon_, through many years. châteaubriand's death took place on july , . he had lived to see the orleans throne, which he hated, overthrown as he had foretold by the republic, which he did not love. his faithful lady stood by his deathbed, with béranger, equally faithful to old friends, old customs, and old clothes, clad as we see him in his statue of square du temple. châteaubriand's funeral service, attended by all that was best in france, was solemnized in the church of the missions Étrangères, next door, and his body was laid in a rock of the harbor of saint-malo. madame récamier went back to her now desolate rooms. on may , , she drove over to the bibliothèque de l'arsenal, on a visit to her niece, whose husband, m. lenormant, was its librarian and had his apartment there. that night she died in that building, in a sudden seizure of cholera. the paris of honorÉ de balzac [illustration: the court of the pension vauquer.] the paris of honorÉ de balzac[ ] set in the front wall of a commonplace house, in the broad main street of sunny tours, a tablet records the birth of balzac in that house, on the _ floréal, an vii._ of the republic--may , --the day of saint-honoré, a saint whose name happened to hit the fancy of the parents, and they gave it to their son. many a secluded corner of the town, many a nook within and about its cathedral of saint-gatien, many a portrait of its priests, has been brought into his books. and he has portrayed, with his artist hand, the country round about of the broad loire and of bright touraine, always vivid in his boyish reminiscences. in his life and his work, however, he was, first and always, a parisian. to the great town, with all its mysteries and its possibilities, his favorite creations surely found their way, however far from it they started, drawn thither, as was drawn and held their creator, by its unconquerable authority. his father had been a lawyer, forced for safety during the revolution into army service, and when he was ordered from tours, in , to take charge of the commissariat of the first division of the army in paris, he brought his family with him. their abode was in rue de thorigny, one of the old marais streets, and the boy, nearly fifteen, was put to school in the same street, and later in rue saint-louis, hard by. transformed as is this quarter, there yet remain many of the magnificent mansions with which it was built up in the days of its grandeur, and their ample halls and rooms and gardens serve admirably now as schools for boys and for girls. the young honoré and his louis lambert are one in their pitiful memories of these schools and of their earlier schooling at the seminary of vendôme. to please his father, the boy, when almost eighteen, went through the law course of the sorbonne and the collége de france. to please himself he listened, for the sake of their literary charm, to the lectures of villemain and cousin and guizot, and would rehearse them with passion when he got home. but he had no love for the arid literature of the law, and was wont to linger, in his daily walks along the quays and across the bridges to and from his lecture-rooms, over the bookstalls, spending his modest allowance for old books, which he had learned already to select for their worth. these studies ended, he entered the law office of m. de merville, a friend of his father, with whom eugène scribe had just before finished his time, and to whom jules janin came for his training a little later. and these three, unknown to one another, were, as it happened, of the same mind in their revolt against the drudgery of the desk, and against the servitude of the attorney, coupled with certain competence as it might be; and in their preference for that career of letters, which might mean greater toil, but which brought immediate freedom and promised not far-off fame, and perhaps fortune, too. the elder balzac, severely practical, dreamed no dreams, and was horrified by his son's refusal to pursue the profession appointed for him. he foretold speedy starvation, and--perhaps to prepare honoré for it--allowed him to try his experiment, for two years, on a hundred francs or less a month. so, the family having to leave paris early in , a garret--literally--was rented for the young author, and poorly furnished by his mother; a painstaking, hard-working, fussy old lady, who looked on him as a little boy all her life long, who drudged for him to his last days, and who felt it to be her duty to discipline him to hardship in these early days! this attic-room was at the top of the old house no. rue lesdiguières, which was swept away by the cutting of broad boulevard henri iv. in - , its site being in the very middle of this new street. to wax sentimental--as has a recent writer--over the present no. as balzac's abode is touching, but hardly worth while, that house having no interest for us beyond that of being of the style and the period of balzac's house, and serving to show the shabbiness of his surroundings. these did not touch the young author, whose garret's rental was within his reach, as was the _librairie de monsieur_; for he gives it the old bourbon name, and how it got that name shall be told in our last chapter. it was the library of the arsenal, still open to students as in his days there, in the building begun by françois i. for the casting of cannon, which he made lighter and easier of carriage, and the casting of which exploded the arsenal within twenty years, and with it part of the adjacent marais. the valois kings rebuilt it, henri iv. enlarged it, and gave it for a residence to his grand master of artillery, sully, for whom he decorated the _salons_ as we see them to-day. you may climb the grand staircase, and stand in the rooms--their gildings fresh, their paintings bright--occupied by the great minister. in the cabinet that contains his furniture and fittings is an admirable bust of the king. and you seem to see the man himself, as he enters, his debonair swagger covering his secret shamefacedness for fear of a refusal of his stern treasurer to make the little loan for which he has again come to beg, to pay his last night's gambling or other debt of honor! in this library by day, and in his garret by night, balzac began that life of terrific toil from which he never ceased until death stopped his unresting hand. the novels he produced during these years were hardly noticed then, are quite unknown now; showing no art, giving no promise. he never owned them, and put them forth under grotesque pen-names, such as "horace de saint-aubin," "lord r'hoone"--an anagram of honoré--and others equally absurd, all telling of his fondness for titles. this garret, in which he lived for fifteen months, is vividly pictured in "la peau de chagrin," written in , as raphael's room in his early days, before he became rich and wretched. balzac's letters to his sister laure (madame laure de surville) detail, with delightful gayety, his exposure to wind and wet within these weather-worn walls; and his ingenious shifts in daily small expenditure of _sous_ to make his income serve. he relates how he shopped, how he brought home in his pockets his scant provender, how he fetched up from the court-pump his large allowance of water. for he used it lavishly in making his coffee, that stimulation supplying the place of insufficient food, and carrying him through his nights of pen-work. excessive excitation and excessive toil, begun thus early, went on through all his life, and he dug his too early grave with his implacable pen. his only outings, by day or by night, were the long walks that gave him his amazing acquaintance with every corner of paris, and his solitary strolls through the great graveyard of paris, near at hand. "_je vais m'égayer au père-lachaise_," he writes to his sister; and there he would climb to the upper slopes, from which he saw the vast city stretched out. for he was fond of height and space, and we shall see how he sought for them in his later dwelling-places. and in this storm-swept attic he had his first dreams of dwelling in marble halls. extreme in everything, he could imagine no half-way house between a garret and a palace; he began in the one, he ended in the other, unable to find pause or repose in either! dreaming the dreams of midas, he loved to plunge his favorite young heroes into floods of sudden soft opulence, and his longings for luxury found expression in those unceasing schemes for instant wealth which made him a kindly mock to his companions. his first practical project was started in , during a temporary sojourn for needed rest and proper food at his father's new home in villeparisis, eighteen miles from paris, on the edge of the forest of bondy. he speedily hurried back to paris and turned printer and publisher; bringing out, among other reprints, the complete works of molière and of la fontaine, each with his own introduction, each in one volume--compact and inconvenient--and, at the end of the year which saw twenty copies of either sold, the entire editions were got rid of, to save storage, at the price by weight of their paper. this and other failures left him in debt, and to pay this debt and to gain quick fortune, he set up a type-foundry in partnership with a foreman of his printing-office. the young firm took the establishment at no. rue des marais-saint-germain, now rue visconti; named for the famous archæologist who had lived, and in had died, in that venerable mansion hard by on the corner of rue de seine and quai malaquais. we have already found our way to this short and narrow rue visconti, to visit jean cousin and baptiste du cerceau, and, last of all, the rival houses of racine. balzac's establishment, now entirely rebuilt, was as typical a setting of the scene as any ever invented by that master of scene-setting in fiction. it may be seen, as it stood until very lately, in its neighbor no. , an exact copy of this vanished no. . its frowning front, receding as it rises, is pierced with infrequent windows, and hollowed out by a huge, wide doorway, within which you may see men casting plates for the press, albeit the successors of "_balzac et barbier_" no longer set type nor print. "_balzac h. et barbier a., imprimeurs, rue des marais-saint-germain, _;" so appears the firm in the paris directory for . the senior partner had not yet assumed the particle "_de_," so proudly worn in later years when, too, he is labelled in the directory "_homme-de-lettres_," the title of "_imprimeur_," on which he prided himself because it meant wealth, having lasted only until the end of or the beginning of . printing-office and type-foundry were sold at a ruinous sacrifice, and balzac was left with debts of about , francs; a burden that nearly broke his back and his heart for many years. he never went through that narrow street without groaning for its memories; and for a long time, he told his sister, he had been tempted to kill himself, as was tempted his hero of "la peau de chagrin." in his "illusions perdues" he has painted, in relentless detail, the cruel capacity of unpaid, or partially paid, debts for piling up interest. but the helpless despair of david séchard was, in balzac himself, redeemed by a buoyant confidence that never deserted him for long. to pay his debts, he toiled as did walter scott, whom balzac admired for this bondage to rectitude, as he admired his genius. all through the "comédie humaine" he dwells on the burden of debt, the ceaseless struggle to throw it off, by desperate, by dishonorable, expedients. on an upper floor of his establishment, balzac had fitted up a small but elegant apartment for his living-place, his first attempt to realize that ideal of a bachelor residence such as those in which he installed his heroes. this was furnished, of course, on credit, and when failure came, he removed his belongings to a room at no. rue de tournon, a house quite unchanged to-day. here his neighbor was the editor of the "figaro," henri de la touche--his intimate friend then, later his intimate enemy; a poor creature eaten by envy, whose specialty it was to turn against former friends and to sneer at old allies. here balzac finished the book begun in his former room over his works, "les chouans." it was published in , and was the first to bear his real name as author, the first to show to the reading world of what sterling stuff he was made. that stuff was not content with the book, good as it was, and he retouched and bettered it in after years. it brought him not only readers but editors and publishers; and before the end of , he had poured forth a flood of novels, tales, and studies; among them such works as "la maison du chat-qui-pelote," "physiologie du mariage," "gobseck," "Étude de femme," "une passion dans le désert," "un Épisode sous la terreur," "catherine de médicis," "lettres sur paris"--with "les chouans," seventy in all! werdet, one of balzac's publishers--his sole publisher from to --lived and had his shop near by, at no. rue de seine. to his house, just as it stands to-day, the always impecunious young author used to come, morning, noon, and night for funds, in payment of work unfinished, of work not yet begun, often of work never to be done. from rue de tournon he removed, early in , to rue cassini, no. , as we find it given in the paris _bottin_ of that year. it is a short street of one block, running from avenue de l'observatoire to rue du faubourg-saint-jacques, and takes its name appropriately from the italian astronomer, who was installed in the observatory, having been made a citizen of france by colbert, louis xiv.'s great finance minister. it is a secluded quarter still, with its own air of isolation and its own village atmosphere. in it was really a village, far from town, and these streets were only country lanes, bordered by infrequent cottages, dear to the weary parisian seeking distance and quiet. three of them, near together here, harbored famous men at about this period, and all three have remained intact until lately for the delight of the pilgrim--that of châteaubriand, no. rue denfert-rochereau, that of victor hugo, no. rue notre-dame-des-champs, and this one of balzac. his house, destroyed only in , was on the southwest corner of rue du faubourg-saint-jacques and rue cassini. it was a little cottage of two stories, with two wings and a small central body, giving on a tiny court. a misguided paris journal has claimed, with copious letterpress and illustrations, the large building at no. rue cassini for balzac's abode. this is a lamentable error, one of the many met with in topographical research, by which the traditions of a demolished house are transplanted to an existing neighbor. this characterless no. carries its own proof that balzac could never have chosen it, even were we without the decisive proof given by the _cadastre_ of the city, lately unearthed by m. g. lenôtre among the buried archives of the _bureau des contributions directes_. in the sunny apartment of the left wing dwelt balzac and his friend, auguste borget; in the other wing, jules sandeau lived alone and lonely in his recent separation from george sand. their separation was not so absolute as to prevent an occasional visit from her, and an occasional dinner to her by the three men. she has described one of these wonderful dinners with much humor; telling how balzac, when she started for her home--then on quai malaquais--arrayed himself in a fantastically gorgeous dressing-gown to accompany her; boasting, as they went, of the four arabian horses he was about to buy; which he never bought, but which he quite convinced himself, if not her, that he already owned! says madame dudevant: "he would, if we had permitted him, have thus escorted us from one end of paris to the other." he so far realized his vision as to set up a tilbury and horse at this period--about --and exulted in the sensation created by his magnificence as he drove, clad in his famous blue coat with shining buttons, and attended by his tiny groom, "_grain-de-mil_." this equipage and that gorgeous dressing-gown were but a portion of the bizarre splendor with which balzac loved to relieve the squalor of his debt-ridden days. here, his creditors forgetting, by them forgotten, as he fondly hoped, hiding from his friends the furniture he had salvaged from his wreck, he wantoned in silver toilet-appliances, in dainty porcelain and _bric-à-brac_; willing to go without soup and meat--never without his coffee--that he might fill, with egregious _bibelots_, his "nest of boudoirs _à la marquise_, hung with silk and edged with lace," to use george sand's words; boudoirs which he has described in minute detail, placing them in the preposterous apartment of "la fille aux yeux d'or." in his work-room, apart and markedly simple and severe, he began that series of volumes, amazing in number and vigor, with which he was resolute to pay his enormous debts. here, in this little wing, in the years between and , he produced, among over sixty others of less note, such masterpieces as "la peau de chagrin," "le chef d'oeuvre inconnu," "le curé de tours," "louis lambert," "eugénie grandet," "le médecin de campagne," "le père goriot," "la duchesse de langeais," "illusion perdues" (first part only), "le lys dans la vallée," "l'enfant maudit," "césar birotteau," "cent contes drôlatiques" (in three sections), "séraphita," "la femme de trente ans," and "jésus-christ en flandres." in addition to his books, he did journalistic writing, chiefly for weekly papers; and in he bought up and took charge of the "chronique de paris," aided by a gallant staff of the cleverest men of the day. it lived only a few months. in he started "la revue parisienne," written entirely by himself. it lived three months. when once at work, balzac shut himself in his room, often seeing no one but his faithful servant for many weeks. his work-room was darkened from all daylight, his table lit only by steady-flamed candles, shaded with green. a cloistered monk of fiction, he was clad in his favorite robe of white cashmere, lined with white silk, open at the throat, with a silken cord about the waist, as we see him on the canvas of louis boulanger. he would get to his table at two in the morning and leave it at six in the evening; the entire time spent in writing new manuscript, and in his endless correction of proofs, except for an hour at six in the morning, for his bath and coffee, an hour at noon for his frugal breakfast, with frequent coffee between-times. at six in the evening he dined most simply, and was in bed and asleep by eight o'clock. [illustration: honoré de balzac. (from the portrait by louis boulanger.)] with no inborn literary facility, with an inborn artistic conscience that drove him on in untiring pursuit of perfection, he filled the vast chasm between his thought and its expression with countless pen-strokes, and by methods of composition all his own: the exact reverse of those of dumas, writing at white heat, never rewriting; or of hugo, who said: "i know not the art of soldering an excellence in the place of a defect, and i correct myself in another work." balzac began with a short and sketchy and slip-shod skeleton, making no attempt toward sequence or style, and sent it, with all its errors, to the printer. proofs were returned to him in small sections pasted in the centre of huge sheets; around whose wide borders soon shot from the central text rockets and squibs of the author's additions and corrections, fired by his infuriated fist. the new proofs came back on similar sheets, to be returned to the printer, again like the web and tracks of a tipsy spider. this was repeated a dozen or, it is said, a score of times, always with amplifications, until his type-setters became palsied lunatics. he overheard one of them, as he entered the office one day, say: "i've done my hour of balzac; who takes him next?" type-setter, publisher, author were put out of misery only when the last proof came in, at its foot the magic "_bon à tirer_." this stupendous work had been preceded and was accompanied by as stupendous preparation of details. he dug deep to set the solid foundations for each structure he meant to build. "i have had to read _so many_ books," he says, referring to his preliminary toil on "louis lambert." so real were his creations to him--more alive to his vision than visible creatures about--that he must needs name them fittingly, and house them appropriately. invented nomenclature gave no vitality to them, in his view, and he hunted, on signs and shop-fronts wherever he went, for real names that meant life, and a special life. "a name," as he said, "which explains and pictures and proclaims him; a name that shall be his, that could not possibly belong to any other." he revelled in his discovery of "matifat," and "cardot," and like oddities. he dragged léon gozlan through miles of streets on such a search, refusing every name they found, until he quivered and colored before "marcas" on a tailor's sign; it was the name he had dreamed of, and he put "z" before it, "to add a flame, a plume, a star to the name of names!" his scenes, too, were set for his personages with appalling care, so that, as has been well said, he sometimes chokes one with brick and mortar. he knew his paris as dickens knew his london, and found in unknown streets or unfrequented quarters the scenes he searched long for, the surroundings demanded by his characters. if his story were placed in a provincial town, he would write to a friend living there for a map of the neighborhood, and for accurate details of certain houses. or, he would make hurried journeys to distant places: "i am off to grenoble," or, "to alençon"--he wrote to his sister--"where so-and-so lives:" one of his new personages, already a living acquaintance to him. in his artistic frenzy for fitting atmosphere he has, unconsciously, breathed his spirit of unrest into much of his narrative, and the reader plunges on, out-of-breath, through chapterless pages of fatiguing detail. these excursions were not his only outings in later years. he got away from his desk during the summer months, for welcome journeys to his own touraine, and to other lands, and for visits to old family friends. always and everywhere he carried his work with him. and he began to see the world of paris, and to be seen in that world, notably in the famous _salon_ of emile de girardin and his young wife, delphine gay de girardin, where the watchword was "admiration, more admiration, and still more admiration." he met well-bred women and illustrious men, whose familiar intercourse polished him, whose attentions gratified him. the pressure of his present toil removed for a while, he was fond of emerging from his solitude, and of flashing in the light of publicity. he was an interested and an interesting talker, earnest and vehement and often excited in his utterances; yet frank and merry, and vivid with a "herculean joviality." his thick fine black hair was tossed back like a mane from his noble, towering brow; his nose was square at the end, his lips full and curved, and hidden partly by a small mustache. his most notable features were his eyes, brown, spotted with gold, glowing with life and light--"the eyes of a sovereign, a seer, a subjugator." a great soul shone out of them, and they redeemed and triumphed over all that was heavy in face and vulgar in body; for, with a thickness of torso like mirabeau, and the neck of a bull, he had his own corpulence. lamartine says that the personal impression made by balzac was that of an element in nature; he gripped one's brain when speaking, and one's heart when silent. moreover, it was an element good as well as strong, unable to be other than good; and his expression, we know from all who saw it, told of courage, patience, gentleness, kindliness. he was commonly as careless of costume as a vagrant school-boy in outgrown clothes. he would rush from his desk to the printer's or race away in search of names, clad in his green hunting-jacket with its copper buttons of foxes' heads, black and gray checked trousers, pleated at the waist, and held down by straps passing under the huge high-quartered shoes, tied or untied as might happen, a red silk kerchief cord-like about his neck, his hat, shaggy and faded, crushed over his eyes--altogether a grotesque creature! in contrast, he was gorgeous in his gala toilet of the famous blue coat and massive gold buttons, and the historic walking-stick, always carried _en grande tenue_, its great knob aglow with jewels sent him by his countless feminine adorers. when balzac removed with sandeau, in , to new quarters, he kept this apartment in rue cassini for an occasional retreat, perhaps for a friendly refuge against the creditors, who became more and more clamorous in their attentions. the two comrades furnished the lower floor of their new home most handsomely; mainly with the view of dazzling urgent publishers, who, as said balzac, "would give me nothing for my books if they found me in a garret." coming to drive a bargain, these guileless gentry found themselves too timid to haggle with the owners of such luxury. they could not know that that luxury was merely hired under cover of a friend's name, and lit up only by night to blind and bewilder them, while the haughty authors lived by day in bare discomfort, on a half-furnished upper floor. of this mansion only the site remains. it was at no. rue des battailles, on the heights of chaillot--the suburb between paris and passy--and that street and the balzac house have been cut away by the modern avenue d'iéna. retired and high as it was, with its grand view over river and town, it was not high enough nor far enough away for this lover of distance and height. he soon tried again to realize his ideal of a country home by buying, in , three acres of land at ville d'avray, a quarter near sèvres, on the road to versailles. on the ground was a small cottage called, in louis xiv.'s time, "_les jardies_," still known by that name, and notable in our time as the country-home of léon gambetta, wherein he died. that home remains exactly as he left it, at no. rue gambetta, ville d'avray, and has been placed among the national monuments of france. it is a shrine for the former followers of the great tribune, who visit it on each anniversary of his death. the statue they have erected to their leader, alongside the house, may be most kindly passed by in silence. [illustration: les jardies.] the glorious view from this spot--embracing the valley of ville d'avray, the slopes opposite, the great city in the distance--was a delight to balzac. _les jardies_ was a tiny box, having but three rooms in its two stories, which communicated by a ladder-like staircase outside. he had tried to improve the place by a partial rebuilding, and the stairs were forgotten until it was too late to put them inside. a later tenant has enclosed that absurd outer staircase within a small addition. his garden walls gave him even more trouble, for they crumbled and slid down on the grounds of an irate neighbor. the greater part of that garden has been walled off. yet the poor little patch was a domain in his eyes; its one tree and scattered shrubs grew to a forest in his imagination, and his fancy pictured, in that confined area, a grand plantation of pineapples, from which he was to receive a yearly income of , francs! he had fixed on the very shop on the boulevards where they were to be sold, and only gautier's cold sense prevented the great planter, as he saw himself, from renting it before he had grown one pineapple! his rooms were almost bare of furniture, and this was suggested by his stage directions charcoaled on the plaster walls: "rosewood panels," "gobelins tapestries," "venetian mirror," "an inlaid cabinet stands here," "here hangs a raphael." thus he was content to camp for four or five years, hoping his house would yet be furnished, and perhaps believing it was already furnished. at this time, and for many years, balzac rented a room over the shop of his tailor buisson, at the present no. rue de richelieu. his letters came here always, and he used the place not only for convenience when in town, but, in connection with other shelters, for his unceasing evasion of pursuing creditors. a tailor still occupies that shop, and seems to be prosperous; probably able to collect his bills from prompter customers than was balzac. in , forced to sell _les jardies_, he came back into the suburbs, to a house then no. rue basse, at passy, now no. rue raynouard of that suburb. on the opposite side of the street, at no. , is a modest house, hiding behind its garden-wall. this was the unpretending home of "_béranger, poète à passy_," to quote the paris _bottin_. no. is a plain bourgeois dwelling of two stories and attic, wide and low, standing on the line of the street; in the rear is a court, and behind that court is the pavilion occupied by balzac. he had entrance from the front, and unseen egress by a small gate on the narrow lane sunk between walls, now named rue berton, and so by the quay into town. this was a need for his furtive goings and comings, at times. balzac's work-room here looked out over a superb panorama--across the winding seine, over the champ-de-mars, and the invalides' dome, and all southern paris, to the hills of meudon in the distance. this room he kept austerely furnished, as was his way; while the living apartments were crowded with the extraordinary collection of rare furniture, pictures, and costly trifles, which he had begun again to bring together. to it he gave all the money he could find or get credit for, and as much thought and labor and time as to his books, although with little of the knowledge that might have saved him from frequent swindlers. it was only his intimates who were allowed to enter these rooms, and they needed, in order to enter them, or the court or the house on the street, many contrivances and passwords, constantly changed. he himself posed as "_la veuve durand_," or as "_madame de bruguat_," and each visitor had to ask for one of these fictitious persons; stating, with cheerful irrelevancy: "the season of plums has arrived," or, "i bring laces from belgium." once in, they found free-hearted greeting and full-handed hospitality, and occasional little dinners. the good cheer was more toothsome to the favored _convives_, than were the cheap acrid wines, labelled with grand names, made drinkable only by the host's fantastic fables of their vintages and their voyages; believed by _him_, at least, who dwelt always in his own domain of dreams. these dinners were not extravagant, and there was no foolish expenditure in this household at passy. balzac wrote later to his niece, that his cooking there had been done only twice a week, and in the days between he was content with cold meat and salad, so that each inmate had cost him only one franc a day. for this man of lavish outlay for genuine and bogus antiques, this slave to strange extravagances and colossal debts--partly imaginary--was painfully economical in his treatment of himself. he thought of money, he wrote about money. before him, love had been the only passion allowed in novels; he put money in its place and found romance in the code. all through his life he worked for money to pay his debts, intent on that one duty. in october, , he wrote two letters, within one week, to the woman who was to be his wife; in one of them he says that his dream, almost realized, is to earn before december the paltry twenty thousand francs that would free him from all debt; in the other he gloats over recent purchases of _bric-à-brac_, amounting to hundreds of francs. he saw nothing comically inconsistent in the two letters. in all his letters, the saddest reading of all letters, there is this curious commingling of the comic and the sordid. those, especially, written to his devoted sister and to the devoted lady who became his wife at the last, give us most intimate acquaintance with the man; showing a _man_, indeed, strong and vehement, steadfast and patient; above all, magnanimous. self-assertive in his art, eager and insistent concerning it, he was quite without personal envy or self-seeking. said madame dudevant: "i saw him often under the shock of great injustices, literary and personal, and i never heard him say an evil word of anyone." nor was there any evil in his life--a life of sobriety and of chastity, as well as of toil. at the bottom of his complex nature lay a deep natural affection. this giant of letters, when nearly fifty years old, signed his letters to his mother, "_ton fils soumis_"; so expressing truly his feeling for her, from the day she had installed him in his mean garret, to that later day, when she fitted up his grand last mansion. in his letters to those dear to him, amid clamorous outcries about debts and discomforts, comes a deeper cry for sympathy and affection. early in life, he wrote to his sister: "my two only and immense desires--to be famous and to be loved--will they ever be satisfied?" to a friend he wrote: "all happiness depends on courage and work." so, out of his own mouth, we may judge this man in all fairness. from this passy home one night, balzac and théophile gautier went to the apartment of roger de beauvoir, in the hôtel de lauzun-pimodan, on the island of saint-louis; and thence the three friends took a short flight into a hashish heaven. their strange experiences have been told by their pens, but to us, balzac's night of drugged dreams is not so strange as his days of unforced dreams. that which attracts us in this incident is its scene--one of the grandest of the mansions that sprang up from the thickets of Île saint-louis, as _le menteur_ has put it. built in the middle years of the seventeenth century, it stands quite unchanged at no. quai d'anjou, bearing, simply and effectively, every mark of mansart's hand in his later years. its first owner followed his friend fouquet to the bastille and to pignerol; its next tenant came to it from a prison-cell, and went from it to the very steps of the throne. he was the superb adventurer, antonin nompar de caumont, duc de lauzun, and his family name clings still to the place, and is cut in gold letters on the black marble tablet above the door. on that prettiest balcony in paris, crowded the prettiest women of paris, on summer nights, to look at the river fêtes got up by their showy and braggart gascon host. through this portal have passed bossuet and père lachaise, going in to convert the plain old huguenot mother of de lauzun, who lived retired in her own isolated chamber through the years of her son's ups and downs. when her family had gone, came the marquis de richelieu, great-nephew of the great richelieu, with the bride he had stolen from her convent at chaillot--the daughter of hortense mancini, niece of mazarin, and of her husband, it is alleged. then came the pimodan, who was first of that name, and who gave it to his _hôtel_. it is an admirable relic; its rooms, with their frescoed ceilings and their panelled walls, are as remarkable as those of the _château_ of fontainebleau, and are not surpassed by any in paris. the mansion is well worth a visit for itself and for its memories. balzac's paris--the paris for which his pen did what callot and meryon did for it with their needles--has been almost entirely pickaxed out of sight and remembrance. the revolution, wild-eyed in its mad "carmagnole," gave itself time to raze a few houses only, after clearing the ground of the bastille, although it had meant much more destruction; the empire cut some new streets, and planned some new quarters; the bourbons came back and went away again, leaving things much as they had found them. it remained for louis-philippe to begin "works of public utility," an academic phrase, which being interpreted signified the tearing down of the old and the building up of the new, to gratify the grocers and tallow-chandlers whose chosen king he was, and to fill his own pocket. yet much of balzac's stage-setting remained until it was swept away by haussmann and his master of the second empire. such was the wretched rue du doyenné, that "narrow ravine" between the louvre and place du carrousel, where baron hulot first saw _la marneffe_, and where _la cousine bette_ kept guard over her polish artist in his squalid garret; doubtless the very garret known to balzac in his visits there, when it was tenanted by arsène houssaye, gautier, gavarni, and the rest of "young france, harmless in its furies." that house, one of a block of black old eighteenth-century structures, stood where now is the trim little garden behind the preposterous statue of gambetta. history and fiction meet on the steps of saint-roch. there césar birotteau, the ambitious and unlucky perfumer, was "wounded by napoleon," on the _ vendémiaire_, the day that put the young corsican's foot into the stirrup, and gave to the sham-heroic césar that sounding phrase, always thereafter doing duty on his tongue. he was carried to his shop in rue saint-honoré, on its northern side near rue de castiglione, and hid and bandaged and nursed in his _entresol_. this part of rue saint-honoré and its length eastward, with its narrow pavement and its tall, thin houses, is still a part of the picture balzac knew and painted; but the business district hereabout has greatly changed since his day. the avenue de l'opéra, and all that mercantile quarter dear to the american pocket, the bourse and the banking-houses about, date from this side of his paris. nucingen would be lost in his old haunts, and lucien de rubempré could not recognize the newspaper world of our day. the _hôtels_ of the faubourg saint-germain--the splendid mansions of the splendid eighteenth century, where his rastignac and his lesser pet swells lorded it--are now, in many cases, let out in apartments, their owners content with the one floor that is in keeping with their diminished fortunes. undiminished, however, are their traditions and their prejudices, albeit "_le faubourg_" exists no longer, except as an attitude of mind. yet, here on the left bank, are still to be found some of the scenes of the "comédie humaine." on quai voltaire, alongside the house in which voltaire died, is the very same shop of the antiquary, from whom raphael de valentin bought the _peau de chagrin_. balzac knew it well, doubtless was swindled there, and to-day you will find it as crowded with curiosities, as begrimed with dust, as suggestive of marvels hid in its dusky corners, as when he haunted it. raphael de valentin lived in the _hôtel-garni_ saint-quentin, rue des cordiers. long before his day, rousseau had been a tenant of a dirty room in the same dirty _hôtellerie_, going there because of the scholarly neighborhood of the place and of its memories, even at that time. leibnitz, in , had found it a village inn in a narrow lane, hardly yet a street. gustave planche lived there, and hégésippe moreau died there in --a true poet, starved to death. the old inn and all its memories and the very street are vanished; and the new buildings of the sorbonne cover their site. [illustration: the antiquary's shop, and in the background the house where voltaire died.] "one of the most portentous settings of the scene in all the literature of fiction. in this case there is nothing superfluous; there is a profound correspondence between the background and the action." such is the judgment of so competent a critic as mr. henry james, concerning the house in which is played the poignant tragedy of "père goriot." you will, if you love balzac, own to the truth of this statement, when you look upon this striking bit of salvage. it stands, absolutely unchanged as to externals, at no. rue tournefort; a street named in honor of the great botanist who cleared the track for linnæus. in balzac's day, this street was known by its original name of neuve-sainte-geneviève; one of the most ancient and most isolated streets on the southern bank. once only, through the centuries, has its immemorial quiet been broken by unseemly noise, when, in the days of françois i., a rowdy gambling-den there, the "_tripôt des , diables_," did its utmost to justify its name. the street seems to creep, in subdued self-effacement, over the brow of mont-sainte-geneviève, away from the paris of shops and cabs and electric light. the house stands narrow on the street, its gable window giving scanty light to poor old goriot's wretched garret; framed in it, one may fancy the patient face of the old man, looking out in mute bewilderment on his selfish, worldly daughters. the place no longer holds the "_pension bourgeoise de deux sexes et autres_" of the naïve description on the cards of madame vauquer, _née_ conflans; and is now let out to families and single tenants. its gate-way stands always open, and you may enter without let or hindrance into the court, and so through to the tiny garden behind, once the pride of madame vauquer, no longer so carefully kept up. you peep into the small, shabby _salle-à-manger_, on the entrance floor of the house, and you seem to see the convict vautrin, manacled, in the clutch of the _gens-d'armes_, and, cowering before him, the vicious old maid who has betrayed him. that colossal conception of the great romancer had found his ideal hiding-place here, as had the forlorn father his hiding-place, in his self-inflicted poverty. all told, there is no more convincing pile of brick and mortar in fiction; sought out and selected by balzac with as much care and as many journeys as dickens gave to his hunt for exactly the right house for sampson and sally brass. [illustration: the pension vauquer.] while balzac was still at passy, after long searching for a new home, he made purchase, as early as , in the new quarter near the present parc monceaux. that name came from an estate hereabout, once owned by philippe Égalité; and his son, the king of the french, and the shrewdest speculator among the french, was just at this time exploiting this estate, in company with lesser speculators. the whole suburb was known as the quartier beaujon, from a great banker of the eighteenth century, whose grand mansion, within its own grounds, had been partly demolished by the cutting of new streets, leaving only out-buildings and a pavilion in a small garden. this was the place bought by balzac; the house and grounds, dear as they were, costing much less, as he found, than his furniture, bronzes, porcelains, and pottery, paintings and their frames--all minutely described in the collection of _le cousin pons_. he made a museum, indeed, of this house, bringing out all his hidden treasures from their various concealments here and there about town. there was still a pretence of poverty regarding his new home; he would say to his friends, amazed by the display: "nothing of all this is mine. i have furnished this house for a friend, whom i expect. i am only the guardian and doorkeeper of this _hôtel_." the pretty mystery was resolved within a few months, and its solution explained balzac's frequent and long absences from paris after the winter of - . these months had been passed at the home of madame Ève de hanska, the polish widow who was to be his wife. her home was in the grand _château_ of wierzchownie, in the ukraine, whose present owner keeps unchanged the furniture of balzac's apartment, where is hung his portrait by boulanger, a gift to madame de hanska from her lover. and from there he brought his bride to paris in the summer of , their marriage dating from march of that year, after many years of waiting in patient affection. she had made over--with balzac's cordial consent--nearly the whole of her great fortune to her daughter, her only child, and to that daughter's husband, retaining but a small income for herself. it was--and the envious world owned that it was--truly a love-match. they came home to be welcomed, first of all, by balzac's aged mother; who had, during his absence, taken charge of all the preparations, with the same anxious, loving care she had given to the fitting-up of his garret thirty years before. she had carried out, in every detail, even to the arrangement of the flowers in the various rooms, the countless directions he had sent from every stage of the tedious journey from wierzchownie. "and so, the house being finished, death enters," goes the turkish proverb. this undaunted mariner, after his stormy voyage, gets into port and is ship-wrecked there. his premonition of early years, written to his confidant dablin in , was proven true: "i foresee the darkest of destinies for myself; that will be to die when all that i now wish for shall be about to come to me." as early as in the preceding summer of , he had ceased to conceal from himself any longer the malady that others had seen coming since . the long years of unbroken toil, of combat without pause, of stinted sleep, of insufficient food, of inadequate exercise, of the steady stimulation of coffee, had broken the body of this athlete doubled with the monk. years before, he had found that the inspiration for work given by coffee had lessened in length and strength. "it now excites my brain for only fifteen days consecutively," he had complained; protesting that rossini was able to work for the same period on the same stimulus! so he spurred himself on, listening to none of the warnings of worn nature nor of watchful friends. "well, we won't talk about that now," was always his answer. "in the olden days," says sainte-beuve, "men wrote with their brains; but balzac wrote, not only with his brains, but with his blood." and now, he went to pieces all at once; his heart and stomach could no longer do their work; his nerves, once of steel and manila hemp, were torn and jangled, and snapped at every strain; his very eyesight failed him. the most pitiful words ever penned by a man-of-letters were scrawled by him, at the end of a note written by his wife to gautier, a few weeks after their home-coming: "_je ne puis ni lire ni écrire._" "on the th august, "--writes hugo in "choses vues"--"my wife, who had been during the day to call on madame balzac, told me that balzac was dying. my uncle, general louis hugo, was dining with us, but as soon as we rose from table, i left him and took a cab to rue fortunée, quartier beaujon, where m. de balzac lived. he had bought what remained of the _hôtel_ of m. de beaujon, a few buildings of which had escaped the general demolition, and out of them he had made a charming little house, elegantly furnished, with a _porte-cochère_ on the street, and in place of a garden, a long, narrow, paved court-yard, with flower-beds about it here and there." [illustration: plaque marking place of death of balzac] it was to no. , allée fortunée, that hugo drove. that suburban lane is now widened into rue balzac, and where it meets rue du faubourg-saint-honoré there is a bit of garden-wall, and set in it is a tablet recording the site of this, balzac's last home. the house itself has quite vanished, but one can see, above that wall, the upper part of a stone pavilion with greek columns, built by him, it is believed. "i rang," continues hugo; "the moon was veiled by clouds; the street deserted. no one came. i rang again. the gate opened; a woman came forward, weeping. i gave my name, and was told to enter the _salon_, which was on the ground floor. on a pedestal opposite the fireplace was the colossal bust by david. a wax-candle was burning on a handsome oval table in the middle of the room.... we passed along a corridor, and up a staircase carpeted in red, and crowded with works of art of all kinds--vases, pictures, statues, paintings, brackets bearing porcelains.... i heard a loud and difficult breathing. i was in m. de balzac's bedroom. "the bed was in the middle of the room. m. de balzac lay in it, his head supported by a mound of pillows, to which had been added the red damask cushions of the sofa. his face was purple, almost black, inclining to the right. the hair was gray, and cut rather short. his eyes were open and fixed. i saw his side face only, and thus seen, he was like napoleon.... i raised the coverlet and took balzac's hand. it was moist with perspiration. i pressed it; he made no answer to the pressure...." the bust that hugo saw was done by david d'angers; a reduced copy surmounts balzac's tomb. his portrait, in water-color, painted, within an hour after his death, by eugène giraud, is a touching portrayal of the man, truer than any made during life, his widow thought. while long suffering had wasted, it had refined, his face, and into it had come youth, strength, majesty. it is the head of the titan, who carried a pitiable burden through a life of brave labor. balzac's death was known in a moment, it would seem, to his creditors, and they came clamoring to the door, and invaded the house--a ravening horde, ransacking rooms and hunting for valuables. they drove the widow away, and she found a temporary home with madame de surville, at rue des martyrs. this house and number are yet unchanged. cabinets and drawers were torn open, and about the grounds were scattered his letters and papers, sketches of new stories, drafts of contemplated work--all, that could be, collected by his friends, also hurrying to the spot. they found manuscripts in the shops around, ready to enwrap butter and groceries. one characteristic and most valuable letter was tracked to three places, in three pieces, by an enthusiast, who rescued the first piece just as it was twisted up and ready to light a cobbler's pipe. "he died in the night," continues hugo. "he was first taken to the chapel beaujon.... the funeral service took place at saint-philippe-du-roule. as i stood by the coffin, i remembered that there my second daughter had been baptized. i had not been in the church since.... the procession crossed paris, and went by way of the boulevards to père-lachaise. rain was falling as we left the church, and when we reached the cemetery. it was one of those days when the heavens seemed to weep. we walked the whole distance. i was at the head of the coffin on the right, holding one of the silver tassels of the pall. alexandre dumas was on the other side.... when we reached the grave, which was on the brow of the hill, the crowd was immense.... the coffin was lowered into the grave, which is near to those of charles nodier and casimir delavigne. the priest said a last prayer and i a few words. while i was speaking the sun went down. all paris lay before me, afar off, in the splendid mists of the sinking orb, the glow of which seemed to fall into the grave at my feet, as the dull sounds of the sods dropping on the coffin broke in upon my last words." yes, stretched before his grave, lies all paris, as his rastignac saw it, when he turned from the _fosses-communes_, into which they had just thrown the body of père goriot, and with his clinched fist flung out his grand defiance toward the great, beautiful, cruel city: "_À nous deux, maintenant!_" footnote: [ ] just as balzac was a victim of calumny during life, so, since death, has he suffered from carelessness. it is almost impossible to make sure of incidents and dates in his career. these errors begin with his birth, which is placed on the th may by many writers, and is so cut on the memorial tablet in paris. in this text, his birth-date is fixed on the th may, on the strength of his family records, and the statements of his life-long friends. of these, some say that he was born on the _ floréal_, and others on the day of saint-honoré. no figuring can make these dates fall on any other day than the th may. as for the many conflicting statements concerning him that have been handed down, in the absence of indisputable evidence, those alone are accepted here which are most nearly in keeping with the proven facts and dates in his life. the paris of alexandre dumas [illustration: the figure of d'artagnan. (from the dumas monument, by gustave doré.)] the paris of alexandre dumas it was in that alexandre dumas, in his twenty-first year, took coach for paris from his boyhood-home with his widowed mother, at villers-cotterets. he was set down at the principal landing-place of the provincial diligences in place des victoires, and found a room near by in an inn at no. rue du bouloi. its old walls are still there on the street and in the court, and the hôtel de blois still awaits the traveller. thence he started on foot, at once, for no. rue du mont-blanc, the home of the popular liberal spokesman in the chamber of deputies, general foy, an old comrade-in-arms of general dumas, to whom his son brought a letter of introduction. about that house, two years later, a few days after november , , all paris assembled, while all france mourned, for the burial of this honest man, whose earnest voice had been heard only in the cause of freedom and justice. marked by a tablet, his house still stands, and is now no. rue de la chaussée-d'antin--the renamed rue du mont-blanc--on the corner of rue de la victoire. besides this letter, young dumas carried only a meagre outfit of luggage, and such meagre education as may be picked up by a clever and yet an idle lad, in a notary's office in a provincial town. indeed, when he was made welcome by general foy, he was questioned, too; and, to his chagrin, he was found to be without equipment for any sort of service. on the strength, however, of his "_belle écriture_," he obtained, through the influence of the general, a petty clerkship in the household of the duc d'orléans, coming naturally enough to the boy from villers-cotterets, the country-seat of the orleans family. its stipend of , francs a year was doubtless munificent in the eyes of orleans thrift, and was certainly sufficient for the needs then of the future owner of monte-cristo's millions. he earned his wage and no more; for his official pen--at his desk in the palais-royal--while doing its strict duty on official documents, was more gladly busied on his own studies and his own paper-spoiling. for the author within him had come to life with his first tramping of the paris streets and his first taking-in of all that they meant then. the babies, begotten by french fathers and mothers during the napoleonic wars, and during those tremendous years at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, breathed, full-lunged, an air of instant and intense vitality. now, come to stalwart manhood, that mighty generation, eager to speed the coming of red-blooded romanticism and the going of cold and correct classicism, showed itself alert in many directions, notably prolific in literature and the arts, after the sterility of so many years. when dumas came to paris, lamartine had already, in , charmed the public by the freshness and grace of his "méditations." his admirers were content with the sonorous surface of his vague, spiritual exaltations, satisfied not to seek for any depth below. hugo, barely twenty, had thrilled men with the sounding phrases of his "odes et ballades." these two, coming behind chénier the herald and châteaubriand the van-courier, were imposing pioneers of the great movement. even more popular than these two royalist poets, as they were regarded, was casimir delavigne--already installed over dumas as librarian at the palais-royal--rather a classicist in form, yet hailed as the poet and playwright of the liberal opposition. soulié, not so well known now as he merits, won his first fame in by his poems and plays. de vigny had brought out his earliest poems in ; and now, "isolated in his ivory tower," he was turning the periods of his admirable "cinq-mars." de musset was getting ready to try his wings, and made his first open-air flight in ; a flight alone, for the poet of personal passion joined no flock, ever. gautier was serving his apprenticeship to that poetic art, to whose service he gave a life-long devotion and the most perfect craftsmanship in all france. "they all come from châteaubriand," said goethe, of these and of other rhymesters of that time. châteaubriand himself had closed his career as poet and as imaginative writer as far back as , and had by now taken his rank as a classic in literature, and in life as a peer of france and a minister of the bourbons. but of all the singers of that day it was to béranger that the public ear turned most quickly and most kindly; even though he, then forty-three years of age, might also seem to be of an earlier generation. those others touched, with various fingers, the lyre or the lute; he turned a most melodious hand-organ, with assured and showy art, and around it the captivated crowd loved to throng, with enraptured long ears. his cheaply sentimental airs were hummed and whistled all over france, and, known to everybody everywhere, there was really no need of his putting them in type on paper, and no need of his being sent to prison for that crime by charles x. yet he had his turn, soon again, and his _chansons_, as much as any utterance of man, upset the bourbon throne and placed louis-philippe on that shaky seat. that most prosaic of monarchs was sung up to the throne, and the misguided poet soon found him out for what he was. in prose, during these years, nodier, librarian at the arsenal, was plying his refined and facile pen. mérimée showed his hand in , not to clasp, with any show of sympathy, the hand of any fellow-worker, yet willing to take his share of the strain. guizot, out of active politics for a time, did his most notable pen-work between and . his untiring antagonist, thiers, not yet turned into the practical politician, produced, between and , his "history of the french revolution," voluminous and untrustworthy; its author energetically earning carlyle's epithet, "a brisk little man in his way." his life-long crony, mignet, was digging vigorously in dry, historic dust. sainte-beuve left, in , his medical studies for those critical studies in which he soon showed the master's hand; notably with his early paper on hugo's "odes et ballades." michelet was finding his _métier_ by writing histories for children. the two thierry brothers, augustin and amédée, proved the genuine historian's stuff in them as early as . balzac was working, alone and unknown, in his garret; and young sue was handling the naval surgeon's knife, before learning how to handle the pen. and nearly all of these, nearly all the fine young fellows who made the movement of , had got inspiration from villemain, who had spoken, constantly and steadfastly, from his platform in the sorbonne during the ten years from to , those sturdy and graphic words which gave cheer and courage to so many. there were a similar vitality and fecundity in painting and music and their sister arts, and the brilliant host stirring for their sake might be cited along with the unnumbered and unnamable pen-workers of this teeming decade. less aggressive was the theatre. scribe had possession, flooding the stage with his comedies, vaudeville, opera-librettos, peopling its boards with his pasteboard personages. there was call for revolt and need of life. talma, near his end, full of honors, devoted to his very death to his art, longed to fill the rôle of a _man_ on the boards, after so many years' impersonation of bloodless heroes. so he told dumas, who had come to see him only two weeks before his death, in , when the veteran thought he was recovering from illness--an illness acceptable to the great tragedian, for it gave him, he pointed out with pride, the lean frame and pendent cheeks, "beautiful for old tiberius"--the new part he was then studying. death came with his cue before that rôle could be played. this wish for a real human being on the boards came home to dumas, when he saw the true shakespeare rendered by macready and miss smithson at the salle favart in . it was shakespeare, in the reading before and now in the acting, that helped dumas more than any other influence. no frenchman has comprehended more completely than dumas the englishman's universality, and he used to say that, after god, shakespeare was the great creator. his first attempt to put live men and women on the stage, in "christine," was crowded out by a poorer play of the same name, pushed by the powers behind the comédie française. but on its boards, on the evening of february , , was produced his "henri iii. et sa cour," an instantaneous and unassailable success. he might have said, in the words of henri iv. at senlis, "my hour has struck"; for from that hour he went on in his triumphant dramatic career. the romantic drama had come at last, with its superb daring, its sounding but spurious sentiment, its engorgement of adjectives, and its plentiful lack of all sense of the ludicrous. perhaps if it had not taken itself so seriously, and had been blessed with a few grains of the saving salt of humor, it had not gone stale so soon. dumas had removed, soon after coming to town, from the inn in rue du bouloi to another of the same sort just around the corner, hôtel des vieux-augustins, in the street of the same name--now widened and renamed rue hérold. in the widening they have cut away his inn, at present no. , and that of "_la providence_," next door at no. , where charlotte corday had found a room on coming to paris, thirty years before, to visit monsieur marat. the sites of the two hotels are covered by the rear buildings of the caisse d'epargne, which fronts on rue du louvre. one ancient house, which saw the arrival of both these historic travellers, has been left at no. ; in it was born, on january , , the musician hérold, composer of "zampa" and "pré-aux-clercs." dumas lived for a while later at no. place des italiens, now place boïeldieu. in the summer of he brought his good mother to town, and took rooms on the second floor of no. rue du faubourg-saint-denis, next door to the old _cabaret_, "_au lion d'argent_." mother and son soon after moved across the river, where he found for her a home in rue madame, and found for himself an apartment at no. rue de l'université, on the southeastern corner of rue du bac. there had been an illustrious tenant of this house, in and , who was named châteaubriand. dumas, in his "mémoires," gives both the third and the fourth floors for his abode, as he happens to feel like fixing them. he had windows on both streets, and he fitted up the rooms "with a certain elegance." shoppers at the big establishment, "_au petit saint-thomas_," may explore its annex and mount to dumas's rooms in the house that now hides its stately façade and its entrance _perron_ in the court behind modern structures. here he remained from to , making a longer stay than in any of the many camping-places of his migratory career. and here he gave his name to his most memorable endowment to the french drama, in the person of his only son, born on july , , at the home of the mother, marie-catherine lebay, a dressmaker, living at no. place des italiens, where dumas had had his rooms. on march , , the father formally owned the son by _l'acte de reconnaissance_, signed and recorded at the office of the mayor of the second arrondissement, may , . so came into legal existence "alexandre dumas, _fils_." portions of the child's early life were passed with his father, but separations became more frequent and more prolonged, as the boy developed his own marked character--in striking contrast with that of the elder. their mutual attitude came, before many years, to be as queer and as tragi-comic as any attitudes invented by either of them for the stage. the son used to say, in later life, that he seemed to be the elderly guardian and counsellor of the father--a happy-go-lucky, improvident, chance child. for the son of the parisienne had inherited her hard shrewdness along with his father's dramatic range, and this happy commingling of the stronger qualities of the parents gave him his special powers. the doings of the elder dumas during the famous three days of july, , would make an amusing chapter. eager to play the part of his own boisterous heroes, he flung himself, with hot-headed and bombastic ardor, into throne-upsetting and throne-setting-up. of course he allied himself with the opponents of louis-philippe--possibly in keen memory of his monthly hundred francs worth of drudgery--and of course the success of the orleanists left him with no further chance for place or patronage. so his pen was his only ally, and it soon proved itself to be no broken reed, but a strong staff for support. strong as it was and unresting, no one pen could do even the manual labor required by the endless volumes he poured forth. in , having finished "monte-cristo," he followed it by "the three musketeers," and then he put out no less than forty volumes in that same year; each volume bearing his name as sole author. but this sturdy and undaunted toiler was no laborious recluse, like balzac, and he was surrounded by clerks for research, secretaries for writing, young and unknown authors for collaborating; reserving, for his own hand, those final telling touches that give warmth and color to the canvas signed by him. his "victims," as they are described in the "fabrique de romans, maison alexandre dumas et compagnie," a malicious exposure, are hardly subjects for sympathy; they earned money not otherwise within their power to earn, and not one of them produced, before or after, any work of individual distinction. in his historical romances, their work is evident in the study and research that give an accuracy not commonly credited to dumas and about which he never bothered. the _belle insouciance_ of his touch is to be seen in the dash of the narrative, and above all in the dialogues, not only in their dramatic force and fire, but in their growing long-windedness. for he was paid by the line at a royal rate, and he learned the trick of making his lines too short and his dialogues too long, his paymasters complained. and, as he went on, it must be owned that he used his name in unworthy ways, not only for books of no value and for journalistic paltriness, but for shameless signature to shopkeepers' puffs, composed for coin. as the volumes poured out, money poured in, and poured out again as freely. for he was a spendthrift of the old _régime_, spending not only for his own caprices, but for his friends and flatterers and hangers-on. he made many foolish ventures, too, such as building his own theatre and running it; and he squandered fabulous sums in his desire to make real, at saint-gratien, his dream of a palace fit for monte-cristo himself. the very dogs abused his big-hearted hospitality, quartering themselves on him there, until his favorite servant, under pretence of fear of the unlucky number thirteen, to which they had come, begged to be allowed to send some of them away. he gave up his attempt toward reformatory thrift when dumas ordered him to find a fourteenth dog! he would have drained dry a king's treasury, and have bankrupted monte-cristo's island of buried millions. yet with all his ostentatious swagger and his preposterous tomfoolery, he had a childlike rapture in spending, and a manly joy in giving, that disarm stingy censure. the lover of the romancer must mourn for the man, growing poorer as he grew older, and must regret the degrading shifts at which he snatched for money, by which he sank to be a mountebank in his declining years. toward the last his purse held fewer _sous_ than it held when he came to paris to hunt for them. from his eight years' home in rue de l'université, dumas crossed the seine, preferring always thereafter the flashily fashionable quarters of the northern side; and none of his numerous dwellings henceforward are worth visiting for their character or color. for nearly two years he lived in a great mansion, no. rue saint-lazare, in other rooms of which george sand lived a little later. his next home, from to , at rue bleue, has been cut away by rue lafayette. from to he had an apartment, occasionally shared by his son, at no. rue de rivoli, between place des pyramides and rue saint-roch. twenty-five years after the death of the father, when the son, as he says, was older and grayer than his father had ever grown to be, a letter to him was written by that son. it is an exquisite piece of literature. he brings back their life in this apartment, when, twenty-two years apart in their birth, they were really of the same age. he tells how he, a young man going early to his studies, left the elder at his desk, already at work at seven in the morning, clad only in trousers and shirt, the latter with open neck and rolled-up sleeves. at seven in the evening his son would find him planted there still at work, his mid-day breakfast often cold at his side, forgotten and untouched! then these two would dine, and dine well, for the father loved to play the cook, and he was a master of that craft. all the while he was preparing the _plats_ he would prattle of his heroes, what they'd done that day, and what he imagined they might do on the next day. and then the letter calls back to the father that evening, a little later, when he was found by his son sunk in an armchair, red-eyed and wretched, and mournfully explained: "porthos is dead! i've just killed him, and i couldn't help crying over him!" it must have been at this period that the romancer tried to secure his son as his permanent paid critic, offering him , francs a year, and "you'll have nothing to do but to make objections." the offer was declined, and rightly declined. it was in this and in his succeeding residences--rue de richelieu, , in , and rue de la chaussée-d'antin, , in --that he brought out in newspaper _feuilletons_ "the count of monte-cristo," and "the three musketeers," these amazing successes written from day to day to keep pace with the press. in , while his address was at no. rue joubert, he was in spain with the duc de montpensier, one of his many companions among princes. they, along with other cronies, male and female, more or less worthy, found dumas at saint-germain from to . then, suddenly, he disappeared into belgium, "for reasons not wholly unconnected with financial reverses," as he and his only peer in fiction, micawber, would have put it. he was in town again in , at no. rue d'amsterdam, and there remained until , when he rushed off to the head-quarters of the "dictator of sicily," garibaldi, to whom dumas appointed himself aide and messenger. between and his residence was at boulevard malesherbes. on the coming of the prussians, he was carried, ailing and feeble, to his country-place at puys, near dieppe, where he died december , . his public burial was delayed until the close of the war, and then, in , was solemnized in the presence of all that was notable in french art and literature, at his birthplace and his boyhood-home, villers-cotterets. when dumas was asked how a monument might be erected in memory of a dead pen-worker, who in life had been misunderstood and maligned, he replied: "use the stones thrown at him while he lived, and you'll have a tremendous monument." the lovers in all lands of the great romancer could well have brought together more telling stones than those that make doré's monument in place malesherbes, near his last paris home. and yet, curiously weak in its general impression, its details are effective. the group in front is well imagined: a girl is reading to a young student, and to an old, barefooted workman; on the other side is our hero d'artagnan. the seated statue of dumas, on too tall a pedestal, is an admirable portrait, with his own vigorous poise of head and gallant regard. in the american minister to france, mr. john bigelow, breakfasted with dumas at saint-gratien, near paris, where the romancer was temporarily sojourning. it was toward the close of our civil war, and he had a notion of going to the united states as war-correspondent for french papers, and to make another book, of course. mr. bigelow gives an accurate and admirable description of the host, as he greeted him at the entrance of his villa; over six feet in height, corpulent, but well proportioned; a brown skin, a head low and narrow in front, enlarging as it receded, covered with crisp, bushy hair growing gray, thick lips, a large mouth, and enormous neck. partly african and wholly stalwart, from his negress grandmother, he would have been a handsome creature but for his rapidly retreating forehead. but in his features and his expression nothing showed that was sordid or selfish, and his smile was very sweet. [illustration: alexandre dumas.] dumas lives and will never die as long as men love strength and daring, loyalty and generosity, good love-making and good fighting. he has put his own tenderness and frankness and vivacity into the real personages, whom he has reanimated and refined; and into the ideal personages, whom he has made as real as the actual historic men and women who throng his thrilling pages. his own virility and lust of life are there, too, without one prurient page in all his thousands. and he tells his delightful stories not only with charm and wit, but in clean-cut, straightforward words, with no making of phrases. very little of the valois paris is left to-day, and the searcher for the scenery familiar to margot and to chicot must be content with what is left of the old louvre, and of the then new renaissance louvre as it was known to the grandchildren of its builder, françois i. of the old, the outer walls and the great central tower are outlined by light stones in the darker pavement of the southwest corner of the present court. of the new structure, as we see it, the cold and cheerless salle des caryatides lights up unwillingly to us with the brilliancy of the marriage festival of marguerite de france and henri de navarre, as it is pictured by dumas. this festivity followed the religious ceremony, that had taken place under the grand portal of notre-dame, for henry's heresy forbade his marriage within. he and his _suite_ strolled about the cloisters while she went in to mass. in this hall of the caryatides his body, in customary effigy, lay in state after the assassination. there is no change in these walls since that day, except that a vaulted ceiling took the place, in , of the original oaken beams, which had served for rare hangings, not of tapestries, but of men. the long corridors and square rooms above, peopled peaceably by pictures now, echoed to the rushing of frightened feet on the night of saint bartholomew, when margot saved the life of her husband that was and of her lover that was to be. hidden within the massive walls of philippe-auguste's building is a spiral stairway of his time, connecting the salle des sept cheminées with the floor below, and beneath that with the cumbrous underground portions of his old louvre. as one gropes down the worn steps, around the sharp turns deep below the surface, visions appear of valois conspiracy and of the intrigues of the florentine queen-mother. here the wily creature had triumphed at last after waiting through weary years of humiliated wifehood; passed, such of them as henri ii. was willing to waste in paris far from his beloved touraine, in the old palais des tournelles. we shall visit, in another chapter, that residence of the early kings of france, when they had become kings of france in more than name. after the accidental killing of henry at the hand of montmorency in the lists of this palace, his widow urged its immediate destruction, and this was accomplished within a few years. one portion of the site became a favorite duelling-ground, and it was here--exactly in the southeastern corner of place des vosges, where now nursemaids play with their charges and romping schoolboys raise the dust--that was fought, on sunday, april , , the duel, as famous in history as in the pages of dumas, between the three followers of the duc de guise and the three _mignons_ of henri iii. those of the six who were not left dead on the ground were borne away desperately wounded. the instigator of the duel, quélus--"_un des grands mignons du roy_"--lay for over a month, slowly dying of his nineteen wounds, in the hôtel de boissy, hard by in rue saint-antoine, which the king had had closed to traffic with chains. by his bedside henri spent many hours every day, offering, with sobs, , francs to the surgeon who should save him. not far from this house of death, in rue saint-antoine too, was a little house, very much alive, for it belonged to marguerite--navarre only in name--to which none may follow her save the favored one to whom her latest caprice has given a nocturnal meeting. she is carried there, under cover of her closed litter, whenever her mother, never her husband, shows undue solicitude concerning her erratic career. in the same street, on the corner of rue sainte-catherine, now sévigné--where stand new stone and brick structures--was the town house of the comte de monsoreau. to this house, says brantôme, bussy d'amboise, done with margot, was lured by a note written by the countess, under her husband's orders and eyes, giving her lover, bussy, his usual _rendezvous_ during the count's absence. _this_ time the count was at home, with a gang of his armed men; and on this corner, on the night of august , , the gallant was duly and thoroughly done to death, not quite so dramatically as dumas narrates it in one of his magnificent fights. this rue saint-antoine was, in those days, hardly less of a bustling thoroughfare than in our days, albeit it was then a country road, unpaved, unlighted, bordered by great gardens with great mansions within them, or small dwellings between them. outside porte saint-antoine--that gate in the town wall alongside the bastille where now is the end of rue de la bastille--on the road to vincennes, was la roquette, a _maison-de-plaisance_ of the valois kings. hence the title of the modern prisons, on the same site. it was a favorite resort of the wretched third henry, that shameless compound of sensuality and superstition; and it was on his way there, at the end of rue de la roquette, that the vicious little lame duchesse de montpensier had plotted to waylay him, and to cut his hair down to a tonsure with the gold scissors she carried so long at her girdle for that very use. he had had two crowns, she said--of poland and of france--and she meant to give him a third, and make a monk of him, for the sake of her scheming brother, the duc de guise. the plot was betrayed, just as dumas details, by one nicolas poulain, a lieutenant of the prévôt of the Île de france, in the service of the league. gorenflot's priory--a vast jacobin priory--was on the same road, just beyond the bastille. to visit him out here came chicot, almost as vivid a creation in our affections as d'artagnan. once, when the fat and esurient monk was fasting, chicot tormented him with a description of their dinner awhile ago, near porte montmartre, when they had teal from the marshes of the grange batelière--where runs now the street of that name--washed down with the best of burgundy, _la romanée_. these two dined most frequently and most amply, at "_la corne d'abondance_"--a _cabaret_ on the east side of rue saint-jacques, opposite the cloisters and the gardens of saint-benoît, where the boy françois villon had lived more than a century before. either of the two shabby, aged hotels, still left at one corner of the old street may serve for chicot's pet eating-place. his dwelling was in rue des augustins, now rue des grands-augustins. where that street meets the quay of the same name, is a restaurant dear to legal and medical and lay _gourmets_, where those two noble diners would be enchanted to dine to-day. near chicot's later dwelling in rue de bussy--now spelt "buci"--was the inn, "the sword of the brave chevalier," which served as the meeting-place of the forty-five guardsmen, on their arrival in paris. you may find, in that same street, the lineal descendant of that inn, dirty and disreputable and modernized as to name, but still haunted for us by those forty-five gallant gascon gentlemen. the striking change of atmosphere, from the valois court to the regency of marie de' medici and the reign of the two great cardinals, is shown clearly in the pages of dumas, with his perhaps unconscious subtlety of intuition. we greet with delight the entrance into paris of a certain raw gascon youth mounted on his ludicrously colored steed, and we are eager to follow him to the _hôtel_ of the duc de tréville in rue du vieux-colombier. this street stretches now, as then, between place de saint-sulpice and place de la croix-rouge, but it has been widened and wholly rebuilt, and the courtyard that bustled with armed men, and every stone of de tréville's head-quarters, have vanished. the _hôtel_ of his temporary enemy, duc de la trémouille, always full of huguenots, the king complained, was in rue saint-dominique, at no. , in that eastern end cut away by boulevard saint-germain. this had been the trémouille mansion for only about a century, since the original family home had been given over to chancellor dubourg. built by the founder of the family, gui de la trémoille--as it was then spelt--the great fighter who died in , that superb specimen of fourteenth-century architecture, with additions late in the fifteenth and early in the sixteenth centuries, stood at the corner of rues des bourdonnais and de béthisy--two of the oldest streets on the north bank--until the piercing of rue de rivoli in compelled its destruction. fragments of its fine gothic carvings are set in the wall of the court of no. rue des bourdonnais, a building which occupies a portion of the original site. on the front of this house is an admirable iron balcony of later date. and just above, at no. of this street, over the entrance gate of the remaining wing of another mediæval mansion, is a superbly carved stone mask of an old man with a once gilded beard. it was the new hôtel la trémouille, on the south side of the river, not far from the luxembourg gardens, that was nearly wrecked by de tréville's guardsmen, running to the rescue of d'artagnan on that morning of his duel with bernajoux, and of his danger from the onslaught of de la trémouille's retainers. that duel ought to be good enough for us, but we have a hankering for the most dramatic and delightful of all duels in fiction. to get to its ground, we may follow either of the four friends, each coming his own way, each through streets changed but slightly even yet, all four coming out together at the corner of rues de vaugirard and cassette; where stands an ancient wall, its moss-covered coping overshadowed by straggling trees, through whose branches shows the roof of a chapel. it is the chapel, and about it are the grounds, of the carmes déchaussés. a pair of these gentry, sent by pope paul v., had appeared in paris in the year of the assassination of henri iv., and drew the devout to the little chapel they built here in the fields. the order grew rapidly in numbers and in wealth, acquiring a vast extent of ground; roughly outlined now by rues de vaugirard, du regard, du cherche-midi and cassette. the corner-stone of the new chapel, that which we see, was laid by the regent marie de' medici on july , . beyond its entrance, along the street, rise modern buildings; but behind the entrance in the western end of the wall, near rue d'assas, stands one of the original structures of the barefooted carmelites. this was used for a prison during the revolution, and no spot in all paris shows so graphic a scene of the september massacres. nothing of the prison has been taken away or altered. here are the iron bars put then in the windows of the ground floor on the garden side. at the top of that stone staircase the butchers crowded about that door; out through it came their victims, to be hurled down these same steps, clinging to this same railing; along these garden walks some of them ran, and were beaten down at the foot of yonder dark wall. this garden has not been changed since then, except that a large portion was shorn away by the cutting of rues d'assas and de rennes and the boulevard raspail. the narrow and untravelled lane, now become rue cassette, and the unfrequented thoroughfare, now rue de vaugirard, between the monastery and the luxembourg gardens--which then reached thus far--met at just such a secluded spot as was sought by duellists; and this wall, intact in its antique ruggedness, saw--so far as anybody or anything saw--the brilliant fight between five of richelieu's henchmen, led by the keen swordsman jussac, and athos, porthos, and aramis, aided by the volunteered sword of d'artagnan; the sword he had meant to match against each one of the three, at whose side he found himself fighting in the end. and so, cemented by much young blood, was framed that goodly fellowship, of such constancy and vitality as to control kings and outwit cardinals and confound all france, as the lover of dumas must needs believe! not only the duelling ground, but many of the scenes of "the three musketeers" are to be looked for in this quarter, near to de tréville's dwelling; where, too, the four friends, inseparable by day, were not far apart at night, for they lived "just around the corner," one from the other. [illustration: the wall of the carmelites.] athos had his rooms, "within two steps of the luxembourg," in rue ferou, still having that name, still much as he saw it. those few, whom the taciturn grimaud allowed to enter, found tasteful furnishing, with a few relics of past splendor; notably, a daintily damascened sword of the time of françois i., its jewelled hilt alone worth a fortune. the vainglorious porthos would have given ten years of his life for that sword, but it was never sold nor pledged by athos. porthos, himself, lived in rue du vieux-colombier, _he used to say_; and he gave grandiloquent descriptions of the superb furniture and rich decorations of his apartment. whenever he passed with a friend through this street, he would raise his head and point out the house--before which his valet, mousqueton, was always seen strutting in full fig--and proudly announce, "_that_ is my abode." but he never invited that friend to enter, and he was never to be found at home. so that one is led to suspect that his grand apartment is akin to his gorgeous corselet, having only a showy front and nothing behind! we know that his "fine lady," his "duchess," his "princess"--she was promoted with his swelling mood--was simply a madame coquenard, wife of a mean lawyer, living in rue aux ours. that dingy street, named from a corruption of the ancient "_rue où l'on cuit des oies_," between rues saint-denis and saint-martin, has been partly cut away by rue Étienne-marcel; but its tall, hide-bound, tight-fisted houses, that are left, make vivid to us those scrimped sunday dinners, at which porthos was famished even more than the already starved apprentices; and bring home to us his artful working on the lady's credulous infatuation, that he might get his outfit from her husband's strongbox. the wily aramis let his real duchess pass, with his friends, for the niece of his doctor, or for a waiting-maid. she was, indeed, a _grande dame_, beautiful and bold, devoted to political and personal intrigue, the finest flower of the court of that day. marie de rohan, duchesse de chevreuse, known as "_la frondeuse duchesse_," was the trusted friend of anne of austria, and the active adversary of richelieu and of mazarin, and exiled from paris by each in turn. she plays as busy a rôle in history as in dumas. the daughter of hercule de rohan, duc de montbazon, and the wife of charles d'albert, duc de luynes, and, after his death, of claude de lorraine, duc de chevreuse, this zealous recruit of the fronde naturally had her "fling" in private as well as in public life. her hôtel de chevreuse et de luynes was one of the grandest mansions of the faubourg saint-germain, as it originally stood at no. rue saint-dominique. the cutting of boulevard saint-germain, leaving it no. of that boulevard, has shorn off its two wings and its great front court. the main body, which remains, is impressive in the simple, stately dignity stamped on it by mansart, who gave to it his own roof. its first-floor _salons_ and chambers, lofty and spacious, glow with the ornate mouldings and decorations of that period, mellowed by the sombre splendors of its tapestries. much of the garden--once a rural park within city limits--has been cut away by boulevard raspail, but from that street one sees, over the new boundary wall, wide-spreading trees that strike a welcome note of green amid surrounding stone. the latest _bottin_, with no room for romance within its covers, gives the comtesse de chevreuse as tenant of the house, along with other tenants, to whom she lets her upper floors. aramis was not a guest at that mansion, his rôle being that of her host at his own apartment; daintily furnished and adorned, in harmony with his taste and that of his frequent visitor. his comrades in the troop had infrequent privilege of admission. his apartment, on the ground floor, easy of entrance, was in rue de vaugirard, just east of rue cassette, and his windows looked out on the luxembourg gardens opposite. there were three small rooms, communicating, and the bedroom behind gave on a tiny garden, all his own, green and shady and well shut in from prying eyes. the whole place forms a most fitting _entourage_ for the youthful priest who, after this episode of arms and of intrigue, was to rise so high in the church, and who has always been, to all readers, the least congenial of the four musketeers. to the most sympathetic of them, d'artagnan, dearer to us than all the others, we are eager to turn. the real d'artagnan of history, who succeeded de tréville in command of the guards, has left his memoirs, possibly written by another hand under his guidance. they are commonplace and coarse, broad as well as long, and leave us with no distinct portrait of the man. our d'artagnan, bodied forth from that ineffective sketch by the large brush that never niggled, might serve as an under-study for henri iv.; equally brave and resourceful, equally buoyant in peril and ready in disaster; with the same guileless and ingenuous candor that covered and carried off the craftiness beneath. the gascon, no less than the béarnais, was master of the jaunty artlessness of an astute and artful dodgery, a _fausse-bonhomie_ that is yet delicious and endears them both to us. stroll down rue servandoni, in its short length from rue de vaugirard to rue palatine against saint-sulpice church--the architect of whose western towers, servandoni, gave his name to this street--and you will not fail to find, among the old houses still left, one which might have sheltered d'artagnan during his early days in de tréville's troop. this street was then known as rue des fossoyeurs, and, still as narrow though not quite so dirty as in d'artagnan's day, has been mostly rebuilt. his apartment--"a sort of garret," made up of one bedroom and a tiny room in which planchet slept--was at the top of a house, given as no. and no. in different chapters, owned by the objectionable and intrusive husband of the beloved constance. for her sake, d'artagnan remains in these poor rooms, and there his three friends say good-by to paris and to him, now lieutenant of the famous troop. "twenty years after" we find our friend, but slightly sobered by those years, in search of a good lodging and of a good table. he fell on both at the inn, "_la chevrette_," kept by the pretty flemish madeleine, in rue tiquetonne. once a path on the outer side of the ditch, north of the town-wall, named for rogier tiquetonne, or quinquetonne, a rich baker of the fourteenth century, that narrow curved street is, still, as to most of its length, a village highway in the centre of paris. its tall-fronted houses rise on either hand almost as he saw them. among them is the hôtel de picardie, and it is out of reason to doubt that d'artagnan, in memory of planchet--for planchet came from picardy--was attracted by the name and made search therein for suitable rooms. or, it may please our fancy to believe that this inn bore then the sign of the kid, and that the kindly hostess changed its name, later, in memory of planchet, grown prosperous and rich. d'artagnan, mounting still higher in rank and income while here, went down lower in the inn; and one fine morning said to his landlady: "madeleine, give me your apartment on the first floor. now that i am captain of the royal musketeers, i must make an appearance; nevertheless, still keep my room on the fifth story for me, one never knows what may happen!" good master planchet, sometime valet, and lifelong friend of the great d'artagnan, turned grocer, and lived over his shop at the sign of "_le pilon d'or_," in rue des lombards. this had been a street of bankers and money-dealers in the outset, and it was named, to alter de quincey's ornate reference to another lombard street, after the lombards or milanese, who affiliated an infant commerce to the matron splendors of the adriatic and the mediterranean. when the financial centre went westward, this street was invaded by the grocers and spice-dealers, who hold it to this day. its narrow length is still fragrant with the descendants of the spices in which planchet traded, and of the raisins into which d'artagnan plunged his hands so greedily. [illustration: rue tiquetonne, with the hôtel de picardie.] to those of us who go through the short and stupid rue de la harpe of our paris, it is puzzling to read of its re-echoing with the ceaseless clatter of troopers riding through. but in those old days, and up to a comparatively recent date, it was one of the important arteries of circulation between the southern side of the town and the island; the most frequented road between the louvre and the luxembourg, when they were both royal residences. it started from the little open _place_, now enlarged and boasting its fountain, where rue monsieur-le-prince comes out opposite the luxembourg gardens, and curved down to the river-bank, and to the first pont saint-michel. it was the only long, unbroken thoroughfare to the west of rue saint-jacques, that street leading to petit-pont, and so across the island to notre-dame bridge. so rue de la harpe was a crowded highway, bordered by busy shops. its western side was done wholly away with by the cutting of boulevard saint-michel, and that broad boulevard has usurped the site of most of the old street; its eastern side saved only in that section along the cluny garden. d'artagnan, while living on the left bank in his early days, made his way by this street to visit his flame lady de winter. that dangerous adventuress is domiciled by dumas at no. place royale, now place des vosges, the number of the house still the same. it is a historic house, and its story is told in our hugo pages. dumas was one of the frequenters of hugo's apartment there, and made use of it and its approaches in "the three musketeers." when athos came to town, in later years, it was his custom to put up at the _auberge_, "_au grand roi charlemagne_," in rue guénégaud; a street bearing still its old name, but the inn has gone. so, too, has gone the sign of the fox, in rue du vieux-colombier, where he found quarters for himself and his son bragelonne, twenty years after. he brought the youth here, to the scenes of his own youth, hoping to launch him in a like career of arms. from there, the two went, one night, across the river to a house in the marais, known to all the footmen and sedan-chairmen of paris, says dumas; a house not of a great lord or of a great lady, and where was neither dancing, dining, nor card-playing; yet it was the favorite resort of the men best worth knowing in paris. it was the abode of "_le petit scarron_." about his chair, wherein he was held helpless by his paralysis, met especially the enemies of mazarin, the witty and lewd rhymesters of the fronde--not one of them as witty or as lewd as was the crippled host. yet some _soupçon_ of decency had been brought into his house by his young wife; the poor country girl of sixteen, françoise d'aubigné, who accepted the puny paralytic of forty and more, rather than go into a convent. after his death she became madame de maintenon, and later queen of france, by her secret marriage with louis xiv., as old and almost as decrepit as was her first husband. dumas has brought scarron to this house a few years later than history warrants, and he places the house in rue des tournelles, while it was really a short step from there, being at the corner of rues des douze-portes and de saint-louis, now rue turenne. we shall visit it in our final stroll. with the going of time came the loosening of the ties that held the great quartette together; yet, each passing on his own way, all were ready to reunite, at any moment, for a new deed of emprise and for the joy of countless readers. we spare ourselves the pain of seeing them at that cruel moment when they found themselves on opposing sides, blade crossing blade. we take leave of aramis, the bishop, deep in the intrigues dear to his plotting spirit; of porthos, complacent in his wealth, growing more corpulent at his well-spread table; of athos, sedate and dignified, content in the tranquil life of his beloved _château_, at blois. and d'artagnan? most fitting in _his_ eyes, mayhap, would it be to take our last look at him in the height of his glory, host of the hôtel de tréville, receiving the king at his own table. we prefer, rather, to hold him in memory just when athos introduces his old comrade to the assemblage at blois, as "monsieur le chevalier d'artagnan, lieutenant of his majesty's musketeers, a devoted friend and one of the most excellent and brave gentlemen i have ever known." the reading world echoes his words. in the whole range of fiction there exists no gentleman more excellent and more brave! the paris of victor hugo the paris of victor hugo when madame hugo brought her two younger boys, eugène and victor, to paris in , she took a temporary lodging in rue de clichy, until she found an apartment with a garden, on the southern side of the seine. in this part of the town, where gardens, such as she needed, are plentiful even yet, she sought all her future abodes. her first home in this quarter was near the old church of saint-jacques-du-haut-pas. victor, then six years old, could never recall its exact site, after he grew up, and could not say if the house were still standing. this ground-floor apartment proved to be too small for the small family; which was soon installed, a few steps farther south, in a roomy old house within its own garden. it was a portion of the ancient convent of the feuillantines, left untouched by the revolution, at impasse des feuillantines, no. --an isolated mansion in a deserted corner of southern paris. the great garden running wild, its fine old trees, and its ruined chapel, claimed the first place in the recollections of victor's boyhood; "a religious and beloved souvenir," he fondly regarded it. this homely paradise has disappeared; partly invaded by the aggressive builder, and partly cut away to make room for rue d'ulm, called by hugo a "big and useless street." the greater portion of the site of his house and garden is now covered by the huge buildings of one of the city schools. by a curious coincidence, at no. rue des feuillantines--which must not be confused, as it is often confused, with the impasse of the same name--there stands just such an old house, in the midst of just such gardens, shaded by just such old trees, as hugo describes in the pathetic reminiscences of his youth, and as those of us remember, who saw his old home, only a few years ago. his childish memories went back, also, to his days at school in rue saint-jacques, not far from home; and to a night lit up by the illumination of all paris, in celebration of the birth of the little king of rome, in . this was just before the sudden journey of the three to madrid to join general hugo. the delineation of the boy marius, swaying between his clashing relatives, is a vivid drawing of the attitude, during these and later years, of the young victor, leaning at times toward his bourbonist mother, at times toward his bonapartist father. of that gallant soldier, whose hunt for "fra diavolo"--the nickname of a real outlaw--seems to belong rather to the realm of fiction than of fact, one hears but little in his son's early history. except to send for them from madrid, and except for his brief appearance in paris, during the hundred days, general hugo seldom saw and scarcely influenced these two younger sons during their boyhood. once more in paris, and for awhile at the feuillantines, we find the devoted mother settling herself and her sons, on the last day of the year , in a roomy old building of the time of louis xv., in rue du cherche-midi. her rooms were on the ground floor, as usual, with easy access to the health-giving garden, and the boys slept above. there was a court in front, in which, during the occupation of paris by the allies, were quartered a prussian officer and forty of his men; to the disgust of the mother, and to the joy of her boys, captivated by soldierly gewgaws. the site of court and house and garden is covered by a grim military prison, in which history has been made in the closing years of the nineteenth century. on the other side of the street, at the corner of rue du regard, was and is the hôtel de toulouse, a seventeenth-century structure, named for its former occupant, the comte de toulouse, son of madame de montespan. it was used as a prison early in the nineteenth century, and since then it has been the seat of the conseil-de-guerre; famous, or infamous, in our day, as the head-quarters of the court-martial. the wide façade on the court has no distinction, nor has the "tribunal of military justice" on the first floor; to which we mount by the broad staircase at the left of the entrance-door. above are the living-rooms of the commandant, who was a monsieur foucher at that time, with whose family, the hugo family, already acquainted, formed now a lasting friendship. it was this intimacy that made their home here the brightest spot in hugo's boyish horizon. [illustration: the hôtel de toulouse.] when napoleon's return from elba brought his old officers back to their allegiance, general hugo hurried to paris, and, before hurrying away again, placed his boys in a boarding-school--the abbaye cordier, in rue sainte-marguerite. this was a gloomy little street, dingy with the smoke of the smiths' forges that filled it, elbowed in among equally narrow ways between the prison of the abbaye--then standing where now runs the roadway of modern boulevard saint-germain--and the cour du dragon. this superb relic of ancient paris has been left untouched, and the carved dragon above its great arched entrance looks down, out of the past, on modern rue de rennes. rue sainte-marguerite has been less lucky, for such small section of it, as remained after the cutting of boulevard saint-germain and rue de rennes, is mainly rebuilt, and renamed rue gozlin. a little later, victor was advanced to the lycée louis-le-grand, the college of many another frenchman who became famous in after life, notably of molière. these two youths saw the same buildings of the lycée and studied in the same rooms; for it was demolished and rebuilt only under the second empire. it stood--and the new structure stands--in rue saint-jacques, behind the collége de france. it was something of a stretch for youthful legs by the roundabout way between college and home, but he plodded sturdily along, that solemn lad, taking himself and all he did as seriously then as when he became a peer of france, and the self-elected leader of a cause. in madame hugo and her boys came to a new home on the third floor of no. rue des petits-augustins, in a wing of that old _abbaye_ of the augustin fathers, which had given its name to the street, now rue bonaparte. the entrance court, on that street, of the École des beaux-arts, covers the site of this wing, and the school has replaced the rest of the monastery, saving, within its modern walls, only the chapel built by queen marguerite. in the old court and the old buildings behind, at that time, were stored tombs of french kings and historic monuments and historic bones, removed from their original grounds, as has been told in our molière chapter, to save them from mutilation at the hands of the revolutionary patriots. on this queer assemblage the boys' room looked down; their mother, from her front windows, looked down on the remains of the vast gardens of the hôtel de la rochefoucauld, once a portion of the grounds of marguerite, that stretched to the north of rue visconti, between rues de seine and bonaparte. the view, so far below, could not compensate madame hugo for the loss of her own garden, which meant sun and air and health. she drooped and fell ill, and her only solace was the devotion of her son victor. whenever she was able to go out, they spent their evenings with the foucher family, at the hôtel de toulouse. while the boys sat silent, listening to the talk of their elders, victor's eyes were busy, and they taught him that adèle foucher was good to look upon. these two children walked, open-eyed, into love, as simply and as naturally as did cosette and marius; and after a brief period of storm and stress, their marriage came in due time, and they began their long and happy life together. this hugo home in rue des petits-augustins, rising right in front of all who came along rue des beaux-arts, was a familiar sight to a young englishman, about ten years after this time. his name was william makepeace thackeray, and he was lodging in this latter street among other students of the latin quarter, and trying to make a passable artist with the material given him by nature for the making of an unsurpassable author. his way lay in front of the old _abbaye_, each time he went to or from the schools, or his modest restaurant. thirion was the host of this cheap feeding-place, esteemed by art students, on the northern side of old rue des boucheries; of which this side and some of its buildings have been saved, while the street itself has been carried away in the wider stream of boulevard saint-germain. there, at no. , to-day, you will find the same restaurant, under the same name on the sign, and the same rooms, swarming with students as during thackeray's days in paris. in , at the end of her term of three years in the _abbaye_, madame hugo took her sons and her furniture directly up rue bonaparte and turned into rue des mézières, and in its no. they were soon settled in a ground floor with its garden. the great new building at no. stands on the site of house and court and garden. there is left, of their day there, only the two-storied cottage on the western end of no. rue des mézières--then no. --which preserves the image of the hugo cottage, and brings back the aspect of the street as they saw it, countrified with just such cottages. early in their residence here, victor was honored by a summons to visit châteaubriand, long the literary idol of the schoolboy, who had written in his diary, when only fourteen: "i will be châteaubriand or nothing!" for he had begun to rhyme already at the cordier school, and in his seventeenth year he had established, in collaboration with his eldest brother, abel, "le conservateur littéraire," a bi-monthly of poetry, criticism, politics, most of it written by victor. it lived from december, , to march, , and its scarce copies are prized by collectors. now the precocious boy's ode "on the death of the duke of berry"--assassinated by louvel in february, , in rue rameau, on the southern side of square louvois, then the site of the opera-house--had fallen under the eye of châteaubriand, who was reported to have dubbed him "the sublime child." châteaubriand denied this utterance, in later years, but agreed to let it stand, since the phrase had become "consecrated." it was at the door of no. rue saint-dominique, then the residence of the elder author, that the young poet knocked in those early days of his fame; and here, a little later, he was invited by the diplomat to join his embassy to berlin. madame hugo's health prevented the acceptance of this flattering offer. while still at this home in rue des mézières, victor received another honor in a call from lamartine, the lately and loudly acclaimed author of "les méditations," who was then about thirty-one years of age. in a letter, written many years after, lamartine described this first meeting: "youth is the time for forming friendships. i love hugo because i knew and loved him at a period of life when the heart is still expanding within the breast.... i found myself on the ground floor of an obscure house at the end of a court. there a grave, melancholy mother was industriously instructing some boys of various ages--her sons. she showed me into a low room a little apart, at the farther end of which, either reading or writing, sat a studious youth with a fine massive head, intelligent and thoughtful. this was victor hugo, the man whose pen can now charm or terrify the world." the grave, melancholy mother died in the early summer of , and her bereaved sons carried her body across the place, to the church, of saint-sulpice and then to the cemetery of mont-parnasse. on the evening of that day of the burial, victor returned to the cemetery, and there, overcome with grief and choked by sobs, the boy of only nineteen wandered alone for hours, recalling his mother's image and repeating her name. seeking blindly for some comforting presence, he found his way, that same night, to the hôtel de toulouse, for a glimpse of adèle foucher. unseen himself, he saw her dancing, all unconscious of his mother's death and his heart-breaking loss. after weeks of wretched loneliness, young hugo went to live, with a country cousin just come to town, on the top floor of no. rue du dragon. this street is connected with the court of the same name by a narrow passage under the houses at the western end of the court. no. is still standing, a high, shabby old building, that yet suggests its better days. in the belvedere high above the attic windows, hugo lived the life of his marius, keeping body and soul together on a slender income of francs a year. luckier than marius, who could only follow cosette and the old convict in the luxembourg gardens, hugo was allowed little walks there with his adored lady, her mother always accompanying them. this chaperonage did not prevent the secret slipping of letters between the lovers' hands, and many of these have been preserved for future publication. it was at this time that the post-office officials held up, in their _cabinet-noir_, a letter from hugo, offering the shelter of his one room, "_au cinquième_," to a young fellow implicated in the conspiracy of saumur, and hiding from the royal police. hugo makes this offer, his letter explains, in pure sympathy for a misguided young man in peril of arrest and death; his own allegiance to the throne being so established as to permit him to give this aid with no danger to himself and no discredit to his loyalty. the letter was copied, resealed, sent on its way; the copy was carried to louis xviii., and so moved him--_not_ in the direction meant by his officials--that he made inquiry about its writer, and presently gave him a pension. this incident was not known to hugo until many years after. among the men who visited him in this garret was alfred de vigny, then a captain in the royal guard, and dreaming only, as yet, of his "cinq-mars." hugo was dreaming many dreams, too, over his work, and his brightest dream became a reality in october, , when, in saint-sulpice's chapel of the virgin--the chapel from which his mother had been buried eighteen months earlier--was performed the church part of his marriage with adèle foucher. the wedding banquet was given at the hôtel de toulouse by her father, who had been won over to this immediate marriage, despite the delay he had urged because of the youth of the bride and the poverty of the bridegroom. the young couple, whose combined ages barely reached thirty-five, found modest quarters for awhile in rue du cherche-midi, near her and his former homes, and then removed to no. rue de vaugirard. their abode, cut away by the piercing of that end of rue saint-placide, is replaced by the new building still numbered rue de vaugirard, near the corner of rue de l'abbé-grégoire. in this first real home of his married life, hugo produced his "hans d'islande" and his "bug jargal"--the latter rewritten from a crude early work--by which, poor things though they were, he earned money, as well as by his poems, poured forth in ungrudging flood. in the ranks of the classicists at first, he soon fell into line with the romanticists, and by he was the acknowledged leader of "_la jeune france_." on his marriage, he had been allotted the pension, already alluded to, of , francs yearly, by louis xviii., in recognition of his royalist rhymings, and this sum was doubled in . with their growing fortune, the young couple allowed themselves more commodious quarters. these they found, early in , in a house behind no. rue notre-dame-des-champs, a street somewhat curtailed in its length by the cutting of rue de rennes, and the old no. is now no. . a long alley, once a rural lane between bordering trees, leads to the modest house hidden away from the street. quiet enough to-day, it was quieter then, when it was really in the fields of our lady, in that quarter of the town endeared to hugo by his several boyhood-homes. the long, low cottage, since divided and numbered and , still faces the street, just as when he first passed under its northern end into the lane, with his young wife. she writes, in her entrancing "life of victor hugo, by a witness": "the avenue was continued by a garden, whose laburnums touched the windows of his rooms. a lawn extended to a rustic bridge, the branches of which grew green in summer." the rustic bridge, the lawn, and the laburnums are no longer to be found, but the house is untouched, save by time and the elements. behind those windows of the second floor, where was their apartment, was written "marion delorme," his strongest dramatic work, in the short time between the st and the th of june, ; and there he read it to invited friends, among whom sat balzac, just then finishing, in his own painstaking way, "les chouans." in october of this year "hernani" was written and put on the boards of the comédie française, long before reluctant censors allowed "marion delorme" to be played. to these rooms came, of evenings, those brilliant young fellows and those who were bent on being brilliant, who made the vanguard of the romanticists. here was formed "_le cénacle_," of which curious circle we shall soon see more. here sainte-beuve dropped in, from his rooms a few doors off, at no. , now no. , rue notre-dame-des-champs; dropped in too frequently, for the "smiling critic" came rather to smile on young madame hugo than for other companionship. sometimes of an afternoon, such of the group as were walkers would start for a long stroll out to and over the low hills surrounding the southern suburbs, to see the sun set beyond the plains of vanves and montrouge. as they returned they would rest and quench their modest thirst in a suburban _guinguette_ and listen to the shrill fiddling of "_la mère saguet_." all this and much more is told in hugo's verse. the town has grown around and beyond the tavern, where it stands on the southwestern corner of rue de vanves and avenue du maine, its two stories and steep roof and dormer windows all like an old village inn going to decay. one day, late in , hugo started from his house for the prison of the grande-force, to visit béranger. the simple-seeming old singer, during his nine months' imprisonment, had an "at home" every day, receiving crowds of men eminent in politics and in letters. his conviction made one of the most potent counts in the indictment of the bourbons by the populace, two years later. it was in this way that hugo had opportunity to study the prison, in such quick and accurate detail, as enabled him to make that dramatic description of the escape of thénardier; an escape made possible, at the last, by little gavroche, fetched from his palatial lodging in the belly of the huge plaster elephant on place de la bastille, on the very night of his giving shelter to the two lost thénardier boys, whom he--the heroic, pathetic, grotesque creature--didn't know to be his brothers any more than he knew he was going to rescue his father! this prison had been the hôtel du roi-de-sicile, away back in the "middling ages," and had been enlarged and renamed many times, until it came, about , to caumont, duc de la force, whose name clung to it until its demolition early in the second empire. taken in by the government, necker made of it what was then considered a "model prison," to please the king, and to placate himself and the philosophers about him, righteously irate with the horrors of the grand-châtelet. the terror packed its many buildings, surrounding inner courts, with political prisoners, and killed most of them in the september massacres. its main entrance was on the northern side of rue du roi-de-sicile, near rue malher, recently cut. just at the southwestern junction of those two streets, stood--men yet living have seen it--the _borne_ (a large stone planted beside the roadway to keep wheels from contact with the bordering buildings), on which was hacked off the head of the princesse de lamballe, as she was led from that entrance to be "_élargie_," on the morning of september , . the landlady of the hugo household had retired from trade with enough money to buy this quiet place, set far back from this quiet street, intending to end her days in an ideal resting-place. from the first, her smug comfort had been violated by many queer visitors, and when "hernani" made its hit, there was a ceaseless procession of the author's noisy admirers, by night and by day, on her staircase and over her head--she had kept the ground floor for her tranquil retreat--until the maddened woman gave monsieur hugo "notice to quit." she liked her tenants, she hastened to say, she felt for the poor young wife in _her_ loss of sleep, and, above all, she pitied her for having a husband "who had taken to such a dreadful trade!" so they had to move, and late in , or early in , they went across the river to no. rue jean-goujon, where, in an isolated house surrounded by gardens, in the midst of the then deserted and desolate champs-Élysées, they could be as noisy as they and their friends chose. soon after coming here they took their new daughter and their last child, adèle, to saint-philippe-du-roule for her baptism, as hugo recalled, twenty years later, at balzac's burial service in the same church. but here, despite the fields that tempted to walks in all directions, hugo shut himself in and shut out his friends. for he was bound, by contract with his publisher, to produce "notre-dame de paris" within a few months. with his eye for effect, he put on a coarse, gray, woollen garment, reaching from neck to ankles, locked up his coats and hats, and went to work, stopping only to eat and sleep. he began his melodramatic book to the booming of the cannon of a parisian insurrection, and he ended it in exactly five and one-half months, just as he had got to the last drop of ink in the bottle he had bought at the beginning. he thought of calling this romance "what there is in a bottle of ink," but gave that title to alphonse karr, who used it later for a collection of stories. goethe's verdict on "notre-dame de paris" must stand; it is a dull and tiresome show of marionettes. this house has gone, that street has been rebuilt, the whole quarter has a new face and an altered aspect. after his book was finished, hugo hurried out to see the barricades of , which he has glorified in "les misérables." at this time, too--by way of contrast--he permits a glimpse of his undisturbed home life. it is seen by a friend, who, "ushered into a large room, furnished with simple but elegant taste, was struck with the womanly beauty of madame hugo, who had one of her children on her knee." when he saw the poet, sitting reading by the fireside close by, "he was vividly impressed with the resemblance of the entire scene to one of van dyck's finest pictures." during the rehearsals of "le roi s'amuse," in october, , hugo found time to settle himself and his family in the apartment on the second floor of no. place royale, now place des vosges. we shall prowl about this historic spot when we come to explore the marais; just now, only this apartment and this house come under our scrutiny. it was one of the earliest and grandest mansions of this grand square, and took its title of hôtel de guéménée when that family held possession in . ten years later one of its floors was tenanted by marion delorme, whose gorgeous coach with four horses drew a crowd to that south-eastern corner whenever she alighted, and whose dainty rooms drew a crowd of another sort on her evenings, so much the vogue. they were the gathering-place of the swells of her day, of dignitaries of the court and the church, of men famous in letters and science, all attracted by the charm and wit and polish of this young woman. in his "cinq-mars," de vigny brings together in her _salon_, among many nameless fine people, descartes, grotius, corneille--fresh from his latest success, "cinna"--and a youth of eighteen, poquelin, afterward molière. this is well enough, but he goes too far in his fancy for a telling picture, and drags in milton, shy and silent. john milton had long before passed through paris, on his way home from italy, and was then busy over controversial pamphlets in london. nor can the english reader take seriously the recitation, urged on "_le jeune anglais_," of passages from his "paradise lost"--written twenty years later--a recitation quite comprehended by this exclusively french audience. for the delorme is moved to tears, and georges scudéry to censure, so shocked are his religious scruples and his poetic taste! de vigny is surer of his stepping when on french ground, and plausibly makes marion a spy on the conspirators, in the pay of richelieu. at that time, during the construction of his palais-cardinal--now the palais-royal--his residence was diagonally opposite no. , in the northwestern corner of place royale. that corner has been cut through, and his house cut away, by the prolongation of rue des vosges along that side of the square. it has been said that the cardinal's hunting to death of cinq-mars was less a punishment for the conspiracy against king and state than a personal vengeance on the dandy, with a hundred pairs of boots, who had supplanted him with mlle. delorme. the marais streets knew them both well. cinq-mars lived with his father in the family hôtel d'effiat, in rue vieille-du-temple, demolished in . marion did not pine long after his execution, but went her way gayly, until she was driven by her debts to a pretended death and a sham funeral, at which she peeped from these windows. she sank out of sight of men, and died in earnest, before she had come to forty years, in her mother's apartment in rue de thorigny, leaving a fortune in fine lace and not a _sou_ in cash for her burial. de vigny proves his intimate acquaintance with this house, during hugo's residence, by his use of its back entrance for the confederates of cinq-mars, making their way to delorme's house, on the night of their betrayal. and dumas makes this entrance serve for d'artagnan in his visits to lady de winter and to her attractive maid. that entrance is still in existence from rue saint-antoine, by way of the impasse--then cul-de-sac--guéménée, and at its end through a small gate into the court, and so by a back door into the house. through that rear entrance crowded a squad of the national guard, from rue saint-antoine, during the street fighting of february, , intending by this route to enter the square unseen, and secure it against the regular troops of louis-philippe. some few among them amused themselves by mounting the stairs and invading hugo's deserted apartment. he had gone, that day, at the head of a detachment of the royal force, not leading it against the rioters, but lending his influence as peer of france to save, from its bayonets, the fellow-rioters of the men just then intruding on his home. they did no harm, happily, as they filed through the various rooms, and past a child's empty cradle by the side of the empty bed. it had been the cradle of the daughter, adèle, and perhaps of the other babies, and was always cherished by madame hugo. in a small room in the rear, that served as hugo's study, the leader of the band picked up some written sheets from the table, the ink hardly dry, and read them aloud. it was the manuscript of "les misérables," just then begun, but not finished and published until , when the exile was in guernsey. while plodding along with that great work, hugo put forth from this study much verse and his last plays. here, in , he wrote his final dramatic success, "ruy blas," and his final dramatic failure, "les burgraves," which ended his stage career. from here he went to his _fauteuil_ in the academy in , the step to the seat of peer of france, accorded him by the king within a few years. meanwhile, his larger rooms hardly held the swelling host of his friends, and, it must be said, his flatterers. not marion delorme had more, nor listened to them with a more open ear. their poison became his food. indeed, the men who formed "_le cénacle_," in these and other _salons_, seemed to find their breath only in an atmosphere of mutual admiration. each called the other "_cher maître_," and all would listen, in wistful reverence, to every utterance of the others and to the deliverance of his latest bringing-forth, vouchsafed by each in turn. while lamartine, standing before the fireplace, turned on the pensive tune of his latest little thing in verse, hugo gazed intent on him as on an oracle. then hugo would pour forth his sonorous rhymes, his voice most impressive in its grave monotone. the smaller singers next took up the song. no vulgar applause followed any recitation, but the elect, moved beyond speech, would clutch the reciter's hand, their eyes upturned to the cornice. those not entirely voiceless with ecstasy might be heard to murmur the freshest phrases of sacramental adoration: "_cathédrale_," or "_pyramide d'Égypte_!" there were certain minor chartered _poseurs_ in the circle. there was alfred de vigny, "before his transfiguration," to whom might be applied camille desmoulins's gibe at saint-just: "he carries his head as if it were a sacrament." to which saint-just replied by the promise, that he kept, to make camille carry _his_ head after the fashion of saint-denis. there was alfred de musset, who had been brought first to the cottage in rue notre-dame-des-champs by paul foucher, his schoolmate and hugo's brother-in-law. like his fantasio, de musset then "had the may upon his cheeks," and was young and gay and given to laughter; now, old at thirty, he posed as the bored and _blasé_ prey and poet of passion. [illustration: alfred de musset. (from the sketch by louis-eugène lami.)] yet there were others, by way of contrast: dumas, fresh from his romance-factory, full-blooded, stalwart, sane; gautier, dropping in from his rooms near by, at no. in the square, ship-shape inside his skull for all its mane of curling locks, and for all his eccentric costume; barye, coming from his simple old house at no. quai des célestins, sitting isolated and silent, dreaming of the superb curves of his bronze creatures; nodier, escaping from his librarian's desk in the arsenal, the _flâneur_ of genius, with no convictions about anything, and with generous friendships for everybody; delacroix, impetuous chief of the insurgents in painting, most mild-mannered of men, his personal suavity disarming those who were going gunning for him, because of his insurrectionary brush; mérimée, frock-coated, high-collared, buttoned-up, self-contained, cold and correct, of formal english cut. among the guests were occasional irreverent onlookers, not deemed worthy of admission to the inner circle, who sat outside, getting much fun out of its antics. such a one was madame ancelot, whose graphic pen is pointed with her jealousy as a rival lion-hunter, who had outlived her vogue of the early restoration. daudet's sketch of her blue-stockinged _salon_, a faded survival of its splendors under louis xviii., is as daintily malicious as is her sketch of hugo's evenings. through those evenings, madame ancelot says, madame hugo reclined on a couch, as if over-wearied by the load of glory she was helping to carry. that lady had one relief in this new home, its doors being shut against the ugly face of sainte-beuve, at the urging of the indignant young wife. this happened in , and within a few years sainte-beuve gave to the world his "book of love," a book of hatred toward hugo, with its base suggestion of the wife's complaisance for the writer. him it hurt more than it hurt hugo. _he_ had taken, and he still keeps, his unassailable place in the affection, as in the admiration, of his countrymen. there can be no need to summon them as witnesses, yet it may be well to quote the words of two foreign fellow-craftsmen. the englishman, swinburne, in his wild and untamed enthusiasm, acclaims hugo as a healer and a comforter, a redeemer and a prophet; burning with wrath and scorn unquenchable; deriving his light and his heat from love, while terror and pity and eternal fate are his keynotes. no great poet, adds swinburne, was ever so good, no good man was ever so great. heine, german by birth, scoffs at hugo, claiming that his greatest gift was a lack of good taste, a condition so rare in frenchmen that his compatriots mistook it for genius. he sees merely a studied passion and an artificial flame in hugo's specious divine fire; and the product is nothing but "fried ice." and heine sums him up: "hugo was more than an egoist, he was a hugoist." charles dickens describes madame hugo as "a little, sallow lady, with dark, flashing eyes." making the round of paris with john forster, in the winter of - , they came to this "noble corner house in the place royale." they were struck by its painted ceilings and wonderful carvings, the old-gold furniture and superb tapestries; and, more than all, by a canopy of state out of some palace of the middle ages. it is worthy of note here that hugo was almost the first man of his period--a deplorable period for taste in all lands--to value and collect antiques of all sorts. they were a fit setting for these rooms, and for the youth and loveliness that crowded them, up to the open windows on the old square. the young smokers among the men were driven forth to stroll under its arcades, recalling the strollers of corneille's and molière's time, albeit these were painfully ignorant of tobacco bliss, so loud were the papal thunders against its temptations then. dickens and forster found hugo the best thing in that house, and the latter records the sober grace and self-possessed, quiet gravity of the man, recently ennobled by louis-philippe, but whose nature was already written noble. "rather under the middle size, of compact, close buttoned-up figure, with ample dark hair falling loosely over his close-shaven face. i never saw upon any features, so keenly intellectual, such a soft and sweet gentility, and certainly never heard the french language spoken with the picturesque distinctness given it by victor hugo." within the portal of the church of saint-paul and saint-louis, in rue saint-antoine, on either side, is a lovely shell holding holy-water, given by hugo in commemoration of the first communion of his eldest child, léopoldine. in this church she and young charles vacquerie were married in february, . both were drowned in august of that year. and this is the church selected by monsieur gillenormand for the marriage of marius and cosette, because the old gentleman considered it "more coquettish" than the church of his parish. for he lived much farther north in the marais, at no. rue des filles-du-calvaire, where a new block of buildings has taken the place of his eighteenth-century dwelling. for this marriage, after playing the obdurate and irascible godfather so long, he was suddenly transformed into a fairy godmother. toward the end of , after the escape of louis-philippe, hugo moved to rue d'isly, no. , for a short period, and then to no. , now no. rue de la tour-d'auvergne, where he remained until . in the paris _bottin_ during these years he is entitled--considering it, strangely to us, his especial distinction--"_représentant du peuple_." the youthful royalist poet, the friend of charles x., the friend later of louis-philippe, had become an oracle of democracy. he added nothing to his honestly earned fame by his long-winded bombast in the _tribune_; and however genuine his attitude may have been, it appealed almost entirely to the groundlings. they came in crowds about this house, with flaming torches and blaring bands, howling their windy homage. they are remembered, with mute disapproval, by the old _concierge_ of the house, lagoutte armand. with real pleasure does he recall "monsieur hugo," and prattle memories of his friends like béranger, and of his family. there were two sons, charles and françois-victor, the former known as "toto," a "_très gentil garçon_." in his _loge_, pointed out with pride by the _concierge_, to whom it was given by hugo, is a rare engraving of the poet, which makes him serious, almost stern, of aspect, his mouth showing its strength in the beardless face, his hair plastered down about the superb brow. his head was carried always well bent forward, and he went gravely, the old man tells us. the house is unaltered, but the street has grown commonplace since the days when its half-countryfied cut attracted hugo and béranger and alphonse karr. this witty editor of "les guêpes," something of a _poseur_ with his pen, had a genuine love of flowers and of women, on whom he lavished his pet camelias and tulips. he cultivated them in the garden of the house, now numbered , which he occupied in this street from to . the sculptor carrier-belleuse is now in possession of karr's old rooms, and his studio covers the one-time garden. béranger came, in , to no. , then a small cottage behind a garden, where he lived for three years. the bare walls of the communal school, numbered , now cover the site of his home, and there are no more cottages nor gardens in the street. from , when the _coup-d'état_ of december drove him first into hiding and then into exile, through all the years of the empire, we find in each year's _bottin_: "_hugo, victor, vicomte de, de l'institut_, . . . . ." these dots represent a home unknown to the paris directory; no home indeed, for there can be none for a frenchman beyond his country's borders. of hugo's dwellings during these years nothing need be said here, save that his long residence in guernsey gave him his characters and colors for "les travailleurs de la mer," and such slight acquaintance with seafaring and ships as is shown in "quatre-vingt-treize." where he got the fantastic english details of "l'homme-qui-rit," no man shall ever know. here, too, he finished "les misérables," writing it, he said, with all paris lying before him in his mind's eye; or, as he puts it, with the exile's longing, "_on regarde la mer, et on voit paris_." his topographical memory was none too accurate, and errors of slight or of real importance may be detected in "les misérables." it is really in his poetry that he has done for his "maternal city" what balzac did for her in prose; singing in all tones the splendor and the squalor of "_la ville lumière_," to use his swelling phrase. despite some errors, and despite the pulling-about of paris since valjean's day, we may still trace his flight through nearly all that thrilling night, when javert and his men hunted him about the southern side of the town, and across the river from the gorbeau tenement. this tenement, so striking a set in many scenes of the drama, was an historic mansion run to seed, standing just where hugo places it--on the site of nos. and boulevard de l'hôpital, almost directly opposite rue de la barrière-des-gobelins. facing that street--renamed rue fagon in --on the northern side of boulevard de l'hôpital, the little market of the gobelins replaces the squalid old shanty which gave perilous shelter to valjean and cosette, and later to marius. from here, driven by a nameless terror after his recognition of javert in the beggar's disguise, the old convict started, leading cosette by the hand. he took a winding way to the seine, through the deserted region between the jardin des plantes and val-de-grâce, turning strategically on his track in streets through which we can follow him as easily as did javert. he was not certain that he was followed, until, turning in a dark corner, he caught full sight of the three men under the light before the police-station. hugo places this station in rue de pontoise, and this is a mistake; it was then and is still in the next parallel street, rue de poissy, at no. . now, valjean turns away from the river, carrying the tired child in his arms, and makes a long circuit around by the collége rollin--long since removed to the northern boulevards--and by the lower streets skirting the jardin des plantes--no longer the jardin du roi--and so along the quay. he is bent, as javert guessed, on putting the river between himself and his pursuers. he crosses pont d'austerlitz, and plunges into the maze of roads and lanes, lined with woodyards and walls, on the northern side of the river. there javert loses the trail; while for us, that trail is hidden under new streets laid out along those lanes, and under railway tracks laid down on those roads. we come in sight of the fugitive again, as he climbs the convent wall, drawing up cosette by the rope taken from the street lantern. here is that high gray wall, stretching along the eastern side of old rue de picpus, and the southern side of the new wide avenue saint-mandé. this wall--of stone, covered with crumbling plaster--is as old as the garden of "_les religieuses de picpus_," which it surrounds, and as the buildings within, which it hides from the street. we may enter the enclosure by the old gate at no. rue de picpus, the very gate through which cosette was carried out in a basket, and valjean borne alive in the nun's coffin to his mock burial. about the court within, the red-tiled low roofs of the ancient foundation peep out among more modern buildings. behind all these and beyond the court stretches the garden, a portion still set aside for vegetables, and we look about for fauchelevent's protecting glasses for his cherished melons. what we do find is the very outhouse, in an angle of the wall, on which valjean dropped; it is a shanty nearly gone to ruin, but serving still to store the garden tools of fauchelevent's successor. [illustration: the cemetery of picpus.] "near the old village of picpus, now a part of the faubourg saint-antoine, under the walls of the garden which belonged to the canoness of saint-augustin, in a bit of ground not more than thirty feet in length, repose thirteen hundred and six victims beheaded at barrière du trône, between _ prairial_ and _ thermidor_, in the second year of the republic." this extract, from the "mémorial européen" of april , , is a fitting introduction to the small cemetery, hid away at the very end of this convent garden. in this snug resting-spot sleep many illustrious dead. on the wall, alongside the iron-railed gate, under a laurel-wreath, is a tablet inscribed with the name of "andré de chénier, son of greece and of france," who "_servit les muses, aima la sagesse, mourut pour la verité_." he and his headless comrades were carted here and thrown into trenches, when the guillotine was busy at the barrière du trône, now place de la nation, only a step away, in the early summer of , up to the day of robespierre's arrest. their mothers, widows, children, dared not visit this great grave nor, indeed, ask where it was. in that time of terror, grief was a crime and tears were no longer innocent. it was only in after years that this bit of ground was bought, and walled in, and cared for, by unforgetting survivors. some few among them, of high descent or of ancient family, planned for their own graves and those of their line to come and to go, within touch of this great common grave that held the clay of those dear to them. they bought, in perpetuity, this bit of the convent garden on the hither side of the gate, through which we have been looking, and it is dotted with many a cross and many a slab. and this tiny burial-ground draws the american pilgrim as to a shrine, for in it lies the body of lafayette. the sisters of the séminaire de picpus, who inherited the duties, along with the domain of "_les religieuses_" of the eighteenth century, devote themselves to the instruction and the training of their young _pensionnaires_. the story of the establishment is told in "les misérables," in detail that allows no retelling. fauchelevent had planned to carry off his tippling crony of the vaugirard cemetery to the tap-room, "_au bon coing_," and so get valjean out of his coffin. to his horror, he found the drunkard replaced by a new grave-digger, who refused to drink, and valjean was nearly buried alive. we will, if it please you, visit the "good quince," no longer in its old quarters, for it quitted them when the historic cemetery of vaugirard was closed forever. on its ground, at the corner of rue de vaugirard and boulevard pasteur, has been built the lycée buffon. to be near the then newly opened burial-ground of mont-parnasse, "_au bon coing_" put up its sign on the front of a two-storied shanty, at the corner of boulevard edgar-quinet and rue de la gaieté, a street strangely misguided in title in this joyless neighborhood. about the bar on this corner crowd the grave-diggers and workmen from the near-at-hand graves, and at the tables sit mourners from poor funerals, all intent on washing the smell of fresh mould from out their nostrils. this den is the _assommoir_ of this quarter, swarming, noisy, noisome. on those summer days, when hugo used to stroll from his cottage in rue notre-dame-des-champs out to the southern slopes, he discovered the champ de l'alouette--a fair field bordering the limpid bièvre, just beyond the factory of the gobelins. it had borne that name from immemorial time, and was the field, as the man told marius, where ulbach had killed the shepherdess of ivry. marius came to this green spot that he might dream about "the lark," after he had heard, from his peep-hole in the wall of the gorbeau tenement, the thénardiers so name his unknown lady. we, too, may walk in the field of the lark, its ancient spaciousness somewhat shrunken, as with all those erstwhile fields hereabout, of which we get glimpses along boulevard saint-jacques and other distant southern boulevards. there is a wide gateway in the high wall that runs along stony rue du champ-de-l'alouette, and we pass through it and the court within to the bright little garden beyond, where children are playing, guileless as cosette. this is her field, now shut in by great tanneries, its air redolent of leather, its bièvre sullied by the stains and the scum of the dye-works above. yet, hid away in this dreary quarter--where the broad and cheerless streets are sultry in summer, bleak in winter, and gritty to the feet all the year round--it is still, as hugo aptly says, the only spot about here where ruysdael would have been tempted to stop, and sit, and sketch. among the countless american feet that tread rue du bac and rue de babylone, on their way to the shop that is a shrine at the junction of those two streets, there may be some few that turn into rue oudinot. it is well worth the turning, if only because it has contrived to keep that village aspect given by gardens behind walls, and cottages within those gardens. it still bore its old name, plumet, when general hugo came to live in it, that he might be near his son in rue notre-dame-des-champs, and here he died suddenly in january, . in this house, well known to hugo, he installed valjean and the girl cosette. from this house, by its back door and by the lane between high parallel walls, valjean slips out unseen into rue de babylone. in its front garden, under a stone on her bench, cosette finds her wonderful love-letter; and here is the scene of that exquisite love-making, when marius appears in the moonlight. the trumpery tumults of --in hopeless revolt against the orleans monarchy and in impotent adventure for the republic--give occasion for grandiose barricade-building and for melodramatic combats. hugo takes us, with marius and his fellow-students, to that labyrinth of narrowest lanes, twisting about high bluffs of houses, that was then to be found between the churches of saint-leu and saint-eustache. it was a most characteristic corner of mediæval paris, and it has, only recently and not yet entirely, been cut away by rue rambuteau, and built over by the business structures around the halles. the street of la grande-truanderie is for the most part respectabilized, that of la chanverie is reformed quite out of life, and la petite-truanderie alone remains narrow and malodorous. but "_corinthe_" has been carted clean away. this was the notorious tavern, of two-storied stone, in front of which enjolras defended his barricade, within which grantaire emptied his last bottle, and in whose upper room these two stood up against the wall to be shot. grantaire was doubtless sketched from his illustrious precursor and prototype, the poet, mathurin régnier, who tippled and slept at a table of this squalid drinking-den during many years, until the year , when debauchery killed him too young. his colossal and abused body carried the soul, original, virile, and fiery, which he has put into his verse, although he has over-polished it a bit. when this tavern--in the fields near the open markets--was his favorite resort, it bore the sign and name, "_pot-aux-roses_"; it was dedicated later "_au raisin de corinthe_"; and this was soon popularly shortened to "_corinthe_." forty years after his death, another true poet was born in the tall house that rose alongside this tavern, its windows looking out over the waste lands of the marais, as jean-françois regnard says in his verse. like young poquelin, thirty years before, this boy played about the halles; then he went away to strange adventures in foreign lands with pirates and with ladies; and came home here to write comedies, that have the gayety and sparkle, yet not the depth, of those of molière. indeed, voltaire asserts that he who is not pleased with regnard is not fit to admire molière. the seventeenth-century mansion, in which he was born, befitted the position of his father, a rich city merchant, and it has luckily escaped demolition, albeit brought down to base uses, as you shall see on looking at no. rue rambuteau. and if you hurry to this neighborhood, you may yet find some few reminders of the scenes of . in rue de la petite-truanderie is just such a tavern as was "_corinthe_," in its worst days. its huge square pillars will hardly hold up, much longer, the aged stone walls. just here is the dark corner where valjean set javert free; and in rue mondétour, at that end not yet shortened and straightened into a semblance of respectability, you may see a small sewer-mouth, direct descendant of the grated hole, down which valjean crawled, with marius on his back, to begin that almost incredible march through the tortuous sewers to their outlet on the seine, under cours-la-reine. he came out on a spit of sand, "not very far distant from the house brought to paris in ," says hugo, who should have said . his reference is to the house popularly named "_la maison de françois ier_." it was built by that monarch, at moret on the edge of the forest of fontainebleau, for his beloved sister, marguerite de navarre, it is believed. it was removed, stone by stone, and re-erected on its present site in cours-la-reine, where it is a delight to the lover of french renaissance. hugo was one of the earliest, among the exiles of the empire that ended worthily in the shame of sedan, to be welcomed by the new republic on his hastening to paris. there he remained through _l'année terrible_ of the prussian siege, with his friend paul meurice, a hale veteran of letters, still in the youth of age in . paris being once more opened, hugo went to and fro between brussels and guernsey and his own country for awhile. in he had quarters in the villa montmorenci at auteuil, we learn by a letter from him dated there. in he settled in an apartment at no. rue de la rochefoucauld, an airy spot at the summit of the slope upward toward montmartre. here he remained a year, and in removed a little farther along this same slope, to no. rue de clichy, on the corner of rue d'athènes. his apartment on the third floor was bright and sunny, having windows quite around the corner on both streets, and here he lived for four years. much of the last two years was taken up by his new duties as senator, so that scant leisure was left him for literary labor; and it was in this house that he sadly told a favorite comrade that the works he had dreamed of writing were infinitely more numerous than those he had found time to write. driven from here by the unremitting invasion of friends, admirers, strangers, men and women from all quarters of the globe, bent on a sight of or an autograph from the only hugo, he took refuge in avenue d'eylau, away off at the other end of the town, where only real friendship would take the trouble to follow him. he made this last removal in . this final home was as modest as any of his childhood homes, and had just such a garden as theirs. here he passed five happy years, with cherished companionship within, and all about him "honor, love, obedience, troops of friends." [illustration: victor hugo. (from the portrait by bonnat.)] as a tribute to him, avenue d'eylau has become avenue victor-hugo, and his two-story-and-attic house--not one bit grander than the cottage in rue notre-dame-des-champs, in which began his literary fame--remains unchanged under its new number , only its side garden having been built over, the garden in the rear being left unspoiled. at no. of the avenue, the residence of m. lockroy, is preserved the original death-mask of the poet, taken by the sculptor, m. dalou. it is a most striking portrait, and one wishes that copies might be permitted. here he died in , and from here his body was carried by france to the panthéon, there to be placed among all her other glories by a grateful country. despite the ostentation of the pauper's hearse decreed by this rich man, no more solemn and imposing spectacle has been seen by eyes that have looked on many pageants, civil and military, in many lands; even more impressive in the attitude of the closely packed concourse--hushed, motionless, with bared heads--that gazed all through that hot may day at the slow-moving _cortège_, than in that magnificent retinue, escorting to his grave "the sublime child," grown gray in the service of his country's letters. the making of the marais the making of the marais the prehistoric savages, who settled, for safety from onslaught, on the largest of the islands in the seine, known to us as Île de la cité; the rabble of gaulish fisherfolk, who came to camp here in after-years; the little tribe of parisii who later builded a fortified hamlet on this sure ground, and bridged it with the mainland: all these, looking, through the centuries, northwardly across the transparent and unsullied stream, saw the flat river-bank opposite, over beyond it a ring of low wooded hills, and between these, on either hand, broad expanses of marsh, morass, and forest. that which stretched to their right is our marais. in it the veteran camulogenus, captaining the parisii, hoped to mire down the roman soldiers, once already stuck in the mud along the bièvre on the southern bank of the seine. but it is labienus, that ablest of cæsar's lieutenants, who "marches with four legions to lutetia. (this is the fortress of the parisii, situated on an island in the river seine.)" and labienus knows the country as well as his trade, and skirts around the marais, and crosses the seine at auteuil to the solid ground he has chosen on the plains of grenelle. there he wins battle in the year b.c., and drives the gauls in disorder to the high ground on which the panthéon now stands, and the luxembourg gardens lie. the romans, in possession of the island, rebuild the bridges, cut away by the parisii, and restore the town partly burned by them; a palace for the resident governors arises on the extreme western end of the island; and new defences are constructed for the gallo-roman lutetia. four centuries later, it was called his "dear and well-beloved lutetia" by julian, and from that conviction he was never apostate. he loved it for its soft air, its fair river, its honest wines coming from its own vineyards. on the slope of its southern suburb stood out the massive walls of the baths that bear his name; and his gardens, planted with vines, reached to the river. where he swam, we go dry-shod, when we saunter through the cluny; and we may sit, a little farther south, in rue de navarre just off rue monge, in the stone seats of the roman arena, a perfect bit of loyal preservation of lutetia. the romans meant to make their new town an important centre, and those impassioned road-builders began to bring to it the highways, in the making of which, and by means of which, they were easily masters of their world. the gauls had trodden footpaths through the forests and over the marshes, and of these, the two most trodden on the northern bank started from near the end of their only bridge, now replaced by pont notre-dame. that which went northerly to the southeastern corner of the halles of our paris, there split into two branches; the one, named the voie des provinces maritimes, followed nearly the line of present rue montmartre, and went, by way of pontoise, to the northwestern coast of gaul; the other, named the voie des provinces du nord, ran from the halles on a line between rues saint-martin and saint-denis, about where now boulevard sebastopol stretches. it was the high road to saint-denis, senlis, soissons, and so away to the north. the other main pathway turned toward the east, just above the bridge-end, and went nearly parallel with the river-bank, along the line of present rue saint-antoine. this road, to sens and meaux and thence eastwardly, was known as the voie des provinces de l'est, and later in life as the voie royale. this pathway was diked by the romans, and when sufficiently raised, it was paved with stones. even then it was often submerged, and the marsh over which it went made more marshy, by frequent floods of the swollen seine, overwashing its slight banks; and by the ceaseless streams that carried down through this bowl the waters of the encircling slopes of montmartre, belleville, chaumont, ménilmontant. in our stroll through the marais, you will walk above one of these streams, serving as a sewer to-day, and along the bank of still another, turned into the gare de l'arsenal. on the two sides of this raised road, bit by bit the bog was planted; foot by foot the swamp was reclaimed; gardens were cultivated, farms were tilled, flocks were fed; herdsmen's huts dotted the plain; on the higher spots farmers' houses peeped from among the trees; and on the slopes above, all around from chaillot to charonne, shone the white walls of the villas--walls of marble from italy--of great officials and of wealthy traders. the church came along this road from its central seat at sens, and, keen of eye, picked out choice sites for chapels, convents, monasteries. little by little the entire marais was levelled up as the surrounding hills were levelled down; yet keeping so well its forests, that it gave good hiding for eight years to saint-denis dodging valerian's pursuit, until that day of the saint's long and winding walk down the street of his name, his head carried in his hands. this northern suburb grew more gradually, at first, than its southern sister, whose sunny breast had enticements for gardeners and for vine-growers. it was a strong man who woke the marais to unwonted life, and by his wall, encircling and securing it, philippe-auguste quickened its sluggish suburban pulse into urban animation. the northern settlements became _la ville_, the island being _la cité_, and the southern suburb _l'université_. there was a beach or strand--_la grève_--near the middle of this northern bank, at which were moored and unloaded the boats bringing to the town light merchandise, such as grain, meats, stuffs, and fabrics. all heavy goods--timber, stone, metals--came to the port saint-paul, in front of quai des célestins; still there under its old name, but its old business long since gone to the bustling port de grenelle. on the grève gathered men out of place, wandering about while waiting for work; whence comes the modern meaning of _grève_--a strike, when men get out of place and are not anxious for a job. here on the grève, as their common ground, met the men who carried goods by water from up and down stream, and the men who carried goods by land, to and from the provinces. they were strong and turbulent men, and they made two mighty guilds, and these two, combined with other guilds, formed an all-powerful confraternity. in the course of years, there came to its head, as _prévôt des marchands_, that demigod of democracy, the notable Étienne marcel. he had his home, while living, on place de grève, and in the river, when dead; to-day, in bronze he bestrides his bronze horse between those two dwelling-places, facing the strand he ruled and the city he tried to rule. it is he--none more worthy--who shall marshal us on our way to the marais. for, when jean ii., "_le bon_," was sent to his long captivity in england from the field of poictiers, won by the black prince in , it was the first dauphin france had had, known later as charles v., who acted as regent in his father's absence. he was a sickly and a studious youth, easily alarmed by the violence of these guilds, now making one more savage assault on royal prerogatives, in a desperate stroke to secure the right of the townsmen to rule their town. the dauphin was afraid of being trapped in the louvre, and he took refuge in the old palace of the city. to him forces his way, one day, the boisterous marcel at the head of three thousand armed and howling men, kills two of the royal marshals in the presence, and places his own cap of the town colors, red and blue--these were combined with the bourbon white to make the tricolor, centuries later--on the head of the terrified dauphin, either to protect him, or in insolent token of this new recruit to the faction. as soon as might be, the dauphin got away from his revolted citizens, and came back to his town only when strong enough to hold it against them. nor would he then trust himself to a permanent residence in the island-palace, and it was allowed to fall into disrepair through several successive reigns. louis xii. made partial restorations, and occasionally sojourned in his palace "in mid-stream," that made him think of his loire. parliament already owned the building then, by gift from charles vii., and since then it has always been known as the palais de justice. the returned dauphin took up his abode in the hôtel d'Étampes, in the quarter of saint-paul, outside philippe-auguste's wall; and, by successive purchases, secured other neighboring _hôtels_ and their grounds. this spacious _enceinte_, within its own walls, stretched from behind the gardens of the archbishop of sens, on the river front, and from the grounds of the célestins, just east of them, on port saint-paul--where the dauphin's new estate had a grand portal and entrance-way from the quay and the river--away back to rue saint-antoine on the north; and from just outside the old wall, eastwardly to the open country. this domain, and the suburbs that had grown beyond that old wall, toward the north, now came to be embraced within a new enclosure. on the southern side of the river there seemed no need for any enlargement of the old enclosure. this wall, known in history as the wall of charles v., was partly quite new, partly an extension or a strengthening of a wall begun by marcel in ; under the pretext of "works of defence of the kingdom against the english," and carried on in offence of his royal master. but before he had finished it, he came to his own end, opportunely for everyone but himself. it is midnight of july , , and he is hastening, in darkness and stealth, to open his own gate of saint-antoine for the entrance of the combined forces of the english and of charles the bad, of navarre. in froissart's words: "the same night that this should have been done, god inspired certain burgesses of the city ... who, by divine inspiration, as it ought to be supposed, were informed that paris should be that night destroyed." so they armed and made their way to porte saint-antoine, "and there they found the provost of merchants with the keys of the gates in his hands;" and their leader, john maillart, asked, "stephen, what do you here at this hour?" when stephen told john not to meddle, john told stephen: "by god, you're not here for any good, at this hour, and i'll prove it to you." and so, as his notion of proof, "he gave with an axe on stephen's head, that he fell down to the earth--and yet he was his gossip." thus died stephen marcel, the martyr of devotion to the liberties of his fellow-citizens, in the eyes of many. to others of us, he is the original of the modern patriot of another land, who thanked god that he had a country--to sell; and his ignoble death seems to be the just execution of a traitor. it is due to him to own that he was a strong man, genuine and pitiless in his convictions, and might have merited well of his town and his country, but that the good in him was poisoned by his rapacity for power, and polluted by personal hatred of the dauphin. his naked body, before being thrown into the seine, lay exposed for days in front of the convent of sainte-catherine du val-des-Écoliers, whose grounds stretched from without the old wall, eastwardly along the northern side of rue saint-antoine. through them was cut our present rue sévigné, and it was on the spot made now by the corner of that street and rue saint-antoine, half way between the old gate and the new gate just built by marcel, that the crowd gathered to gaze on his corpse. froissart rightly claims, referring to marcel's projected wall with his customary delightful enthusiasm, that it was "a great deed to furnish an arm, and to close with defence, such a city as paris. surely it was the best deed that ever any provost did there, for else it had been, after divers times, overrun and robbed by divers occasions." it was a greater deed that was now done by charles v., and his provost of paris, hugues aubriot; and their new wall is well worth a little journey along its line, easily traced on our paris map. we have already made a visit to quai des célestins, and have read the tablet that marks the place where played molière and his troupe, in ; and the other tablet that shows the site of philippe-auguste's barbeau tower, constructed toward , and taking its name from the great abbey of barbeau, whose extensive grounds bordered the river-bank here. from this huge tower and its gateway, kept intact as the starting-point at this end, the new wall turned at a right angle to the fast crumbling old wall, and went eastwardly along the shore; which they now banked up and planted with elms. that shore-line is now boulevard morland--named from that brave colonel of chasseurs who was killed at austerlitz--and the land in front, as far as quai henri iv., was anciently the little Île des javiaux, renamed Île louvier in the seventeenth century, when it served as a vast woodyard for the town. the slight arm of the river that cut it off has been filled in, and the island is now one with the mainland. at the corner of boulevard bourdon--which records the name of a colonel of dragoons, who fell at austerlitz--the new wall turned, and followed what is now the middle line of that boulevard to the present place de la bastille. here was the two-round-towered gateway built by marcel, and called, as were called all those gateways, _bastilia_--a word of mediæval latin, meaning a small fortress, such as was formed by each of these gates with its flanking towers. there were many of them opening into and guarding the town, that of saint-denis being the only other one of the size of this of saint-antoine; which was enlarged into the massive fortress known to us as the bastille. of all the wretched memories of the accursed old prison, we shall awaken only one; that of hugues aubriot, its builder and its first tenant. made provost of paris by charles v.--who, after his hapless experience with marcel, when dauphin, would have no more provost of merchants--aubriot had many enemies among the guilds and among the clerics. he was frank and outspoken of speech, humane to the priest-despoiled and mob-harried jews, for whom he had, like his royal master, toleration if not sympathy, and to whom he returned their children, caught and christened by force. so, on the very day of the burial of his royal master, in september, , aubriot was arrested for heresy, and soon sent to his own bastille of saint-antoine, "_pour faire pénitence perpétuelle, au pain de tristesse, et à l'eau de douleur_." the church sentence gives a poetic touch to prosaic bread and water. aubriot fed only a short time on these delicacies, for he was rescued by the mob that, for the moment, idolized him, and led in triumph to his home. that home, from which he speedily fled out of paris in terror of his rescuers, was given by charles v. to this good servant, and we may stop, just here, to look on what is left of it. [illustration: the hôtel du prévôt.] under an arch at no. rue saint-antoine, we enter passage charlemagne, and go through an outer into an inner court. in its northwestern corner is a tower containing an old-time spiral staircase. this is the only visible vestige of the palace of the provost of paris, its unseen portions being buried under, or incorporated with, the structures of the lycée charlemagne, just behind us toward the east. the boundary railing, between this college and the church of saint-paul-et-saint-louis, is exactly on the line of philippe-auguste's wall. from the inner or city side of that wall, the provost's palace, with its grounds, stretched to rue prévôt, then rue percée; that name still legible in the carved lettering on its corner with rue charlemagne. in that street, behind us as we stand here, is the southern entrance of his grounds, whose northern line was on rue saint-antoine. this tower before us has been sadly modernized and newly painted, but its fabric is intact, with its original, square, wide-silled openings at each of the three landing-places of the old staircase. these openings are within a tall, slender arch, a timid attempt at the ogival, whose bolder growth we shall see presently in the hôtel de sens. above this arch a superimposed story, its window cut in line with the others below, has taken the place of the battlements. on either side the tower joins a building obviously later than it in date, although it has been claimed that all three structures are fifteenth-century work. the high arch and the other decorations of the tower are undoubtedly of that time, but they are, as undoubtedly, applied over the small stones of a much more ancient fabric. this conviction is reinforced by the sentiment that makes us see charles the wise come into this court, with his good aubriot, enter that low door, and climb that staircase, looking out through those windows as he mounts. in the year of that king's death there was born a future owner of this tower and its palace. this was pierre de giac, a charming specimen of the gang that helped john of burgundy and louis of orleans in their ruin of france--the only job in which they were ever at one. pierre de giac, after betraying both sides, fell into the strong clutch of the duke of richmond, by whom, after torture, he was tied in a bag and flung into the seine. his crony, louis d'orléans, had possession of this property in the closing years of the fourteenth century, when he instituted the order of the _porc-Épic_ in honor of the baptism of his eldest son, charles the poet. the family emblem which gave its name to this order, gave it also to this _hôtel_, to which it still clings. going back to place de la bastille, on our map, we may follow the course of the new town wall along the curve of the inner boulevards, to porte saint-denis; whence it took a straight southwesterly course, parallel with present rue aboukir, through place des victoires and the bank of france, and diagonally across the gardens of the palais-royal, to the gate of saint-honoré, nearly in the centre of our place du théatre-français. it was this gate and its protecting works that were pounded by the "_canons et coulevrines_" of joan of arc, and it was this portion of the wall which was assaulted by her at the head of her men; an assault that would have succeeded, and so have given paris to the french, had she not been struck down by a crossbow bolt, so striking panic to her followers. when you post your letters in the outside southern box of the post-office on the corner of avenue de l'opéra and place du théâtre-français, or when you look in at the incubating chickens in the shop window alongside, you are standing, as near as may be, on the spot where she fell wounded on september , . her tent was pitched, and her head-quarters fixed, on the outer slope of the butte des moulins, a few feet north of where now stands the apse of the church of saint-roch. from porte saint-honoré, the wall went direct, across present place du carrousel, to the round tour de bois on the river-shore, and from that tower a chain was swung slantwise up-stream to the tour de nesle on the southern bank. this great wall, when quite finished, was an admirable example of mediæval mural masonry. besides its round gate-towers, it was strengthened by many square towers, and was crenellated, and had frequent strong sentry-boxes and watch-towers between the battlements. on the outside was a wide, deep ditch bank-full of water. all stood intact until partly levelled by louis xiii. in , and entirely so by louis xiv. in , during which thirty years the popular pun had run: "_le mur murant paris rend paris murmurant._" it was about that the boulevards were laid out over the foundations of the wall, its ditch filled in, and trees planted. two of the gates were kept, enlarged, and made into triumphal arches; and these portes saint-denis and saint-martin stand there to-day, dingy memorials of ludovican pride and pomposity. a century later, in , every trace of wall and moat was wiped away, the driveway was partly paved, and building began; but it was not until that sidewalks were made, and that grand mansions replaced the former shabby structures. we cannot put hand on any stone of the wall itself, to-day. within the _enceinte_ thus made, our marais was at length entirely enclosed; away from its river-front, bordered by abbeys and monasteries; through its streets, walled off by palaces and mansions; and its other streets, packed with modest dwellings and shops; far back to the gardens and the vineyards, and the waste fields not yet tilled, that spread all around the inner zone of the wall. within it, too, was brought the vast domain of the templars, covering the space from this outer wall away south to rue de la verrerie, and between rues du temple and vieille-du-temple. it was partly under cultivation, partly left wild to forest and bog, this portion being known as the marais du temple. farther north were the buildings--palaces, priories, chapels--all secure within their own crenellated wall, all commanded and defended by the moated and towered citadel known as the temple. the order had been founded early in crusading days, in the beginning of the twelfth century, by nine french gentlemen and knights, who, clad in white robes marked with a red cross, devoted themselves to the service and the safety of pilgrims to the holy land. louis vii. gave them this waste land late in the same century. the small godly body, vowed to poverty and humility, grew large in numbers and appetite, great in wealth and pride. its knights were equal with princes, its monks were bankers for kings, and all had become simply a gang of sanctimonious brigands. a capet saw the birth of the order, a capet thought it time to strangle it as it neared its two-hundredth birthday. philippe iv., "_le bel_," less solicitous for the genuine faith than for the good coin of the templars, laid hands on them and on it. he got rid of them by axe and stake and in other ways approved of in that day, and parcelled out their lands; through which streets were cut later, and building begun, when this new wall put them on its safe side. with the later history of the temple we cannot concern ourselves, save to say that it long served as a sanctuary, later as a prison, and that its last stone was plucked away, six and a half centuries after it was laid, early in the nineteenth century. the palace of the grand prior stood exactly on the rue du temple front of the present square du temple. that little garden was his garden, and on its other edge, just at the junction of rues des archives and perrée of to-day, rose the tower, so famous and so infamous in prison annals. safely settled in his hôtel saint-paul, within his own wall--marcel quiet in his grave at last, the nobles curbed, the jacquerie crushed--the young dauphin, who had been weak and dissembling, and who was now grown, by long apprenticeship to his trade of royalty, into the strong, prudent, politic charles v., known in history as charles the wise, made proclamation, on his accession in , that this--"_l'hôtel solennel des grands ébastements_"--should be henceforth the royal residence. in the old palace on the island was held the official court; the louvre, partly rebuilt and brightened by him, was kept for the occasional "_séjour, souper, et gîte_" of roving royalty. here in "saint-pol" was his home, from whose windows he looked out, with keen, patient, far-sighted vision, over the paris and the france he had quelled and tranquillized. the hôtel saint-paul was a town in itself, of many mansions, big and little, of _châteaux_ with their parks, of farms with gardens, of orchards, fish-ponds, fowl-houses, a menagerie. sauval goes with gusto into details of the buildings and their apartments, the decorations, furniture, and pavements; and the chronicle is appetizing of the dinners and banquets given to embassies and to honored visitors. withal, pigeons perched on the carved balustrades, and guards lay on straw in the halls. it was a simple patriarchal life led here by charles the wise, and here begun by his son, charles the silly. a pretty, light-minded child of eleven, on his father's death, he remained a child through his dissolute and diseased early manhood, and through his later years of spasmodic madness and of intermittent reason, to his old age of permanent childishness. while in paris, this was his abode, and here he was left, almost a prisoner to unconcerned servants, by his shameless wife, isabeau de bavière. when she saw him, once in a way, he looked on her with unknowing eyes, or with knowing eyes of horror. his only companion was the low-born odette de champdivers, and with her he played the cards that untrue tradition claims to have been invented for him. he prowled about these halls, in filthy rags, eaten by ulcers and vermin, gnawing his food with canine greed; he ranged through these grounds, finding fellowship with the animals that were not let loose, but kept in cages. you may hunt up the stone walls of those cages--originally on pointed arches with short romanesque pillars--and the stone foundations of the royal stables, in the yards on the southern side of rue des lions; a street whose name tells of these menageries, and that seems to echo with their roarings. the alleyway of cherry-trees now makes rue de la cerisaie, and rue beautreillis replaces the green tunnels of vines on trellises, where were gathered the grapes--good as are those of thomery to-day--which produced the esteemed _vin de l'hôtel saint-paul_. along the farther edge of its grounds, just under the old wall, ran the lane that is now rue des jardins; and rue charles v. keeps alive the memory of the founder of saint-paul. in all these streets, we are treading on the ground he loved. after the wretched mad king died here in , royalty came no more to the hôtel saint-paul, and the place ran to waste. it was no home for the new dauphin, come to his kingdom as charles vii., by the grace of joan of arc and of god. his boyish memories were of a dreary childhood, between a mad father, a devilish mother who had hated him from his birth, and princely relatives raging and wrestling over those two for the power to misgovern france. outside the royal madhouse, paris was a butcher-shop. burgundians and armagnacs were howling crazy war-cries in every street, ambuscading and assassinating at every corner, equally thirsty for blood, but both surpassed in that thirst by the butchers and horse-knackers, led by jean caboche and called cabochians. all these factions, while intent solely on bloodshed, were loud-mouthed with loyalty and patriotism. they were all alike, and we may transfer to them and to their times the apt phrase of joseph de maistre, concerning the massacre of saint bartholomew: "_quelques scélérats firent périr quelques scélérats._" almost every leader of men in those days came to his end by arms and in arms, and death by violence seemed the natural death. the town was a shambles; corpses, mangled by butchers and stripped by plunderers, lay thick in the streets; wolves sneaked from the suburbs to eat them; the black-death and other plagues crept in to keep them company, and the english came marching on; the while _la danse macabre_ whirled about the tombs in all the cemeteries. on the northern side of rue saint-antoine, opposite the hôtel saint-paul, stretched the grounds of the old _hôtel_ of pierre d'orgemont, bishop of paris. this property had come to the crown by purchase or by gift, and had been partly torn down, rebuilt, and its grounds greatly enlarged, to make a _maison-de-plaisance_ for charles vi. the principal building had so many and such various shaped towers and turrets that it was named the palais des tournelles. viewed from a distant height, as from the tower of notre-dame by quasimodo, it had the look of a set of giant chessmen. this was the place selected by the duke of bedford for his residence during the english occupation of paris; and from here, after the death of his brother henry v. of england--and heir of france, as was then claimed--he reigned as regent for the little henry vi. he enlarged the buildings and beautified the grounds, in which he kept many rare birds. he kept, too, the rare manuscripts brought together by charles v. in the louvre; and after his death in rouen--where he had helped burn the maid--this library was carried to england, when the english departed from france. it was ransomed with coin, and brought back to paris, by the two grandsons of its original owner--charles of orleans, and his brother of angoulême, and became the nucleus of the royal, now the national library. so, when the sentries in english uniforms had gone from the gates, and the archers in lincoln green were seen no more in the streets, charles vii. came back, made king of france by the maid who had found him king of bourges, and whom he let the english burn for her pains. he entered paris in november, , nearly twenty years after he had been carried out from the town in the arms of tanneguy duchâtel. that quick-witted provost, discovering that the burgundians had got into the town by the betrayed porte de buci, on the night of saturday, may , , had hastened to the hôtel saint-paul, had wrapped the sleeping boy in his bedclothes, and had carried him up rue saint-antoine to the bastille, and out into the country on the following day, and so to melun, where the king's son was safe. during this first short stay of three weeks, the listless and sluggish young king grew as fond as had been the duke of bedford of the walled-in grounds of the tournelles. they were very extensive, covering the space bounded by present rues saint-antoine, saint-gilles, turenne, and boulevard beaumarchais. within this vast enclosure were many buildings and outbuildings, and in the words of sauval: "_ce n'étoit que galeries et jardins de tous côtés, sans parler des chapelles._" and henceforth, for more than a hundred years, the tournelles, "_pour la beauté et commodité du dit lieu_," was the favored abode of royalty, when royalty favored paris with infrequent visits. the sombre shapes of louis xi. and his ignoble comrades darkened its precincts, at times. when he made his entry, already narrated, into the town after his coronation at rheims, he passed the night of august , , in the old island-palace, and on the following day he installed himself in "_son hôtel des tournelles, près la bastille de saint-antoine_." here he received, in september, , a visit from his second wife, charlotte de savoie, who came up the river from rouen. she was met, below the island, by a boatful of choristers, who "sang psalms and anthems after a most heavenly and melodious manner." she landed on the island, performed her devotions at notre-dame, and took boat to the water-gate of quai des célestins opposite, and thence made her way on a white palfrey to the tournelles. the king's physician, dr. coictier--most skilled in bleeding, in all possible ways, his royal patient--had an astrological tower in the grounds, and in the centre was a maze named "_le jardin dædalus_." about these grounds louis prowled, seldom going beyond them, and then only by night, and with one trusted gossip. indeed, he was less like the king of france here in his palace than anywhere else; camping rather than residing, with a small retinue of old brabant servitors, and a larder filled mostly with cold victuals, says michelet. it was loches occasionally, and plessis-les-tours habitually, that had the pleasure of harboring the "universal spider"; in them both he spun his webs, and waited gloating, and found "many cockroaches under the king's hearthstone," as the saying went. and at last he died, triumphant and wretched, at plessis-les-tours. "_le petit roi_," charles viii., hardly knew paris; and when he entered the town on february , , with his young wife, anne of brittany, who had been crowned at saint-denis the day before, the populace was not agreeably impressed by his short stature, his bad figure, his heavy head, his big nose, his thick lips always open, and his great, blank, staring eyes. he was in curious contrast with the bride--pretty, sprightly, vivacious, and "very knowing," wrote home the venetian ambassador, zaccaria contarini. the gentle, weakly king--so strange a scion of louis xi.--made his home in touraine. on the terrace of amboise, where he was born, we all know the little door, leading to the old haquelebac gallery, against which he struck his head as he started down to look on a game of tennis. there, on april , , in a sordid and filthy chamber, a remnant of the old _château_ he was just then rebuilding, he lay for hours until his death, so carrying out the curse of savonarola, who had threatened him with the anger of god, if he failed to return to italy with his army to cleanse the unclean church with the sword. [illustration: anne de bretagne. (from a portrait by an unknown artist in a private collection.)] "_le bon roi louis, père du peuple, est mort_," is the doleful pronouncement of the _crieurs du corps_, starting out from the tournelles before dawn of new year's day, . the kindly old fellow has died in the night, a martyr to a young wife and to her fashionable hours. all his life long, louis had been subject to the fancies of women, to his undoing. we meet him first, the young and ardent duc d'orléans, the best horseman and swordsman in the court, riding out from plessis with the brave dunois--both grandsons, with different bars, of the murdered louis d'orléans--to snatch the girl isabelle from the escort of quentin durward. the duke has already taken the eye of the capable anne, eldest daughter of louis xi., as brantôme is quick to note. getting no return for her passion, the fury of a woman scorned, backed by her father's malign humor, marries the handsome prince to her younger sister, jeanne--ugly and deformed and uncharming. freed by divorce from this childless union, on taking the throne, louis hastens to marry his former flame, anne of brittany, now the widow of charles viii. this lady, fair in person and fairer in her duchy, lively and not unlearned, a blameless yet imperious spouse, gave him many happy years. the personal court he allowed "_sa bretonne_" outshone his own court, and glorified the gloomy tournelles. for all his clinging to her, she was taken from him when only thirty-seven years of age; refusing to live, when she found, for the first time, that her self-will was not allowed its own way. she would have her daughter, claude, marry charles of austria, emperor-to-be, and the powers in france would not have it, because they were unwilling that brittany should go, with its heiress, into foreign hands. a marriage was arranged between claude and the young duc d'angoulême, who was to become françois i., so keeping the rich duchy for france. after anne's death, her widower made a third venture, and yet, the chronicler plaintively assures us, he had no need of a new wife. this was mary, sister of henry viii. of england, who was glad to get her out of his country; and she was as glad to return as soon as, on finding herself a widow, she could become the wife of her first love, charles brandon, duke of suffolk. and so these two were the grandparents of lady jane grey. now the customary hour for dining in those days was from five to ten in the morning, changing a little with the seasons. a french "poor richard" of the period says: "_lever à cinq, diner à neuf, souper à cinq, coucher à neuf; fait vivre d'ans nonnante et neuf._" montaigne owns that his dinner-hour of eleven in the morning was unduly late, but then his supper came correspondingly late, never before, and often after, six of the evening. henri iv. dined at the same belated hour, while françois i. could not wait later than nine o'clock. once installed in the tournelles, this young english bride of louis's must needs, among other innovations, introduce her own country's customs into her husband's mode of life, as we are told in "_la très joyeuse et plaisante histoire_" of the "loyal serviteur," of bayard: "his wife changed all his manner of living; he had been wont to dine at eight, and he now dined at mid-day; he had been wont to go to bed at six in the evening, and he now went to bed at midnight." moreover, she beguiled him into supping late and heavily. so these changes, and other changes in his habits, brought him to his grave, six weeks after his marriage. his parisians gathered in rue saint-antoine, about the entrance of the tournelles, in honest sorrow for the loss of the big and benevolent old boy, whom they looked on and loved as the father of his people; indeed "one of the people," says michelet, "without the soul of a king." the tournelles blazed out bravely for françois i., the while the hôtel saint-paul found itself cut up and sold off in lots by him; the two cases showing his way, all through life, of raising money by any means, squeezing his subjects, starting france's national debt as he did, all because of his puerile ambitions, his shallow levity, his selfish waste. he did his best to justify louis xii.'s shrewd prophecy for him: "_ce grand gars-là gâtera tout._" recalling, one needy day, that he owned saint-paul, "_un grand hôtel, fort vague et ruineux_," he soon got rid of the buildings and the land for coin, reserving one large tract, along the eastern side under the wall, for the erection of an arsenal. and so, with streets cut through the old domain, no trace was left of charles v.'s "_hôtel solennel des grands ébastements_." as for the tournelles, its new master's fondness for all showy gimcrackery adorned it with furniture and fittings, and notably with the tapestries turned out so sumptuously from the factory at tours, toward the middle of the sixteenth century, that they came into vogue for decoration, in place of wall-paintings. no need to say that the table at the tournelles was profuse and its court resplendent. there had been few women in the court before now, and it was a garden without pretty flowers, as brantôme puts it. anne of brittany had brightened it a bit for brantôme with some few _dames et demoiselles_, but françois crowded it with fair women, who brought music and dancing and flirting. this big and brutal dilettante--study his face in the countless portraits in the louvre and at azay-le-rideau--gave little of his time to the tournelles, however. setting pierre lescot at work on the lovely western wing of his new louvre, he rushed over the land, building and beautifying at saint-germain, compiègne, fontainebleau, blois, chambord, posing always as the patron and prodrome of the renaissance in france. at least, he could say truly of himself, "_on verra qu'il y a un roi en france_;" but besides the throne and his pet foolishnesses, he handed down nothing worth owning to his son--that henri ii. of heavy fist and light brain, slow of thought and of speech, cold, uncongenial, commonplace. yet the tournelles was a cheerful home for him and for his official family, when he could get away from the exclusive holding of diana of poictiers and her family. his youngest daughter, marguerite de france, has sketched, in her "mémoires," a most winning picture of the place and of herself, a lovely maid of seven, playing about the garden or sitting on her father's knee, helping him select a suitor for her, from among the young swells at the court. that scene took place only a few days before his death. [illustration: louis xii. (water color, from a portrait by an unknown artist in a private collection.)] to the tournelles comes françois rabelais, in the "contes drôlatiques" of balzac, and gives to king and court that delicious sermon, worthy of rabelais himself. he has come along rue saint-antoine from his home in rue des jardins-saint-paul, a rural lane then, just outside philippe-auguste's wall, on the extreme edge of the gardens of saint-paul. in that paved and built-up street of to-day none of us can fix on the site of his house, and the tablet on its corner, of quai des célestins, tells us only that rabelais died in a house in this street on april , . charles nodier, starting out from his librarian's rooms in the arsenal library, on his endless prowls about old paris, always stopped and took off his hat in front of no. of rue des jardins, in honor of the great french humorist. ignorant of his reason for the selection of this site, we may be content, in imitation of this charming _flâneur_, to stand uncovered there, before or near the last dwelling of "_le savant et ingénieux rieur_," whose birthplace and whose statue at chinon are worth a journey to see; where, too, the local wine will be found as delicate and as individual as when, sold by the elder rabelais in the fourteenth century, it made the money that sent his famous son to the great schools of the capital. that son closed his life of congenial vagabondage, and of many _métiers_, in this sedate country road, where he had passed three blameless years, two of them as _curé_ of meudon, resigning that position in . he was buried in the cemetery of old saint-paul, to which we shall find our way later. modern paris has doubtless built itself over the grave, as it certainly has over the last dwelling-place, of the narrator of the adventures of gargantua and pantagruel and the creator of panurge. the famous lists of the tournelles extended along the southern edge of its grounds, just beyond the present northern side of rue saint-antoine, rue de birague being cut through almost their middle line. for more than a hundred years they had been the scene of many a tournament, and not one of them had been so crowded or so brilliant as that which began on june , . the peace of cateau-cambrésis, made in the previous april with england and spain, was to be celebrated, and there were to be rejoicings over the recent marriage of henry's sister, marguerite, with the duc de savoie, and of his eldest daughter, isabelle, with philip ii. of spain. this girlish third wife of the spanish king was the heroine of the don carlos affair, which has made so many dramas. to rejoice in royal fashion in those days, men must needs fight and ladies must look on. so it came that the king, proud of having shown himself "a sturdy and skilful cavalier" during the two days' tilting, insisted on running a course with montgomery of the scottish guard, whose broken lance pierced henri's visor through the eye into the brain. he lay unconscious in the tournelles for eleven days, and there he died on july , . those lists were never again used, the palace was never again inhabited. all the bravery of the two last courts could not hide the dry-rot of the wooden structures, and all its perfumes could not sweeten the stenches from the open drains all about. even the hard-headed and strong-stomached louise de savoie, mother of françois i., had sickened in the place. so "_le misérable coup_," that freed catherine de' medici from years of slighted wifehood, gave her an excuse for leaving the malodorous and unhealthful tournelles, with her four sons and her unmarried daughter. a portion of the structures was kept by her second son, charles ix., for his birds and dogs, until his mother got him to order its destruction by an edict dated january, . on his pont-neuf sits henri iv. on his horse, and every frenchman looks up as he passes, with almost the same emotion felt by the frenchmen of voltaire's day, at the effigy of the most essentially french of all french kings. the statue faces "the symmetrical structures of stone and brick," planned by him for his place dauphine, in honor of the birth of his son. they are hardly altered since their construction by his good friend achille de harlay, president of parliament, whose name is retained in the street behind the _place_ and in front of the palace of justice. the king looks out, a genial grin between his big, ugly, gascon-bourbon nose and his pushing chin, over his beloved paris, well worth the mass he gave for it; for, from the day he got control, it grew in form and comeliness for him. his kindly, quizzical eyes seem to see, over the island and the river, his own old marais, the quarter which held the _hôtel_ of his _menus plaisirs_, and which it was his greater pleasure to rebuild and make beautiful. and "_la perle du marais_"--his place royale--deserves his unchanging regard, almost unchanged as it is, since he planned it and since its completion, which he never saw. it is the grand tangible monument he has left to paris, and speaks of him as does nothing else in the town. when he came into his capital on march , , he found the enclosure of the tournelles _en friche_. within a few days he gave a piece of it, holding an old house, that fronted on rue saint-antoine, to his good rosny, whom he made duc de sully a little later. this maximilien de béthune had been the most faithful helper of henri de navarre and he continued to be the most faithful servant of henri iv. he had many homely virtues, rare in those days, rare in any days. he was courageous, honest, laborious; he did long and loyal service to the state; he worked almost a miracle for the finances of the kingdom, carrying his economies into every detail, even to the ordering of costumes in black, to spare the expense of the richly colored robes in vogue. a vigilant watch-dog, he was surly and snappish withal, and he had a greedy grip on all stray bones that fell fairly in his way. his wealth and power grew with his chances. he seems to have put something of himself into his _hôtel_, which faces us at no. rue saint-antoine. it bears on its lordly front an honesty of intention that is almost haughty, with a certain self-sufficiency that shows a lack of humor; all most characteristic of the man. neither he nor his abode appeals to our affections, howsoever they may compel our respect. [illustration: sully. (from a portrait attributed to quesnel, in the musée condé at chantilly.)] having got this well-earned gift of land from the king, he cleared away the old buildings upon it, and erected this superb structure. his architect was doubtless jean du cerceau, for the heaviness of his early work is apparent in these walls, but their owner evidently enforced his personal tastes on them. the façade, on the shapely court, has its own touch of distinction, dashed by the touch of pomposity that dictated, to the four secretaries employed on his memoirs, his stock phrase, "such was sully!" this front is over-elaborate. the main body and the two wings--which are a trifle too long and too large, and so crowd and choke that main body--are all heavily sculptured. on every side, stone _genii_ bear arms, stone women pose as the seasons and the elements, stone masks and foliage, whose carving is finer than the sculpture, crowd about the richly chiselled windows. yet those windows look down on the court in a most commanding way; and the fabric, behind all its floridness, shows a power in the rectitude of its lines that must needs be acknowledged. [illustration: the court of the hôtel de béthune. sully's residence.] the garish windows of the restaurant on the ground floor glare intrusively out on the old-time court, and a discordant note is struck by the signs, all about its doorways, of the new-fangled industries within--a water-cure, a boxing-school, a gymnasium. school-boys play noisily in this court, and, in the garden behind, schoolgirls take the air demurely. to reach their garden, we pass through a spacious hall, along one side of which mounts a wide, substantial staircase, its ceiling overloaded with panels and mouldings. set in a niche in the garden-wall is a bust of the duke of sully. this garden façade is in severer taste than that of the front court, its wings are less obtrusive, and its whole effect is admirable. the little garden once made one with the garden of the hôtel de chaulnes behind, that faced the place royale, to which sully thus had entrance. that entrance may be found through the two small doors of no. , place des vosges, and behind that building is sully's _orangerie_, in perfect preservation. having handsomely requited his servant and comrade, the king began, in the very centre of the tournelles, a great square with surrounding structures. as soon as one of his pavilions was sufficiently finished, he installed in it a colony of two hundred italians, brought to france for that purpose, skilled weavers and workers of silks shot with silver and with gold, such as made milan famous. and to this man alone--who was, said a memorial of his chamber of commerce, pleading for the planting of the mulberry, "nearly divine, never promising without performing, never starting without finishing;" and who issued edicts for that planting, in spite of sully's opposition--does france owe her mulberry plantations and her silkworms, as voltaire truly points out. it is commonly asserted that his "mason," for these constructions of the place royale, was androuët du cerceau, whose name is claimed for many buildings that would make his working-life last for a century and more. this jacques androuët was so renowned in his day, that much of the architecture of his sons and his grandson was then, and is still, set down to him. that stern old huguenot, born in , went from paris along with the dwellers in "little geneva," and is last heard of, still in exile, as late as . perhaps his son baptiste joined him in , when his convictions drove him, too, from the court and the capital, as has been told in the chapter, "the scholars' quarter." baptiste came back to serve henri iv. and louis xiii., and trained his son jean in his trade. for much of the work of this busy jean his grandfather has the credit, as well as for other work done by jean's uncle jacques, second of that name. the pont-neuf is always ascribed to the great androuët, who never saw one of its stones in place. that bridge was begun by his son baptiste in , and finished by his grandson jean in . he it was, if it were any du cerceau, who planned and began the place royale. [illustration: the hôtel de mayenne. in the distance, the temple sainte-marie, called the church of the visitation.] we are fortunate in that we may see one example of the style of the founder of this notable family, in the massive structure at no. rue saint-antoine, its side walls extending along rue du petit-musc. this street took its title from one of the numerous small _hôtels_ that made up the grand hôtel saint-paul; and on its foundations--still buried beneath these stones--was erected the present structure by androuët du cerceau. it is the only entire specimen of his work in paris, and we may believe that he had done better work than this, albeit it carries the authority of the old huguenot. he began it for diane de poictiers, and it was finished for an owner as heavy and as stolid as its walls. this was charles de lorraine, duc de mayenne, the eldest, the least brilliant, the most honest, of the famous brothers of guise. as lieutenant-general of the league, he led its troops to the defeats of arques and ivry. when henri de navarre became henri iv. of france, the only punishment he inflicted on his fat opponent was to walk him, at a killing pace, about the grounds of monceaux, while listening to his protests of future submission: "i will be to you, all my life long, a loyal subject and faithful servant. i will never fail you nor desert you." so promised mayenne, and he kept his word. he lived here in this mansion, through sixteen years of honorable employment in the council of state, surviving henry only a few months, and dying in his bed, in pain and with patience. his house, once one of the noisy hatching-places of the holy league, is now a noisy school for boys. its well-set cornice has been mangled by the cutting through it of the dormer windows, its grand staircase has been degraded, its court, stern from du cerceau's hand, has grown sullen, and its great gardens are built over, all along rue du petit-musc. in accordance with the king's scheme for his place royale, its eastern side was first built up at the crown's expense. the other sides were divided into lots of similar size, and leased to men of the court, of family, and of finance, on condition that they should begin to build at once, each after the original plans. with this stipulation, and an agreement to occupy their dwellings when finished, and to pay a yearly rental of one crown of gold, they and their heirs forever were given possession of these lots, as stated in the royal patent registered on august , . thirty-six structures were planned for these private dwellings, the two central pavilions on the northern and southern sides being reserved for royalty; so that thirty-six crowns were to come in as the entire annual revenue from the place royale; not an exorbitant rental, since the _écu de la couronne_ of that day was worth from seven to ten francs. thus began that historic square, and thus vanished, from off the face of the earth, the last trace of the historic tournelles. henry was more eager to hurry on the constructions than were his tenants; only a few of whom, indeed, completed and occupied their houses. there were other delays in building, not to be overcome by his almost daily visits to the spot when in town, and by his appealing letters from fontainebleau to sully, urging him to "_go and see_" if the work were being pushed on. but it was still unfinished, when ravaillac's knife cut off all his plans. this plan, however, was carried out by marie de' medici, who had made herself queen-regent by lavish payments and promises. her memories of the style of northern italy influenced details of the new constructions, which were so far finished in as to serve for the scene of the festivities, planned by her as an expression of the joy that the parisians did not know they felt. the occasion was the marriage of her son, the fourteen-year-old louis xiii., with anne of austria, daughter of philip iii. of spain; and of her daughter, isabelle, with the spanish infante, afterward philip iv. that was a great day for the place royale. for this function its still uncompleted portions were hid by scaffoldings, and all its fronts were draped with hangings and festooned with flowers. one hundred thousand guests swarmed to see the childish mummery of bearded men pranking as nymphs, the circus antics of _ballets de chevaux_ by day, and the fireworks by night. this first public appearance of the _place_ was, also, the last public appearance of the queen-regent. there can be woven no romance about this woman; fat and foolish, copious of emotion, impulsive of speech. the pencil of rubens cannot give grace to her affluent curves, and her husband's strength could not stand against her "terribly robust" arms, working briskly when she raged. whatever may be our summing-up of this man's morality, we must set down, to the credit of his account, his hard case with the two women to whom fate had married him, each so trying after her own fashion. of sterner stuff than he, so far as that sex goes, was richelieu, the new ruler of the young king louis xiii. he would bear no more of marie's meddling and muddling, and sent her into exile in . these two died in the same year, , she in poverty and neglect at cologne, after having so long been "tossed to and fro by the various fortunes of her life," says english evelyn; who, travelling on the continent, notes the "universal discontent which accompanied that unlucky woman, wherever she went." we see her in our place royale only during this one day, but her son and his minister are with us there to-day, as we stand in front of that king's statue, in the centre of the square. this statue is a reproduction of the original--melted down in --erected by richelieu in , not less for his own glorification, than to immortalize the virtues of "louis the just, thirteenth of that name." he had a score of the virtues of a valet, indeed, and with them the soul of a lackey. this present statue, placed here in the closing year of the bourbon restoration, , prettifies and makes complacent that sombre and suspicious creature, the dismallest figure in his low-spirited court. on his hair, flowing to his shoulders, rests a laurel crown, and the weak lips, curved in an unwonted smile, not twisted by his habitual stutter, are half hid by a darling mustache. he sits his horse jauntily, clad in a long cloak and a skirt reaching to his naked knees, and tries to be ostentatiously roman with bare arms and legs, his right hand pointing out across the square, from which he tried in vain to drive the duellists. we have already come here, under the guidance of dumas, to witness one famous duel in the time of henri iii. this spot had retained its vogue for the aristocratic pastime, in spite of the repeated edicts and the relentless punishments of richelieu, under royal sanction and signature. fair women hung over the infrequent balconies, or peeped from the windows, to view these duels and to applaud the duellists. a keener interest was given to the probability of the death on the ground of one combatant, by the certainty of the axe or the rope of the public executioner for the survivor. windows and balconies are deserted now; there is no clash of steel in the square, whose silence is in striking contrast with the sordid strife of neighboring rue saint-antoine; and these stately mansions, dignified in their unimpaired old age, seem to await in patience the return of their noble occupants. there has been no change in them since, on their completion in , they were regarded as the grandest in all paris, and there is hardly any change in their surroundings. the commonplace iron railings of the square, put there at the same time with the fountains, by louis-philippe, were the cause of hot protest by hugo and other residents of the quarter, who mourned the loss of the artistic rails and gateway of seventeenth-century fabrication. and rue des vosges has been cut through into the northern side of the square, making a thoroughfare to boulevard beaumarchais, such as was not planned originally. that plan provided for approach to the _place_ only by the two streets under the two central pavilions, north and south, now named béarn and birague. those two pavilions, higher than the others, were set apart for the king and queen; and over the central window of the southern one, the king, in medallion, looks down. the stately fronts of red brick--new to paris then--edged with light freestone, and the steep roofs of leaded blue slate, broken by great dormers reminiscent of renaissance windows, are time-stained to a delicate tricolor; and it pleases us to fancy the first bourbon king unconsciously anticipating the flag of the french republic in the colors of his place royale. these tall windows, opening from floor to ceiling, were a novelty to the parisians of that day, the fashion having only just then been set in the new hôtel rambouillet. behind them, the spacious blue and yellow _salons_ were hung with italian velvets, or with flemish and french tapestries, interspaced with venetian mirrors. lebrun and his like decorated the ceilings later, and the cornices were heavily carved, and the furniture was in keeping with its surroundings. the arcades of brick, picked out with stone ribs--a trifle too low and heavy, it may be, for their symmetry with the otherwise perfect proportions of these façades--were imitated from those of italy, to serve for shelter from sun, and for refuge from rain, to the strollers who thronged them for over a century. to tell over their names, one has merely to look down the list of the men who made themselves talked about, through the whole of louis xiii.'s and almost to the close of louis xiv.'s reign. then there were the women, lovely or witty or wicked, and those others, "_entre deux âges_," for whom the marais was noted. the creations of comedy are here, too, and molière's mascarille and _le menteur_ of corneille are as alive as their creators, under these arcades. for this spot was not only the centre of the supreme social movement of the capital during this long period, but it was the cradle of that _bourgeois_ existence which grew absurd in its swelling resolve to grow as big as that above it. the hôtel rambouillet, for all its affectations, did some slight service to good literature and good morals; it rated brains and manners above rank and money; it gave at least an outside deference to decency. molière himself, rebelling, had to yield, and his early license became restraint, at least. in the wild days of the fronde, men and women were in earnest, and then came the days when they were in earnest only about trifles; when the "infinitely little" was of supremest importance, when shallow refinements concealed coarseness, stilted politeness covered mutual contempt, and the finest sentiments of a joseph surface in the _salon_ went along with unrestricted looseness outside. to seem clean was the epidemic of the time, and its chronic malady was cant, pretence, and pollution. and the _bourgeois_ imitated the noble; and, in the place royale and about, molière found his _précieuses ridicules_. just a little way from here, was a room full of them--that of mlle. de scudéry. go up rue de beauce, narrowest of marais streets between its old house- and garden-walls, and you come to the passage that leads to the marché des enfants-rouges, the market and its surrounding space taking the greater part of the site, and keeping alive the name, of the admirable charity for children originated by the good marguerite de navarre, sister of françois i., and by him endowed at her urging. the little orphans cared for in this institution were clad all in red, and their pet popular name of "_enfants rouges_" soon took the place of the official title of "_enfants de dieu_." on the corner of this passage, you must stop to choose the abode of mlle. de scudéry from one of the two ancient houses there, for it is certain that she lived in one of these two, with a side door in the passage; and local legend and topographic research have failed to fix on the true one. she has told us that it stood alongside the templars' grounds, in the midst of gardens and orchards tuneful with birds, so that the lower end of the street was called rue des oiseaux; and we find this narrow passage, since then close shut in with houses, still tuneful to-day, but the birds are kept in cages. in this house madeleine de scudéry wrote her long and weary romance, "artamène, ou le grand cyrus," the most widely read and the most successful book of the day, from the money point of view. with this money she paid the debts of her brother, georges, a dashing spendthrift with showy tastes; one of those chivalric souls, too fine to work, but not too fine to sponge on his sister and to take pay for, and put his name to, work done by her pen. here she carried on the old business of the hôtel rambouillet, where she had served her apprenticeship before starting out for herself, and where she had produced the poem by which she won her _nom de parnasse_, "sapho." here she was promoted to be the tenth muse, and sat enthroned amid her admirers, who trooped in from all about the marais, on every saturday for more than thirty years. as to the _causerie littéraire et galante_ of these reunions, we learn all about it, and laugh at it, in pellisson's "chronique du samedi." it is impossible to burlesque it; molière himself could not do it. he has taken entire sentences concerning the education of woman from the "grand cyrus," and put them into his "femmes savantes"; and it is simply a portrait that he drew of madelon, as she sat in this _salon_ a year or so before he put her on the stage, awaiting the gifted authors of "la carte du royaume des précieuses." and mascarille's fatuous swagger and strident voice--as he walks the boards in coquelin's skin--seem to come straight and uncaricatured from pellisson's pages. when the valet's voice, quavering with complacency, shakes our midriff with his pronouncement: "we attach ourselves only to madrigals," he is making a direct quotation from the "chronique." mlle. de scudéry, while a _précieuse_ herself, was too genuine and talented and good-hearted a woman to be ridiculous. she is really an admirable example of the writing-woman of the seventeenth century, a female mignard in her pen-portraits. dr. martin lister came to pay his respects to the tenth muse, in this little house in , and found her over ninety years old, toothless, and still talking! one might wish to have been present at this meeting, but may be content with looking on the walls that harbored a worthy woman and her queer crowd of adorers. they came from all about the marais, it has been said. at the time of her death, in the first year of the eighteenth century, this quarter had become the chosen abode of the real swells of paris, and so the only possible residence for all those who wished to be so considered. long before, a new member of the body politic had been born--the _bourgeois_--and a place had to be found for him. the leisure he had gained from bread-getting need no longer be given to head-breaking, and for his vision there was a horizon broader than that of his father, of dignity in man and comeliness in life. his first solicitude was for his habitation, which must be set free from the rude strength of the feudal fortresses in which the _noblesse_ had camped. he levelled battlements into cornices, and widened loop-holes into windows, open for sunlight and _à la belle étoile_. in this seemly home, his thoughts threw off the obstruction imposed by centuries of repression, and by the joyless dogmas of the church. and so began that multiform process that, at last, flamed up through the frozen earth, and has been named the renaissance. many of the new mansions of the _bourgeoisie_ were in marais streets that were still walled off by the shut-in grounds of the religious bodies, whose unproductive dwellers avoided all taxation. "you see, formerly, there were monasteries all about here," says light-hearted laigle in "les misérables"; "du breul and sauval give the list of them and the abbé lebeuf. they were all around here; they swarmed; the shod, the unshod, the shaven, the bearded, the blacks, the grays, the whites, the franciscans, the minimi, the capuchins, the carmelites, the lesser augustins, the greater augustins, the old augustins. they littered." these belated owls, blinking in the new sunlight and fresher air, had now to find other dark walls for their flapping. the zone of abbeys, stretching from the bastille to the louvre, began to be cut into, and the grounds of the great _hôtels_ of the noblemen came into the market as well. there had been hardly any opening-up of this quarter, from the day when charles v. ended his wall, to the day when henri iv. began his place royale. he had planned, also, a monumental square at the top of the templars' domain, to be called place de france, with a grandiose entrance, from which eight wide streets, bearing the names of the great provinces of france, were to radiate, to be crossed by smaller streets named from the lesser provinces. for this scheme sully had bought up, under cover of a broker, an immense tract in this region, just as the king's death put a sudden end to this project, along with all his other projects. one man did much to make real the plan that had been put on paper only. this was claude charlot, a languedoc peasant, who had come to the capital in wooden _sabots_, with no money, but with plenty of shrewdness and audacity. by he had managed to acquire almost the entire tract set aside by sully, and through it he cut streets, the principal one of which is called after him, while, of those called after the provinces, some still keep their names and some have been renamed. even during his mapmaking of the marais--summarily stopped by richelieu's spoliation--this was yet a solitary and unsafe quarter, through which its honest citizens went armed against footpads by day, and by night stretched chains across the _coupe-gorges_ of its narrow streets. it continued to grow slowly through the last years of the seventeenth century, and these streets, with the place royale as their centre, were in time lined by the _portes-cochères_ of rich financiers, farmers-generals, and receivers of taxes, all swollen with their pickings and stealings. they adorned their dwellings with carved panels and painted ceilings, with sculptured halls and spacious stone stairways; and many of them were rich in manuscripts and rare books, and in collections of various sorts. of these mansions, a surprising proportion is still standing, given up to business-houses, factories, and schools; for all of which uses their capacious rooms readily lend themselves. within these old walls, face to face with the bustling streets, shouldered by structures of yesterday, or in dignified withdrawal behind their courts, can be found actual treasures of decoration and of carving, along with invisible and intangible treasures of association. for the aspect of a street, or the atmosphere of a house, tells to the intelligent looker-on as much of its bygone inmates as of its bare masonry. and kindly fate has left such relics plentifully scattered about the marais. in oldest paris of the island, and in that almost as old suburb on the southern bank, one must prowl patiently to find suggestive brick and stone. in those regions a concealed tower, or an isolated _tourelle_ on the angle of a building, makes the whole joy of a day's journey. here, in the marais, at every step you stumble on history and tradition and romance. for "the little province of the marais" was far away from the capital, and was let alone; or, rather, it was an unmolested island, washed about and not washed over by the swift tide of traffic. the stormy waves of insurrection have broken against its shores, and its pavements have never been made into barricades in any of the recurring revolutions, which have all been but interludes and later acts of the great revolution, in the people's endeavor to carry on and complete the main motive of that drama. the vogue of the marais began to fade away with the middle years of the eighteenth century, when the old _noblesse de famille_ adopted the faubourg saint-germain, and the new _noblesse de finance_ migrated to the faubourg saint-honoré, and the gadding multitude sought the arcades of the palais-cardinal, renamed palais-royal. a few ancient families, poor and proud, remained to burrow in their ancestral homes, and retired pensioned officials and _petits rentiers_ found a boon in the small rentals of the big apartments. all these _locataires_, preserving the old forms and keeping untarnished the old etiquette, gave an air of dignified dulness to the marais. their dinner-hour was at five o'clock, and after that solemn function, held in the hall hung with family portraits or with dingy tapestry, their sedate prattle, before going to bed at nine o'clock, would touch on the unhallowed edict of nantes and on its righteous revocation; even as in a certain london club of to-day, musty old gentlemen still lament, with subdued dismay, "the murder of the martyr, charles stuart." the sole diversion of these ancient dames of the marais was a stroll in the place royale, arrayed in old-time costumes, their white hair dressed high above their patrician brows. nowadays, under the horse-chestnuts and baby elms of its ground, school-boys from the neighboring institutions romp on the grit, and babies are wheeled about by their nurses, and on the benches sit faded old men, blinking and inarticulate. they cling to the historic name of the place, while to us of the real world it is known as place des vosges; this title having been given it, in honor of the province of that name, by lucien bonaparte, while he was minister of the interior. the appellation was officially adopted by the republic of , and once more, perhaps finally and for all time, by the third republic. the women of the marais [illustration: the place des vosges.] the women of the marais "_dans cet hôtel est née, le fevrier, , marie de rabutin-chantal, marquise de sévigné_:" so reads the tablet set in that wall, which fronts on the square, of the house numbered place des vosges, having its entrance at no. rue de birague. there is no name more closely linked with the marais than that of this illustrious woman. born in this house, baptized in its parish church of saint-paul-et-saint-louis, she here grew up to girlhood; she was married in saint-gervais, her daughter was married in saint-nicolas-des-champs; and the greater portion of her life was passed within this quarter. her father was killed in a duel a few months after her birth, at the age of seven she lost her mother, and when only twenty-five years old, she found herself a widow. after a short sojourn in the provinces with her son and daughter, she came back, in , to paris and to the marais. she had casual and unsettled domiciles, for many years, in rues de thorigny, barbette, des francs-bourgeois, des lions-saint-paul, des tournelles--all within our chosen district--before she settled in her home of twenty years, the carnavalet. it is but a step away from this tablet above us, to the corner of rues des francs-bourgeois and sévigné; the latter street, at that time, bearing its original name of culture-sainte-catherine, having been opened through that portion under cultivation of the grounds of the great monastery of sainte-catherine du val-des-Écoliers. on the corner of this new street and that of francs-bourgeois--then rue neuve-sainte-catherine--a piece of the convent garden was bought by jacques de ligneris, and thereon a house for his residence was erected. its plans were drawn by pierre lescot, it was built by jean bullant, was decorated by androuët du cerceau, and its sculptures were carved by jean goujon. and thus these walls, on which we are looking, speak in mute laudation of four famous men. one more notable name may be added to this list--that of françois mansart. he was called in, a century or so after the completion of this mansion, for its renovation and enlargement; and, to his lasting honor, he contented himself with doing only what seemed to him to be imperatively demanded, and with attempting no "improvements" nor "restoration" of the work of his great predecessors. he knew what we have learned, that those words too often mean desecration and ruin to all historic monuments in all lands. during this interval, the building had come into the hands of françoise de la baume, dame de kernévalec, whose breton name, corrupted to carnavalet, has clung to it ever since. that name suggested the pun of the _carnaval_ masks, carved in stone over the arches of the wings in the court. they were done by a later hand than that of goujon, whose last work is to be seen about that window of the louvre, on which he was busy, when a bullet picked him off, a day or two after the night of saint bartholomew. the tranquil elegance of his chisel has adorned this almost perfect gateway with the graceful winged figure in its keystone. it lifts and lightens the severe dignity of the façade. and, in the court--its centre not unworthily held by the bronze statue of louis xiv., remarkable in its exquisite details, found in the old hôtel de ville--we linger in joy before the graceful flowing curves and the daylight directness of the seasons of this french phidias. the figures on the wings are from a feebler chisel than his. of all the crowding memories of this spot, those of the marquise de sévigné and of jean goujon are the most vivid and the most captivating. the busts of these two, one on either side, greet us at the head of the staircase leading to her apartments; she is alert and winsome, he is sedate and thoughtful and a trifle too stern for the most amiable of sculptors, as he shows himself here, rather than the staunch huguenot, killed for his convictions. she was fifty-one years of age by the records when she came to live here, in , and half that age at heart, which she kept always young. she had been so long camping about in the marais, that she was impatient to settle down in the ideal dwelling she had found, at last. she writes to her daughter: "_dieu merci, nous avons l'hôtel carnavalet. c'est une affaire admirable; nous y tiendrons tous, et nous aurons le bel air. comme on ne peut pas tout avoir, il faut se passer des parquets, et des petites cheminées a la mode.... pour moi, je vais vous ranger la carnavalette, car, enfin, nous l'avons, et j'en suis fort aise._" so she moved in, with her son and daughter, both dear to her. it was to the daughter, however, that the mother's affluence of affection flowed out, all through her life; and it may well be that this veritable passion saved her from all other passions, during the years of her long widowhood, when many a _grand parti_ fell at her feet. she looked on them all alike, with pity for their seizure, and each of them got up and walked away, unappeased. yet hers was a rich nature, wholesome and womanly withal, and there are potentialities of emotion in the pouting lips and inviting eyes of the pretty pagan of this bust. nor was she a prude, and her way of quoting rabelais and listening to la fontaine's verses would horrify us moderns of queasy stomachs. she had ready pardon for the infidelities of her husband, and later for the misdeeds of her scampish cousin, bussy-rabutin, "the most dangerous tongue in france." above all, this real woman showed a masculine strength and loyalty of friendship for men; showed it most markedly in her sympathy for those who had fallen in the world. there is no finer example in the annals of constancy than her devotion to the broken fouquet, howbeit he may have merited breaking. the spirit of her letters, at the time of his disgrace and imprisonment, cannot be twisted into anything ignoble, as napoleon tried to do, on reading them in the state archives. he sneeringly suggested that her sympathy with fouquet was "_bien chaud, bien vif, bien tendre, pour de la simple amitié_." so it was, indeed; for her friendships were attachments, and warmth and tenderness pulsate in all her letters; and these qualities will, along with their unpremeditated spontaneity, keep them alive as long as letters live. what else was in her letters has been told by nodier, when he says that they regulated and purified the language for ordinary use; and by jules janin, who rightly claims that, from this carnavalet, came the purest and most perfect french hitherto heard in france. in forming and housing the great collection of the history of paris, to which the musée carnavalet is devoted, new buildings about a trim garden in the rear have been added to the original mansion, whose own rooms have been subjected to as little change as possible. madame de sévigné's apartment, on the first floor, is hardly altered, and her bedroom and _salon_ have been especially kept inviolate. the admirable mouldings, the curious mirrors, the old-fashioned lustre, remain as she left them, when she went to her daughter at grignan to die. in this _salon_, and in the wide corridor leading to it, both now so silent and pensive, she received all the men of her day worth receiving; and it is here alone that we breathe the very atmosphere of this incomparable creature. we may join the early-goers among these men, who make their way to another house, not far distant. there are temptations to stop before, and explore within, the seventeenth-century mansions all along rues sévigné and du parc-royal, but we pass on into rue turenne--once rue saint-louis, the longest and widest and foremost in fashion of marais streets, now merely big and bustling, with little left of its ancient glory--until we come to its no. , on the corner of old rue des douze-portes, now named ville-hardouin, after the contemporary chronicler of the fifth crusade. this modest house at the corner has been luckily overlooked by the modern rebuilder of this quarter, who has not touched its two stories and low attic above a ground floor, its unobtrusive portal, its narrow hall, and its staircase; small and quaint, in keeping with the cripple who was carried up and down for many years. paul scarron lived here, in the apartment _au deuzième à droite_, dubbed the "_hôtel de l'impécuniosité_" by his young wife, who was the granddaughter of the calvinist leader, agrippa d'aubigné, and who was to be the second wife of louis xiv. sitting at her scantily supplied supper-table here, the maid would whisper that a course was lacking, and that an anecdote from the hostess must fill the bill of fare instead. goldsmith tells us, at the beginning of his "retaliation:" "of old when scarron his companions invited, each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united." and, just here, it is curious to recall the fact that goldsmith was busied, during the last months of his life, on a translation of scarron's "roman comique," and his bethumbed copy was found on his desk, after his death. scarron was always poor and always importunate, and yet he was "a pleasant prodigy never before seen," he says of himself; rightfully claiming that he was able "to sport with misery and jest in pain." paralyzed and still a prey to incurable torments, immovable in his armchair except for his nimble fingers, he drove his pen merrily to the making of comedies, tales, pamphlets, and the verse that, like him, was impishly awry with mockery, as if chattered by "a wilderness of monkeys." letters, too, he wrote in this house, that give us striking glimpses of the man and of his time. in them we discover that "most terribly" was the sanctified slang then for the modern abomination "awfully." appeals for money make up much of his correspondence, but there is never a hint of a loan in the charming letters to the "_belle ange en deuil_," madame de sévigné; in which he always assures her that she is a dangerous person, and that those who look on her without due care, grow sick upon it immediately, and are not long-lived. mlle. de lenclos was a favorite of his, too, and that "_charmant objet, belle ninon_," came to sit for hours beside his invalid-chair. she made friends with the young wife, too, but complained that she was "_trop gauche_" to learn gallantry, and was "_vertueuse par faiblesse_." the large-minded lady frankly owns: "_j'aurais voulu l'en guérir, mais elle craignait trop dieu._" for all that, the friendship then formed between the two women was never broken, and when the widow scarron came to position and power she offered a place at court to her elder friend; an offer that was refused, for the old lady never grew old enough to change her mode of life. and there is little doubt that the younger woman often looked back with longing to those wretched days that were so happy. she said once, seeing the carp dying of surfeit in the versailles pond: "_elles regrettent leur bourbe_," suggesting that, like them, she suffered from satiety. years before his marriage, scarron had lived with his sister in this same little street of "twelve doors," and had grown very fond of the "_beau quartier des marests_." he asks: "who can stay long from the place royale?" when he returned to paris in --having married in , and having made a long stay in touraine--he came back to his beloved marais, and took a three-years' lease of this apartment. at its termination the lease was probably renewed, for it is a time-honored tradition that makes this old house the place of his death, on october , . between fifty and one hundred years later--the exact date is not to be got at--the garret above was crowded with the pet dogs and cats and birds of prosper jolyot de crébillon, who lived in filth among them, seldom eating, never washing, always smoking. the big blond dramatist had fallen a victim to poverty and melancholy, after a short career of success on those boards which he stained with the blood of many violent deaths. he had said that, since corneille had taken heaven for his own and racine had seized upon earth, he could place his scenes only in hell. he was rescued, and taken from this garret, by the pension obtained through la pompadour. that great lady was not prompted by any comprehension of the sombre power of his tragedy, but by a desire to wreak her spite against voltaire by the exaltation of a rival. scarron's widow was left in poor case, with only her husband's small pension for support, and this was stopped by colbert on the death of anne of austria, in . that queen-mother had endowed an institution for poor girls and sick women, and with these "_hospitalières de la place royale_," madame scarron found shelter, having sold all that she owned. in she was put in charge of the first child of the king and madame de montespan, and we know all the rest, to the secret marriage in . such of the buildings of the "_hospitalières_" as are left now form part of the hôpital andral, and their old roofs and dormers and chimneys take our eye above the low wall as we turn into rue des tournelles. in this street is the hospital's main entrance, and through its gate we look across the garden, that stretches back to the former entrance in impasse de béarn; now opened only to carry out for burial the bodies of those dying in the hospital. the line of walls along rue des tournelles was broken by only a few isolated houses, when françois mansart selected a site here, and put thereon his own dwelling, unpretending as the man himself, in contrast with the grand mansions he had planned for his noble and wealthy clients. this is his modest entrance-court, at no. rue des tournelles, and behind it is the simple façade of his _hôtel_. this building probably formed his entire frontage, or it may have been the _corps-de-logis_ of a more extensive structure, whose two wings reached out toward the street at nos. and . this number , whether the central or the entire body of the building, remains in perfect preservation. at mansart's death, in , it came, along with most of his property, to his sister's son, whom he had adopted, and trained to be the architect known as jules hardouin mansart. he gained position and pay in the royal employ, more by this adoptive name than by his abilities. as superintendent of buildings under louis xiv. he is responsible for most of the horrors of the palace of versailles, yet the dome of the invalides proves him to have been capable of less meretricious work. on taking possession of his uncle's mansion, he had, as sole tenant of his spacious and inviting first floor, mlle. anne lenclos, popularly christened ninon de lenclos, then fifty years of age. her dwelling is the end and object of this short walk, and together with the house from which we started, and the one at which we stopped, it gives us a complete picture of the social doings of the marais at that period. we are allowed to enter among the men with whom we have come, and we will go in, let us say, with young de sévigné, who finds his way here frequently, from his _pied-à-terre_ in his mother's house, as his father and his grandfather had found their way to ninon's abode. under the stone balcony on the court-front we step up into a goodly hall, from which rises a stone staircase, its outer end finely carved, its steps well worn by many visitors through the years. an admirable medallion looks down from the wall as we mount, and in the rooms above we find carved panels and decorated ceilings, many of them done by lebrun and mignard, probably for the fair tenant. they are so carefully kept that canvas covers such of them as are feared to be "_trop lestes_" for modern eyes, in the modest words of the ancient _concierge_. mansart put an excellent façade on his garden-front, and its coupled ionic columns, and balconies of wrought-iron railings, are all there unmutilated. but the garden, then stretching to boulevard beaumarchais, is now hidden under the shops that front on that boulevard. to these rooms and this garden thronged the same men whom we have seen in the sévigné and scudéry _salons_, and these reunions were as decorous as those, and perhaps somewhat more cheerful and more natural in tone. for, while ninon had the honor of being enrolled in the "grand dictionnaire des précieuses," published in , and while she had been presented at the hôtel de rambouillet at the early age of seventeen, she had none of the pretensions nor the ridiculosities of "les femmes savantes." she was absolutely genuine, not ashamed to be natural, quite ready to laugh or to cry with her friends. these friends, drawn to her less by her beauty than by her charm, were held always by her sunny amiability, her quick sympathies, her frank _camaraderie_. she was the clarisse of mlle. de scudéry's "clélie;" an _enjouée aimable_, who never denied herself the indulgence of any caprice of head or of heart. yet, as she laughingly confessed, while she thanked god every night for the good wits given her, she prayed every morning for better protection against the follies of her heart. it is a faithful portrait that is given in the verse of her day: "_l'indulgente et sage nature a formé l'âme de ninon, de la volupté d'Épicure, et de la vertu de caton._" beyond most women of that time, she was really cultivated, in the best meaning of that word; far different from the meaningless culture with a capital, of our time. she was fond of philosophy, withal, and took turns with plato and with montaigne; and would speculate on the problems of life either with church dignitaries or with the epicurean saint-Évremond. and she captivated them all, men of all sorts, beginning with her girlish years--when she dutifully obeyed her father, who preached pleasure to her, rather than her mother, who pushed her toward a convent--through all her long life of incredibly youthful heart and body, to her amazing conquests when over sixty. a portrait of her at about this age hangs in knole house, sevenoaks; her hair, parted down the middle and plainly drawn back in modest fashion, her alluring eyes and her ingenuous direct smile, give her the look of a girl. richelieu was her first admirer, voltaire was the latest. when brought to this house, where he celebrated ninon's ninetieth birthday in verse, young arouet was only about twelve years old, as was told in a preceding chapter. she was charmed with the youthful genius, and, dying within a few weeks, in , she left him two thousand crowns for buying his beloved books. from five until nine in the evening, ninon was "at home" here, up to her eighty-fourth year, in . before her visitors went away, they sat down to a simple supper, served with no parade and at small expense. many of the guests, following the fashion of scarron's friends and of the persistent diners-out of that day, brought their own _plats_. we get a glimpse of the simplicity of these suppers "_à tous les despréaux et tous les racines_," and of the homely, social ways of the _bourgeoisie_, in voltaire's tiresome comedy "le dépositaire." we look about these rooms, in which we are standing, and wish we might have seen boileau and racine here; we seem to see molière, reading his unacted and still unnamed play, and consulting his hostess as to whether "tartufe" will do for a title; and old corneille, forgetting to be shy and clumsy at her side; and scarron, wheeled in his chair, quicker in his scoffing for her quick catching of the point; and la rochefoucauld, less of a surly and egotistic _poseur_ in her presence, content to sparkle as a boudoir machiavelli; and huyghens, fresh from his discovery of the moons of saturn, finding here a heavenly body of unwonted radiance, and setting to work to write erotic verse mixed with mathematics. the great condé himself, proud, vain, hardest-hearted of men, melts when he meets her; broken and decrepit, he climbs out from his sedan-chair--"that wonderful fortification against bad weather and the insults of the mud," says delicious mascarille--and approaches, hat in hand, the _calèche_ of that other aged warrior, ninon de lenclos. through no. of boulevard beaumarchais, which occupies the site of her garden, we come out on that broad thoroughfare, passing on our right the buildings covering the gardens that once countrified this east side of rue des tournelles. we cannot now search among the houses there for that one inhabited by the abbé prévost, some time between and , while he was writing his enthralling story of "manon lescaut." almost at the end of the boulevard, men are sitting about tin tables on the pavement, drinking good beer, on the very site of the gate of saint-antoine. just there, outside the gate, stood lady de winter, pointing out to her two hired assassins her pet enemy, d'artagnan, as he rode out on the vincennes road, on his way to the siege of rochelle. the gate abutted on the western side of the bastille, and its figures, carved by jean goujon for decorations of a later day, may be seen in the cluny gardens. traced in the pavement of place de la bastille and across rue saint-antoine, you may follow the outlines of such portions of the walls and towers of the great prison as are not hidden under the houses at the two corners. when you ask for your number in the omnibus office of the _place_, you are standing in the bastille's inner court. across its outer eastern ditch and connected with the wall of charles v., was thrown a projecting bastion, the tower of which stood exactly where now rises the column of july. at the corner of rues saint-antoine and jacques-coeur, a tablet shows the site of the gateway that gave entrance to the outer court, which led southwardly along the line of the latter small street. by this gateway the armed mob entered on july , . lazy louis xvi., hard at work on locks and other trifles at versailles--having as yet no news from paris--writes in his diary for that day: "_rien_"! that mob had found the fortress as little capable of resistance as the throne that it overturned a while later; both proved to be but baseless fabrics of an unduly dreaded terror. indeed, it was the power behind this prison that was stormed on that day. there were plenty of prisons in paris, as fast and as secret as was the bastille. this was more than a prison to these people; it gloomed over their lives as its towers gloomed over their street--a mysterious and menacing defiance, a dumb and docile doer of shady deeds, a symbol of an authority feared and hated. and so these people first tore away the tool, and then disabled the hand that had held it. it was a stirring act in the drama, though a trifle melodramatic. "_palloy le patriote_," as he styled himself, takes the centre of the stage just here, and, like all professional patriots, in all lands and all times, he makes a good thing of his patriotism. he was the contractor for demolishing the walls and for clearing the ground of the wreckage, at a handsome price; and he doubled his wage by the sale of the materials. some of the stones went, queerly enough, to the building of pont de la concorde; others of them may be seen in the walls of the house on the western corner of boulevard poissonière and rue saint-fiacre, and of other houses in the town. with the stones not fit for these uses, and with the mortar, he made numerous models of the bastille, which were purchased by the committees and sent as souvenirs to the chief towns of the then newly created departments. one of these models is in the musée carnavalet. so, too, the thrifty palloy turned the ironwork dug out into hat and shoe buckles, and the woodwork into canes and fans and tobacco-boxes; all, at last, into coin for his patriotic pocket. the gate of one of the cells was removed, and rebuilt in the prison of sainte-pélagie; where it may be seen by the inmates, who care nothing for a door more or less, but never by the outsider, who would like to get in for a glimpse! to "palloy the patriotic" and his gang of a thousand workingmen, rides up on his white horse, one day, the first commander of the just invented and organized national guard--lafayette, aptly named by mirabeau the "cromwell-grandison" of his nation. he looks over the busy ground, and gives orders that the men shall receive a pint of wine and a half-franc daily; but they got neither money nor wine, both doubtless "conveyed, the wise it called," on the way, by palloy or by other "patriots." lafayette carried away the great key of the bastille's great entrance-door, and sent it to george washington by thomas paine, when, a few years later, paine got out of the luxembourg prison and out of france. it is one of the cherished relics at mount vernon, and not one is more impressive and more appropriate in that place, since it was the success of the american revolutionists that inspirited those who opened the bastille. we pass along rue saint-antoine, so commonplace and sordid to-day, so crowded with history and tradition. it has seen, in its short length, pageants of royalty and nobility, the hide-and-seek of romance, the blood-letting of sharp blades, the carnage of the common people, such as no other street of any other town has known. its memories would fill a fat volume. the little temple of sainte-marie on our left, as we go--a reduced imitation of rome's pantheon--is a design by françois mansart, and while it has his grace of line and his other qualities, it is not a notable work. built on the site of the hôtel de boissy, wherein quélus died and his lover henry wept, it was intended for the chapel of the "_filles de la visitation_," and their name clings to it, although it has been made over to the protestant church. to this convent fled mlle. louise de la fayette from louis xiii.; who, ardent in the only love and the only chase known in his platonic career, visited her here until his confessor, vincent de paul, showed him the scandal of a king going to a nunnery. so he had to leave her, secure under the veil and the vows of the cloister. she became soeur, and later mère, angélique, of the convent of sainte-madeleine, founded in by henrietta maria, widow of charles i., which stood on the far-away heights of chaillot, where now is the museum of the trocadéro. there the sister and the sweetheart of louis xiii. lived together for many years. a few steps farther, and we come to rue beautreillis; its pavement and its houses on both sides, nearly as far as rue charles v., covering the cemetery of old saint-paul; which extended westerly toward passage saint-pierre, wherein we may find the stone walls, now roofed in with wood, of the _charniers_. there had been a suburban cemetery outside the old wall, which was brought within city limits by the new wall, and served as the burial-ground of the prisoners who died in the bastille. it did not so serve, as is commonly asserted, for the skeletons found in chains in the cells, when the prison was opened by righteous violence, because no such skeletons were found. "the man in the iron mask" was buried in this ground, close alongside the grave of rabelais, dug exactly one hundred and fifty years earlier. pass through the two courts that lie in the rear of no. rue beautreillis, and you will find yourself in a large waste garden, in one corner of which the persuasive _concierge_ points out the grave of the "_masque-de-fer_." it may well be that she is not misled by topographical pride, for this ground was certainly a portion of the old burial-ground, and not impossibly that portion where rabelais and "marchioly" were laid near together. this is the prisoner's name on the bastille's burial-register, and not far from his real name. for we know, as surely as we shall ever know, that this prisoner of state was the count ercolo antonio mattioli, secretary of state of charles iv., duke of mantua. the count had agreed to betray his trust and to sell his master's fortress of casali to the french representative; with this in their possession, pignerol belonging already to france, louis xiv. and louvois would dominate all upper italy. mattioli took his pay, and betrayed his paymaster; the scheme miscarried, and the schemer deserved another sort of reward. his open arrest, or execution, or any public punishment, meant exposure and scandal to the crown and the minister and the ambassador of france. so he was secretly kidnapped, and became "the man in the iron mask." at his death, in , his face was mutilated, lest there might be recognition, even then; the walls of his cell were scraped and painted, to obliterate any marks he might have put on them; his linen and clothing and furniture were burned. had voltaire suspected the results of modern research, he would not have put forth his theory, in the second edition of his "questions sur l'encyclopédie," that this prisoner was an elder brother of louis xiv. yet, but for voltaire's error, we should have lost those delightful pages of dumas, wherein aramis carries off from the bastille this elder brother and rightful heir to the crown, leaving louis xiv. in the cell, and at last replaces his puppets in their original positions. this cemetery of saint-paul, dating back to dagobert, when the burial-grounds on the island had become overpeopled, had its own small chapel of the same name, which had fallen out of use and into ruin. charles v., bringing it within his enclosure of the hôtel saint-paul, rebuilt and enlarged it and made it the church of the royal parish. all the daughters and the sons of france were thenceforth baptized here, and it became the favorite church of the nobility. after louis xi.'s time, and the desertion of this quarter by royalty, the little church lost its vogue. in it was appropriated and sold as national domain, and torn down soon after. its site is covered by the buildings on and behind the eastern side of rue saint-paul, opposite the space between passage saint-paul and rue eginhard. this is the small street selected by alphonse daudet for the shop of his _brocanteur_ leemans, to which comes the fascinating sephora, of "les rois en exil." daudet has overdone it in going so far for his local color; the street is a noisome alley, entered by an archway from rue saint-paul, holding only two or three obscene junk-shops. and now, passing the flamboyant italian façade--a meretricious imitation of the front of saint-gervais--of the church of saint-paul-et-saint-louis, which has absorbed the name of old saint-paul, we reach at last the ample space where the two streets of rivoli and of saint-antoine meet and so make one broad, unbroken thoroughfare through the length of the town, from the place where the bastille was to the place now named concorde. this grand highway has existed only since the middle of the nineteenth century. the consulate and the first empire had cut rue de rivoli along the upper edge of the tuileries gardens as far easterly as rue de rohan; from there it was prolonged, taking the line of some of the old, narrow streets and piercing through solid masses of ancient buildings, in the last years of louis-philippe; and was carried from the hôtel de ville to this point by the second empire. all through earlier days, the route, common and royal, from the louvre and the tuileries to the hôtel saint-paul, the tournelles, the bastille, and the arsenal, was by way of narrow rue saint-honoré and its narrower continuation, rue de la ferronerie, thence around by rue saint-denis into rue des lombards, and so along rues de la verrerie and roi-de-sicile to the old gate of saint-antoine, that stood just behind us here at the end of rue malher. outside that gate was the country road leading to vincennes, which was transformed into the city street, known to us as rue saint-antoine, through the protection given by charles v.'s new wall and by his bastille. there had been, long before, a rue saint-antoine, and it curves away here on our left, and is called rue françois-miron, so named in honor of that _prévôt des marchands_ in henri iv.'s time, who merits remembrance as an honest, high-minded, capable administrator of his weighty office. thus this street of old saint-antoine was the thoroughfare--at first from the entrance into the town by the old gate of saint-antoine, and afterward from the new street of saint-antoine and its entrance gate farther east--to the open space behind the hôtel de ville, alongside saint-gervais, and so to the bridges and the palace on the island. it was a street "marvellously rich" in shops, having no rival except in rue saint-denis. its shopkeepers shouted, from their doors or from the pavement in front, the merits of their wares to the throng swarming always along. their wares were worthy of the city that, with its fast-growing population, equalled venice herself in wealth, display, and splendor, if we may trust the word of an exultant scribbling citizen of the paris of charles v. so, too, it was the grand highway for royal entries, for troops, for ambassadors with their trains, for any parade that demanded display and attracted spectators. such an array came along here on august , , when young louis xiv. brought into his town his young bride, maria theresa of spain, each of them being just twenty-two years old. it was the showiest pageant and the longest procession yet seen in paris, taking ten or twelve hours to pass. the bride--a slight, pretty, girlish figure, in white satin and pearls, and a violet mantle of velvet--leaned back on the crimson velvet of her huge gilded chariot; at her right on horseback was the king, in cloth-of-gold and black lace, his collars and ruffles of white point. in the resplendent retinue nothing so blazed as the superb empty coach of the cardinal-minister mazarin, its panels painted by lebrun, drawn by the famous mules and escorted by the mousquetaires. less than a year later mazarin was carried through paris in his hearse, caring no more for mules or any tomfoolery. the procession had entered the town under claude perrault's triumphal arch at the end of the vincennes avenue, and through porte saint-antoine, cleaned up and sculptured afresh for this day, and so by new rue saint-antoine, along this present rue françois-miron. it was packed with spectators, among whom was la fontaine, who sent a long rhymed description of the show to his patron, fouquet, not omitting mention of the cardinal's mules. these, too, were spoken of with fitting praise in a letter written to a friend by young madame scarron--to be a widow, within a few weeks--who was also in the throng. years after, she confessed to the credulous king that on that day she had first seen him and first loved him, and that she had never ceased to love him since! we may not consider the duchess of orleans unduly prejudiced when she refers to madame de maintenon as "that hussy." at no. rue françois-miron you may see an excellent balcony of that period, solidly and richly wrought in iron, supported by captivating stone dragons of fantastic design. there were similar balconies on the front of the great mansion at no. --which was then no. --but of these only a small one is still left over the portal. they were all crowded with a most select mob of the elect on the day of this procession. there was anne of austria, in her black mantle, looking down on her son, her thoughts turning back to her own bridal procession over the same route, and her own youthful blond beauty of forty-five years before. by her side sat henrietta of france, widow of charles i., and her daughter, henrietta anne of england. the girl may have gazed with curiosity on the over-dressed fop riding at the bride's left wheel. this was philippe d'orléans, who was to be her husband, and was, through his complacent creatures, to poison her within ten years from this day. in another balcony sat mazarin, too ill to take part in the procession. the hostess of these great ladies was one catherine bellier, wife of pierre de beauvais; and this house is the hôtel de beauvais. the husband had been a pedlar or a shopkeeper, and had amassed sufficient wealth from ribbons to enable him to buy his title. the wife had served as first _femme-de-chambre_ to anne of austria, and had so learned many secrets of that queer court, of its queen-mother, and of her cardinal. in that court there was no more unscrupulous creature than this catherine bellier. the deliciously outspoken duchess of orleans--the second wife of that philippe we have just seen--describes this woman as one-eyed and hideous, of profligate life, and apt in all intrigue. to the day of her death she loved to appear in flamboyant costumes at the court, where she was treated with distinction because of what she knew. anne of austria gave her the stone for the construction of this _hôtel_, and she used to visit her waiting-woman and _confidente_ here. a popular verse of the day ran: "_mercredi notre auguste reine, cette charmante souveraine, fut chez madame de beauvais; pour de son admirable palais voir les merveilles étonnantes, et les raretés surprenantes._" [illustration: the hôtel de beauvais.] the design of the hôtel de beauvais, by antoine lepautre, is most daring and original in its great interior oval court, embellished with pilasters that are topped with finely carved stone masks. despite the unhallowed devotion to cleanliness which, with its whitewash, has robbed it of its former lovely bloom of age, this court remains one of the most impressive specimens of seventeenth-century domestic architecture in all paris. from the street we pass through an ample gateway, its curved top surmounted by a great shell. the vestibule is ornamented with escutcheons, alternating with the garlanded ox-skulls of roman-doric decoration--mistaken by many for rams' heads, so as to make a sculptor's pun on bellier--all admirably carved in stone. the noble staircase has corinthian columns, and a massive stone balustrade so perfectly pierced into fine lines of intertwisted tracery as to give delicacy to it, thick and broad as it is. cut in stone escutcheons in the ceiling of this stairway are the intertwined initials of the brand-new nobility that built it. the grand _salons_ of the first floor have been partitioned off into small rooms for trade purposes. no character of any sort has been left to the interior. the ground on which we tread here, while a portion of the marais of old paris, is not the marais of modern paris, as it is commonly designated. yet this region toward the river, built on during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, after the opening up of the grounds of the hôtel saint-paul and the cutting of streets through them, holds enticements in architecture and in story that tempt us to turn our backs for a while on our own marais. many of the streets here remain unmodernized and unspoiled, and here are _hôtels_ as perfectly preserved as this hôtel de beauvais. at no. rue geoffroy-lasnier we stop in delight before an entrance-door superbly carved and heavy with a glorious knocker--a lion's head holding a great ring in its mouth. above this door we read: "_hôtel de châlons, , et de luxembourg, ._" the small court within, diminished by modern stables on one side, retains on its other side an ancient iron fountain. the façade of the miniature _hôtel_ giving on this court is in well-balanced stone and brick; its shapely windows are surrounded by male and female masks, and by delicate foliage twining about the monograms of the aforetime exalted owners--all elaborately carved in stone. the roof rises gracefully to its ridge, and each gable end is surmounted by a well-wrought iron finial. there is a modest garden behind, shut in and hid by the buildings about, which hide, too, the simple and attractive stateliness of that rear face of the hôtel de châlons. the enchanting isolation and the singular charm of this concealed corner give us the feeling that here is a bit of bourges, gently dropped, tranquil and untroubled, into the midst of these turbulent streets. a little farther along, at no. in this street of geoffroy-lasnier, behind a commonplace house-front and a commonplace court, you shall find a staircase, with an iron rail below and a wooden rail above, that make a most uncommon and interesting picture. turning into rue de jouy, an altogether delightful old-time street, we pass through a monumental gateway at no. into a symmetrical court. facing us is the hôtel d'aumont, and it tells us more than is told by any structure hereabout of the merits of françois mansart. this front of two stories and of his own roof is faultless in proportion and dainty in adornment. he has given it the stamp of the stately days of the grand monarch by the four _oeils-de-boeuf_ above the perfect cornice of the second floor, two on either side of the central window. in the two corners of the court, at each angle of the building, are round-fronted stone _perrons_, broad and low and inviting. that on our left gives entrance to a small hall, the staircase in which carries an exquisite wrought-iron rail that lifts and lightens the stone steps. by them we mount to the chambers of the first floor, small as was the custom then, with one grand central reception-room, excellent in its proportions, its vaulted ceiling curiously carved in relief. all these rooms are, by the good taste and generous spirit of the owners of the property, kept in perfect condition, the furniture is of the period, and the painting--done by lebrun a century later than the ceiling on which it is placed--is fresh and untarnished. mansart's commission for this construction came from that duc d'aumont who was maréchal of france and governor of paris under louis xiii. a descendant of the early fighters of old france, he seems to have been one of those favorites of fortune who, in the phrase of beaumarchais, give themselves only the trouble to be born. at the age of ten he began his career as a colonel of cavalry, and continued it through a long line of lucky promotions in place and pay. dying in , he left this _hôtel_ packed with furniture, paintings, _bibelots_, and curios, and its stables filled with the carriages he had invented; an amazing collection, requiring months for its sale by his heirs. the _hôtel_ is now occupied by the pharmacie centrale of france, to whose officials is due our gratitude for their rare and scrupulous respect for this delightful relic. over its spacious gardens behind they have erected their immense laboratories and offices, which we may enter under the great vaulted porch at no. rue des nonnains-d'hyères. that once narrowest of the streets of old paris, as quaint as its name, given it by the branch of the hyères nunnery having its seat here, has become a broad and bustling thoroughfare. the plain rear elevation of the _hôtel_ can be seen here from the little corner of the garden that is still kept, and kept green by the choice plants of the company. in it is a capital bust of dorvault, physician, author, founder of the pharmacie centrale. this may be the very bit of garden noticed by dr. martin lister, an english traveller in france at the close of the seventeenth century. he dined with the duc d'aumont, and records that, opening from the dining-room, was a greenhouse through which his noble host led him into the garden. along through the rocky ravine that bears the name of charlemagne, and does him no honor, we pass, by way of rue saint-paul, into the short street that started in life as rue neuve-saint-paul, and has now taken the name of charles v. here, among the ancient fronts, we are attracted by that which is numbered , low and wide, with two floors and dormers above. through its entrance-door, capped by a well-carved mask that smiles stonily down on us, we may enter the court by the courtesy of the sister, who smiles sweetly. this building is occupied by the girls' school of a sisterhood, whose youthful _communiantes_ happen to be forming in procession for a function to-day. they flutter about in innocent white, in unconscious contrast with the great lady and great criminal whom we have come to see. for this was the hôtel d'aubray, and its most distinguished tenant was the marquise de brinvilliers. let us look about the court and the little garden behind, both embraced by the two wings of the structure. that wing on our right, with round arches and a round tower at its end, is evidently of the original fabric and intended for stabling. this wing on our left, now extended by a new chapel, was, when built, meant to contain only this staircase, whose wide and broad stone steps and well-wrought iron balustrade mount gradually about a spacious central well. here, resting on the bench at its foot, we may recall what is known about the strange and monstrous woman who once lived here. she was marie-madeleine dreux d'aubray, and her father was an officer of louis xiv., appointed civil lieutenant of the châtelet prison. he married her in , when she was twenty-one, to the wealthy and dissolute marquis de brinvilliers, who was not a model husband. she was nothing loath, with her inborn instincts, to follow the example set by him. among her lovers, a certain gaudin de sainte-croix was much talked of; so much so that the lady's father, more powerful than her husband, and doubtless more outraged by the shameless publicity of the _liaison_, had sainte-croix taken from his daughter's carriage, as they rode together, and put into the bastille. there his cell-mate was an italian known only as exili, a past-master in poisons, who boasted that he had brought to death at least one hundred and fifty men and women in rome alone. he taught his trade to sainte-croix, who proved to be an apt pupil, and who continued his studies after his release. he took rooms with an apothecary in the faubourg saint-germain, and fitted up a laboratory. there his marquise visited him, and was taught in her turn the use of his potions, among which the "manna of saint-nicholas" became her favorite. for she took pains and showed conscience in her experiments, mainly on the patients in the hospitals, wherein she was a constant charitable worker. thus she soon learned to dispense her poisoned wafers with scientific slowness and precision. but she was anxious that her charity should begin at home. her father failed gradually with some obscure and unaccountable malady, and died in torment; and she nursed him tenderly to the end. there were too many in her family for her comfort, and her relatives outside had been too solicitous about her; so some sickened and some died off, she caring for all and lamenting each death. she had a sister, a carmelite nun, who was never blinded by the round, girlish face, appealing blue eyes, and beguiling ways that bewitched so many. this woman guarded her own life and watched over others of the family. the attempts made by the marchioness on her husband's life were caused to fail, it is believed, by the attenuation of the poisons mixed for her by sainte-croix, who doubtless feared that he must marry the widow if he allowed her to become a widow. he himself was found dead, in , in his laboratory, poisoned by the fumes of his devilish brews, through the breaking of the glass mask worn at his work. the official search among his effects discovered a casket, addressed to the marchioness at this dwelling; being opened, its contents were found to be her own ardent love-letters to him, a document detailing the doses and periods for the proper administration of the poisons, and a choice assortment of preparations of opium, antimony, sulphur. there was also a water-like liquid, unknown to chemists, which was found to kill animals instantaneously, leaving no lesions of any organ that could be traced by science. sainte-croix's servant made a disclosure, and the marchioness, hearing of his arrest and the finding of her package, made "confession by avoidance" by a flight to england. she slipped down these stairs, out through that doorway, and took coach around the corner for a northern port. colbert's brother was then ambassador at the court of saint james, and between them her capture was planned; she got wind of it, and fled to liège, where she felt sure of safety in a convent. to her appears, after a while, a handsome and susceptible young _abbé_, who allows himself to be corrupted, and arranges for an elopement to a more congenial refuge for lovers. she climbs gayly into his carriage, his men surround it, and she is driven across the frontier into france and to the bastille. the _abbé_ was desgrais, an eager police officer detailed for this duty. he returned to her room in the convent, and found scattered sheets of paper containing notes that began a confession. this confession she was forced to complete and confirm by the torture by water--repugnant to her coquetry, because it would spoil her figure; "_toute mignonne et toute gracieuse_," had said an adorer of her early days. she showed courage at the last, madame de sévigné states, in the letters that were full of the trial and execution. she was burned, having first been beheaded. "her poor little body was thrown, after her execution, into a good large fire, and her ashes blown about by the wind; so that we may be breathing her," sévigné writes. this took place late in the afternoon of july , --she was just over forty-five years of age--on place de grève, to which she was carted in a tumbril, having stopped on the way in front of notre-dame, and there, on her knees on the stones--her feet bare, a rope around her neck, a consecrated lighted taper in her uplifted hand--made to confess afresh. [illustration: the staircase of the dwelling of the marquise de brinvilliers.] the painter lebrun was one of the great crowd that gathered to see her go by, and he made a drawing, which you may see in the gallery of old french designs in the louvre. she half sits, half reclines, in her tumbril, clad in a gown, its cowl drawn forward; her head is thrown back; her thick chestnut hair brushed away from her face; her eyes are wide and her mouth drawn with terror; her face is round, her lips are thick; in her folded hands she holds a cross, and she stares straight before her without seeing. at one side is the profile of a woman, very lean and ugly, her expression full of horror as she bends forward to gaze. turning from this street down through rue beautreillis, we pass the end of rue des lions, on whose southern side we have already found remains of the hôtel des lions du roi. on its northern side is a row of plaster-fronted houses, commonplace and shabby. in one of those garrets there was living, shortly after , a poor family of jews named félix, lately arrived from the canton aarau in switzerland. their two little girls went about the streets, singing and picking up coppers. one day in the place royale, among those who stopped to listen was a kindly eyed gentleman, who handed to the younger and thinner of the two pinched children a piece of silver. "that is victor hugo," said a woman in the crowd, as he went his way to his home in the corner. that small singer was Élisa rachel félix, known to us as the great rachel. years after, when the world had given all that it could give to rachel, she returned, from a voyage to egypt in search of health, to the place royale to die. "it is on the way to père-lachaise," she said, when, in , she moved into the immense and superbly furnished apartment on the first floor of no. , where her friends, she thought, would have ample room for her burial service. it is only a step in space from this garret to that palace. there, within a few months--although her death came at the country-seat of victorien sardou's father, whom she was visiting--that service was held, and from there her body was borne to père-lachaise. going down rue du petit-musc, we reach the quai des célestins, and here on our left is the beginning of broad boulevard henri iv., cutting away, in its diagonal course through the grounds of the hôtel saint-paul, much history and romance. nothing is left of the gardens of the hôtel de lesdiguières, whose site is marked by a tablet on the corner of the street of that name, at no. rue de la cerisaie. this tablet tells us that the _hôtel_ was the residence of the czar peter the great in ; the guest, during his short sojourn in paris, of the maréchal de villeroy, its owner then. we prefer to go back from that visit over a hundred years to a more attractive presence in this house. this was gabrielle d'estrées, beloved of henry, who--for his fondness for her and their two fine boys--would have made her his wife, and have made them his legitimate successors, if he could have had his way. it was sébastien zamet who was their host in this "_palais d'amour du roi_." the son of a shoe-maker of lucca, he had found his fortune in paris, like so many of his countrymen in those days, and he built here "a true fairy palace, such as romances describe," says saint-simon. and here, walking in the garden after supper on the evening of april , , the lovely gabrielle was taken ill very suddenly. they carried her to the hôtel de sourdis and put her in the care of her aunt, with whom she had passed a portion of her girlhood in that mansion. it stood within the precincts of saint-germain-l'auxerrois, its entrance on rue de l'arbre-sec, where now is the end of rue perrault. here gabrielle died, in agony, at six o'clock of the next morning; poisoned, say sismondi, michelet, and the rest, but by whose hand we shall never know. the hôtel des mousquetaires, that you will find at no. of rue de l'arbre-sec, was then in existence, and so, too, were many of these tall façades, with ancient, iron balconies that look down on the narrow winding street, then a crowded thoroughfare of old paris. after zamet's death his house was bought by the duc de lesdiguières, marshal and later constable of france, from whom it took its permanent name. we have already come here with boileau to see the veteran _frondeur_, paul de gondi, cardinal de retz, whose last years were passed in this mansion, under the care of one niece, madame de lesdiguières, and comforted by another niece, madame de sévigné. on the quay, off on our left, the célestins _caserne_ occupies a small portion of the immense grounds of the célestins monastery. it was a rich community, made so by the many gifts of kings, from charles v. down, to "_leurs bien aimés chapelains et serviteurs en dieu_." these pious beggars were not too proud to accept anything, and time fails to tell of the splendors of their church, which became a museum of monuments, tombs, statues, and was demolished in , many of its treasures having been destroyed during the revolution. the godly brethren are remembered in the name of the barracks and of the quay, and to some of us, it must be owned, by the delectable dish of their invention, _omelette à la célestins_. that long façade beyond, on rue de sully, belongs to the arsenal, the building alone left, its spacious gardens now under streets and houses. we have come to its library with young balzac, when he escaped from his grinding drudgery and his dreary garret in rue lesdiguières. we have driven here with madame récamier on the day before her death. the most winning memory of the place is that of charles nodier, an adorable man of genius, whose very defects were lovable, we are told by the elder dumas, who loved him. nodier and charles lamb were hissing, almost in the same year, each his own damned play. many others besides dumas loved nodier--royalists and republicans, classicists and romanticists; and they crowded his _salon_ here of an evening. for this was his official residence as librarian, occupied by him from his appointment in until his death in . his historic green drawing-room, where men were friendly who fought outside, and the smaller rooms of his apartment on the first floor overlooking boulevard morland, have been thrown into the library, and are now its reading-rooms. they have kept their old-time panelling, carvings, mouldings, but their walls, once decorated _en grisaille_, have been toned to a uniform delicate gray-white. this library was begun in by the comte d'artois, who purchased the valuable books and manuscripts of voyer de paulmy, marquis d'argenson, and of the duc de la vallière. rooms in the arsenal were arranged for this collection, and it was named the "_librairie de monsieur_;" the comte d'artois, brother of louis xvi. and of louis xviii., having been the last "_monsieur_" in france. his library has grown to be the grandest in paris after the bibliothèque nationale. it contains the original archives of the bastille--such as were saved, when so many were scattered and destroyed at its taking--and it is especially rich in dramatic literature and in manuscripts. here, above our heads as we stand in rue du petit-musc, is the tasteful, unspoiled side wall of the hôtel de lavallette, formerly the hôtel fieubet. it was built by the younger mansart, on the corner of saint-paul's grounds, for the chancellor of maria theresa, gaspard de fieubet, and it became a gathering-place of the writers of those days. they were courted by its owner, whose name is frequent in the letters of madame de sévigné, and he himself turned his hand to rhyming, at odd hours. nearly two hundred years after he had gone, his mansion was rescued from the sugar-refiners, who had degraded it to their uses, by the lavallette who has given it his name, and who "restored" it beyond the recognition of its great architect, could he see it now. its façade behind the little court is overloaded with carvings, buttressed by caryatides, surmounted by campaniles; it is a debauch of sculpture, an orgy of ornamentation, under which the stately lines of the original fabric are almost lost. they are quite hidden, on one side, by a modern wing that has been thrust in on the court. all this dishonor to architecture does not trouble the boys, whose big school fills the building now, and who troop about the court in their black jackets and trousers, their wide, white collars, their big, white ties, pulling on reluctant gloves, as they line up on their unwilling way to some church function. we pass along the quay, glancing at the homelike and homely house numbered , whose quiet dignity behind its court is in pleasing contrast with the place just left. here were the home and the studio of antoine-louis barye, and here he died on june , . on the quay at the corner of rue saint-paul there stood until very lately the entire and unspoiled _hôtel_ built for young charles, duc de la vieuville, in the last days of the valois men. it was an admirable specimen of the architecture of their time, as we may still assure ourselves by a glance at the wing that is left within the court entered from rue saint-paul; a stone side wall toned to the glorified grayness of age, pierced by tall, slender windows of graceful proportions, and, above, the picturesque brick dormers of that period. the last of the valois women, marguerite, had her home hard by here, and its story begins just on this spot. when charles v., to round out and make entire his saint-paul estate, was taking in neighboring _hôtels_ and outlying bits of land, he found, here where we find the hôtel de la vieuville, the paris seat of the archbishops of sens. their palace on this corner, and its grounds extending along the river-front and back along the east side of rue saint-paul, up beyond present rue des lions, cut out a goodly slice from this angle of the royal domain. the king took this property, giving in exchange, to the archbishop, the feudal fortress, the hôtel d'Éstoménil, a little farther west on the river-bank, at the meeting-place of several country roads. those roads are now the streets named hôtel-de-ville, figuier, fauconnier, de l'ave-maria; and where they meet stands the hôtel de sens, in almost the same state, as to its walls, as when they were finished by the archbishop tristan de salazar. this soldier-priest had rebuilt the old structure in the last years of the fifteenth and the earliest years of the sixteenth century, and it remains an authentic and authoritative document of the domestic architecture of that period. the delicate ornamentation of its façade has suffered, some few mutilations have despoiled the fabric, its gardens are built upon, their great trees are gone, yet it stands, time-stained and weather-worn, a most impressive example of that gothic strength and beauty whose frozen lines were just beginning to melt under the fire of the upspringing renaissance. the noble arch of the ogival portal is, by a touch of genius, pinched forward at its topmost point, and is there sliced away, so as to make a snub-nosed protuberance that seems to lift up the whole front. its two high-peaked bartizan turrets are a trifle heavy, as we see them hemmed in by other buildings, but their panelling and moulding plead for pardon for any slight disproportion; and the one on the corner is perfect in situation and in effect. the few windows of the front have lost their stone-crossed mullions, some broken, some bricked up. the great dormer window above, possibly of later construction, is a prediction of the loveliness that was to come to dormers, such as we see in the roofs of rouen's hôtel de ville and of the _château_ of blois. the fine effect of the chimneys, once entirely of stone, has been marred by cheap patching. as to the rest, the oddities and irregularities of this façade are yet all in good taste and all captivating. within the groined porch we see, across the small court, the main building meant for the archbishop's dwelling, and the solid square tower meant for defence and for watching. its entrance-door tells, in its size and shape, the entire tale of feudal days. away up on one angle of this tower is an imitation sentry-box, battlemented and supported by corbelled brackets. the interior of the buildings has been defaced and degraded by the base usages to which it has been subjected, yet traces are left of its past grandeur in some of the rooms and halls. [illustration: the hôtel de sens.] these awaited in orderly and decorous silence, in their early days, the coming of their owner from the mother-church at sens. he came along the banks of the yonne and the seine on his richly caparisoned mule, his foot-servants in advance, his clerkly servitors and ecclesiastics riding behind, and so he entered into this tranquil court. years later the place was noisy enough, when the religious wars made it one of the meeting-places of the leaders of the holy league. on the very day when henri iv. entered paris, the archbishop of sens, cardinal de pellevé, lay dying in this his palace, almost within hearing of the triumphant te deum in notre-dame. the king had been allowed his divorce by his childless wife, marguerite, and he in turn allowed her to return to paris from her long exile in auvergne; ordering that this _hôtel_ should be fittingly arranged for her residence, in . we saw her last, a charming child, in the gardens of the tournelles. and now she comes here, a worn wanton of nearly fifty-five, her wonted fires still smouldering under the ashes. it is between these two appearances that we like to look on her in the pages of brantôme and on the canvas of clouet. pierre de bourdeilles, seigneur de brantôme, has been aptly dubbed the _valet-de-place_ of history; and yet a valet has the merit of looking out of his own eyes from his own point of view. it was for him that marguerite wrote her "mémoires," and to him she left them. in after days, when exiled from the court he loved, able only to lick the chops of memory, he wrote her _éloge_ in these glowing words: "if there has ever been anyone in the world perfect in beauty, it is the queen of navarre. all who have been, or shall be, near her, are ugly beside her. if there is a miscreant who believes not in the miracles of god, let him look upon her. many believe that she is rather a goddess of heaven than a princess of earth, and yet perhaps no goddess was ever so lovely." it is indeed a lovely creature, yet all of earth, whom we see in clouet's half life-size portrait in the _château_ of azay-le-rideau. her plentiful blond hair curves back above her fine brow, and her bluish-gray eyes smile out with inviting mischievousness. yet brantôme has to own that his goddess was easily first in the _escadron volant_ that sailed under her mother's flag, and we may guess what that meant in the court "whose vices it would be repulsive to suggest, and whose virtues were homicide and adultery." in this hôtel de sens, madame marguerite held receptions, twice a week, of men of letters and of the arts, with whom her learning allowed her to converse on equal terms; and her kindliness allowed them to feel at ease. for "from her behavior it could never be discovered that she had once been the wife of the king." but the wayward margot made trouble for herself that ended her stay here after a year or less. she came home from mass at the célestins on the morning of wednesday, april , , and as she was helped from her coach by her newest favorite page of eighteen, he was killed by her latest discarded favorite, already twenty. she sat in one of these front windows the next day, having neither eaten nor drunk nor slept meanwhile; she looked out on the beheading of the jaunty assassin; that evening she left the hôtel de sens forever. for a while she stayed at her hunting-lodge at issy, already visited by us in former pages, and then went to her last dwelling, on the southern bank in the pré-aux-clercs, which looked out across the river at the louvre, where henry was unhappy with her successor. the two women remained always friendly, and were seen together in festivities and processions, and the reigning queen paid many a debt of the deposed queen. to the last she rouged to the eyes, and wore a flowing wig and low frocks, albeit she had turned _dévote_, and had found a new idol in her confessor. this was young vincent de paul, not yet canonized, whose chaste ministrations made him adored by sinners elderly enough to repent. there she died in the spring of , at the age of sixty-three, the last of the valois name, leaving everything, mostly debts, to young louis xiii. later along in the seventeenth century, when the court end of the town went to the west, and the church dignitaries found this region too far afield, this hôtel de sens was sold. its new owners and tenants were the merchants and financiers who crowded then to this quarter. they, too, soon moved farther west, and the place had many strange employments forced upon it. as early as , the _messageries_ for dijon and lyons rented it for their town head-quarters. by the middle of the eighteenth century, the palace of the archbishops was degraded to a livery stable and a horsedealer's lair, and the ancient arms of sens on its front and the escutcheons of lorraine and bourbon, prelates of the church, were covered by a great sign, "_maison de roulage et de commission_." from this court, in the words of the advertisement of that date, "_le courrier de la malle de paris à lyons partit à cinq heures et demi du soir, floréal, an iv._"--which was april , . [illustration: marguerite de valois. (from a portrait by an unknown artist, in the musée de montpellier.)] that mail-coach was stopped near lieussart, its driver killed, and a large sum in assignats and gold carried off. for this crime one joseph lesurques was arrested, and was recognized by several witnesses as the robber. he had been an official in douai, had saved money, and had gone to paris for the education of his children. neither his record nor his alibi sufficed to acquit him, the strongest of circumstantial evidence convicted him, and he was executed on october , . two years later the murderer and robber was captured in one dubosc, who, after a daring escape and recapture, went to the guillotine. by dubosc's conviction lesurques was posthumously morally acquitted, but his judicial rehabilitation has never been made, albeit his broken and crazed children petitioned, courts debated, and deputies chattered through many long years. this true story, our last reminiscence of the hôtel de sens, has been put on the french stage as "le courrier de lyons," and on the english stage as "the lyons mail." we go on to the upper end of rue fauconnier, and across rue saint-antoine, to where begins rue pavée-au-marais, a most ancient and aristocratic street, filled with grand mansions in its best days and in days not so long gone. it had taken its name as early as the middle of the fifteenth century, when, first of all the marais streets, it was paved. it was known, unofficially and popularly, as _le petit marais_, so closely did it crowd, within its short and select limits, the essential characteristics in architecture and atmosphere of the great marais. now, wofully modernized, it holds one relic only, a magnificent relic, that suggests to us, in its solitary dignity, something of the lost glories of this street. we cross rue du roi-de-sicile, a main thoroughfare of old paris, whose odd name came from charles, brother of saint louis, count of anjou and provence, and king of naples and sicily in . his fortified abode stood on the northern side of this street, at its eastern end just within the old walls. it became, in after times, the _hôtel_ and then the prison of la force. its entrance was over yonder, at the corner of modern rue malher; and opposite, on the southern corner, was the stone that served as the axeman's block for the princess of lamballe. along this pavement the small gavroche led the two smaller thénardier boys, on his way to _his hôtel_--the plaster elephant in place de la bastille. a wide avenue, bordered by modern constructions, is fast taking the place of the old street and robbing it of all its character. where rue pavée meets rue des francs-bourgeois, stands the hôtel lamoignon, formerly the hôtel d'angoulême. at that corner a square turret juts out from above the ground floor, overhanging the pavement, its supporting bracket cut under in shell-like curves. about the stately court, entered from rue pavée, rise the imposing walls, those of the wings of a little later date and a little more ornate than that of the façade. this front is pre-eminently impressive in its height, in the unusual loftiness of its floors and their windows, in the single corinthian pilasters, tall and slender and graceful, rising from ground to cornice. they may serve us as a souvenir of jean bullant's work in the _château_ of ecouen and in his portion of chantilly. above that cornice the dormer windows spring high under their gabled ends. beneath them, and over the entrance porch, and on the side wall of rue des francs-bourgeois--profusely decorating, but not overloading, the spacious surfaces that carry them easily--we trace without effort the unworn hunting-horns, the stags' heads, the dogs in chase, the crescent and the initial h so interlaced as to form an h and a d--all the carved emblems of diane de france, for whom this remarkable structure was planned and built, a little after , by a now unknown architect. she was born of an italian mother, during a stay in her country of the son of françois i., who was later henri ii. on coming to the throne, in , he legitimatized this daughter, then ten years of age, and gave her education and position in france. she grew up to be a good woman and a good wife to horace farnese, duc de castro, and to her second husband, françois, the eldest son of the constable montmorenci. she spent her long life--which saw seven monarchs sitting on the french throne--doing kindly acts, not one of which meant so much for the france she loved as the reconciliation between henri iii. and henri de navarre; possible through her, because the sceptic béarnais took her word for or against any written word of anyone. dying in , she left this mansion to charles, duc d'angoulême, son of charles ix. and marie touchet, the last of her many benefactions to him. he added these wings, and placed in that on the northern side this stately stone staircase, filling the width between the stone walls, with no hand-rail to break its sweep. nothing is left of the former grandeur of the interior, which is given up to large industries and petty handicrafts; even the vast and lofty chambers are cut up for trade purposes by partitions and by interposed floorings. in the hôtel d'angoulême became the hôtel lamoignon by purchase of guillaume de lamoignon, a wealthy president of parliament, and in it went to his son, chrétien-françois de lamoignon. it was a dwelling worthy of him and of his illustrious name, which it still bears. in it he received the best society of that day--represented to us by racine, boileau, bourdaloue, regnard, and others of their kidney, all honored in finding a friend in this magistrate of ability, probity, kindliness. it was to him that boileau addressed his "sixth epistle," and to him, when, as master of requests, it was his official duty to forbid further performances of "tartufe" after the first night, molière submitted without rancor. perhaps his highest honor, during a life of honors, was his refusal of an election to a _fauteuil_ in the académie française. on april , , in this building was opened the first public library of the hôtel de ville of paris. one antoine moriau had been for many years collecting, in his apartment on this second floor, some , volumes and manuscripts, all left to the town at his death in . the municipality kept his rooms, and rented additional rooms on this first floor, opening them to the public on wednesdays and saturdays. [illustration: the hôtel lamoignon.] the _concierge_ or his wife, honored by the interest shown in their splendid show-place, will conduct such curious strangers as may wish around the corner into rue des francs-bourgeois, and through a little gate on that street into a small back court. this is the shabby remnant of diane's and of lamoignon's extensive gardens, which once stretched to those of the hôtel de la force on the south, and eastwardly to rue sévigné. from this spot you may see four or five windows away up in the rear wall of the mansion, and you will be told that these are the windows of alphonse daudet's former apartment, wherein he wrote "fromont jeune et risler aîné." his large study on the top floor had two high, wide windows, from which he saw the roofs of all paris on that side. against the wall at one end of the room was his shelf for standing at his work, and his wife's desk was at the other end; while, between them, carrying the freshly written sheets, trotted the little boy léon, who is now a man, wielding his own good pen. to him, in those days, the tall flaubert and tourgueneff were "giants" by the side of his father, and of the other friends who used to climb these many stairs to this _salon_ in the sky. daudet has left affectionate records of the old house. his "rois-en-exil" was written in a pavilion in the garden of richelieu's old mansion, which stood in the northwestern corner of the then place royale, now place des vosges, where has been cut, through house and garden, the prolongation of rue des francs-bourgeois in rue des vosges. the gentle artist, "handsome as a hindoo god" in those days, says m. claretie, brought from his beloved _midi_ a longing for space and air and quiet, and all his abodes in the city were high above the street, with ample breathing-space and unbroken horizon. his earliest paris home was at the very top of the furnished hôtel du senat, still at no. rue de tournon. this was the wretched room to which he came back, early one morning, from his first swell reception, his only dress-suit drenched with the wet snow through which he had waded, owning no overcoat. then, for a while, he occupied an _entresol_ in no. place de l'odéon, in "_la maison a. laissus_," one of the unaltered houses of that historic place. his last home was on the third floor of no. rue bellechasse, in the heart of the faubourg saint-germain, and one of its delightful old gardens lay beneath his windows, giving him the greenness and the tranquillity so dear to him. the name of madame daudet may not be omitted from this record of the illustrious women of the marais, although now, in the maturity of her distinction and elegance, she adorns another quarter of paris. she has made for herself an honored place among french women of letters, and she helped her husband to his own place by her critical powers and her sympathetic appreciation. she both tranquillized and stimulated him through his earlier years of robust strength, and the later invalidism that was yet filled with labor. her son, who carried the father's sheets across the room to her for approval or correction, has dedicated his "alphonse daudet" to his mother, "who aided and encouraged her husband alike in the hours of discouragement and of hopefulness." there are bits and fragments of vanished antiquity--portals, windows, balconies, brackets, pitifully sundered from the grandeur they stand for and suggest--scattered all about this portion of the marais. much of this bygone grandeur was to be found in rue des francs-bourgeois, a street that had been a country road just outside the wall of philippe-auguste, and, with the crumbling of the wall, had been speedily built up with stately mansions. one of these, with a fund for its support, was willed, in , to the grand prior of france, in trust for such burghers as were freed from all taxation by reason of their extreme poverty. so it came that these _francs bourgeois_ gave their name to the street. here at no. is a quaint low front, mostly taken up by a spacious entrance-porch, decorated with finely cut dragons; here at no. is the superb portal of the hôtel jeanne d'albret; all that is left of the noble residence of that niece of françois i. who married the duc de clèves in . it is more than a century from that date before this _hôtel_ holds any history for us, when it became tenanted by césar phébus d'albret, marshal of france; a rich and frolicsome gascon, a friend of scarron, an especial friend of young madame scarron. it was he who killed the marquis de sévigné in a duel. the duchesse d'albret was an eminently proper person, a bit of a _précieuse_, and her _salon_ here was a flimsy copy of that of the hôtel rambouillet. scarron's widow, poor and by no means unfriended, found a temporary home in this house, after a short stay with her life-long friend, mlle. de lenclos, before taking rooms in the convent, where we have seen her. when _la veuve_ scarron, reincarnated in madame de maintenon, was living in the grand establishment at vaugirard, provided by the king for his two children, she is said, by local tradition, to have had her private apartment in the marais, near where we stand. it was on the first floor of the small and shabby house at no. bis rue du perche, and you are shown a ceiling in an upper room, that is claimed to have been painted for the great lady. it is in four sunken squares, wherein pose the four seasons, in conventional attitudes and unconventional raiment. let us stop here on the southern side of rue des francs-bourgeois, where it meets the end of a little street with the big name of des hospitalières-saint-gervais, given to it by the great hospital and monastery that occupied these grounds, through which this street was afterward cut, when philippe-auguste gathered them just within the safe-keeping of his wall. just without that wall lay the hôtel barbette, in the midst of its own wide lands. on this corner, we stand just on the line of the wall, and look across rue des francs-bourgeois into a court, once the alleé aux arbalétriers, over whose entrance is a tablet, recording the murder of louis d'orléans, near that spot--a scene sketched in our first chapter. that maze of courts, crowded close with ancient wooden structures, tempts us to search within it for vestiges of the outbuildings of the hôtel barbette. and it is worth while exploring the interior of the corner house, if only for its mediæval staircase. coming out by the courts opening into rue vieille-du-temple, we take a few steps to where it meets the southern side of rue des francs-bourgeois, and we stand on the exact site of the porte barbette of the old wall. there, on the northeastern corner of the two streets, stands a most ancient building well worth our regard. on the angle, reaching from just above its ground floor to the cornice, is hung a five-sided _tourelle_ of singular beauty. its heavy supporting bracket is deeply and handsomely corbelled out, and at each angle is a slim colonette, delicately carved. the division line between its two stories is defined by a fine moulding. in the first story is cut a small ogival window, under a prettily crocketed head and a flat finial. this window is iron grated, and its grim visage is softened by a flowering plant set within. the panels of the lower story are plain, and those above are decorated with a lace-like pattern, graceful and elegant, whose lines and curves carry one's eye to the cornice. the plain façade of the house in rue vieille-du-temple has been degraded by modern windows, while that in the other street remains most impressive, with its gabled end. all in all, no such delightful specimen of fifteenth-century gothic as this barbette turret can be found in our marais. [illustration: the tourelle of the hôtel barbette.] yet turret and structure are not, as is often stated, any portion of the original hôtel barbette. that was built, at the end of the thirteenth century, by Étienne barbette, a man of wealth and importance, the provost of paris under philippe "_le bel_," and his master of the mint. the vast enclosure of his grandiose _hôtel_ covered all the ground, from the old wall northward to the line of the present rues de la perle and du parc-royal; and eastwardly from this rue vieille-du-temple to the gardens of saint-catherine du val-des-Écoliers, near where now runs rue sévigné. this ample domain sufficed for the _menus plaisirs_ of this lucky man, and was merely his _petit séjour_. under that blameless guise it served as the abode, a little more than a century later, when rebuilt after the mob had wrecked it, of isabeau de bavière, official wife of mad charles vi. leaving him to the neglect of servants and to the companionship of odette, the queen escaped boredom here, by her dinners and suppers, balls and fêtes; here she invented, or first introduced, the masquerades that were soon the rage of polite society. she amused herself with other games, too; such as statecraft, in partnership with her husband's younger brother, louis d'orléans. it was from the barbette that she mismanaged the kingdom, ground down the people with intolerable taxes, pushed the marriage of her daughter catherine with henry v. of england, plotted the shameful treaty of troyes, which made france an appanage of the english crown, and gave paris to english troops. after her husband's death, cast aside by burgundy and england, she found a drearier refuge in the hôtel saint-paul than that to which she had condemned him there. in its corners she hid while joan the maid was undoing the evil work done by this shameless woman, and was bringing back to paris the son hated by this shameless mother. all through those years she wept and moaned, witnesses have reported; left alone, as she was, with the memories of her lusts and her treasons, with the wreckage of the animal beauty, for which, and for no other quality, she had been selected as the royal consort. seven days after she learned of the signing of the treaty of arras she died, "_et son corps fut tant méprisé_," says brantôme, that it was thrown into a boat at the water-gate of saint-paul, and, after an unseemly service in notre-dame, was sent by night down the seine to saint-denis, "_ainsi ni plus ni moins qu'une simple demoiselle!_" partly destroyed by fire and partly rebuilt, we find the hôtel barbette, after another hundred years and more, in the hands of the comte de brézé, seneschal of normandy. aged, ugly, crippled, as we see him in hugo's verse, he is pleasantly remembered for the lovely widow he left for henri ii., and for his lovely tomb left, for our joy, in the cathedral of rouen. when his widow, diane de saint-vallier, became diane de poictiers, duchesse de valentinois--an elderly siren of thirty-seven, who was yet "_fort aymée et servie d'un des grands rois et valeureux du monde_"--she wore always her widow's white and black, and kept to the last that whiteness of skin and purity of complexion that came, she claimed, from her only cosmetic, soap and water. her coldness of heart had much to do with it, to our thinking. brantôme saw her when she had come to sixty-two, and was struck by her freshness, "_sans se farder_," as of thirty. he adds, with his ever-green susceptibility: "_c'est dommage que la terre couvre ce beau corps._" this property had gone, on her husband's death, in , to his and her two daughters; who profited by its vast extent and by the example set by françois i. in similar jobs, to open streets through it, and divide it into parcels for selling. those streets were named barbette and trois-pavilions, the latter now renamed elzévir. and if any remnant exists of the second hôtel barbette of diane de poictiers, it is this corner house and its lovely turret. by way of this corner, the body of louis d'orléans was carried to the church of the blancs-manteaux, in the street of that name just behind us. it lay till morning in the nave, and about the bier gathered royalty and nobility, all through the long november night. the church is gone, and so, too, is his chapel in the church of the célestins; and the monument, erected there by louis xii. to his murdered grandfather and his martyred grandmother, has been placed in the cathedral of saint-denis. the site of the church of the blancs-manteaux is covered by the great central establishment of the mont de piété; its grounds are entirely built over; the street that took the name of the monastery, once a perilous _coupe-gorge_, has grown to be, not respectable, but characterless. we must be content with the phantoms of saint louis's white-mantled monks, strolling in their cloisters; later, grown fat and scampish, haunting the low _cabarets_ of this mal-famed street, and rehearsing, within their own precincts, those frenzied mysteries of the mediæval stage, that led to the disbandment and the driving-out of the debauched order. a step to the south from this street, along rue vieille-du-temple, brings us to the massive entrance-doors of no. . their outer surfaces are richly carved with masks and with figures; on their inner side is an excellent bas-relief representing romulus and remus found by the shepherd, when the wolf is giving them suck. about the court, diminutive and dainty, the walls of the small _hôtel_ are adorned with tasteful sculptures, and laden with dials, two of the sun and two of the moon. these anomalous adornments came here through the caprice of a director of the royal observatory, who once occupied the house and who wreaked his scientific humor in this odd fashion. this is the hôtel de hollande, a rebuilt remnant of the large mediæval mansion of maréchal de rieux. the street just in front of his _hôtel_, some authorities insist, was the scene of the assassination of the duc d'orléans. reconstructed early in the seventeenth century, the carvings, sculptures, and decorations of this elegant little _hôtel_ are excellent examples of late renaissance. unluckily, the bas-reliefs and paintings of the interior may no longer be seen. beyond this outer court is a smaller court, containing an attractive structure of a later date. this hôtel de hollande has borne that name since, in the reign of louis xiv., it was the seat of the embassy representing holland at his court. this being officially dutch soil, at that time, we may see racine coming through this entrance-doorway, in full wig and court costume; coming to present his son for introductions at the hague, where the young man is to be a member of the french embassy. we have seen the letters sent to him there by his thrifty father. there is another bit of history for us here. it was in this house that the firm "roderigue hortalez et compagnie" started in business in , with a capital of , , francs. the firm was composed of caron de beaumarchais, with the governments of france and spain for his silent partners; the former putting in , , francs, and the latter the other million. the business of this house--and it did a lively business while it lasted--was to supply, secretly and unknown to the english officials in paris, arms and equipments to the american colonies. anne de montmorenci, the great constable of france, in alliance, against the huguenots, with the guises, his near neighbors in the marais, outfought condé and coligny at saint-denis in , and died, of the wounds he got in that battle, "in his own _hôtel_ in rue saint-avoie." so says the chronicle, and it tells us further that his was the grandest mansion in the town, with most extensive grounds; far surpassing in size and magnificence the hôtels lamoignon and carnavalet. it was sufficiently spacious for the large-minded john law, who established his bank in the building two centuries later. when the crash came, and he sought more modest quarters, the state took the building for its _bureaux_. now, no stone of the structure can be found, the street from which it had entrance--saint-avoie--is merged in that portion of rue du temple which crosses rue rambuteau, and this broad thoroughfare sweeps over the site of montmorenci's palace and his gardens. turning from rue rambuteau into rue du temple, we are face to face, at no. , with a monumental gateway, richly carved, giving entrance to an ample court. the stately walls surrounding this court have suffered much from time, and more from man. the old façade of this wing on our left is hidden behind a paltry new frontage for shops, and on the roof of the central body before us a contemptible top story has been put. the face of the original lofty attic, above the cornice, carried pilasters in continuation of those below, and these have been brutally mutilated by a line of low windows just over the cornice. for all that, there is a majesty in the stately arcades of these lower stories, and in the unspoiled lower walls, up which climb graceful corinthian pilasters from ground to cornice. they are similar to those of the hôtel lamoignon, built before this hôtel de saint-aignan was transformed from a former structure by de muet, who doubtless admired, perhaps unconsciously imitated, the best features of the earlier architecture. he has put, in this almost intact right wing, just such a stone staircase, of easy grade and no hand-rail, as that we have seen in the residence built for diane de france. there is hardly any history to detain us here, and the great names that once resounded in this court make only far-away echoes now. claude de mesme, comte d'avaux, a diplomat of the seventeenth century, built this _hôtel_. at his death, it came to the duc de saint-aignan, a royal purveyor at the head of louis xiv.'s council of finance. he was a relative of madame de scudéry, wife of the georges whom we have met in his sister's _salon_. through his wife's influence with saint-aignan, georges was presented to the king, and succeeded in obtaining a pension--useful to supplement such of his sister's earnings as came in his way. his merits, for which the royal bounty was granted, seem to have been of so momentous a literary character as to be pronounced equal to those of corneille! when olivier de clisson--constable of france after the death of his comrade-in-arms, the mighty duguesclin--brought back charles vi. victorious to paris, after crushing the revolt in ghent under philip van artavelde, he found the marais du temple fast being reclaimed and built upon. at one corner of the templars' former wood-yard, on a street to be named du chaume, now merged in the southern end of rue des archives, opposite the end of rue de braque, was the fortress-home of his wife, marguerite de rohan, within the family enclosure. here de clisson made his head-quarters, giving his name to the _hôtel_. its entrance, an ogival portal sunk beneath two impressive round turrets, built of different sizes through some vagary, still remains; a most impressive relic, imbedded in more recent walls. [illustration: the gateway of the hôtel de clisson.] it was de clisson, who, quite without his consent, gave the king one of the several shocks which culminated in his madness. king and constable had supped together in the royal apartment of the hôtel saint-paul, and the constable went on his way home. lighted by the main facts of the affair, we may easily track him. after crossing rue saint-antoine and passing through one of the narrow lanes to rue neuve-sainte-catherine--now the eastern end of rue des francs-bourgeois --he should have kept along this street to this new home of his. perhaps the old soldier was not quite sure of his way, so soon after supper and the plentiful _petit vin de l'hôtel saint-paul_, for he found himself beyond his corner, up in rue sainte-catherine, now rue sévigné; and there, in front of a baker's shop opposite the spot where now is the carnavalet, he was set upon by a band of men led by pierre de craon, a crony of louis d'orléans. they left the tough old warrior in the baker's doorway, bleeding from many wounds, but not quite killed. the king was summoned, came hastily in scanty clothing, and it was long before he recovered from his affright. when he had rallied, he started out to punish the assailant of his favorite captain, and it was on his way to brittany, with whose duke de craon had taken refuge, that the king received the final blow to his reason. the history of the hôtel de clisson would weary us, were it told in detail. we may jump to the year , when it came to anne d'est, wife of françois de lorraine, duc de guise. he and his family were beginning to feel and to show their growing power, and he found these walls not wide enough for his swelling consequence. he bought the hôtels de laval and de la roche-guyon, whose grounds adjoined his own; so adding to his estate, while others, following the example of françois i., were cutting up and selling their paris lands. soon the hôtel de guise was made up of several mansions, rebuilt and run together, within one enclosure, bounded by rues de paradis (now the western end of rue des francs-bourgeois), du chaume (now des archives), des quatre-fils, and vieille-du-temple. the heirs of the last guise, who died in , sold this property at the end of the seventeenth century, and it came into the grasping hands of madame de soubise; bought with the savings of the french peasants, squeezed from them by louis xiv.'s farmers of taxes, and by him poured into the lap of this lady, one of the many ladies so turning an honest penny. her complaisant husband, françois de rohan, prince de soubise, began to tear down much of the old work, and to replace it by new work, in . for thirty years he kept the most skilful artists and artisans of that day employed on the place within and without; and he left the hotel de soubise much as we find it now. to him we owe this striking _cour d'honneur_, square with curved ends, and framed in a colonnade of coupled columns, that leads a covered gallery from the grand entrance around to the portal of the main building. this is his façade of three stories, with pediment, its columns both composite and corinthian. for general effect this court has no parallel in paris. a light elegant staircase, its ceiling delicately painted, leads to the first floor, whose rooms retain some of their mouldings, their wood-carvings, their decorated doorways and ceilings. gone, however, are the tapestries, "the most beautiful in the world and most esteemed in christendom, after those of the vatican," sauval assures us. vast and magnificent as was this palace, it did not suffice for the son of this prince, the cardinal armand gaston de rohan, bishop of strasburg, who, says sauval, "was, in his prosperity, very insolent and blinded." on the site of the demolished hôtel de la roche-guyon he built for himself the palais cardinal, now commonly known as the hôtel de strasbourg. the library, great and precious, which he there collected, together with his _hôtel_ and his blind insolence, came to his grand-nephew, the cardinal de rohan of the diamond necklace, the last cardinal of a family of cardinals. at his death, in , desertion and emptiness came to the hôtel de strasbourg, as they had already come to the hôtel de soubise. the huge size of the buildings rendered them unfit for private residences. at length they were taken for the state by the emperor, at the urging of daunou, director of the archives of france. by the decree of march , , those archives took for their own the hôtel de soubise, and the hôtel de strasbourg was given to the imprimerie impériale. no after-revolution nor any change of rulers has troubled them. as their contents grew, new structures have been added, over the gardens and on the street behind, all done in good taste, all suggesting the uses for which they are meant. the imprimerie, entered from rue vieille-du-temple, through a court containing a statue of gutenberg, does the work for the senate and the chamber of deputies, for the ministers and for the institute. its _bulletin des lois_, issued to all the communes of france, carries to completion the mission meant for it when it was begun by louis xiii., hugo asserts. the archives of france must be studied and may not be described. this amazing collection of manuscripts, charters, diplomas, letters, and autographs begins with the earliest day of writing and of records in france, and comes down through all the centuries. it is a spot for unhurried and unhindered browsing during long summer days. just in this region is to be seen, better than anywhere, an aspect of the marais not yet seen in our historic strolling. it is the marais of to-day and of every day, the work-a-day marais, whose heart is here in this street of the temple and the old street of the temple. in them, and in the streets that cross them, are numerous mansions of a bygone time, with little to say to us in architecture, nothing at all to say to us in history or letters. side by side with them are tall buildings and huge blocks of modern construction; new and old held and possessed by factories, warehouses, show-rooms; their upper portions given over to strange handicrafts, strangely met together. the making of syphon-tops is next door on the same floor to the wiring of feathers, as daudet discovered. these narrow streets between the buildings, and these walled-in courts within them, are hushed all through the working-hours, save for the ceaseless muffled rumble of the machinery, and the unbroken low murmur of the human toilers, both intent on their tasks. suddenly at noon, these streets are all astir with an industrial, unarmed mob, and the whole quarter is given over to an insurrection, peaceful and unoffending. these workers are making their way to restaurant or _rôtisserie_ or _cabaret_; some of them saunter along, taking their breakfast "_sur le pouce_." the men, in stained blouses, are alert, earnest, and self-respecting; the girls, direct of gaze, frank of manner, shrill of voice, wear enwrapping aprons, that fall from neck to ankle, and their hair, the glory of the french working-woman who goes hatless, is dressed with an artless art that would not dishonor a drawing-room. we can carry away with us, from these last scenes, no more captivating memory than this of the most modern woman of our marais. index abelard, pierre, i., _et seq._ amboise, bussy d', ii., site of his murder, anne of brittany, i., ; built the still existing refectory of the cordelier convent, ; ii., wife and widow of charles viii., ; marries louis xii., arsenal, the library of the, ii., _et seq._ artois, robert, comte d', i., , aubriot, hugues, provost of paris, builder of the bastille, ii., ; tower and staircase of, _et seq._ balzac, honoré de, ii., birthplace, ; homes in paris, , , , ; site of type foundry, ; mode of writing, - ; scenes and characters of, - ; marriage and death, _et seq._ barras, paul-françois-jean-nicolas, comte de, i., barye, antoine-louis, ii., home and studio of, beaumarchais, de pierre-augustin caron, i., birthplace and homes of, - béjart, armande, i., wife and widow of molière, ; sketched, _et seq._ ---- madeleine, sister or mother of armande, friend of molière, i., ; opposes his marriage, béranger, pierre-jean de, ii., house at passy, ; in prison, bernardins, monastery of the, i., modern use of its refectory, béthune, maximilien de (see sully) bièvre, the river, i., , , ; ii. - birch, george h., i., blanche of castile, i., house and stairway of, _et seq._; widow of louis viii., boccaccio, i., records dante's visit to paris, boffrand, germain, i, architect of charles lebrun's _hôtel_, boileau-despréaux, nicolas, i., in the cloisters of notre-dame, - ; offers to surrender his pension to corneille, ; sketch of, _et seq._; studied in the sorbonne, ; site of his house at auteuil, ; lodgings in paris, ; final resting-place, bonaparte, napoleon, i., house visited by, when a lad, ; early homes in paris, - bossuet, bishop of meaux, i., ; "the strong and splendid," - _boulangerie générale des hôpitaux et hospices, la_, i., in its courtyard a wing of sardini's villa, boulevard saint-germain, i., , boulevard saint-michel, i., bourgogne, charles "le téméraire," duc de, i., ---- jean "sans-peur," duc de, i., _et seq._ ---- marguerite, duchesse de, i., _et seq._ ---- philippe "le bon," duc de, i., _et seq._ ---- philippe, "le hardi," duc de, i., _et seq._ brinvilliers, marie-madeleine dreux d'aubray, duchesse de, ii., residence of, in the marais, ; sketch of, _et seq._; lebrun's portrait of, in the louvre, calvin, john, i., studied in seminary of saint-nicolas-du-chardonnet, ; his only residence in paris, _candide_, i., referred to, carlyle, thomas, i., quoted, ; on diderot, ; sees talma in the théâtre français, catherine de' medici, i., referred to, , ; ii., cerceau, androuët du, ii., huguenot architect, existing specimens of his work, - ---- baptiste, du, i., house of, in the huguenot quarter, ---- jean du, ii., architect of sully's _hôtel_, champeaux, guillaume de, i., master of abelard, chapelle, saint-benoît-le-bétourné, i., site of, ---- sainte, la, i., referred to, charles of orleans, i., ---- ii. (of france), i., wooden tower of, charles v., "the wise," i., , ; ii., in the marais, ; wall of, - ; his hôtel saint-paul, - ---- vi., i., drives the first pile of pont notre-dame, ; ii., _et seq._ ---- vii., ii., presents the island palace, _palais de justice_, to parliament, ; residence in the tournelles, ---- viii., ii., enters paris with anne of brittany, charlot, claude, ii., opens streets through the marais, - châteaubriand, françois-auguste, vicomte de, i., describes talma, ; ii., homes in paris, - , châtelet, le grand, i., its site, ; molière imprisoned in, for debt, ---- le petit, i., ---- place du, i., chaucer, geoffrey, i., translated part of _le roman de la rose_, chénier, andré-marie de, i., house in paris, ; ii., memorial tablet and grave, ---- joseph-marie de, i., - chevreuse, marie de rohan, duchesse de, i., her hôtel de luynes constructed under racine's supervision, ; ii., her rôle in history and in dumas, - chimæra, i., statue of the, in cluny museum, church, saint-eustache, i., lebrun's tomb of colbert in, ; molière's second son baptized in, , ---- sainte-geneviève, i., one of the resting-places of the body of rené descartes, ---- saint-germain-l'auxerrois, i., scene of molière's marriage, ---- saint-gervais, i., window of jean cousin, ---- saint-julien-le-pauvre, still unchanged, - ---- saint-roch, i., molière stands sponsor for a child in, ; corneille buried in, ; bust of charles michel, abbé de l'Épée, ---- saint-philippe-du-roule, ii., scene of adèle hugo's baptism and of balzac's funeral service, ---- saint-séverin, i., destroyed in , rebuilt in the th century, - . _cité, la_, i., , ---- _Île de la_, i., , , city, the (see _la cité_) city, island of the (see _Île de la_) clagny, abbé de, i., designer of the fountain of the innocents, clairon, hippolyte, i., dwellings of, , "clopinel," i., nickname of jean de meung, completer of _le roman de la rose_, cluny museum, i., , coictier, dr., i., physician of louis xi., well of, ; ii., astrological tower of, college of the four nations, i., founded by cardinal mazarin, , _confrérie de la passion_, i., _et seq._ conti, prince de, i., friend and protector of molière, racine, boileau, cook, theodore andrea, quoted, i., coppée, françois, i., quoted, ; remembers the halles as they were in molière's time, corneille, pierre, i., quoted, ; statue of, at rouen, and sketch of life, _et seq._; apartment in rue de cléry, ; personality, ; guizot's estimate of, ---- thomas, i., , , , cour du commerce, i., ; sainte-beuve's apartment in, ; trial of the first guillotine, ---- de rohan, i., stairway and ancient well, cousin, jean, i., worker in stained glass, his window in saint-gervais, crusade, the sixth, i., crusaders, the, i., cuvier, georges, i., homes of, dablin, ii., friend of balzac, dagobert, i., stairway and tower of, _et seq._ dante, i., _et seq._ danton, georges-jacques, i., statue and site of house, daudet, alphonse, ii., homes in the marais, _et seq._ delorme, philibert, i., dies in the cloister of notre-dame, ---- marion, ii., house in the marais, _et seq._ descartes, rené, i., site of his house, ; portrait by franz hals, ; body rests in saint-germain-des-prés, deschamps, eustace, i., ballad to chaucer, desmoulins, lucie-simplice-camille-benoist, i., homes in paris, - dickens, charles, ii., description of george sand, ; description of hugo and of his home, diderot, denis, i., in the café procope, _et seq._; sketch of, _et seq._; where he died, dolet, Étienne, i., statue of, in place maubert, dudevant, mme. (see george sand) dumas, alexandre, ii., arrival in paris, ; contemporaries of, _et seq._; homes in paris, - , - ; birth of dumas _fils_, ; statue and description of, ; scenes and characters of his novels, _et seq._ dunois, bastard of louis d'orléans, i., , dupanloup, bishop, i., renan's master in the seminary of st. nicolas-du-chardonnet, École des beaux-arts, ii., "encore un tableau de paris," henrion's, i., erasmus, i., residence of, in the collège montaigu, estrées, gabrielle d', ii., scene of her sudden death, fontenelle, i., describes corneille, force, la, i., prison of, , ii., fouquet, i., protector of lebrun, françois i., i., , , , ii., _maison de_, ; ii., franklin, benjamin, i., residences in paris and passy, - frémiet, i., bronze statue of louis d'orléans, fulbert, canon, i., uncle of héloise, , gambetta, léon, i., at the café procope, gautier, théophile, i., verses for corneille's birthday fête, gobelins, i., factory of the, founded by a dyer named gobelin, - goujon, jean, i., decorator of ancient fountain, ; ii., bust of, and specimens of his carving, - gringoire, i., alluded to, "guillotine, la," i., its inventor, ; sites of, , guizot, françois-pierre-guillaume, ii., residence in the scholars' quarter, , halles, les, i., heine, heinrich, ii., his estimate of hugo, héloise, i., , henley, w. e., i., quoted, henri ii., i., ; ii., fatally wounded in the lists of the tournelles, henri iv., i., . , , ; ii., statue of, ; introduced mulberries and silkworms into france, ; built up eastern side of the place royale at the crown's expense, hôtel de ville, i., the new, ; ii., first public library of, hôtel-dieu, i., hôtel, d'artois (see hôtel de bourgogne) ---- barbette, i., ; ii. _et seq._ ---- de beauvais, i., ; ii., impressive specimen of seventeenth century architecture, _et seq._ ---- de bourgogne, i., last remaining fragment, ; in the reign of louis xi., ; use made of its donjon by saint vincent de paul, ; part of it used as a theatre by the confraternity of the passion, ---- de bretagne, i., memories of, ---- de choiseul-praslin, i., now a dominican school for girls, ---- de clermont-tonnerre, i., ---- de clisson, ii., history of, _et seq._ ---- de flandres, i., now the site of the general post office in rue jean-jacques-rousseau, ---- de hollande, ii., ---- de lauzun-pimodan, ii., - ---- de luynes, i., constructed under racine's supervision, ---- de navarre, i., existing remains of, - ---- de la reine blanche, i., _et seq._ ---- saint-paul, i., ; ii., _et seq._ ---- de strasbourg (_palais cardinal_), ii., now the imprimerie, ---- des tournelles, i., occupied by louis xi., ; ii., by the duke of bedford during the english occupation of paris, ; by charles vii. after the burning of joan the maid, ; afterward the abode of royalty for more than a century, ; françois i. in the, - hôtel des tournelles, lists of, ii., henri ii. fatally wounded in, ---- des ursins, i., _hôtels-garnis_, i., do not antedate the revolution, huguenots, the, i., befriended by marguerite of navarre, - ; in the scholars' quarter, , hugo, general, ii., father of victor, , , ---- victor, i., "painful detail and inaccurate erudition" in his portraiture of mediæval paris, ; sarcasm on cuvier, ; ii., describes balzac's death and burial, - ; first paris lodging, ; later homes and schools, _et seq._; visits châteaubriand, ; death of his mother, ; marriage, ; homes of married life, _et seq._; friends, _et seq._; visits béranger in prison, ; scenes and characters of, _et seq._; final home, Île de la cité, i., , , , ; ii., ---- des javiaux, later Île louvier, i., ---- notre-dame, i., ---- saint-louis, i., formed by the junction of Île notre-dame and Île aux vaches, , _et seq._ innocents, cemetery of the, i., some of its vaults in perfect preservation, their present use, ---- church of, i., built by louis "le gros," ---- fountain and square of the, institute, the, i., site of the tour de nesle shown by a tablet on its eastern wall, isabelle of bavaria, i., wife of charles vi., held her "unclean court" in hôtel barbette, ; ii., her abode in the marais, james, henry, i., quoted, , ; ii., jean "le bon," i., ---- "sans-peur," i., procures the assassination of louis d'orléans, ; himself assassinated, joan the maid, ii., , la fontaine, jean de, i., friendship with mme. de la sablière, - ; death and burial, ; friends of, _et seq._ lamartine, alphonse de, ii., residence of, in the scholars' quarter, ; statue of, ; his first visit to hugo, - lang, andrew, i., quoted, laplace, pierre-simon, i., residences of, - latin quarter (see scholars' quarter) lavoisier, antoine-laurent, i., lebrun, charles, i., court painter and decorator, - lecouvreur, adrienne, i., residence of, ; where buried, lemoine, cardinal, i., college of, lenclos, ninon de, ii., house of, in the marais, _et seq._ lenôtre, m. g., i., ; his "paris révolutionnaire," lescot, pierre, i., the fountain _des innocents_ wrongly ascribed to, ; dies in the cloisters of notre-dame, "_librairie de monsieur_" (see library of the arsenal) library of the arsenal, the, ii., , _et seq._ littré, maximilien-paul-Émile, ii., homes of, longfellow, henry wadsworth, i., quoted, lorris, guillaume de, i., began the roman of the rose, louis vi., i., wall and towers of, - louis vii., ii., gives site in the marais to the templars, louis ix. (saint-louis), i., louis xi., i., entry into paris on accession, ; ii., residence in the tournelles, _et seq._ louis xii., i., ancient well once his property, ; patron of pierre gringoire, ; ii., in the marais, ; marries anne of brittany, ; marries mary, sister of henry viii. of england, louis xiii., "the just," i., opens building sites on Île saint-louis, ; vincent de paul his confessor, ; permits "les comédiens du marais" to style themselves "la troupe royale," - ; ii., marries anne of austria, ; statue of, louis xiv., ii., enters paris with his bride, - ; witness of his marriage procession, louis xvi., i., institutes the "model prison" of la force, louis xviii., ii., why he pensioned victor hugo, - louis of orleans, i., statue of, ; assassinated, ; his widow, ; ii., at the hôtel barbette with isabelle of bavaria, lulli, musician, i., house of, still in perfect condition, lutetia, i., gallic and roman, ; gallo-roman wall of, ; wall built by louis vi., ; ii., - macaulay, thomas babington, i., "criticises" french names, maison de la reine blanche, i., _et seq._ maistre, joseph de, ii., quoted on the massacre of saint-bartholomew's night, mancini, anne, duchesse de bouillon, niece of mazarin, i., - mansart, françois, ii., house in the marais, mansart, jules hardouin, nephew of françois, ii., superintendent of buildings under louis xiv., ; specimens of his work, , marais, the, ii., scarron's house in, ; wall of philippe-auguste, ; wall of charles v., - ; wall of the temple, ; monasteries in, ; relics of old houses in, - , _et seq._; mme. de maintenon's apartment in, marat, jean-paul, i., paris apartment of, marcel, Étienne, i., statue of, ; ii., "prévôt des marchands," ; froissart's description of his death, ; estimate of, - marcus aurelius, i., compared with saint louis, marguerite of navarre. i., befriends the huguenots, , marguerite of valois, divorced wife of henri iv., ii., home in the marais, _et seq._; clouet's portrait of, mattioli, count ercolo antonio, ii., probably the "man in the iron mask," mazarin, cardinal, i., his college, now the palais de l'institut, medicine, school of, i., ; present site of that of the fifteenth century, mérimée, prosper, ii., homes of, meung, jean de, i., completes the roman of the rose; site of his house, michel, charles, abbé de l'Épée, i., bust of, ; statue of, by deaf-mute artist, - mirabeau, i., house where he died, molière (jean poquelin), i., birthplace, ; baptized at saint-eustache, ; site of college, ; imprisoned in the grand châtelet, ; site of paris theatres, ; married in saint-germain-l'auxerrois, ; site of his widow's theatre, ; fountain erected to his memory, ; residence at auteuil, _et seq._; his arm-chair in the theâtre français, - monval, m., i., morley, john, i., on voltaire, ; on diderot, ; on the encyclopædia, palais des thermes, i., frigidarium of, in the cluny museum, palissy, bernard, i., homes in paris, - palloy "le patriote," ii., contracts to demolish the bastille walls, et seq. pascal, blaise, i., commemorative tablet to, ; site of experiments, ; where buried, philippe-auguste, i., wall of, _et seq._; ii., ; round towers of, ; paves main streets of paris, place dauphine, i., mme. roland's girlhood's home in, ---- de grève, i., , ---- du parvis-notre-dame, i., ---- royale, ii., _et seq._ ---- saint-andré-des-arts, i., site of ancient church of that name, pompadour, la, i., house of, unchanged, portes, i., de buci, , ---- dauphine, ---- de nesle, ---- saint-antoine, ---- saint-bernard, ---- saint-denis, ---- saint-jacques, , ---- saint-marcel, ---- saint-martin, ---- saint-victor, ponts, i., d'arcole, ---- des arts, ---- au change, ---- au double, ---- louis-philippe, ---- aux meuniers, ---- neuf, , ---- notre-dame, ---- petit-, - , ---- rouge, ---- royal, ---- de la tournelle, pôternes, i., barbette, ---- des barrés, ---- baudoyer, ---- beaubourg, quais, i., d'anjou, ---- de bourbon, ---- des célestins, ---- henri iv., ---- des lunettes, ---- malaquais, la fontaine lived on, ; house of the elder visconti still intact, ; humboldt lived on, ; cardinal mazarin the largest builder on, ---- d'orléans, ---- ii., de la tournelle, , , quinet, edgar, ii., house of, rachel (Élisa-rachel félix), ii., homes in the marais, - racine, jean, i., student in collége d'harcourt, ; homes in paris, _et seq._; relations with molière and corneille, - ; his house in rue visconti, ; family life, - ; death and burial, racine, louis, i., récamier, mme., ii., homes of, - renan, ernest, i., pupil of dupanloup, in saint-nicolas-du-chardonnet, ; ii., homes of, _et seq._ richelieu, cardinal, i., widened paris streets, , ; his theatre, - robespierre, maximilien, i., homes in paris, - rollin, charles, historian, i., his residence unchanged, rousseau, jean-jacques, i., traces of, in paris, - rue, d'arras, i., ---- du bac, i., ---- boutebrie, i., mediæval staircase, ---- de braque, i., ---- de la bucherie, i., ---- du cardinal-lemoine, i., , , ---- cassini, ii., site of balzac's house in, ---- chanoinesse, i., ---- du cimetière-saint-benoît, i., retains some ancient houses, ---- clovis, i., contains fragment of wall of philippe-auguste, , ---- dauphine, i., tablet at no. , ---- descartes, i., cottages on the wall of philippe-auguste, ---- du dragon, ii., hugo's house in, ---- des Écoles, i., bronze statue of dante, ---- Étienne-marcel, i., contains last fragment of the hôtel de bourgogne, ---- de fer-à-moulin, i., contains fragment of scipio sardini's villa, - ---- de la ferronerie, i., scene of henri iv.'s assassination, , , ---- françois-miron, ii., balcony of the louis xiv. period, ---- des francs-bourgeois, i., - ; ii., relics of antiquity in, _et seq._ ---- galande, ii., houses of the time of charles ix., ---- des gobelins, i., country house of blanche of castile, - ---- guénégaud, contains a tower of philippe-auguste, i., ; ii., ---- des innocents, i., vaults of cemetery des innocents in good preservation, ---- des marais-saint-germain (now visconti), house where louis racine was born, ---- de la parcheminerie, i., superb façade, ---- de poissy, i., refectory of the bernardin convent, ---- saint-andré-des-arts, site of the original porte de buci, saint-benoît-le-bétourné, i., chapel of the martyrs, ---- nicolas-du-chardonnet, i., where calvin and renan made their studies, ---- paul, cemetery of, ii., - saint-pierre, henri-bernardin de, i., , sainte-beuve, charles-augustin, i., room in the cour du commerce, ; ii., his homes in paris, , sainte-pélagie, i., prison of, salle-des-gardes, i., relic of the old palace, salpêtrière, the, i., , sand, george (mme. dudevant), ii., homes in paris, - sapeurs-pompiers, i., its _caserne_ a specimen of thirteenth century architecture, sardini, scipio, i., villa of, - sardou, victorien, i., collections of, , ; relic of corneille, ; of danton, saxe, maurice de, i., residences of, - scarron, paul, ii., house in the marais, - scribe, eugène, i., commemorative tablet of, sellier, m. charles, i., sévigné, mme. de, ii., born in the marais, ; her fondness for the carnavalet, - staël, mme. de, ii., stairway, i., of la reine blanche, _et seq._ ---- i., of dagobert, _et seq._ ---- i., of jean "sans-peur," , sully, duc de, i., ; ii., residence of, , - surville, mme. laure de, ii., balzac's letters to, ; shelters balzac's widow, taine, hippolyte-adolphe, ii., house where he died, talma, joseph-françois, i., homes in paris, - taylor, mlle. blanche, i., temple, the, ii., rise and fall of, - terror, the, i., three famous victims of, - ; ii., , thackeray, william makepeace, ii., in paris, - tocqueville, alexis-charles-henri clérel, comte de, ii., residences in the scholars' quarter, , tour barbeau, i., ---- de l'horloge, i., ---- jean "sans-peur," i., , , _et seq._ ---- de nesle, i., , ---- "qui-fait-le-coin," i., tournelles, the, ii., dwelt in by bedford, ; by charles vii. and louis xi., - ; by françois i., - ; lists of, - turlupin, i., comedian of the théâtre du marais, _ville, la_, i., ville d'avray, ii., balzac's house in, - villeparisis, ii., home of balzac's father, villon, françois, i., ; sketch of, - visconti, valentine, duchesse d'orléans, i., ; incites dunois to avenge his father's murder, voie du midi, the, i., now rue saint-jacques, voltaire, françois-marie arouet, i., baptized at saint-andré-des-arts, , ; sketch of, _et seq._; at the café procope, books & characters french & english _by_ lytton strachey london first published may to john maynard keynes _the following papers are reprinted by kind permission of the editors of the independent review, the new quarterly, the athenaeum, and the edinburgh review._ _the 'dialogue' is now printed for the first time, from a manuscript, apparently in the handwriting of voltaire and belonging to his english period_. contents racine sir thomas browne shakespeare's final period the lives of the poets madame du deffand voltaire and england a dialogue voltaire's tragedies voltaire and frederick the great the rousseau affair the poetry of blake the last elizabethan henri beyle lady hester stanhope mr. creevey index racine when ingres painted his vast 'apotheosis of homer,' he represented, grouped round the central throne, all the great poets of the ancient and modern worlds, with a single exception--shakespeare. after some persuasion, he relented so far as to introduce into his picture a _part_ of that offensive personage; and english visitors at the louvre can now see, to their disgust or their amusement, the truncated image of rather less than half of the author of _king lear_ just appearing at the extreme edge of the enormous canvas. french taste, let us hope, has changed since the days of ingres; shakespeare would doubtless now be advanced--though perhaps chiefly from a sense of duty--to the very steps of the central throne. but if an english painter were to choose a similar subject, how would he treat the master who stands acknowledged as the most characteristic representative of the literature of france? would racine find a place in the picture at all? or, if he did, would more of him be visible than the last curl of his full-bottomed wig, whisking away into the outer darkness? there is something inexplicable about the intensity of national tastes and the violence of national differences. if, as in the good old days, i could boldly believe a frenchman to be an inferior creature, while he, as simply, wrote me down a savage, there would be an easy end of the matter. but alas! _nous avons changé tout cela_. now we are each of us obliged to recognise that the other has a full share of intelligence, ability, and taste; that the accident of our having been born on different sides of the channel is no ground for supposing either that i am a brute or that he is a ninny. but, in that case, how does it happen that while on one side of that 'span of waters' racine is despised and shakespeare is worshipped, on the other, shakespeare is tolerated and racine is adored? the perplexing question was recently emphasised and illustrated in a singular way. mr. john bailey, in a volume of essays entitled 'the claims of french poetry,' discussed the qualities of racine at some length, placed him, not without contumely, among the second rank of writers, and drew the conclusion that, though indeed the merits of french poetry are many and great, it is not among the pages of racine that they are to be found. within a few months of the appearance of mr. bailey's book, the distinguished french writer and brilliant critic, m. lemaître, published a series of lectures on racine, in which the highest note of unqualified panegyric sounded uninterruptedly from beginning to end. the contrast is remarkable, and the conflicting criticisms seem to represent, on the whole, the views of the cultivated classes in the two countries. and it is worthy of note that neither of these critics pays any heed, either explicitly or by implication, to the opinions of the other. they are totally at variance, but they argue along lines so different and so remote that they never come into collision. mr. bailey, with the utmost sang-froid, sweeps on one side the whole of the literary tradition of france. it is as if a french critic were to assert that shakespeare, the elizabethans, and the romantic poets of the nineteenth century were all negligible, and that england's really valuable contribution to the poetry of the world was to be found among the writings of dryden and pope. m. lemaître, on the other hand, seems sublimely unconscious that any such views as mr. bailey's could possibly exist. nothing shows more clearly racine's supreme dominion over his countrymen than the fact that m. lemaître never questions it for a moment, and tacitly assumes on every page of his book that his only duty is to illustrate and amplify a greatness already recognised by all. indeed, after reading m. lemaître's book, one begins to understand more clearly why it is that english critics find it difficult to appreciate to the full the literature of france. it is no paradox to say that that country is as insular as our own. when we find so eminent a critic as m. lemaître observing that racine 'a vraiment "achevé" et porté à son point suprême de perfection _la tragédie_, cette étonnante forme d'art, et qui est bien de chez nous: car on la trouve peu chez les anglais,' is it surprising that we should hastily jump to the conclusion that the canons and the principles of a criticism of this kind will not repay, and perhaps do not deserve, any careful consideration? certainly they are not calculated to spare the susceptibilities of englishmen. and, after all, this is only natural; a french critic addresses a french audience; like a rabbi in a synagogue, he has no need to argue and no wish to convert. perhaps, too, whether he willed or no, he could do very little to the purpose; for the difficulties which beset an englishman in his endeavours to appreciate a writer such as racine are precisely of the kind which a frenchman is least able either to dispel or even to understand. the object of this essay is, first, to face these difficulties, with the aid of mr. bailey's paper, which sums up in an able and interesting way the average english view of the matter; and, in the second place, to communicate to the english reader a sense of the true significance and the immense value of racine's work. whether the attempt succeed or fail, some important general questions of literary doctrine will have been discussed; and, in addition, at least an effort will have been made to vindicate a great reputation. for, to a lover of racine, the fact that english critics of mr. bailey's calibre can write of him as they do, brings a feeling not only of entire disagreement, but of almost personal distress. strange as it may seem to those who have been accustomed to think of that great artist merely as a type of the frigid pomposity of an antiquated age, his music, to ears that are attuned to hear it, comes fraught with a poignancy of loveliness whose peculiar quality is shared by no other poetry in the world. to have grown familiar with the voice of racine, to have realised once and for all its intensity, its beauty, and its depth, is to have learnt a new happiness, to have discovered something exquisite and splendid, to have enlarged the glorious boundaries of art. for such benefits as these who would not be grateful? who would not seek to make them known to others, that they too may enjoy, and render thanks? m. lemaître, starting out, like a native of the mountains, from a point which can only be reached by english explorers after a long journey and a severe climb, devotes by far the greater part of his book to a series of brilliant psychological studies of racine's characters. he leaves on one side almost altogether the questions connected both with racine's dramatic construction, and with his style; and these are the very questions by which english readers are most perplexed, and which they are most anxious to discuss. his style in particular--using the word in its widest sense--forms the subject of the principal part of mr. bailey's essay; it is upon this count that the real force of mr. bailey's impeachment depends; and, indeed, it is obvious that no poet can be admired or understood by those who quarrel with the whole fabric of his writing and condemn the very principles of his art. before, however, discussing this, the true crux of the question, it may be well to consider briefly another matter which deserves attention, because the english reader is apt to find in it a stumbling-block at the very outset of his inquiry. coming to racine with shakespeare and the rest of the elizabethans warm in his memory, it is only to be expected that he should be struck with a chilling sense of emptiness and unreality. after the colour, the moving multiplicity, the imaginative luxury of our early tragedies, which seem to have been moulded out of the very stuff of life and to have been built up with the varied and generous structure of nature herself, the frenchman's dramas, with their rigid uniformity of setting, their endless duologues, their immense harangues, their spectral confidants, their strict exclusion of all visible action, give one at first the same sort of impression as a pretentious pseudo-classical summer-house appearing suddenly at the end of a vista, after one has been rambling through an open forest. 'la scène est à buthrote, ville d'epire, dans une salle du palais de pyrrhus'--could anything be more discouraging than such an announcement? here is nothing for the imagination to feed on, nothing to raise expectation, no wondrous vision of 'blasted heaths,' or the 'seaboard of bohemia'; here is only a hypothetical drawing-room conjured out of the void for five acts, simply in order that the persons of the drama may have a place to meet in and make their speeches. the 'three unities' and the rest of the 'rules' are a burden which the english reader finds himself quite unaccustomed to carry; he grows impatient of them; and, if he is a critic, he points out the futility and the unreasonableness of those antiquated conventions. even mr. bailey, who, curiously enough, believes that racine 'stumbled, as it were, half by accident into great advantages' by using them, speaks of the 'discredit' into which 'the once famous unities' have now fallen, and declares that 'the unities of time and place are of no importance in themselves.' so far as critics are concerned this may be true; but critics are apt to forget that plays can exist somewhere else than in books, and a very small acquaintance with contemporary drama is enough to show that, upon the stage at any rate, the unities, so far from having fallen into discredit, are now in effect triumphant. for what is the principle which underlies and justifies the unities of time and place? surely it is not, as mr. bailey would have us believe, that of the 'unity of action or interest,' for it is clear that every good drama, whatever its plan of construction, must possess a single dominating interest, and that it may happen--as in _antony and cleopatra_, for instance--that the very essence of this interest lies in the accumulation of an immense variety of local activities and the representation of long epochs of time. the true justification for the unities of time and place is to be found in the conception of drama as the history of a spiritual crisis--the vision, thrown up, as it were, by a bull's-eye lantern, of the final catastrophic phases of a long series of events. very different were the views of the elizabethan tragedians, who aimed at representing not only the catastrophe, but the whole development of circumstances of which it was the effect; they traced, with elaborate and abounding detail, the rise, the growth, the decline, and the ruin of great causes and great persons; and the result was a series of masterpieces unparalleled in the literature of the world. but, for good or evil, these methods have become obsolete, and to-day our drama seems to be developing along totally different lines. it is playing the part, more and more consistently, of the bull's-eye lantern; it is concerned with the crisis, and nothing but the crisis; and, in proportion as its field is narrowed and its vision intensified, the unities of time and place come more and more completely into play. thus, from the point of view of form, it is true to say that it has been the drama of racine rather than that of shakespeare that has survived. plays of the type of _macbeth_ have been superseded by plays of the type of _britannicus_. _britannicus_, no less than _macbeth_, is the tragedy of a criminal; but it shows us, instead of the gradual history of the temptation and the fall, followed by the fatal march of consequences, nothing but the precise psychological moment in which the first irrevocable step is taken, and the criminal is made. the method of _macbeth_ has been, as it were, absorbed by that of the modern novel; the method of _britannicus_ still rules the stage. but racine carried out his ideals more rigorously and more boldly than any of his successors. he fixed the whole of his attention upon the spiritual crisis; to him that alone was of importance; and the conventional classicism so disheartening to the english reader--the 'unities,' the harangues, the confidences, the absence of local colour, and the concealment of the action--was no more than the machinery for enhancing the effect of the inner tragedy, and for doing away with every side issue and every chance of distraction. his dramas must be read as one looks at an airy, delicate statue, supported by artificial props, whose only importance lies in the fact that without them the statue itself would break in pieces and fall to the ground. approached in this light, even the 'salle du palais de pyrrhus' begins to have a meaning. we come to realise that, if it is nothing else, it is at least the meeting-ground of great passions, the invisible framework for one of those noble conflicts which 'make one little room an everywhere.' it will show us no views, no spectacles, it will give us no sense of atmosphere or of imaginative romance; but it will allow us to be present at the climax of a tragedy, to follow the closing struggle of high destinies, and to witness the final agony of human hearts. it is remarkable that mr. bailey, while seeming to approve of the classicism of racine's dramatic form, nevertheless finds fault with him for his lack of a quality with which, by its very nature, the classical form is incompatible. racine's vision, he complains, does not 'take in the whole of life'; we do not find in his plays 'the whole pell-mell of human existence'; and this is true, because the particular effects which racine wished to produce necessarily involved this limitation of the range of his interests. his object was to depict the tragic interaction of a small group of persons at the culminating height of its intensity; and it is as irrational to complain of his failure to introduce into his compositions 'the whole pell-mell of human existence' as it would be to find fault with a mozart quartet for not containing the orchestration of wagner. but it is a little difficult to make certain of the precise nature of mr. bailey's criticism. when he speaks of racine's vision not including 'the whole of life,' when he declares that racine cannot be reckoned as one of the 'world-poets,' he seems to be taking somewhat different ground and discussing a more general question. all truly great poets, he asserts, have 'a wide view of humanity,' 'a large view of life'--a profound sense, in short, of the relations between man and the universe; and, since racine is without this quality, his claim to true poetic greatness must be denied. but, even upon the supposition that this view of racine's philosophical outlook is the true one--and, in its most important sense, i believe that it is not--does mr. bailey's conclusion really follow? is it possible to test a poet's greatness by the largeness of his 'view of life'? how wide, one would like to know, was milton's 'view of humanity'? and, though wordsworth's sense of the position of man in the universe was far more profound than dante's, who will venture to assert that he was the greater poet? the truth is that we have struck here upon a principle which lies at the root, not only of mr. bailey's criticism of racine, but of an entire critical method--the method which attempts to define the essential elements of poetry in general, and then proceeds to ask of any particular poem whether it possesses these elements, and to judge it accordingly. how often this method has been employed, and how often it has proved disastrously fallacious! for, after all, art is not a superior kind of chemistry, amenable to the rules of scientific induction. its component parts cannot be classified and tested, and there is a spark within it which defies foreknowledge. when matthew arnold declared that the value of a new poem might be gauged by comparing it with the greatest passages in the acknowledged masterpieces of literature, he was falling into this very error; for who could tell that the poem in question was not itself a masterpiece, living by the light of an unknown beauty, and a law unto itself? it is the business of the poet to break rules and to baffle expectation; and all the masterpieces in the world cannot make a precedent. thus mr. bailey's attempts to discover, by quotations from shakespeare, sophocles, and goethe, the qualities without which no poet can be great, and his condemnation of racine because he is without them, is a fallacy in criticism. there is only one way to judge a poet, as wordsworth, with that paradoxical sobriety so characteristic of him, has pointed out--and that is, by loving him. but mr. bailey, with regard to racine at any rate, has not followed the advice of wordsworth. let us look a little more closely into the nature of his attack. 'l'épithète rare,' said the de goncourts,'voilà la marque de l'écrivain.' mr. bailey quotes the sentence with approval, observing that if, with sainte-beuve, we extend the phrase to 'le mot rare,' we have at once one of those invaluable touch-stones with which we may test the merit of poetry. and doubtless most english readers would be inclined to agree with mr. bailey, for it so happens that our own literature is one in which rarity of style, pushed often to the verge of extravagance, reigns supreme. owing mainly, no doubt, to the double origin of our language, with its strange and violent contrasts between the highly-coloured crudity of the saxon words and the ambiguous splendour of the latin vocabulary; owing partly, perhaps, to a national taste for the intensely imaginative, and partly, too, to the vast and penetrating influence of those grand masters of bizarrerie--the hebrew prophets--our poetry, our prose, and our whole conception of the art of writing have fallen under the dominion of the emphatic, the extraordinary, and the bold. no one in his senses would regret this, for it has given our literature all its most characteristic glories, and, of course, in shakespeare, with whom expression is stretched to the bursting point, the national style finds at once its consummate example and its final justification. but the result is that we have grown so unused to other kinds of poetical beauty, that we have now come to believe, with mr. bailey, that poetry apart from 'le mot rare' is an impossibility. the beauties of restraint, of clarity, of refinement, and of precision we pass by unheeding; we can see nothing there but coldness and uniformity; and we go back with eagerness to the fling and the bravado that we love so well. it is as if we had become so accustomed to looking at boxers, wrestlers, and gladiators that the sight of an exquisite minuet produced no effect on us; the ordered dance strikes us as a monotony, for we are blind to the subtle delicacies of the dancers, which are fraught with such significance to the practised eye. but let us be patient, and let us look again. ariane ma soeur, de quel amour blessée, vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes laissée. here, certainly, are no 'mots rares'; here is nothing to catch the mind or dazzle the understanding; here is only the most ordinary vocabulary, plainly set forth. but is there not an enchantment? is there not a vision? is there not a flow of lovely sound whose beauty grows upon the ear, and dwells exquisitely within the memory? racine's triumph is precisely this--that he brings about, by what are apparently the simplest means, effects which other poets must strain every nerve to produce. the narrowness of his vocabulary is in fact nothing but a proof of his amazing art. in the following passage, for instance, what a sense of dignity and melancholy and power is conveyed by the commonest words! enfin j'ouvre les yeux, et je me fais justice: c'est faire à vos beautés un triste sacrifice que de vous présenter, madame, avec ma foi, tout l'âge et le malheur que je traîne avec moi. jusqu'ici la fortune et la victoire mêmes cachaient mes cheveux blancs sous trente diadèmes. mais ce temps-là n'est plus: je régnais; et je fuis: mes ans se sont accrus; mes honneurs sont detruits. is that wonderful 'trente' an 'épithète rare'? never, surely, before or since, was a simple numeral put to such a use--to conjure up so triumphantly such mysterious grandeurs! but these are subtleties which pass unnoticed by those who have been accustomed to the violent appeals of the great romantic poets. as sainte-beuve says, in a fine comparison between racine and shakespeare, to come to the one after the other is like passing to a portrait by ingres from a decoration by rubens. at first, 'comme on a l'oeil rempli de l'éclatante vérité pittoresque du grand maître flamand, on ne voit dans l'artiste français qu'un ton assez uniforme, une teinte diffuse de pâle et douce lumière. mais qu'on approche de plus près et qu'on observe avec soin: mille nuances fines vont éclore sous le regard; mille intentions savantes vont sortir de ce tissu profond et serré; on ne peut plus en détacher ses yeux.' similarly when mr. bailey, turning from the vocabulary to more general questions of style, declares that there is no 'element of fine surprise' in racine, no trace of the 'daring metaphors and similes of pindar and the greek choruses--the reply is that he would find what he wants if he only knew where to look for it. 'who will forget,' he says, 'the comparison of the atreidae to the eagles wheeling over their empty nest, of war to the money-changer whose gold dust is that of human bodies, of helen to the lion's whelps?... everyone knows these. who will match them among the formal elegances of racine?' and it is true that when racine wished to create a great effect he did not adopt the romantic method; he did not chase his ideas through the four quarters of the universe to catch them at last upon the verge of the inane; and anyone who hopes to come upon 'fine surprises' of this kind in his pages will be disappointed. his daring is of a different kind; it is not the daring of adventure but of intensity; his fine surprises are seized out of the very heart of his subject, and seized in a single stroke. thus many of his most astonishing phrases burn with an inward concentration of energy, which, difficult at first to realise to the full, comes in the end to impress itself ineffaceably upon the mind. c'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit. the sentence is like a cavern whose mouth a careless traveller might pass by, but which opens out, to the true explorer, into vista after vista of strange recesses rich with inexhaustible gold. but, sometimes, the phrase, compact as dynamite, explodes upon one with an immediate and terrific force-- c'est vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée! a few 'formal elegances' of this kind are surely worth having. but what is it that makes the english reader fail to recognise the beauty and the power of such passages as these? besides racine's lack of extravagance and bravura, besides his dislike of exaggerated emphasis and far-fetched or fantastic imagery, there is another characteristic of his style to which we are perhaps even more antipathetic--its suppression of detail. the great majority of poets--and especially of english poets--produce their most potent effects by the accumulation of details--details which in themselves fascinate us either by their beauty or their curiosity or their supreme appropriateness. but with details racine will have nothing to do; he builds up his poetry out of words which are not only absolutely simple but extremely general, so that our minds, failing to find in it the peculiar delights to which we have been accustomed, fall into the error of rejecting it altogether as devoid of significance. and the error is a grave one, for in truth nothing is more marvellous than the magic with which racine can conjure up out of a few expressions of the vaguest import a sense of complete and intimate reality. when shakespeare wishes to describe a silent night he does so with a single stroke of detail--'not a mouse stirring'! and virgil adds touch upon touch of exquisite minutiae: cum tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pictaeque volucres, quaeque lacus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dumis rura tenent, etc. racine's way is different, but is it less masterly? mais tout dort, et l'armée, et les vents, et neptune. what a flat and feeble set of expressions! is the englishman's first thought--with the conventional 'neptune,' and the vague 'armée,' and the commonplace 'vents.' and he forgets to notice the total impression which these words produce--the atmosphere of darkness and emptiness and vastness and ominous hush. it is particularly in regard to racine's treatment of nature that this generalised style creates misunderstandings. 'is he so much as aware,' exclaims mr. bailey, 'that the sun rises and sets in a glory of colour, that the wind plays deliciously on human cheeks, that the human ear will never have enough of the music of the sea? he might have written every page of his work without so much as looking out of the window of his study.' the accusation gains support from the fact that racine rarely describes the processes of nature by means of pictorial detail; that, we know, was not his plan. but he is constantly, with his subtle art, suggesting them. in this line, for instance, he calls up, without a word of definite description, the vision of a sudden and brilliant sunrise: déjà le jour plus grand nous frappe et nous éclaire. and how varied and beautiful are his impressions of the sea! he can give us the desolation of a calm: la rame inutile fatigua vainement une mer immobile; or the agitated movements of a great fleet of galleys: voyez tout l'hellespont blanchissant sous nos rames; or he can fill his verses with the disorder and the fury of a storm: quoi! pour noyer les grecs et leurs mille vaisseaux, mer, tu n'ouvriras pas des abymes nouveaux! quoi! lorsque les chassant du port qui les recèle, l'aulide aura vomi leur flotte criminelle, les vents, les mêmes vents, si longtemps accusés, ne te couvriront pas de ses vaisseaux brisés! and then, in a single line, he can evoke the radiant spectacle of a triumphant flotilla riding the dancing waves: prêts à vous recevoir mes vaisseaux vous attendent; et du pied de l'autel vous y pouvez monter, souveraine des mers qui vous doivent porter. the art of subtle suggestion could hardly go further than in this line, where the alliterating v's, the mute e's, and the placing of the long syllables combine so wonderfully to produce the required effect. but it is not only suggestions of nature that readers like mr. bailey are unable to find in racine--they miss in him no less suggestions of the mysterious and the infinite. no doubt this is partly due to our english habit of associating these qualities with expressions which are complex and unfamiliar. when we come across the mysterious accent of fatality and remote terror in a single perfectly simple phrase-- la fille de minos et de pasiphaé we are apt not to hear that it is there. but there is another reason--the craving, which has seized upon our poetry and our criticism ever since the triumph of wordsworth and coleridge at the beginning of the last century, for metaphysical stimulants. it would be easy to prolong the discussion of this matter far beyond the boundaries of 'sublunary debate,' but it is sufficient to point out that mr. bailey's criticism of racine affords an excellent example of the fatal effects of this obsession. his pages are full of references to 'infinity' and 'the unseen' and 'eternity' and 'a mystery brooding over a mystery' and 'the key to the secret of life'; and it is only natural that he should find in these watchwords one of those tests of poetic greatness of which he is so fond. the fallaciousness of such views as these becomes obvious when we remember the plain fact that there is not a trace of this kind of mystery or of these 'feelings after the key to the secret of life,' in _paradise lost_, and that _paradise lost_ is one of the greatest poems in the world. but milton is sacrosanct in england; no theory, however mistaken, can shake that stupendous name, and the damage which may be wrought by a vicious system of criticism only becomes evident in its treatment of writers like racine, whom it can attack with impunity and apparent success. there is no 'mystery' in racine--that is to say, there are no metaphysical speculations in him, no suggestions of the transcendental, no hints as to the ultimate nature of reality and the constitution of the world; and so away with him, a creature of mere rhetoric and ingenuities, to the outer limbo! but if, instead of asking what a writer is without, we try to discover simply what he is, will not our results be more worthy of our trouble? and in fact, if we once put out of our heads our longings for the mystery of metaphysical suggestion, the more we examine racine, the more clearly we shall discern in him another kind of mystery, whose presence may eventually console us for the loss of the first--the mystery of the mind of man. this indeed is the framework of his poetry, and to speak of it adequately would demand a wider scope than that of an essay; for how much might be written of that strange and moving background, dark with the profundity of passion and glowing with the beauty of the sublime, wherefrom the great personages of his tragedies--hermione and mithridate, roxane and agrippine, athalie and phèdre--seem to emerge for a moment towards us, whereon they breathe and suffer, and among whose depths they vanish for ever from our sight! look where we will, we shall find among his pages the traces of an inward mystery and the obscure infinities of the heart. nous avons su toujours nous aimer et nous taire. the line is a summary of the romance and the anguish of two lives. that is all affection; and this all desire-- j'aimais jusqu'à ses pleurs que je faisais couler. or let us listen to the voice of phèdre, when she learns that hippolyte and aricie love one another: les a-t-on vus souvent se parler, se chercher? dans le fond des forêts alloient-ils se cacher? hélas! ils se voyaient avec pleine licence; le ciel de leurs soupirs approuvait l'innocence; ils suivaient sans remords leur penchant amoureux; tous les jours se levaient clairs et sereins pour eux. this last line--written, let us remember, by a frigidly ingenious rhetorician, who had never looked out of his study-window--does it not seem to mingle, in a trance of absolute simplicity, the peerless beauty of a claude with the misery and ruin of a great soul? it is, perhaps, as a psychologist that racine has achieved his most remarkable triumphs; and the fact that so subtle and penetrating a critic as m. lemaître has chosen to devote the greater part of a volume to the discussion of his characters shows clearly enough that racine's portrayal of human nature has lost nothing of its freshness and vitality with the passage of time. on the contrary, his admirers are now tending more and more to lay stress upon the brilliance of his portraits, the combined vigour and intimacy of his painting, his amazing knowledge, and his unerring fidelity to truth. m. lemaître, in fact, goes so far as to describe racine as a supreme realist, while other writers have found in him the essence of the modern spirit. these are vague phrases, no doubt, but they imply a very definite point of view; and it is curious to compare with it our english conception of racine as a stiff and pompous kind of dancing-master, utterly out of date and infinitely cold. and there is a similar disagreement over his style. mr. bailey is never tired of asserting that racine's style is rhetorical, artificial, and monotonous; while m. lemaître speaks of it as 'nu et familier,' and sainte-beuve says 'il rase la prose, mais avec des ailes,' the explanation of these contradictions is to be found in the fact that the two critics are considering different parts of the poet's work. when racine is most himself, when he is seizing upon a state of mind and depicting it with all its twistings and vibrations, he writes with a directness which is indeed naked, and his sentences, refined to the utmost point of significance, flash out like swords, stroke upon stroke, swift, certain, irresistible. this is how agrippine, in the fury of her tottering ambition, bursts out to burrhus, the tutor of her son: prétendez-vous longtemps me cacher l'empereur? ne le verrai-je plus qu'à titre d'importune? ai-je donc élevé si haut votre fortune pour mettre une barrière entre mon fils et moi? ne l'osez-vous laisser un moment sur sa foi? entre sénèque et vous disputez-vous la gloire a qui m'effacera plus tôt de sa mémoire? vous l'ai-je confié pour en faire un ingrat, pour être, sous son nom, les maîtres de l'état? certes, plus je médite, et moins je me figure que vous m'osiez compter pour votre créature; vous, dont j'ai pu laisser vieillir l'ambition dans les honneurs obscurs de quelque légion; et moi, qui sur le trône ai suivi mes ancêtres, moi, fille, femme, soeur, et mère de vos maîtres! when we come upon a passage like this we know, so to speak, that the hunt is up and the whole field tearing after the quarry. but racine, on other occasions, has another way of writing. he can be roundabout, artificial, and vague; he can involve a simple statement in a mist of high-sounding words and elaborate inversions. jamais l'aimable soeur des cruels pallantides trempa-t-elle aux complots de ses frères perfides. that is racine's way of saying that aricie did not join in her brothers' conspiracy. he will describe an incriminating letter as 'de sa trahison ce gage trop sincère.' it is obvious that this kind of expression has within it the germs of the 'noble' style of the eighteenth-century tragedians, one of whom, finding himself obliged to mention a dog, got out of the difficulty by referring to--'de la fidélité le respectable appui.' this is the side of racine's writing that puzzles and disgusts mr. bailey. but there is a meaning in it, after all. every art is based upon a selection, and the art of racine selected the things of the spirit for the material of its work. the things of sense--physical objects and details, and all the necessary but insignificant facts that go to make up the machinery of existence--these must be kept out of the picture at all hazards. to have called a spade a spade would have ruined the whole effect; spades must never be mentioned, or, at the worst, they must be dimly referred to as agricultural implements, so that the entire attention may be fixed upon the central and dominating features of the composition--the spiritual states of the characters--which, laid bare with uncompromising force and supreme precision, may thus indelibly imprint themselves upon the mind. to condemn racine on the score of his ambiguities and his pomposities is to complain of the hastily dashed-in column and curtain in the background of a portrait, and not to mention the face. sometimes indeed his art seems to rise superior to its own conditions, endowing even the dross and refuse of what it works in with a wonderful significance. thus when the sultana, roxane, discovers her lover's treachery, her mind flies immediately to thoughts of revenge and death, and she exclaims-- ah! je respire enfin, et ma joie est extrême que le traître une fois se soit trahi lui-même. libre des soins cruels où j'allais m'engager, ma tranquille fureur n'a plus qu'à se venger. qu'il meure. vengeons-nous. courez. qu'on le saisisse! que la main des muets s'arme pour son supplice; qu'ils viennent préparer ces noeuds infortunés par qui de ses pareils les jours sont terminés. to have called a bowstring a bowstring was out of the question; and racine, with triumphant art, has managed to introduce the periphrasis in such a way that it exactly expresses the state of mind of the sultana. she begins with revenge and rage, until she reaches the extremity of virulent resolution; and then her mind begins to waver, and she finally orders the execution of the man she loves, in a contorted agony of speech. but, as a rule, racine's characters speak out most clearly when they are most moved, so that their words, at the height of passion, have an intensity of directness unknown in actual life. in such moments, the phrases that leap to their lips quiver and glow with the compressed significance of character and situation; the 'qui te l'a dit?' of hermione, the 'sortez' of roxane, the 'je vais à rome' of mithridate, the 'dieu des juifs, tu l'emportes!' of athalie--who can forget these things, these wondrous microcosms of tragedy? very different is the shakespearean method. there, as passion rises, expression becomes more and more poetical and vague. image flows into image, thought into thought, until at last the state of mind is revealed, inform and molten, driving darkly through a vast storm of words. such revelations, no doubt, come closer to reality than the poignant epigrams of racine. in life, men's minds are not sharpened, they are diffused, by emotion; and the utterance which best represents them is fluctuating and agglomerated rather than compact and defined. but racine's aim was less to reflect the actual current of the human spirit than to seize upon its inmost being and to give expression to that. one might be tempted to say that his art represents the sublimed essence of reality, save that, after all, reality has no degrees. who can affirm that the wild ambiguities of our hearts and the gross impediments of our physical existence are less real than the most pointed of our feelings and 'thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls'? it would be nearer the truth to rank racine among the idealists. the world of his creation is not a copy of our own; it is a heightened and rarefied extension of it; moving, in triumph and in beauty, through 'an ampler ether, a diviner air.' it is a world where the hesitations and the pettinesses and the squalors of this earth have been fired out; a world where ugliness is a forgotten name, and lust itself has grown ethereal; where anguish has become a grace and death a glory, and love the beginning and the end of all. it is, too, the world of a poet, so that we reach it, not through melody nor through vision, but through the poet's sweet articulation--through verse. upon english ears the rhymed couplets of racine sound strangely; and how many besides mr. bailey have dubbed his alexandrines 'monotonous'! but to his lovers, to those who have found their way into the secret places of his art, his lines are impregnated with a peculiar beauty, and the last perfection of style. over them, the most insignificant of his verses can throw a deep enchantment, like the faintest wavings of a magician's wand. 'a-t-on vu de ma part le roi de comagène?'--how is it that words of such slight import should hold such thrilling music? oh! they are racine's words. and, as to his rhymes, they seem perhaps, to the true worshipper, the final crown of his art. mr. bailey tells us that the couplet is only fit for satire. has he forgotten _lamia_? and he asks, 'how is it that we read pope's _satires_ and dryden's, and johnson's with enthusiasm still, while we never touch _irene_, and rarely the _conquest of granada_?' perhaps the answer is that if we cannot get rid of our _a priori_ theories, even the fiery art of dryden's drama may remain dead to us, and that, if we touched _irene_ even once, we should find it was in blank verse. but dryden himself has spoken memorably upon rhyme. discussing the imputed unnaturalness of the rhymed 'repartee' he says: 'suppose we acknowledge it: how comes this confederacy to be more displeasing to you than in a dance which is well contrived? you see there the united design of many persons to make up one figure; ... the confederacy is plain amongst them, for chance could never produce anything so beautiful; and yet there is nothing in it that shocks your sight ... 'tis an art which appears; but it appears only like the shadowings of painture, which, being to cause the rounding of it, cannot be absent; but while that is considered, they are lost: so while we attend to the other beauties of the matter, the care and labour of the rhyme is carried from us, or at least drowned in its own sweetness, as bees are sometimes buried in their honey.' in this exquisite passage dryden seems to have come near, though not quite to have hit, the central argument for rhyme--its power of creating a beautiful atmosphere, in which what is expressed may be caught away from the associations of common life and harmoniously enshrined. for racine, with his prepossessions of sublimity and perfection, some such barrier between his universe and reality was involved in the very nature of his art. his rhyme is like the still clear water of a lake, through which we can see, mysteriously separated from us and changed and beautified, the forms of his imagination, 'quivering within the wave's intenser day.' and truly not seldom are they 'so sweet, the sense faints picturing them'! oui, prince, je languis, je brûle pour thésée ... il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage, cette noble pudeur colorait son visage, lorsque de notre crète il traversa les flots, digne sujet des voeux des filles de minos. que faisiez-vous alors? pourquoi, sans hippolyte, des héros de la grèce assembla-t-il l'élite? pourquoi, trop jeune encor, ne pûtes-vous alors entrer dans le vaisseau qui le mit sur nos bords? par vous aurait péri le monstre de la crète, malgré tous les détours de sa vaste retraite: pour en développer l'embarras incertain ma soeur du fil fatal eût armé votre main. mais non: dans ce dessein je l'aurais devancée; l'amour m'en eût d'abord inspiré la pensée; c'est moi, prince, c'est moi dont l'utile secours vous eût du labyrinthe enseigné les détours. que de soins m'eût coûtés cette tête charmante! it is difficult to 'place' racine among the poets. he has affinities with many; but likenesses to few. to balance him rigorously against any other--to ask whether he is better or worse than shelley or than virgil--is to attempt impossibilities; but there is one fact which is too often forgotten in comparing his work with that of other poets--with virgil's for instance--racine wrote for the stage. virgil's poetry is intended to be read, racine's to be declaimed; and it is only in the theatre that one can experience to the full the potency of his art. in a sense we can know him in our library, just as we can hear the music of mozart with silent eyes. but, when the strings begin, when the whole volume of that divine harmony engulfs us, how differently then we understand and feel! and so, at the theatre, before one of those high tragedies, whose interpretation has taxed to the utmost ten generations of the greatest actresses of france, we realise, with the shock of a new emotion, what we had but half-felt before. to hear the words of phèdre spoken by the mouth of bernhardt, to watch, in the culminating horror of crime and of remorse, of jealousy, of rage, of desire, and of despair, all the dark forces of destiny crowd down upon that great spirit, when the heavens and the earth reject her, and hell opens, and the terriffic urn of minos thunders and crashes to the ground--that indeed is to come close to immortality, to plunge shuddering through infinite abysses, and to look, if only for a moment, upon eternal light. . sir thomas browne the life of sir thomas browne does not afford much scope for the biographer. everyone knows that browne was a physician who lived at norwich in the seventeenth century; and, so far as regards what one must call, for want of a better term, his 'life,' that is a sufficient summary of all there is to know. it is obvious that, with such scanty and unexciting materials, no biographer can say very much about what sir thomas browne did; it is quite easy, however, to expatiate about what he wrote. he dug deeply into so many subjects, he touched lightly upon so many more, that his works offer innumerable openings for those half-conversational digressions and excursions of which perhaps the pleasantest kind of criticism is composed. mr. gosse, in his volume on sir thomas browne in the 'english men of letters' series, has evidently taken this view of his subject. he has not attempted to treat it with any great profundity or elaboration; he has simply gone 'about it and about.' the result is a book so full of entertainment, of discrimination, of quiet humour, and of literary tact, that no reader could have the heart to bring up against it the obvious--though surely irrelevant--truth, that the general impression which it leaves upon the mind is in the nature of a composite presentment, in which the features of sir thomas have become somehow indissolubly blended with those of his biographer. it would be rash indeed to attempt to improve upon mr. gosse's example; after his luminous and suggestive chapters on browne's life at norwich, on the _vulgar errors_, and on the self-revelations in the _religio medici_, there seems to be no room for further comment. one can only admire in silence, and hand on the volume to one's neighbour. there is, however, one side of browne's work upon which it may be worth while to dwell at somewhat greater length. mr. gosse, who has so much to say on such a variety of topics, has unfortunately limited to a very small number of pages his considerations upon what is, after all, the most important thing about the author of _urn burial_ and _the garden of cyrus_--his style. mr. gosse himself confesses that it is chiefly as a master of literary form that browne deserves to be remembered. why then does he tell us so little about his literary form, and so much about his family, and his religion, and his scientific opinions, and his porridge, and who fished up the _murex_? nor is it only owing to its inadequacy that mr. gosse's treatment of browne as an artist in language is the least satisfactory part of his book: for it is difficult not to think that upon this crucial point mr. gosse has for once been deserted by his sympathy and his acumen. in spite of what appears to be a genuine delight in browne's most splendid and characteristic passages, mr. gosse cannot help protesting somewhat acrimoniously against that very method of writing whose effects he is so ready to admire. in practice, he approves; in theory, he condemns. he ranks the _hydriotaphia_ among the gems of english literature; and the prose style of which it is the consummate expression he denounces as fundamentally wrong. the contradiction is obvious; but there can be little doubt that, though browne has, as it were, extorted a personal homage, mr. gosse's real sympathies lie on the other side. his remarks upon browne's effect upon eighteenth-century prose show clearly enough the true bent of his opinions; and they show, too, how completely misleading a preconceived theory may be. the study of sir thomas browne, mr. gosse says, 'encouraged johnson, and with him a whole school of rhetorical writers in the eighteenth century, to avoid circumlocution by the invention of superfluous words, learned but pedantic, in which darkness was concentrated without being dispelled.' such is mr. gosse's account of the influence of browne and johnson upon the later eighteenth-century writers of prose. but to dismiss johnson's influence as something altogether deplorable, is surely to misunderstand the whole drift of the great revolution which he brought about in english letters. the characteristics of the pre-johnsonian prose style--the style which dryden first established and swift brought to perfection--are obvious enough. its advantages are those of clarity and force; but its faults, which, of course, are unimportant in the work of a great master, become glaring in that of the second-rate practitioner. the prose of locke, for instance, or of bishop butler, suffers, in spite of its clarity and vigour, from grave defects. it is very flat and very loose; it has no formal beauty, no elegance, no balance, no trace of the deliberation of art. johnson, there can be no doubt, determined to remedy these evils by giving a new mould to the texture of english prose; and he went back for a model to sir thomas browne. now, as mr. gosse himself observes, browne stands out in a remarkable way from among the great mass of his contemporaries and predecessors, by virtue of his highly developed artistic consciousness. he was, says mr. gosse, 'never carried away. his effects are closely studied, they are the result of forethought and anxious contrivance'; and no one can doubt the truth or the significance of this dictum who compares, let us say, the last paragraphs of _the garden of cyrus_ with any page in _the anatomy of melancholy_. the peculiarities of browne's style--the studied pomp of its latinisms, its wealth of allusion, its tendency towards sonorous antithesis--culminated in his last, though not his best, work, the _christian morals_, which almost reads like an elaborate and magnificent parody of the book of proverbs. with the _christian morals_ to guide him, dr. johnson set about the transformation of the prose of his time. he decorated, he pruned, he balanced; he hung garlands, he draped robes; and he ended by converting the doric order of swift into the corinthian order of gibbon. is it quite just to describe this process as one by which 'a whole school of rhetorical writers' was encouraged 'to avoid circumlocution' by the invention 'of superfluous words,' when it was this very process that gave us the peculiar savour of polished ease which characterises nearly all the important prose of the last half of the eighteenth century--that of johnson himself, of hume, of reynolds, of horace walpole--which can be traced even in burke, and which fills the pages of gibbon? it is, indeed, a curious reflection, but one which is amply justified by the facts, that the _decline and fall_ could not have been precisely what it is, had sir thomas browne never written the _christian morals_. that johnson and his disciples had no inkling of the inner spirit of the writer to whose outward form they owed so much, has been pointed out by mr. gosse, who adds that browne's 'genuine merits were rediscovered and asserted by coleridge and lamb.' but we have already observed that mr. gosse's own assertion of these merits lies a little open to question. his view seems to be, in fact, the precise antithesis of dr. johnson's; he swallows the spirit of browne's writing, and strains at the form. browne, he says, was 'seduced by a certain obscure romance in the terminology of late latin writers,' he used 'adjectives of classical extraction, which are neither necessary nor natural,' he forgot that it is better for a writer 'to consult women and people who have not studied, than those who are too learnedly oppressed by a knowledge of latin and greek.' he should not have said 'oneiro-criticism,' when he meant the interpretation of dreams, nor 'omneity' instead of 'oneness'; and he had 'no excuse for writing about the "pensile" gardens of babylon, when all that is required is expressed by "hanging."' attacks of this kind--attacks upon the elaboration and classicism of browne's style--are difficult to reply to, because they must seem, to anyone who holds a contrary opinion, to betray such a total lack of sympathy with the subject as to make argument all but impossible. to the true browne enthusiast, indeed, there is something almost shocking about the state of mind which would exchange 'pensile' for 'hanging,' and 'asperous' for 'rough,' and would do away with 'digladiation' and 'quodlibetically' altogether. the truth is, that there is a great gulf fixed between those who naturally dislike the ornate, and those who naturally love it. there is no remedy; and to attempt to ignore this fact only emphasises it the more. anyone who is jarred by the expression 'prodigal blazes' had better immediately shut up sir thomas browne. the critic who admits the jar, but continues to appreciate, must present, to the true enthusiast, a spectacle of curious self-contradiction. if once the ornate style be allowed as a legitimate form of art, no attack such as mr. gosse makes on browne's latinisms can possibly be valid. for it is surely an error to judge and to condemn the latinisms without reference to the whole style of which they form a necessary part. mr. gosse, it is true, inclines to treat them as if they were a mere excrescence which could be cut off without difficulty, and might never have existed if browne's views upon the english language had been a little different. browne, he says, 'had come to the conclusion that classic words were the only legitimate ones, the only ones which interpreted with elegance the thoughts of a sensitive and cultivated man, and that the rest were barbarous.' we are to suppose, then, that if he had happened to hold the opinion that saxon words were the only legitimate ones, the _hydriotaphia_ would have been as free from words of classical derivation as the sermons of latimer. a very little reflection and inquiry will suffice to show how completely mistaken this view really is. in the first place, the theory that browne considered all unclassical words 'barbarous' and unfit to interpret his thoughts, is clearly untenable, owing to the obvious fact that his writings are full of instances of the deliberate use of such words. so much is this the case, that pater declares that a dissertation upon style might be written to illustrate browne's use of the words 'thin' and 'dark.' a striking phrase from the _christian morals_ will suffice to show the deliberation with which browne sometimes employed the latter word:--'the areopagy and dark tribunal of our hearts.' if browne had thought the saxon epithet 'barbarous,' why should he have gone out of his way to use it, when 'mysterious' or 'secret' would have expressed his meaning? the truth is clear enough. browne saw that 'dark' was the one word which would give, better than any other, the precise impression of mystery and secrecy which he intended to produce; and so he used it. he did not choose his words according to rule, but according to the effect which he wished them to have. thus, when he wished to suggest an extreme contrast between simplicity and pomp, we find him using saxon words in direct antithesis to classical ones. in the last sentence of _urn burial_, we are told that the true believer, when he is to be buried, is 'as content with six foot as the moles of adrianus.' how could browne have produced the remarkable sense of contrast which this short phrase conveys, if his vocabulary had been limited, in accordance with a linguistic theory, to words of a single stock? there is, of course, no doubt that browne's vocabulary is extraordinarily classical. why is this? the reason is not far to seek. in his most characteristic moments he was almost entirely occupied with thoughts and emotions which can, owing to their very nature, only be expressed in latinistic language. the state of mind which he wished to produce in his readers was nearly always a complicated one: they were to be impressed and elevated by a multiplicity of suggestions and a sense of mystery and awe. 'let thy thoughts,' he says himself, 'be of things which have not entered into the hearts of beasts: think of things long past, and long to come: acquaint thyself with the choragium of the stars, and consider the vast expanse beyond them. let intellectual tubes give thee a glance of things which visive organs reach not. have a glimpse of incomprehensibles; and thoughts of things, which thoughts but tenderly touch.' browne had, in fact, as dr. johnson puts it, 'uncommon sentiments'; and how was he to express them unless by a language of pomp, of allusion, and of elaborate rhythm? not only is the saxon form of speech devoid of splendour and suggestiveness; its simplicity is still further emphasised by a spondaic rhythm which seems to produce (by some mysterious rhythmic law) an atmosphere of ordinary life, where, though the pathetic may be present, there is no place for the complex or the remote. to understand how unsuitable such conditions would be for the highly subtle and rarefied art of sir thomas browne, it is only necessary to compare one of his periods with a typical passage of saxon prose. then they brought a faggot, kindled with fire, and laid the same down at doctor ridley's feet. to whom master latimer spake in this manner: 'be of good comfort, master ridley, and play the man. we shall this day light such a candle, by god's grace, in england, as i trust shall never be put out.' nothing could be better adapted to the meaning and sentiment of this passage than the limpid, even flow of its rhythm. but who could conceive of such a rhythm being ever applicable to the meaning and sentiment of these sentences from the _hydriotaphia_? to extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. we, whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations; and, being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment. here the long, rolling, almost turgid clauses, with their enormous latin substantives, seem to carry the reader forward through an immense succession of ages, until at last, with a sudden change of the rhythm, the whole of recorded time crumbles and vanishes before his eyes. the entire effect depends upon the employment of a rhythmical complexity and subtlety which is utterly alien to saxon prose. it would be foolish to claim a superiority for either of the two styles; it would be still more foolish to suppose that the effects of one might be produced by means of the other. wealth of rhythmical elaboration was not the only benefit which a highly latinised vocabulary conferred on browne. without it, he would never have been able to achieve those splendid strokes of stylistic _bravura_, which were evidently so dear to his nature, and occur so constantly in his finest passages. the precise quality cannot be easily described, but is impossible to mistake; and the pleasure which it produces seems to be curiously analogous to that given by a piece of magnificent brushwork in a rubens or a velasquez. browne's 'brushwork' is certainly unequalled in english literature, except by the very greatest masters of sophisticated art, such as pope and shakespeare; it is the inspiration of sheer technique. such expressions as: 'to subsist in bones and be but pyramidally extant'--'sad and sepulchral pitchers which have no joyful voices'--'predicament of chimaeras'--'the irregularities of vain glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity'--are examples of this consummate mastery of language, examples which, with a multitude of others, singly deserve whole hours of delicious gustation, whole days of absorbed and exquisite worship. it is pleasant to start out for a long walk with such a splendid phrase upon one's lips as: 'according to the ordainer of order and mystical mathematicks of the city of heaven,' to go for miles and miles with the marvellous syllables still rich upon the inward ear, and to return home with them in triumph. it is then that one begins to understand how mistaken it was of sir thomas browne not to have written in simple, short, straightforward saxon english. one other function performed by browne's latinisms must be mentioned, because it is closely connected with the most essential and peculiar of the qualities which distinguish his method of writing. certain classical words, partly owing to their allusiveness, partly owing to their sound, possess a remarkable flavour which is totally absent from those of saxon derivation. such a word, for instance, as 'pyramidally,' gives one at once an immediate sense of something mysterious, something extraordinary, and, at the same time, something almost grotesque. and this subtle blending of mystery and queerness characterises not only browne's choice of words, but his choice of feelings and of thoughts. the grotesque side of his art, indeed, was apparently all that was visible to the critics of a few generations back, who admired him simply and solely for what they called his 'quaintness'; while mr. gosse has flown to the opposite extreme, and will not allow browne any sense of humour at all. the confusion no doubt arises merely from a difference in the point of view. mr. gosse, regarding browne's most important and general effects, rightly fails to detect anything funny in them. the early victorians, however, missed the broad outlines, and were altogether taken up with the obvious grotesqueness of the details. when they found browne asserting that 'cato seemed to dote upon cabbage,' or embroidering an entire paragraph upon the subject of 'pyrrhus his toe,' they could not help smiling; and surely they were quite right. browne, like an impressionist painter, produced his pictures by means of a multitude of details which, if one looks at them in themselves, are discordant, and extraordinary, and even absurd. there can be little doubt that this strongly marked taste for curious details was one of the symptoms of the scientific bent of his mind. for browne was scientific just up to the point where the examination of detail ends, and its coordination begins. he knew little or nothing of general laws; but his interest in isolated phenomena was intense. and the more singular the phenomena, the more he was attracted. he was always ready to begin some strange inquiry. he cannot help wondering: 'whether great-ear'd persons have short necks, long feet, and loose bellies?' 'marcus antoninus philosophus,' he notes in his commonplace book, 'wanted not the advice of the best physicians; yet how warrantable his practice was, to take his repast in the night, and scarce anything but treacle in the day, may admit of great doubt.' to inquire thus is, perhaps, to inquire too curiously; yet such inquiries are the stuff of which great scientific theories are made. browne, however, used his love of details for another purpose: he co-ordinated them, not into a scientific theory, but into a work of art. his method was one which, to be successful, demanded a self-confidence, an imagination, and a technical power, possessed by only the very greatest artists. everyone knows pascal's overwhelming sentence:--'le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie.' it is overwhelming, obviously and immediately; it, so to speak, knocks one down. browne's ultimate object was to create some such tremendous effect as that, by no knock-down blow, but by a multitude of delicate, subtle, and suggestive touches, by an elaborate evocation of memories and half-hidden things, by a mysterious combination of pompous images and odd unexpected trifles drawn together from the ends of the earth and the four quarters of heaven. his success gives him a place beside webster and blake, on one of the very highest peaks of parnassus. and, if not the highest of all, browne's peak is--or so at least it seems from the plains below--more difficult of access than some which are no less exalted. the road skirts the precipice the whole way. if one fails in the style of pascal, one is merely flat; if one fails in the style of browne, one is ridiculous. he who plays with the void, who dallies with eternity, who leaps from star to star, is in danger at every moment of being swept into utter limbo, and tossed forever in the paradise of fools. browne produced his greatest work late in life; for there is nothing in the _religio medici_ which reaches the same level of excellence as the last paragraphs of _the garden of cyrus_ and the last chapter of _urn burial_. a long and calm experience of life seems, indeed, to be the background from which his most amazing sentences start out into being. his strangest phantasies are rich with the spoils of the real world. his art matured with himself; and who but the most expert of artists could have produced this perfect sentence in _the garden of cyrus_, so well known, and yet so impossible not to quote? nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose. this is browne in his most exquisite mood. for his most characteristic, one must go to the concluding pages of _urn burial_, where, from the astonishing sentence beginning--'meanwhile epicurus lies deep in dante's hell'--to the end of the book, the very quintessence of his work is to be found. the subject--mortality in its most generalised aspect--has brought out browne's highest powers; and all the resources of his art--elaboration of rhythm, brilliance of phrase, wealth and variety of suggestion, pomp and splendour of imagination--are accumulated in every paragraph. to crown all, he has scattered through these few pages a multitude of proper names, most of them gorgeous in sound, and each of them carrying its own strange freight of reminiscences and allusions from the unknown depths of the past. as one reads, an extraordinary procession of persons seems to pass before one's eyes--moses, archimedes, achilles, job, hector and charles the fifth, cardan and alaric, gordianus, and pilate, and homer, and cambyses, and the canaanitish woman. among them, one visionary figure flits with a mysterious pre-eminence, flickering over every page, like a familiar and ghostly flame. it is methuselah; and, in browne's scheme, the remote, almost infinite, and almost ridiculous patriarch is--who can doubt?--the only possible centre and symbol of all the rest. but it would be vain to dwell further upon this wonderful and famous chapter, except to note the extraordinary sublimity and serenity of its general tone. browne never states in so many words what his own feelings towards the universe actually are. he speaks of everything but that; and yet, with triumphant art, he manages to convey into our minds an indelible impression of the vast and comprehensive grandeur of his soul. it is interesting--or at least amusing--to consider what are the most appropriate places in which different authors should be read. pope is doubtless at his best in the midst of a formal garden, herrick in an orchard, and shelley in a boat at sea. sir thomas browne demands, perhaps, a more exotic atmosphere. one could read him floating down the euphrates, or past the shores of arabia; and it would be pleasant to open the _vulgar errors_ in constantinople, or to get by heart a chapter of the _christian morals_ between the paws of a sphinx. in england, the most fitting background for his strange ornament must surely be some habitation consecrated to learning, some university which still smells of antiquity and has learnt the habit of repose. the present writer, at any rate, can bear witness to the splendid echo of browne's syllables amid learned and ancient walls; for he has known, he believes, few happier moments than those in which he has rolled the periods of the _hydriotaphia_ out to the darkness and the nightingales through the studious cloisters of trinity. but, after all, who can doubt that it is at oxford that browne himself would choose to linger? may we not guess that he breathed in there, in his boyhood, some part of that mysterious and charming spirit which pervades his words? for one traces something of him, often enough, in the old gardens, and down the hidden streets; one has heard his footstep beside the quiet waters of magdalen; and his smile still hovers amid that strange company of faces which guard, with such a large passivity, the circumference of the sheldonian. . shakespeare's final period the whole of the modern criticism of shakespeare has been fundamentally affected by one important fact. the chronological order of the plays, for so long the object of the vaguest speculation, of random guesses, or at best of isolated 'points,' has been now discovered and reduced to a coherent law. it is no longer possible to suppose that _the tempest_ was written before _romeo and 'juliet_; that _henry vi._ was produced in succession to _henry v._; or that _antony and cleopatra_ followed close upon the heels of _julius caesar_. such theories were sent to limbo for ever, when a study of those plays of whose date we have external evidence revealed the fact that, as shakespeare's life advanced, a corresponding development took place in the metrical structure of his verse. the establishment of metrical tests, by which the approximate position and date of any play can be readily ascertained, at once followed; chaos gave way to order; and, for the first time, critics became able to judge, not only of the individual works, but of the whole succession of the works of shakespeare. upon this firm foundation modern writers have been only too eager to build. it was apparent that the plays, arranged in chronological order, showed something more than a mere development in the technique of verse--a development, that is to say, in the general treatment of characters and subjects, and in the sort of feelings which those characters and subjects were intended to arouse; and from this it was easy to draw conclusions as to the development of the mind of shakespeare itself. such conclusions have, in fact, been constantly drawn. but it must be noted that they all rest upon the tacit assumption, that the character of any given drama is, in fact, a true index to the state of mind of the dramatist composing it. the validity of this assumption has never been proved; it has never been shown, for instance, why we should suppose a writer of farces to be habitually merry; or whether we are really justified in concluding, from the fact that shakespeare wrote nothing but tragedies for six years, that, during that period, more than at any other, he was deeply absorbed in the awful problems of human existence. it is not, however, the purpose of this essay to consider the question of what are the relations between the artist and his art; for it will assume the truth of the generally accepted view, that the character of the one can be inferred from that of the other. what it will attempt to discuss is whether, upon this hypothesis, the most important part of the ordinary doctrine of shakespeare's mental development is justifiable. what, then, is the ordinary doctrine? dr. furnivall states it as follows: shakespeare's course is thus shown to have run from the amorousness and fun of youth, through the strong patriotism of early manhood, to the wrestlings with the dark problems that beset the man of middle age, to the gloom which weighed on shakespeare (as on so many men) in later life, when, though outwardly successful, the world seemed all against him, and his mind dwelt with sympathy on scenes of faithlessness of friends, treachery of relations and subjects, ingratitude of children, scorn of his kind; till at last, in his stratford home again, peace came to him, miranda and perdita in their lovely freshness and charm greeted him, and he was laid by his quiet avon side. and the same writer goes on to quote with approval professor dowden's likening of shakespeare to a ship, beaten and storm-tossed, but yet entering harbour with sails full-set, to anchor in peace. such, in fact, is the general opinion of modern writers upon shakespeare; after a happy youth and a gloomy middle age he reached at last--it is the universal opinion--a state of quiet serenity in which he died. professor dowden's book on 'shakespeare's mind and art' gives the most popular expression to this view, a view which is also held by mr. ten brink, by sir i. gollancz, and, to a great extent, by dr. brandes. professor dowden, indeed, has gone so far as to label this final period with the appellation of 'on the heights,' in opposition to the preceding one, which, he says, was passed 'in the depths.' sir sidney lee, too, seems to find, in the plays at least, if not in shakespeare's mind, the orthodox succession of gaiety, of tragedy, and of the serenity of meditative romance. now it is clear that the most important part of this version of shakespeare's mental history is the end of it. that he did eventually attain to a state of calm content, that he did, in fact, die happy--it is this that gives colour and interest to the whole theory. for some reason or another, the end of a man's life seems naturally to afford the light by which the rest of it should be read; last thoughts do appear in some strange way to be really best and truest; and this is particularly the case when they fit in nicely with the rest of the story, and are, perhaps, just what one likes to think oneself. if it be true that shakespeare, to quote professor dowden, 'did at last attain to the serene self-possession which he had sought with such persistent effort'; that, in the words of dr. furnivall, 'forgiven and forgiving, full of the highest wisdom and peace, at one with family and friends and foes, in harmony with avon's flow and stratford's level meads, shakespeare closed his life on earth'--we have obtained a piece of knowledge which is both interesting and pleasant. but if it be not true, if, on the contrary, it can be shown that something very different was actually the case, then will it not follow that we must not only reverse our judgment as to this particular point, but also readjust our view of the whole drift and bearing of shakespeare's 'inner life'? the group of works which has given rise to this theory of ultimate serenity was probably entirely composed after shakespeare's final retirement from london, and his establishment at new place. it consists of three plays--_cymbeline, the winter's tale_, and _the tempest_--and three fragments--the shakespearean parts of _pericles, henry viii._, and _the two noble kinsmen_. all these plays and portions of plays form a distinct group; they resemble each other in a multitude of ways, and they differ in a multitude of ways from nearly all shakespeare's previous work. one other complete play, however, and one other fragment, do resemble in some degree these works of the final period; for, immediately preceding them in date, they show clear traces of the beginnings of the new method, and they are themselves curiously different from the plays they immediately succeed--that great series of tragedies which began with _hamlet_ in and ended in with _antony and cleopatra_. in the latter year, indeed, shakespeare's entire method underwent an astonishing change. for six years he had been persistently occupied with a kind of writing which he had himself not only invented but brought to the highest point of excellence--the tragedy of character. every one of his masterpieces has for its theme the action of tragic situation upon character; and, without those stupendous creations in character, his greatest tragedies would obviously have lost the precise thing that has made them what they are. yet, after _antony and cleopatra_ shakespeare deliberately turned his back upon the dramatic methods of all his past career. there seems no reason why he should not have continued, year after year, to produce _othellos, hamlets_, and _macbeths_; instead, he turned over a new leaf, and wrote _coriolanus_. _coriolanus_ is certainly a remarkable, and perhaps an intolerable play: remarkable, because it shows the sudden first appearance of the shakespeare of the final period; intolerable, because it is impossible to forget how much better it might have been. the subject is thick with situations; the conflicts of patriotism and pride, the effects of sudden disgrace following upon the very height of fortune, the struggles between family affection on the one hand and every interest of revenge and egotism on the other--these would have made a tragic and tremendous setting for some character worthy to rank with shakespeare's best. but it pleased him to ignore completely all these opportunities; and, in the play he has given us, the situations, mutilated and degraded, serve merely as miserable props for the gorgeous clothing of his rhetoric. for rhetoric, enormously magnificent and extraordinarily elaborate, is the beginning and the middle and the end of _coriolanus_. the hero is not a human being at all; he is the statue of a demi-god cast in bronze, which roars its perfect periods, to use a phrase of sir walter raleigh's, through a melodious megaphone. the vigour of the presentment is, it is true, amazing; but it is a presentment of decoration, not of life. so far and so quickly had shakespeare already wandered from the subtleties of _cleopatra_. the transformation is indeed astonishing; one wonders, as one beholds it, what will happen next. at about the same time, some of the scenes in _timon of athens_ were in all probability composed: scenes which resemble _coriolanus_ in their lack of characterisation and abundance of rhetoric, but differ from it in the peculiar grossness of their tone. for sheer virulence of foul-mouthed abuse, some of the speeches in timon are probably unsurpassed in any literature; an outraged drayman would speak so, if draymen were in the habit of talking poetry. from this whirlwind of furious ejaculation, this splendid storm of nastiness, shakespeare, we are confidently told, passed in a moment to tranquillity and joy, to blue skies, to young ladies, and to general forgiveness. from to [says professor dowden] a show of tragic figures, like the kings who passed before macbeth, filled the vision of shakespeare; until at last the desperate image of timon rose before him; when, as though unable to endure or to conceive a more lamentable ruin of man, he turned for relief to the pastoral loves of prince florizel and perdita; and as soon as the tone of his mind was restored, gave expression to its ultimate mood of grave serenity in _the tempest_, and so ended. this is a pretty picture, but is it true? it may, indeed, be admitted at once that prince florizel and perdita are charming creatures, that prospero is 'grave,' and that hermione is more or less 'serene'; but why is it that, in our consideration of the later plays, the whole of our attention must always be fixed upon these particular characters? modern critics, in their eagerness to appraise everything that is beautiful and good at its proper value, seem to have entirely forgotten that there is another side to the medal; and they have omitted to point out that these plays contain a series of portraits of peculiar infamy, whose wickedness finds expression in language of extraordinary force. coming fresh from their pages to the pages of _cymbeline, the winter's tale_, and _the tempest_, one is astonished and perplexed. how is it possible to fit into their scheme of roses and maidens that 'italian fiend' the 'yellow iachimo,' or cloten, that 'thing too bad for bad report,' or the 'crafty devil,' his mother, or leontes, or caliban, or trinculo? to omit these figures of discord and evil from our consideration, to banish them comfortably to the background of the stage, while autolycus and miranda dance before the footlights, is surely a fallacy in proportion; for the presentment of the one group of persons is every whit as distinct and vigorous as that of the other. nowhere, indeed, is shakespeare's violence of expression more constantly displayed than in the 'gentle utterances' of his last period; it is here that one finds paulina, in a torrent of indignation as far from 'grave serenity' as it is from 'pastoral love,' exclaiming to leontes: what studied torments, tyrant, hast for me? what wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling in leads or oils? what old or newer torture must i receive, whose every word deserves to taste of thy most worst? thy tyranny, together working with thy jealousies, fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle for girls of nine, o! think what they have done, and then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. that thou betray'dst polixenes, 'twas nothing; that did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant and damnable ingrateful; nor was't much thou would'st have poison'd good camillo's honour, to have him kill a king; poor trespasses, more monstrous standing by; whereof i reckon the casting forth to crows thy baby daughter to be or none or little; though a devil would have shed water out of fire ere done't. nor is't directly laid to thee, the death of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts, thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart that could conceive a gross and foolish sire blemished his gracious dam. nowhere are the poet's metaphors more nakedly material; nowhere does he verge more often upon a sort of brutality of phrase, a cruel coarseness. iachimo tells us how: the cloyed will, that satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub both filled and running, ravening first the lamb, longs after for the garbage. and talks of: an eye base and unlustrous as the smoky light that's fed with stinking tallow. 'the south fog rot him!' cloten bursts out to imogen, cursing her husband in an access of hideous rage. what traces do such passages as these show of 'serene self-possession,' of 'the highest wisdom and peace,' or of 'meditative romance'? english critics, overcome by the idea of shakespeare's ultimate tranquillity, have generally denied to him the authorship of the brothel scenes in _pericles_ but these scenes are entirely of a piece with the grossnesses of _the winter's tale_ and _cymbeline_. is there no way for men to be, but women must be half-workers? says posthumus when he hears of imogen's guilt. we are all bastards; and that most venerable man, which i did call my father, was i know not where when i was stamped. some coiner with his tools made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seemed the dian of that time; so doth my wife the nonpareil of this--o vengeance, vengeance! me of my lawful pleasure she restrained and prayed me, oft, forbearance; did it with a pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't might well have warmed old saturn, that i thought her as chaste as unsunned snow--o, all the devils!-- this yellow iachimo, in an hour,--was't not? or less,--at first: perchance he spoke not; but, like a full-acorned boar, a german one, cried, oh! and mounted: found no opposition but what he looked for should oppose, and she should from encounter guard. and leontes, in a similar situation, expresses himself in images no less to the point. there have been, or i am much deceived, cuckolds ere now, and many a man there is, even at this present, now, while i speak this, holds his wife by the arm, that little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence and his pond fished by his next neighbour, by sir smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't, whiles other men have gates, and those gates opened, as mine, against their will. should all despair that have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind would hang themselves. physic for't there's none; it is a bawdy planet, that will strike where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it, from east, west, north and south: be it concluded, no barricade for a belly, know't; it will let in and out the enemy with bag and baggage: many thousand on's have the disease, and feel't not. it is really a little difficult, in the face of such passages, to agree with professor dowden's dictum: 'in these latest plays the beautiful pathetic light is always present.' but how has it happened that the judgment of so many critics has been so completely led astray? charm and gravity, and even serenity, are to be found in many other plays of shakespeare. ophelia is charming, brutus is grave, cordelia is serene; are we then to suppose that _hamlet_, and _julius caesar_, and _king lear_ give expression to the same mood of high tranquillity which is betrayed by _cymbeline, the tempest_, and _the winter's tale_? 'certainly not,' reply the orthodox writers, 'for you must distinguish. the plays of the last period are not tragedies; they all end happily'--'in scenes,' says sir i. gollancz, 'of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.' virtue, in fact, is not only virtuous, it is triumphant; what would you more? but to this it may be retorted, that, in the case of one of shakespeare's plays, even the final vision of virtue and beauty triumphant over ugliness and vice fails to dispel a total effect of horror and of gloom. for, in _measure for measure_ isabella is no whit less pure and lovely than any perdita or miranda, and her success is as complete; yet who would venture to deny that the atmosphere of _measure for measure_ was more nearly one of despair than of serenity? what is it, then, that makes the difference? why should a happy ending seem in one case futile, and in another satisfactory? why does it sometimes matter to us a great deal, and sometimes not at all, whether virtue is rewarded or not? the reason, in this case, is not far to seek. _measure for measure_ is, like nearly every play of shakespeare's before _coriolanus_, essentially realistic. the characters are real men and women; and what happens to them upon the stage has all the effect of what happens to real men and women in actual life. their goodness appears to be real goodness, their wickedness real wickedness; and, if their sufferings are terrible enough, we regret the fact, even though in the end they triumph, just as we regret the real sufferings of our friends. but, in the plays of the final period, all this has changed; we are no longer in the real world, but in a world of enchantment, of mystery, of wonder, a world of shifting visions, a world of hopeless anachronisms, a world in which anything may happen next. the pretences of reality are indeed usually preserved, but only the pretences. cymbeline is supposed to be the king of a real britain, and the real augustus is supposed to demand tribute of him; but these are the reasons which his queen, in solemn audience with the roman ambassador, urges to induce her husband to declare for war: remember, sir, my liege, the kings your ancestors, together with the natural bravery of your isle, which stands as neptune's park, ribbed and paled in with rocks unscaleable and roaring waters, with sands that will not bear your enemies' boats, but suck them up to the topmast. a kind of conquest caesar made here; but made not here his brag of 'came, and saw, and overcame'; with shame-- the first that ever touched him--he was carried from off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping-- poor ignorant baubles!--on our terrible seas, like egg-shells moved upon the surges, crack'd as easily 'gainst our rocks; for joy whereof the famed cassibelan, who was once at point-- o giglot fortune!--to master caesar's sword, made lud's town with rejoicing fires bright and britons strut with courage. it comes with something of a shock to remember that this medley of poetry, bombast, and myth will eventually reach the ears of no other person than the octavius of _antony and cleopatra_; and the contrast is the more remarkable when one recalls the brilliant scene of negotiation and diplomacy in the latter play, which passes between octavius, maecenas, and agrippa on the one side, and antony and enobarbus on the other, and results in the reconciliation of the rivals and the marriage of antony and octavia. thus strangely remote is the world of shakespeare's latest period; and it is peopled, this universe of his invention, with beings equally unreal, with creatures either more or less than human, with fortunate princes and wicked step-mothers, with goblins and spirits, with lost princesses and insufferable kings. and of course, in this sort of fairy land, it is an essential condition that everything shall end well; the prince and princess are bound to marry and live happily ever afterwards, or the whole story is unnecessary and absurd; and the villains and the goblins must naturally repent and be forgiven. but it is clear that such happy endings, such conventional closes to fantastic tales, cannot be taken as evidences of serene tranquillity on the part of their maker; they merely show that he knew, as well as anyone else, how such stories ought to end. yet there can be no doubt that it is this combination of charming heroines and happy endings which has blinded the eyes of modern critics to everything else. iachimo, and leontes, and even caliban, are to be left out of account, as if, because in the end they repent or are forgiven, words need not be wasted on such reconciled and harmonious fiends. it is true they are grotesque; it is true that such personages never could have lived; but who, one would like to know, has ever met miranda, or become acquainted with prince florizel of bohemia? in this land of faery, is it right to neglect the goblins? in this world of dreams, are we justified in ignoring the nightmares? is it fair to say that shakespeare was in 'a gentle, lofty spirit, a peaceful, tranquil mood,' when he was creating the queen in _cymbeline_, or writing the first two acts of _the winter's tale_? attention has never been sufficiently drawn to one other characteristic of these plays, though it is touched upon both by professor dowden and dr. brandes--the singular carelessness with which great parts of them were obviously written. could anything drag more wretchedly than the _dénouement_ of _cymbeline_? and with what perversity is the great pastoral scene in _the winter's tale_ interspersed with long-winded intrigues, and disguises, and homilies! for these blemishes are unlike the blemishes which enrich rather than lessen the beauty of the earlier plays; they are not, like them, interesting or delightful in themselves; they are usually merely necessary to explain the action, and they are sometimes purely irrelevant. one is, it cannot be denied, often bored, and occasionally irritated, by polixenes and camillo and sebastian and gonzalo and belarius; these personages have not even the life of ghosts; they are hardly more than speaking names, that give patient utterance to involution upon involution. what a contrast to the minor characters of shakespeare's earlier works! it is difficult to resist the conclusion that he was getting bored himself. bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama, bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams. he is no longer interested, one often feels, in what happens, or who says what, so long as he can find place for a faultless lyric, or a new, unimagined rhythmical effect, or a grand and mystic speech. in this mood he must have written his share in _the two noble kinsmen_, leaving the plot and characters to fletcher to deal with as he pleased, and reserving to himself only the opportunities for pompous verse. in this mood he must have broken off half-way through the tedious history of _henry viii_.; and in this mood he must have completed, with all the resources of his rhetoric, the miserable archaic fragment of _pericles_. is it not thus, then, that we should imagine him in the last years of his life? half enchanted by visions of beauty and loveliness, and half bored to death; on the one side inspired by a soaring fancy to the singing of ethereal songs, and on the other urged by a general disgust to burst occasionally through his torpor into bitter and violent speech? if we are to learn anything of his mind from his last works, it is surely this. and such is the conclusion which is particularly forced upon us by a consideration of the play which is in many ways most typical of shakespeare's later work, and the one which critics most consistently point to as containing the very essence of his final benignity--_the tempest_. there can be no doubt that the peculiar characteristics which distinguish _cymbeline_ and _the winter's tale_ from the dramas of shakespeare's prime, are present here in a still greater degree. in _the tempest_, unreality has reached its apotheosis. two of the principal characters are frankly not human beings at all; and the whole action passes, through a series of impossible occurrences, in a place which can only by courtesy be said to exist. the enchanted island, indeed, peopled, for a timeless moment, by this strange fantastic medley of persons and of things, has been cut adrift for ever from common sense, and floats, buoyed up by a sea, not of waters, but of poetry. never did shakespeare's magnificence of diction reach more marvellous heights than in some of the speeches of prospero, or his lyric art a purer beauty than in the songs of ariel; nor is it only in these ethereal regions that the triumph of his language asserts itself. it finds as splendid a vent in the curses of caliban: all the infection that the sun sucks up from bogs, fens, flats, on prosper fall, and make him by inch-meal a disease! and in the similes of trinculo: yond' same black cloud, yond' huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. the _dénouement_ itself, brought about by a preposterous piece of machinery, and lost in a whirl of rhetoric, is hardly more than a peg for fine writing. o, it is monstrous, monstrous! methought the billows spoke and told me of it; the winds did sing it to me; and the thunder, that deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced the name of prosper; it did bass my trespass. therefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded, and i'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded, and with him there lie mudded. and this gorgeous phantasm of a repentance from the mouth of the pale phantom alonzo is a fitting climax to the whole fantastic play. a comparison naturally suggests itself, between what was perhaps the last of shakespeare's completed works, and that early drama which first gave undoubted proof that his imagination had taken wings. the points of resemblance between _the tempest_ and _a midsummer night's dream_, their common atmosphere of romance and magic, the beautiful absurdities of their intrigues, their studied contrasts of the grotesque with the delicate, the ethereal with the earthly, the charm of their lyrics, the _verve_ of their vulgar comedy--these, of course, are obvious enough; but it is the points of difference which really make the comparison striking. one thing, at any rate, is certain about the wood near athens--it is full of life. the persons that haunt it--though most of them are hardly more than children, and some of them are fairies, and all of them are too agreeable to be true--are nevertheless substantial creatures, whose loves and jokes and quarrels receive our thorough sympathy; and the air they breathe--the lords and the ladies, no less than the mechanics and the elves--is instinct with an exquisite good-humour, which makes us as happy as the night is long. to turn from theseus and titania and bottom to the enchanted island, is to step out of a country lane into a conservatory. the roses and the dandelions have vanished before preposterous cactuses, and fascinating orchids too delicate for the open air; and, in the artificial atmosphere, the gaiety of youth has been replaced by the disillusionment of middle age. prospero is the central figure of _the tempest_; and it has often been wildly asserted that he is a portrait of the author--an embodiment of that spirit of wise benevolence which is supposed to have thrown a halo over shakespeare's later life. but, on closer inspection, the portrait seems to be as imaginary as the original. to an irreverent eye, the ex-duke of milan would perhaps appear as an unpleasantly crusty personage, in whom a twelve years' monopoly of the conversation had developed an inordinate propensity for talking. these may have been the sentiments of ariel, safe at the bermoothes; but to state them is to risk at least ten years in the knotty entrails of an oak, and it is sufficient to point out, that if prospero is wise, he is also self-opinionated and sour, that his gravity is often another name for pedantic severity, and that there is no character in the play to whom, during some part of it, he is not studiously disagreeable. but his milanese countrymen are not even disagreeable; they are simply dull. 'this is the silliest stuff that e'er i heard,' remarked hippolyta of bottom's amateur theatricals; and one is tempted to wonder what she would have said to the dreary puns and interminable conspiracies of alonzo, and gonzalo, and sebastian, and antonio, and adrian, and francisco, and other shipwrecked noblemen. at all events, there can be little doubt that they would not have had the entrée at athens. the depth of the gulf between the two plays is, however, best measured by a comparison of caliban and his masters with bottom and his companions. the guileless group of english mechanics, whose sports are interrupted by the mischief of puck, offers a strange contrast to the hideous trio of the 'jester,' the 'drunken butler,' and the 'savage and deformed slave,' whose designs are thwarted by the magic of ariel. bottom was the first of shakespeare's masterpieces in characterisation, caliban was the last: and what a world of bitterness and horror lies between them! the charming coxcomb it is easy to know and love; but the 'freckled whelp hag-born' moves us mysteriously to pity and to terror, eluding us for ever in fearful allegories, and strange coils of disgusted laughter and phantasmagorical tears. the physical vigour of the presentment is often so remorseless as to shock us. 'i left them,' says ariel, speaking of caliban and his crew: i' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell, there dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake o'erstunk their feet. but at other times the great half-human shape seems to swell like the 'pan' of victor hugo, into something unimaginably vast. you taught me language, and my profit on't is, i know how to curse. is this caliban addressing prospero, or job addressing god? it may be either; but it is not serene, nor benign, nor pastoral, nor 'on the heights.' . the lives of the poets[ ] no one needs an excuse for re-opening the _lives of the poets_; the book is too delightful. it is not, of course, as delightful as boswell; but who re-opens boswell? boswell is in another category; because, as every one knows, when he has once been opened he can never be shut. but, on its different level, the _lives_ will always hold a firm and comfortable place in our affections. after boswell, it is the book which brings us nearer than any other to the mind of dr. johnson. that is its primary import. we do not go to it for information or for instruction, or that our tastes may be improved, or that our sympathies may be widened; we go to it to see what dr. johnson thought. doubtless, during the process, we are informed and instructed and improved in various ways; but these benefits are incidental, like the invigoration which comes from a mountain walk. it is not for the sake of the exercise that we set out; but for the sake of the view. the view from the mountain which is samuel johnson is so familiar, and has been so constantly analysed and admired, that further description would be superfluous. it is sufficient for us to recognise that he is a mountain, and to pay all the reverence that is due. in one of emerson's poems a mountain and a squirrel begin to discuss each other's merits; and the squirrel comes to the triumphant conclusion that he is very much the better of the two, since he can crack a nut, while the mountain can do no such thing. the parallel is close enough between this impudence and the attitude--implied, if not expressed--of too much modern criticism towards the sort of qualities--the easy, indolent power, the searching sense of actuality, the combined command of sanity and paradox, the immovable independence of thought--which went to the making of the _lives of the poets_. there is only, perhaps, one flaw in the analogy: that, in this particular instance, the mountain was able to crack nuts a great deal better than any squirrel that ever lived. that the _lives_ continue to be read, admired, and edited, is in itself a high proof of the eminence of johnson's intellect; because, as serious criticism, they can hardly appear to the modern reader to be very far removed from the futile. johnson's aesthetic judgments are almost invariably subtle, or solid, or bold; they have always some good quality to recommend them--except one: they are never right. that is an unfortunate deficiency; but no one can doubt that johnson has made up for it, and that his wit has saved all. he has managed to be wrong so cleverly, that nobody minds. when gray, for instance, points the moral to his poem on walpole's cat with a reminder to the fair that all that glisters is not gold, johnson remarks that this is 'of no relation to the purpose; if _what glistered_ had been _gold_, the cat would not have gone into the water; and, if she had, would not less have been drowned.' could anything be more ingenious, or more neatly put, or more obviously true? but then, to use johnson's own phrase, could anything be of less 'relation to the purpose'? it is his wit--and we are speaking, of course, of wit in its widest sense--that has sanctified johnson's peversities and errors, that has embalmed them for ever, and that has put his book, with all its mass of antiquated doctrine, beyond the reach of time. for it is not only in particular details that johnson's criticism fails to convince us; his entire point of view is patently out of date. our judgments differ from his, not only because our tastes are different, but because our whole method of judging has changed. thus, to the historian of letters, the _lives_ have a special interest, for they afford a standing example of a great dead tradition--a tradition whose characteristics throw more than one curious light upon the literary feelings and ways which have become habitual to ourselves. perhaps the most striking difference between the critical methods of the eighteenth century and those of the present day, is the difference in sympathy. the most cursory glance at johnson's book is enough to show that he judged authors as if they were criminals in the dock, answerable for every infraction of the rules and regulations laid down by the laws of art, which it was his business to administer without fear or favour. johnson never inquired what poets were trying to do; he merely aimed at discovering whether what they had done complied with the canons of poetry. such a system of criticism was clearly unexceptionable, upon one condition--that the critic was quite certain what the canons of poetry were; but the moment that it became obvious that the only way of arriving at a conclusion upon the subject was by consulting the poets themselves, the whole situation completely changed. the judge had to bow to the prisoner's ruling. in other words, the critic discovered that his first duty was, not to criticise, but to understand the object of his criticism. that is the essential distinction between the school of johnson and the school of sainte-beuve. no one can doubt the greater width and profundity of the modern method; but it is not without its drawbacks. an excessive sympathy with one's author brings its own set of errors: the critic is so happy to explain everything, to show how this was the product of the age, how that was the product of environment, and how the other was the inevitable result of inborn qualities and tastes--that he sometimes forgets to mention whether the work in question has any value. it is then that one cannot help regretting the johnsonian black cap. but other defects, besides lack of sympathy, mar the _lives of the poets_. one cannot help feeling that no matter how anxious johnson might have been to enter into the spirit of some of the greatest of the masters with whom he was concerned, he never could have succeeded. whatever critical method he might have adopted, he still would have been unable to appreciate certain literary qualities, which, to our minds at any rate, appear to be the most important of all. his opinion of _lycidas_ is well known: he found that poem 'easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting.' of the songs in _comus_ he remarks: 'they are harsh in their diction, and not very musical in their numbers.' he could see nothing in the splendour and elevation of gray, but 'glittering accumulations of ungraceful ornaments.' the passionate intensity of donne escaped him altogether; he could only wonder how so ingenious a writer could be so absurd. such preposterous judgments can only be accounted for by inherent deficiencies of taste; johnson had no ear, and he had no imagination. these are, indeed, grievous disabilities in a critic. what could have induced such a man, the impatient reader is sometimes tempted to ask, to set himself up as a judge of poetry? the answer to the question is to be found in the remarkable change which has come over our entire conception of poetry, since the time when johnson wrote. it has often been stated that the essential characteristic of that great romantic movement which began at the end of the eighteenth century, was the re-introduction of nature into the domain of poetry. incidentally, it is curious to observe that nearly every literary revolution has been hailed by its supporters as a return to nature. no less than the school of coleridge and wordsworth, the school of denham, of dryden, and of pope, proclaimed itself as the champion of nature; and there can be little doubt that donne himself--the father of all the conceits and elaborations of the seventeenth century--wrote under the impulse of a naturalistic reaction against the conventional classicism of the renaissance. precisely the same contradictions took place in france. nature was the watchword of malherbe and of boileau; and it was equally the watchword of victor hugo. to judge by the successive proclamations of poets, the development of literature offers a singular paradox. the further it goes back, the more sophisticated it becomes; and it grows more and more natural as it grows distant from the state of nature. however this may be, it is at least certain that the romantic revival peculiarly deserves to be called naturalistic, because it succeeded in bringing into vogue the operations of the external world--'the vegetable universe,' as blake called it--as subject-matter for poetry. but it would have done very little, if it had done nothing more than this. thomson, in the full meridian of the eighteenth century, wrote poems upon the subject of nature; but it would be foolish to suppose that wordsworth and coleridge merely carried on a fashion which thomson had begun. nature, with them, was something more than a peg for descriptive and didactic verse; it was the manifestation of the vast and mysterious forces of the world. the publication of _the ancient mariner_ is a landmark in the history of letters, not because of its descriptions of natural objects, but because it swept into the poet's vision a whole new universe of infinite and eternal things; it was the discovery of the unknown. we are still under the spell of _the ancient mariner_; and poetry to us means, primarily, something which suggests, by means of words, mysteries and infinitudes. thus, music and imagination seem to us the most essential qualities of poetry, because they are the most potent means by which such suggestions may be invoked. but the eighteenth century knew none of these things. to lord chesterfield and to pope, to prior and to horace walpole, there was nothing at all strange about the world; it was charming, it was disgusting, it was ridiculous, and it was just what one might have expected. in such a world, why should poetry, more than anything else, be mysterious? no! let it be sensible; that was enough. the new edition of the _lives_, which dr. birkbeck hill prepared for publication before his death, and which has been issued by the clarendon press, with a brief memoir of the editor, would probably have astonished dr. johnson. but, though the elaborate erudition of the notes and appendices might have surprised him, it would not have put him to shame. one can imagine his growling scorn of the scientific conscientiousness of the present day. and indeed, the three tomes of dr. hill's edition, with all their solid wealth of information, their voluminous scholarship, their accumulation of vast research, are a little ponderous and a little ugly; the hand is soon wearied with the weight, and the eye is soon distracted by the varying types, and the compressed columns of the notes, and the paragraphic numerals in the margins. this is the price that must be paid for increased efficiency. the wise reader will divide his attention between the new business-like edition and one of the charming old ones, in four comfortable volumes, where the text is supreme upon the page, and the paragraphs follow one another at leisurely intervals. the type may be a little faded, and the paper a little yellow; but what of that? it is all quiet and easy; and, as one reads, the brilliant sentences seem to come to one, out of the past, with the friendliness of a conversation. . notes: [footnote : _lives of the english poets_. by samuel johnson, ll.d. edited by george birkbeck hill, d.c.l. oxford: at the clarendon press, .] madame du deffand[ ] when napoleon was starting for his campaign in russia, he ordered the proof-sheets of a forthcoming book, about which there had been some disagreement among the censors of the press, to be put into his carriage, so that he might decide for himself what suppressions it might be necessary to make. 'je m'ennuie en route; je lirai ces volumes, et j'écrirai de mayence ce qu'il y aura à faire.' the volumes thus chosen to beguile the imperial leisure between paris and mayence contained the famous correspondence of madame du deffand with horace walpole. by the emperor's command a few excisions were made, and the book--reprinted from miss berry's original edition which had appeared two years earlier in england--was published almost at once. the sensation in paris was immense; the excitement of the russian campaign itself was half forgotten; and for some time the blind old inhabitant of the convent of saint joseph held her own as a subject of conversation with the burning of moscow and the passage of the berezina. we cannot wonder that this was so. in the parisian drawing-room of those days the letters of madame du deffand must have exercised a double fascination--on the one hand as a mine of gossip about numberless persons and events still familiar to many a living memory, and, on the other, as a detailed and brilliant record of a state of society which had already ceased to be actual and become historical. the letters were hardly more than thirty years old; but the world which they depicted in all its intensity and all its singularity--the world of the old régime--had vanished for ever into limbo. between it and the eager readers of the first empire a gulf was fixed--a narrow gulf, but a deep one, still hot and sulphurous with the volcanic fires of the revolution. since then a century has passed; the gulf has widened; and the vision which these curious letters show us to-day seems hardly less remote--from some points of view, indeed, even more--than that which is revealed to us in the memoirs of cellini or the correspondence of cicero. yet the vision is not simply one of a strange and dead antiquity: there is a personal and human element in the letters which gives them a more poignant interest, and brings them close to ourselves. the soul of man is not subject to the rumour of periods; and these pages, impregnated though they be with the abolished life of the eighteenth century, can never be out of date. a fortunate chance enables us now, for the first time, to appreciate them in their completeness. the late mrs. paget toynbee, while preparing her edition of horace walpole's letters, came upon the trace of the original manuscripts, which had long lain hidden in obscurity in a country house in staffordshire. the publication of these manuscripts in full, accompanied by notes and indexes in which mrs. toynbee's well-known accuracy, industry, and tact are everywhere conspicuous, is an event of no small importance to lovers of french literature. a great mass of new and deeply interesting material makes its appearance. the original edition produced by miss berry in , from which all the subsequent editions were reprinted with varying degrees of inaccuracy, turns out to have contained nothing more than a comparatively small fraction of the whole correspondence; of the letters published by mrs. toynbee, are entirely new, and of the rest only were printed by miss berry in their entirety. miss berry's edition was, in fact, simply a selection, and as a selection it deserves nothing but praise. it skims the cream of the correspondence; and it faithfully preserves the main outline of the story which the letters reveal. no doubt that was enough for the readers of that generation; indeed, even for the more exacting reader of to-day, there is something a little overwhelming in the closely packed pages of mrs. toynbee's volumes. enthusiasm alone will undertake to grapple with them, but enthusiasm will be rewarded. in place of the truthful summary of the earlier editions, we have now the truth itself--the truth in all its subtle gradations, all its long-drawn-out suspensions, all its intangible and irremediable obscurities: it is the difference between a clear-cut drawing in black-and-white and a finished painting in oils. probably miss berry's edition will still be preferred by the ordinary reader who wishes to become acquainted with a celebrated figure in french literature; but mrs. toynbee's will always be indispensable for the historical student, and invaluable for anyone with the leisure, the patience, and the taste for a detailed and elaborate examination of a singular adventure of the heart. the marquise du deffand was perhaps the most typical representative of that phase of civilisation which came into existence in western europe during the early years of the eighteenth century, and reached its most concentrated and characteristic form about the year in the drawing-rooms of paris. she was supremely a woman of her age; but it is important to notice that her age was the first, and not the second, half of the eighteenth century: it was the age of the regent orleans, fontenelle, and the young voltaire; not that of rousseau, the 'encyclopaedia,' and the patriarch of ferney. it is true that her letters to walpole, to which her fame is mainly due, were written between and ; but they are the letters of an old woman, and they bear upon every page of them the traces of a mind to which the whole movement of contemporary life was profoundly distasteful. the new forces to which the eighteenth century gave birth in thought, in art, in sentiment, in action--which for us form its peculiar interest and its peculiar glory--were anathema to madame du deffand. in her letters to walpole, whenever she compares the present with the past her bitterness becomes extreme. 'j'ai eu autrefois,' she writes in , 'des plaisirs indicibles aux opéras de quinault et de lulli, et au jeu de thévenart et de la lemaur. pour aujourd'hui, tout me paraît détestable: acteurs, auteurs, musiciens, beaux esprits, philosophes, tout est de mauvais goût, tout est affreux, affreux.' that great movement towards intellectual and political emancipation which centred in the 'encyclopaedia' and the _philosophes_ was the object of her particular detestation. she saw diderot once--and that was enough for both of them. she could never understand why it was that m. de voltaire would persist in wasting his talent for writing over such a dreary subject as religion. turgot, she confessed, was an honest man, but he was also a 'sot animal.' his dismissal from office--that fatal act, which made the french revolution inevitable--delighted her: she concealed her feelings from walpole, who admired him, but she was outspoken enough to the duchesse de choiseul. 'le renvoi du turgot me plaît extrêmement,' she wrote; 'tout me paraît en bon train.' and then she added, more prophetically than she knew, 'mais, assurément, nous n'en resterons pas là.' no doubt her dislike of the encyclopaedists and all their works was in part a matter of personal pique--the result of her famous quarrel with mademoiselle de lespinasse, under whose opposing banner d'alembert and all the intellectual leaders of parisian society had unhesitatingly ranged themselves. but that quarrel was itself far more a symptom of a deeply rooted spiritual antipathy than a mere vulgar struggle for influence between two rival _salonnières_. there are indications that, even before it took place, the elder woman's friendship for d'alembert was giving way under the strain of her scorn for his advanced views and her hatred of his proselytising cast of mind. 'il y a de certains articles,' she complained to voltaire in --a year before the final estrangement--'qui sont devenus pour lui affaires de parti, et sur lesquels je ne lui trouve pas le sens commun.' the truth is that d'alembert and his friends were moving, and madame du deffand was standing still. mademoiselle de lespinasse simply precipitated and intensified an inevitable rupture. she was the younger generation knocking at the door. madame du deffand's generation had, indeed, very little in common with that ardent, hopeful, speculative, sentimental group of friends who met together every evening in the drawing-room of mademoiselle de lespinasse. born at the close of the seventeenth century, she had come into the world in the brilliant days of the regent, whose witty and licentious reign had suddenly dissipated the atmosphere of gloom and bigotry imposed upon society by the moribund court of louis xiv. for a fortnight (so she confessed to walpole) she was actually the regent's mistress; and a fortnight, in those days, was a considerable time. then she became the intimate friend of madame de prie--the singular woman who, for a moment, on the regent's death, during the government of m. le duc, controlled the destinies of france, and who committed suicide when that amusement was denied her. during her early middle age madame du deffand was one of the principal figures in the palace of sceaux, where the duchesse du maine, the grand-daughter of the great condé and the daughter-in-law of louis xiv., kept up for many years an almost royal state among the most distinguished men and women of the time. it was at sceaux, with its endless succession of entertainments and conversations--supper-parties and water-parties, concerts and masked balls, plays in the little theatre and picnics under the great trees of the park--that madame du deffand came to her maturity and established her position as one of the leaders of the society in which she moved. the nature of that society is plainly enough revealed in the letters and the memoirs that have come down to us. the days of formal pomp and vast representation had ended for ever when the 'grand monarque' was no longer to be seen strutting, in periwig and red-heeled shoes, down the glittering gallery of versailles; the intimacy and seclusion of modern life had not yet begun. it was an intermediate period, and the comparatively small group formed by the elite of the rich, refined, and intelligent classes led an existence in which the elements of publicity and privacy were curiously combined. never, certainly, before or since, have any set of persons lived so absolutely and unreservedly with and for their friends as these high ladies and gentlemen of the middle years of the eighteenth century. the circle of one's friends was, in those days, the framework of one's whole being; within which was to be found all that life had to offer, and outside of which no interest, however fruitful, no passion, however profound, no art, however soaring, was of the slightest account. thus while in one sense the ideal of such a society was an eminently selfish one, it is none the less true that there have been very few societies indeed in which the ordinary forms of personal selfishness have played so small a part. the selfishness of the eighteenth century was a communal selfishness. each individual was expected to practise, and did in fact practise to a consummate degree, those difficult arts which make the wheels of human intercourse run smoothly--the arts of tact and temper, of frankness and sympathy, of delicate compliment and exquisite self-abnegation--with the result that a condition of living was produced which, in all its superficial and obvious qualities, was one of unparalleled amenity. indeed, those persons who were privileged to enjoy it showed their appreciation of it in an unequivocal way--by the tenacity with which they clung to the scene of such delights and graces. they refused to grow old; they almost refused to die. time himself seems to have joined their circle, to have been infected with their politeness, and to have absolved them, to the furthest possible point, from the operation of his laws. voltaire, d'argental, moncrif, hénault, madame d'egmont, madame du deffand herself--all were born within a few years of each other, and all lived to be well over eighty, with the full zest of their activities unimpaired. pont-de-veyle, it is true, died young--at the age of seventy-seven. another contemporary, richelieu, who was famous for his adventures while louis xiv. was still on the throne, lived till within a year of the opening of the states-general. more typical still of this singular and fortunate generation was fontenelle, who, one morning in his hundredth year, quietly observed that he felt a difficulty in existing, and forthwith, even more quietly, ceased to do so. yet, though the wheels of life rolled round with such an alluring smoothness, they did not roll of themselves; the skill and care of trained mechanicians were needed to keep them going; and the task was no light one. even fontenelle himself, fitted as he was for it by being blessed (as one of his friends observed) with two brains and no heart, realised to the full the hard conditions of social happiness. 'il y a peu de choses,' he wrote, 'aussi difficiles et aussi dangereuses que le commerce des hommes.' the sentence, true for all ages, was particularly true for his own. the graceful, easy motions of that gay company were those of dancers balanced on skates, gliding, twirling, interlacing, over the thinnest ice. those drawing-rooms, those little circles, so charming with the familiarity of their privacy, were themselves the rigorous abodes of the deadliest kind of public opinion--the kind that lives and glitters in a score of penetrating eyes. they required in their votaries the absolute submission that reigns in religious orders--the willing sacrifice of the entire life. the intimacy of personal passion, the intensity of high endeavour--these things must be left behind and utterly cast away by all who would enter that narrow sanctuary. friendship might be allowed there, and flirtation disguised as love; but the overweening and devouring influence of love itself should never be admitted to destroy the calm of daily intercourse and absorb into a single channel attentions due to all. politics were to be tolerated, so long as they remained a game; so soon as they grew serious and envisaged the public good, they became insufferable. as for literature and art, though they might be excellent as subjects for recreation and good talk, what could be more preposterous than to treat such trifles as if they had a value of their own? only one thing; and that was to indulge, in the day-dreams of religion or philosophy, the inward ardours of the soul. indeed, the scepticism of that generation was the most uncompromising that the world has known; for it did not even trouble to deny: it simply ignored. it presented a blank wall of perfect indifference alike to the mysteries of the universe and to the solutions of them. madame du deffand gave early proof that she shared to the full this propensity of her age. while still a young girl in a convent school, she had shrugged her shoulders when the nuns began to instruct her in the articles of their faith. the matter was considered serious, and the great massillon, then at the height of his fame as a preacher and a healer of souls, was sent for to deal with the youthful heretic. she was not impressed by his arguments. in his person the generous fervour and the massive piety of an age that could still believe felt the icy and disintegrating touch of a new and strange indifference. 'mais qu'elle est jolie!' he murmured as he came away. the abbess ran forward to ask what holy books he recommended. 'give her a threepenny catechism,' was massillon's reply. he had seen that the case was hopeless. an innate scepticism, a profound levity, an antipathy to enthusiasm that wavered between laughter and disgust, combined with an unswerving devotion to the exacting and arduous ideals of social intercourse--such were the characteristics of the brilliant group of men and women who had spent their youth at the court of the regent, and dallied out their middle age down the long avenues of sceaux. about the middle of the century the duchesse du maine died, and madame du deffand established herself in paris at the convent of saint joseph in a set of rooms which still showed traces--in the emblazoned arms over the great mantelpiece--of the occupation of madame de montespan. a few years later a physical affliction overtook her: at the age of fifty-seven she became totally blind; and this misfortune placed her, almost without a transition, among the ranks of the old. for the rest of her life she hardly moved from her drawing-room, which speedily became the most celebrated in europe. the thirty years of her reign there fall into two distinct and almost equal parts. the first, during which d'alembert was pre-eminent, came to an end with the violent expulsion of mademoiselle de lespinasse. during the second, which lasted for the rest of her life, her salon, purged of the encyclopaedists, took on a more decidedly worldly tone; and the influence of horace walpole was supreme. it is this final period of madame du deffand's life that is reflected so minutely in the famous correspondence which the labours of mrs. toynbee have now presented to us for the first time in its entirety. her letters to walpole form in effect a continuous journal covering the space of fifteen years ( - ). they allow us, on the one hand, to trace through all its developments the progress of an extraordinary passion, and on the other to examine, as it were under the microscope of perhaps the bitterest perspicacity on record, the last phase of a doomed society. for the circle which came together in her drawing-room during those years had the hand of death upon it. the future lay elsewhere; it was simply the past that survived there--in the rich trappings of fashion and wit and elaborate gaiety--but still irrevocably the past. the radiant creatures of sceaux had fallen into the yellow leaf. we see them in these letters, a collection of elderly persons trying hard to amuse themselves, and not succeeding very well. pont-de-veyle, the youthful septuagenarian, did perhaps succeed; for he never noticed what a bore he was becoming with his perpetual cough, and continued to go the rounds with indefatigable animation, until one day his cough was heard no more. hénault--once notorious for his dinner-parties, and for having written an historical treatise--which, it is true, was worthless, but he had written it--hénault was beginning to dodder, and voltaire, grinning in ferney, had already dubbed him 'notre délabré président.' various dowagers were engaged upon various vanities. the marquise de boufflers was gambling herself to ruin; the comtesse de boufflers was wringing out the last drops of her reputation as the mistress of a royal prince; the maréchale de mirepoix was involved in shady politics; the maréchale de luxembourg was obliterating a highly dubious past by a scrupulous attention to 'bon ton,' of which, at last, she became the arbitress: 'quel ton! quel effroyable ton!' she is said to have exclaimed after a shuddering glance at the bible; 'ah, madame, quel dommage que le saint esprit eût aussi peu de goût!' then there was the floating company of foreign diplomats, some of whom were invariably to be found at madame du deffand's: caraccioli, for instance, the neapolitan ambassador--'je perds les trois quarts de ce qu'il dit,' she wrote, 'mais comme il en dit beaucoup, on peut supporter cette perte'; and bernstorff, the danish envoy, who became the fashion, was lauded to the skies for his wit and fine manners, until, says the malicious lady, 'à travers tous ces éloges, je m'avisai de l'appeler puffendorf,' and puffendorf the poor man remained for evermore. besides the diplomats, nearly every foreign traveller of distinction found his way to the renowned _salon_; englishmen were particularly frequent visitors; and among the familiar figures of whom we catch more than one glimpse in the letters to walpole are burke, fox, and gibbon. sometimes influential parents in england obtained leave for their young sons to be admitted into the centre of parisian refinement. the english cub, fresh from eton, was introduced by his tutor into the red and yellow drawing-room, where the great circle of a dozen or more elderly important persons, glittering in jewels and orders, pompous in powder and rouge, ranged in rigid order round the fireplace, followed with the precision of a perfect orchestra the leading word or smile or nod of an ancient sibyl, who seemed to survey the company with her eyes shut, from a vast chair by the wall. it is easy to imagine the scene, in all its terrifying politeness. madame du deffand could not tolerate young people; she declared that she did not know what to say to them; and they, no doubt, were in precisely the same difficulty. to an english youth, unfamiliar with the language and shy as only english youths can be, a conversation with that redoubtable old lady must have been a grim ordeal indeed. one can almost hear the stumbling, pointless observations, almost see the imploring looks cast, from among the infinitely attentive company, towards the tutor, and the pink ears growing still more pink. but such awkward moments were rare. as a rule the days flowed on in easy monotony--or rather, not the days, but the nights. for madame du deffand rarely rose till five o'clock in the evening; at six she began her reception; and at nine or half-past the central moment of the twenty-four hours arrived--the moment of supper. upon this event the whole of her existence hinged. supper, she used to say, was one of the four ends of man, and what the other three were she could never remember. she lived up to her dictum. she had an income of £ a year, and of this she spent more than half--£ --on food. these figures should be largely increased to give them their modern values; but, economise as she might, she found that she could only just manage to rub along. her parties varied considerably in size; sometimes only four or five persons sat down to supper--sometimes twenty or thirty. no doubt they were elaborate meals. in a moment of economy we find the hospitable lady making pious resolutions: she would no longer give 'des repas'--only ordinary suppers for six people at the most, at which there should be served nothing more than two entrées, one roast, two sweets, and--mysterious addition--'la pièce du milieu.' this was certainly moderate for those days (monsieur de jonsac rarely provided fewer than fourteen entrées), but such resolutions did not last long. a week later she would suddenly begin to issue invitations wildly, and, day after day, her tables would be loaded with provisions for thirty guests. but she did not always have supper at home. from time to time she sallied forth in her vast coach and rattled through the streets of paris to one of her still extant dowagers--a maréchale, or a duchesse--or the more and more 'délabré président.' there the same company awaited her as that which met in her own house; it was simply a change of decorations; often enough for weeks together she had supper every night with the same half-dozen persons. the entertainment, apart from the supper itself, hardly varied. occasionally there was a little music, more often there were cards and gambling. madame du deffand disliked gambling, but she loathed going to bed, and, if it came to a choice between the two, she did not hesitate: once, at the age of seventy-three, she sat up till seven o'clock in the morning playing vingt-et-un with charles fox. but distractions of that kind were merely incidental to the grand business of the night--the conversation. in the circle that, after an eight hours' sitting, broke up reluctantly at two or three every morning to meet again that same evening at six, talk continually flowed. for those strange creatures it seemed to form the very substance of life itself. it was the underlying essence, the circumambient ether, in which alone the pulsations of existence had their being; it was the one eternal reality; men might come and men might go, but talk went on for ever. it is difficult, especially for those born under the saturnine influence of an english sky, quite to realise the nature of such conversation. brilliant, charming, easy-flowing, gay and rapid it must have been; never profound, never intimate, never thrilling; but also never emphatic, never affected, never languishing, and never dull. madame du deffand herself had a most vigorous flow of language. 'Écoutez! Écoutez!' walpole used constantly to exclaim, trying to get in his points; but in vain; the sparkling cataract swept on unheeding. and indeed to listen was the wiser part--to drink in deliciously the animation of those quick, illimitable, exquisitely articulated syllables, to surrender one's whole soul to the pure and penetrating precision of those phrases, to follow without a breath the happy swiftness of that fine-spun thread of thought. then at moments her wit crystallised; the cataract threw off a shower of radiant jewels, which one caught as one might. some of these have come down to us. her remark on montesquieu's great book--'c'est de l'esprit sur les lois'--is an almost final criticism. her famous 'mot de saint denis,' so dear to the heart of voltaire, deserves to be once more recorded. a garrulous and credulous cardinal was describing the martyrdom of saint denis the areopagite: when his head was cut off, he took it up and carried it in his hands. that, said the cardinal, was well known; what was not well known was the extraordinary fact that he walked with his head under his arm all the way from montmartre to the church of saint denis--a distance of six miles. 'ah, monseigneur!' said madame du deffand, 'dans une telle situation, il n'y a que le premier pas qui coûte.' at two o'clock the brilliance began to flag; the guests began to go; the dreadful moment was approaching. if madame de gramont happened to be there, there was still some hope, for madame de gramont abhorred going to bed almost as much as madame du deffand. or there was just a chance that the duc de choiseul might come in at the last moment, and stay on for a couple of hours. but at length it was impossible to hesitate any longer; the chariot was at the door. she swept off, but it was still early; it was only half-past three; and the coachman was ordered to drive about the boulevards for an hour before going home. it was, after all, only natural that she should put off going to bed, for she rarely slept for more than two or three hours. the greater part of that empty time, during which conversation was impossible, she devoted to her books. but she hardly ever found anything to read that she really enjoyed. of the two thousand volumes she possessed--all bound alike, and stamped on the back with her device of a cat--she had only read four or five hundred; the rest were impossible. she perpetually complained to walpole of the extreme dearth of reading matter. in nothing, indeed, is the contrast more marked between that age and ours than in the quantity of books available for the ordinary reader. how the eighteenth century would envy us our innumerable novels, our biographies, our books of travel, all our easy approaches to knowledge and entertainment, our translations, our cheap reprints! in those days, even for a reader of catholic tastes, there was really very little to read. and, of course, madame du deffand's tastes were far from catholic--they were fastidious to the last degree. she considered that racine alone of writers had reached perfection, and that only once--in _athalie_. corneille carried her away for moments, but on the whole he was barbarous. she highly admired 'quelques centaines de vers de m. de voltaire.' she thought richardson and fielding excellent, and she was enraptured by the style--but only by the style--of _gil blas_. and that was all. everything else appeared to her either affected or pedantic or insipid. walpole recommended to her a history of malta; she tried it, but she soon gave it up--it mentioned the crusades. she began gibbon, but she found him superficial. she tried buffon, but he was 'd'une monotonie insupportable; il sait bien ce qu'il sait, mais il ne s'occupe que des bêtes; il faut l'être un peu soi-même pour se dévouer à une telle occupation.' she got hold of the memoirs of saint-simon in manuscript, and these amused her enormously; but she was so disgusted by the style that she was very nearly sick. at last, in despair, she embarked on a prose translation of shakespeare. the result was unexpected; she was positively pleased. _coriolanus_, it is true, 'me semble, sauf votre respect, épouvantable, et n'a pas le sens commun'; and 'pour _la tempête_, je ne suis pas touchée de ce genre.' but she was impressed by _othello_; she was interested by _macbeth_; and she admired _julius caesar_, in spite of its bad taste. at _king lear_, indeed, she had to draw the line. 'ah, mon dieu! quelle pièce! réellement la trouvez-vous belle? elle me noircit l'âme à un point que je ne puis exprimer; c'est un amas de toutes les horreurs infernales.' her reader was an old soldier from the invalides, who came round every morning early, and took up his position by her bedside. she lay back among the cushions, listening, for long hours. was there ever a more incongruous company, a queerer trysting-place, for goneril and desdemona, ariel and lady macbeth? often, even before the arrival of the old pensioner, she was at work dictating a letter, usually to horace walpole, occasionally to madame de choiseul or voltaire. her letters to voltaire are enchanting; his replies are no less so; and it is much to be regretted that the whole correspondence has never been collected together in chronological order, and published as a separate book. the slim volume would be, of its kind, quite perfect. there was no love lost between the two old friends; they could not understand each other; voltaire, alone of his generation, had thrown himself into the very vanguard of thought; to madame du deffand progress had no meaning, and thought itself was hardly more than an unpleasant necessity. she distrusted him profoundly, and he returned the compliment. yet neither could do without the other: through her, he kept in touch with one of the most influential circles in paris; and even she could not be insensible to the glory of corresponding with such a man. besides, in spite of all their differences, they admired each other genuinely, and they were held together by the habit of a long familiarity. the result was a marvellous display of epistolary art. if they had liked each other any better, they never would have troubled to write so well. they were on their best behaviour--exquisitely courteous and yet punctiliously at ease, like dancers in a minuet. his cajoleries are infinite; his deft sentences, mingling flattery with reflection, have almost the quality of a caress. she replies in the tone of a worshipper, glancing lightly at a hundred subjects, purring out her 'monsieur de voltaire,' and seeking his advice on literature and life. he rejoins in that wonderful strain of epicurean stoicism of which he alone possessed the secret: and so the letters go on. sometimes one just catches the glimpse of a claw beneath the soft pad, a grimace under the smile of elegance; and one remembers with a shock that, after all, one is reading the correspondence of a monkey and a cat. madame du deffand's style reflects, perhaps even more completely than that of voltaire himself, the common-sense of the eighteenth century. its precision is absolute. it is like a line drawn in one stroke by a master, with the prompt exactitude of an unerring subtlety. there is no breadth in it--no sense of colour and the concrete mass of things. one cannot wonder, as one reads her, that she hardly regretted her blindness. what did she lose by it? certainly not the sweet approach of even or morn, or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose; for what did she care for such particulars when her eyes were at their clearest? her perception was intellectual; and to the penetrating glances of her mental vision the objects of the sensual world were mere irrelevance. the kind of writing produced by such a quality of mind may seem thin and barren to those accustomed to the wealth and variety of the romantic school. yet it will repay attention. the vocabulary is very small; but every word is the right one; this old lady of high society, who had never given a thought to her style, who wrote--and spelt--by the light of nature, was a past mistress of that most difficult of literary accomplishments--'l'art de dire en un mot tout ce qu'un mot peut dire.' the object of all art is to make suggestions. the romantic artist attains that end by using a multitude of different stimuli, by calling up image after image, recollection after recollection, until the reader's mind is filled and held by a vivid and palpable evocation; the classic works by the contrary method of a fine economy, and, ignoring everything but what is essential, trusts, by means of the exact propriety of his presentation, to produce the required effect. madame du deffand carries the classical ideal to its furthest point. she never strikes more than once, and she always hits the nail on the head. such is her skill that she sometimes seems to beat the romantics even on their own ground: her reticences make a deeper impression than all the dottings of their i's. the following passage from a letter to walpole is characteristic: nous eûmes une musique charmante, une dame qui joue de la harpe à merveille; elle me fit tant de plaisir que j'eus du regret que vous ne l'entendissiez pas; c'est un instrument admirable. nous eûmes aussi un clavecin, mais quoiqu'il fût touché avec une grande perfection, ce n'est rien en comparaison de la harpe. je fus fort triste toute la soirée; j'avais appris en partant que mme. de luxembourg, qui était allée samedi à montmorency pour y passer quinze jours, s'était trouvée si mal qu'on avait fait venir tronchin, et qu'on l'avait ramenée le dimanche à huit heures du soir, qu'on lui croyait de l'eau dans la poitrine. l'ancienneté de la connaissance; une habitude qui a l'air de l'amitié; voir disparaître ceux avec qui l'on vit; un retour sur soi-même; sentir que l'on ne tient à rien, que tout fuit, que tout échappe, qu'on reste seule dans l'univers, et que malgré cela on craint de le quitter; voilà ce qui m'occupa pendant la musique. here are no coloured words, no fine phrases--only the most flat and ordinary expressions--'un instrument admirable'--'une grande perfection'--'fort triste.' nothing is described; and yet how much is suggested! the whole scene is conjured up--one does not know how; one's imagination is switched on to the right rails, as it were, by a look, by a gesture, and then left to run of itself. in the simple, faultless rhythm of that closing sentence, the trembling melancholy of the old harp seems to be lingering still. while the letters to voltaire show us nothing but the brilliant exterior of madame du deffand's mind, those to walpole reveal the whole state of her soul. the revelation is not a pretty one. bitterness, discontent, pessimism, cynicism, boredom, regret, despair--these are the feelings that dominate every page. to a superficial observer madame du deffand's lot must have seemed peculiarly enviable; she was well off, she enjoyed the highest consideration, she possessed intellectual talents of the rarest kind which she had every opportunity of displaying, and she was surrounded by a multitude of friends. what more could anyone desire? the harsh old woman would have smiled grimly at such a question. 'a little appetite,' she might have answered. she was like a dyspeptic at a feast; the finer the dishes that were set before her, the greater her distaste; that spiritual gusto which lends a savour to the meanest act of living, and without which all life seems profitless, had gone from her for ever. yet--and this intensified her wretchedness--though the banquet was loathsome to her, she had not the strength to tear herself away from the table. once, in a moment of desperation, she had thoughts of retiring to a convent, but she soon realised that such an action was out of the question. fate had put her into the midst of the world, and there she must remain. 'je ne suis point assez heureuse,' she said, 'de me passer des choses dont je ne me soucie pas.' she was extremely lonely. as fastidious in friendship as in literature, she passed her life among a crowd of persons whom she disliked and despised, 'je ne vois que des sots et des fripons,' she said; and she did not know which were the most disgusting. she took a kind of deadly pleasure in analysing 'les nuances des sottises' among the people with whom she lived. the varieties were many, from the foolishness of her companion, mademoiselle sanadon, who would do nothing but imitate her--'elle fait des définitions,' she wails--to that of the lady who hoped to prove her friendship by unending presents of grapes and pears--'comme je n'y tâte pas, cela diminue mes scrupules du peu de goût que j'ai pour elle.' then there were those who were not quite fools but something very near it. 'tous les matignon sont des sots,' said somebody one day to the regent, 'excepté le marquis de matignon.' 'cela est vrai,' the regent replied, 'il n'est pas sot, mais on voit bien qu'il est le fils d'un sot.' madame du deffand was an expert at tracing such affinities. for instance, there was necker. it was clear that necker was not a fool, and yet--what was it? something was the matter--yes, she had it: he made you feel a fool yourself--'l'on est plus bête avec lui que l'on ne l'est tout seul.' as she said of herself: 'elle est toujours tentée d'arracher les masques qu'elle rencontre.' those blind, piercing eyes of hers spied out unerringly the weakness or the ill-nature or the absurdity that lurked behind the gravest or the most fascinating exterior; then her fingers began to itch, and she could resist no longer--she gave way to her besetting temptation. it is impossible not to sympathise with rousseau's remark about her--'j'aimai mieux encore m'exposer au fléau de sa haine qu'à celui de son amitié.' there, sitting in her great diogenes-tub of an armchair--her 'tonneau' as she called it--talking, smiling, scattering her bons mots, she went on through the night, in the remorseless secrecy of her heart, tearing off the masks from the faces that surrounded her. sometimes the world in which she lived displayed itself before her horrified inward vision like some intolerable and meaningless piece of clock-work mechanism: j'admirais hier au soir la nombreuse compagnie qui était chez moi; hommes et femmes me paraissaient des machines à ressorts, qui allaient, venaient, parlaient, riaient, sans penser, sans réfléchir, sans sentir; chacun jouait son rôle par habitude: madame la duchesse d'aiguillon crevait de rire, mme. de forcalquier dédaignait tout, mme. de la vallière jabotait sur tout. les hommes ne jouaient pas de meilleurs rôles, et moi j'étais abîmée dans les réflexions les plus noires; je pensai que j'avais passé ma vie dans les illusions; que je m'étais creusée tous les abîmes dans lesquels j'étais tombée. at other times she could see around her nothing but a mass of mutual hatreds, into which she was plunged herself no less than her neighbours: je ramenai la maréchale de mirepoix chez elle; j'y descendis, je causai une heure avec elle; je n'en fus pas mécontente. elle hait la petite idole, elle hait la maréchale de luxembourg; enfin, sa haine pour tous les gens qui me déplaisent me fit lui pardonner l'indifférence et peut-être la haine qu'elle a pour moi. convenez que voilà une jolie société, un charmant commerce. once or twice for several months together she thought that she had found in the duchesse de choiseul a true friend and a perfect companion. but there was one fatal flaw even in madame de choiseul: she _was_ perfect!--'elle est parfaite; et c'est un plus grand défaut qu'on ne pense et qu'on ne saurait imaginer.' at last one day the inevitable happened--she went to see madame de choiseul, and she was bored. 'je rentrai chez moi à une heure, pénétrée, persuadée qu'on ne peut être content de personne.' one person, however, there was who pleased her; and it was the final irony of her fate that this very fact should have been the last drop that caused the cup of her unhappiness to overflow. horace walpole had come upon her at a psychological moment. her quarrel with mademoiselle de lespinasse and the encyclopaedists had just occurred; she was within a few years of seventy; and it must have seemed to her that, after such a break, at such an age, there was little left for her to do but to die quietly. then the gay, talented, fascinating englishman appeared, and she suddenly found that, so far from her life being over, she was embarked for good and all upon her greatest adventure. what she experienced at that moment was something like a religious conversion. her past fell away from her a dead thing; she was overwhelmed by an ineffable vision; she, who had wandered for so many years in the ways of worldly indifference, was uplifted all at once on to a strange summit, and pierced with the intensest pangs of an unknown devotion. henceforward her life was dedicated; but, unlike the happier saints of a holier persuasion, she was to find no peace on earth. it was, indeed, hardly to be expected that walpole, a blasé bachelor of fifty, should have reciprocated so singular a passion; yet he might at least have treated it with gentleness and respect. the total impression of him which these letters produce is very damaging. it is true that he was in a difficult position; and it is also true that, since only the merest fragments of his side of the correspondence have been preserved, our knowledge of the precise details of his conduct is incomplete; nevertheless, it is clear that, on the whole, throughout the long and painful episode, the principal motive which actuated him was an inexcusable egoism. he was obsessed by a fear of ridicule. he knew that letters were regularly opened at the french post office, and he lived in terror lest some spiteful story of his absurd relationship with a blind old woman of seventy should be concocted and set afloat among his friends, or his enemies, in england, which would make him the laughing-stock of society for the rest of his days. he was no less terrified by the intensity of the sentiment of which he had become the object. thoroughly superficial and thoroughly selfish, immersed in his london life of dilettantism and gossip, the weekly letters from france with their burden of a desperate affection appalled him and bored him by turns. he did not know what to do; and his perplexity was increased by the fact that he really liked madame du deffand--so far as he could like anyone--and also by the fact that his vanity was highly flattered by her letters. many courses were open to him, but the one he took was probably the most cruel that he could have taken: he insisted with an absolute rigidity on their correspondence being conducted in the tone of the most ordinary friendship--on those terms alone, he said, would he consent to continue it. and of course such terms were impossible to madame du deffand. she accepted them--what else could she do?--but every line she wrote was a denial of them. then, periodically, there was an explosion. walpole stormed, threatened, declared he would write no more; and on her side there were abject apologies, and solemn promises of amendment. naturally, it was all in vain. a few months later he would be attacked by a fit of the gout, her solicitude would be too exaggerated, and the same fury was repeated, and the same submission. one wonders what the charm could have been that held that proud old spirit in such a miserable captivity. was it his very coldness that subdued her? if he had cared for her a little more, perhaps she would have cared for him a good deal less. but it is clear that what really bound her to him was the fact that they so rarely met. if he had lived in paris, if he had been a member of her little clique, subject to the unceasing searchlight of her nightly scrutiny, who can doubt that, sooner or later, walpole too would have felt 'le fléau de son amitié'? his mask, too, would have been torn to tatters like the rest. but, as it was, his absence saved him; her imagination clothed him with an almost mythic excellence; his brilliant letters added to the impression; and then, at intervals of about two years, he appeared in paris for six weeks--just long enough to rivet her chains, and not long enough to loosen them. and so it was that she fell before him with that absolute and unquestioning devotion of which only the most dominating and fastidious natures are capable. once or twice, indeed, she did attempt a revolt, but only succeeded in plunging herself into a deeper subjection. after one of his most violent and cruel outbursts, she refused to communicate with him further, and for three or four weeks she kept her word; then she crept back and pleaded for forgiveness. walpole graciously granted it. it is with some satisfaction that one finds him, a few weeks later, laid up with a peculiarly painful attack of the gout. about half-way through the correspondence there is an acute crisis, after which the tone of the letters undergoes a marked change. after seven years of struggle, madame du deffand's indomitable spirit was broken; henceforward she would hope for nothing; she would gratefully accept the few crumbs that might be thrown her; and for the rest she resigned herself to her fate. gradually sinking into extreme old age, her self-repression and her bitterness grew ever more and more complete. she was always bored; and her later letters are a series of variations on the perpetual theme of 'ennui.' 'c'est une maladie de l'âme,' she says, 'dont nous afflige la nature en nous donnant l'existence; c'est le ver solitaire qui absorbe tout.' and again, 'l'ennui est l'avant-goût du néant, mais le néant lui est préférable.' her existence had become a hateful waste--a garden, she said, from which all the flowers had been uprooted and which had been sown with salt. 'ah! je le répète sans cesse, il n'y a qu'un malheur, celui d'être né.' the grasshopper had become a burden; and yet death seemed as little desirable as life. 'comment est-il possible,' she asks, 'qu'on craigne la fin d'une vie aussi triste?' when death did come at last, he came very gently. she felt his approaches, and dictated a letter to walpole, bidding him, in her strange fashion, an infinitely restrained farewell: 'divertissez-vous, mon ami, le plus que vous pourrez; ne vous affligez point de mon état, nous étions presque perdus l'un pour l'autre; nous ne nous devions jamais revoir; vous me regretterez, parce qu'on est bien aise de se savoir aimé.' that was her last word to him. walpole might have reached her before she finally lost consciousness, but, though he realised her condition and knew well enough what his presence would have been to her, he did not trouble to move. she died as she had lived--her room crowded with acquaintances and the sound of a conversation in her ears. when one reflects upon her extraordinary tragedy, when one attempts to gauge the significance of her character and of her life, it is difficult to know whether to pity most, to admire, or to fear. certainly there is something at once pitiable and magnificent in such an unflinching perception of the futilities of living, such an uncompromising refusal to be content with anything save the one thing that it is impossible to have. but there is something alarming too; was she perhaps right after all? notes: [footnote : _lettres de la marquise du deffand à horace walpole_ ( - ). première edition complète, augmentée d'environ lettres inédites, publiées, d'après les originaux, avec une introduction, des notes, et une table des noms, par mrs. paget toynbee. vols. methuen, .] voltaire and england[ ] the visit of voltaire to england marks a turning-point in the history of civilisation. it was the first step in a long process of interaction--big with momentous consequences--between the french and english cultures. for centuries the combined forces of mutual ignorance and political hostility had kept the two nations apart: voltaire planted a small seed of friendship which, in spite of a thousand hostile influences, grew and flourished mightily. the seed, no doubt, fell on good ground, and no doubt, if voltaire had never left his native country, some chance wind would have carried it over the narrow seas, so that history in the main would have been unaltered. but actually his was the hand which did the work. it is unfortunate that our knowledge of so important a period in voltaire's life should be extremely incomplete. carlyle, who gave a hasty glance at it in his life of frederick, declared that he could find nothing but 'mere inanity and darkness visible'; and since carlyle's day the progress has been small. a short chapter in desnoiresterres' long biography and an essay by churton collins did something to co-ordinate the few known facts. another step was taken a few years ago with the publication of m. lanson's elaborate and exhaustive edition of the _lettres philosophiques_, the work in which voltaire gave to the world the distilled essence of his english experiences. and now m. lucien foulet has brought together all the extant letters concerning the period, which he has collated with scrupulous exactitude and to which he has added a series of valuable appendices upon various obscure and disputed points. m. lanson's great attainments are well known, and to say that m. foulet's work may fitly rank as a supplementary volume to the edition of the _lettres philosophiques_ is simply to say that he is a worthy follower of that noble tradition of profound research and perfect lucidity which has made french scholarship one of the glories of european culture. upon the events in particular which led up to voltaire's departure for england, m. foulet has been able to throw considerable light. the story, as revealed by the letters of contemporary observers and the official documents of the police, is an instructive and curious one. in the early days of january voltaire, who was thirty-one years of age, occupied a position which, so far as could be seen upon the surface, could hardly have been more fortunate. he was recognised everywhere as the rising poet of the day; he was a successful dramatist; he was a friend of madame de prie, who was all-powerful at court, and his talents had been rewarded by a pension from the royal purse. his brilliance, his gaiety, his extraordinary capacity for being agreeable had made him the pet of the narrow and aristocratic circle which dominated france. dropping his middle-class antecedents as completely as he had dropped his middle-class name, young arouet, the notary's offspring, floated at his ease through the palaces of dukes and princes, with whose sons he drank and jested, and for whose wives--it was _de rigueur_ in those days--he expressed all the ardours of a passionate and polite devotion. such was his roseate situation when, all at once, the catastrophe came. one night at the opéra the chevalier de rohan-chabot, of the famous and powerful family of the rohans, a man of forty-three, quarrelsome, blustering, whose reputation for courage left something to be desired, began to taunt the poet upon his birth--'monsieur arouet, monsieur voltaire--what _is_ your name?' to which the retort came quickly--'whatever my name may be, i know how to preserve the honour of it.' the chevalier muttered something and went off, but the incident was not ended. voltaire had let his high spirits and his sharp tongue carry him too far, and he was to pay the penalty. it was not an age in which it was safe to be too witty with lords. 'now mind, dancourt,' said one of those _grands seigneurs_ to the leading actor of the day, 'if you're more amusing than i am at dinner to-night, _je te donnerai cent coups de bâtons._' it was dangerous enough to show one's wits at all in the company of such privileged persons, but to do so at their expense----! a few days later voltaire and the chevalier met again, at the comédie, in adrienne lecouvreur's dressing-room. rohan repeated his sneering question, and 'the chevalier has had his answer' was voltaire's reply. furious, rohan lifted his stick, but at that moment adrienne very properly fainted, and the company dispersed. a few days more and rohan had perfected the arrangements for his revenge. voltaire, dining at the duc de sully's, where, we are told, he was on the footing of a son of the house, received a message that he was wanted outside in the street. he went out, was seized by a gang of lackeys, and beaten before the eyes of rohan, who directed operations from a cab. 'epargnez la tête,' he shouted, 'elle est encore bonne pour faire rire le public'; upon which, according to one account, there were exclamations from the crowd which had gathered round of 'ah! le bon seigneur!' the sequel is known to everyone: how voltaire rushed back, dishevelled and agonised, into sully's dining-room, how he poured out his story in an agitated flood of words, and how that high-born company, with whom he had been living up to that moment on terms of the closest intimacy, now only displayed the signs of a frigid indifference. the caste-feeling had suddenly asserted itself. poets, no doubt, were all very well in their way, but really, if they began squabbling with noblemen, what could they expect? and then the callous and stupid convention of that still half-barbarous age--the convention which made misfortune the proper object of ridicule--came into play no less powerfully. one might take a poet seriously, perhaps--until he was whipped; then, of course, one could only laugh at him. for the next few days, wherever voltaire went he was received with icy looks, covert smiles, or exaggerated politeness. the prince de conti, who, a month or two before, had written an ode in which he placed the author of _oedipe_ side by side with the authors of _le cid_ and _phèdre_, now remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that 'ces coups de bâtons étaient bien reçus et mal donnés.' 'nous serions bien malheureux,' said another well-bred personage, as he took a pinch of snuff, 'si les poètes n'avaient pas des épaules.' such friends as remained faithful were helpless. even madame de prie could do nothing. 'le pauvre voltaire me fait grande pitié,' she said; 'dans le fond il a raison.' but the influence of the rohan family was too much for her, and she could only advise him to disappear for a little into the country, lest worse should befall. disappear he did, remaining for the next two months concealed in the outskirts of paris, where he practised swordsmanship against his next meeting with his enemy. the situation was cynically topsy-turvy. as m. foulet points out, rohan had legally rendered himself liable, under the edict against duelling, to a long term of imprisonment, if not to the penalty of death. yet the law did not move, and voltaire was left to take the only course open in those days to a man of honour in such circumstances--to avenge the insult by a challenge and a fight. but now the law, which had winked at rohan, began to act against voltaire. the police were instructed to arrest him so soon as he should show any sign of an intention to break the peace. one day he suddenly appeared at versailles, evidently on the lookout for rohan, and then as suddenly vanished. a few weeks later, the police reported that he was in paris, lodging with a fencing-master, and making no concealment of his desire to 'insulter incessamment et avec éclat m. le chevalier de rohan.' this decided the authorities, and accordingly on the night of the th of april, as we learn from the _police gazette_, 'le sieur arrouët de voltaire, fameux poète,' was arrested, and conducted 'par ordre du roi' to the bastille. a letter, written by voltaire to his friend madame de bernières while he was still in hiding, reveals the effect which these events had produced upon his mind. it is the first letter in the series of his collected correspondence which is not all epicurean elegance and caressing wit. the wit, the elegance, the finely turned phrase, the shifting smile--these things are still visible there no doubt, but they are informed and overmastered by a new, an almost ominous spirit: voltaire, for the first time in his life, is serious. j'ai été à l'extrémité; je n'attends que ma convalescence pour abandonner à jamais ce pays-ci. souvenez-vous de l'amitié tendre que vous avez eue pour moi; au nom de cette amitié informez-moi par un mot de votre main de ce qui se passe, ou parlez à l'homme que je vous envoi, en qui vous pouvez prendre une entière confiance. présentez mes respects à madame du deffand; dites à thieriot que je veux absolument qu'il m'aime, ou quand je serai mort, ou quand je serai heureux; jusque-là, je lui pardonne son indifférence. dites à m. le chevalier des alleurs que je n'oublierai jamais la générosité de ses procédés pour moi. comptez que tout détrompé que je suis de la vanité des amitiés humaines, la vôtre me sera à jamais précieuse. je ne souhaite de revenir à paris que pour vous voir, vous embrasser encore une fois, et vous faire voir ma constance dans mon amitié et dans mes malheurs. 'présentez mes respects à madame du deffand!' strange indeed are the whirligigs of time! madame de bernières was then living in none other than that famous house at the corner of the rue de beaune and the quai des théatins (now quai voltaire) where, more than half a century later, the writer of those lines was to come, bowed down under the weight of an enormous celebrity, to look for the last time upon paris and the world; where, too, madame du deffand herself, decrepit, blind, and bitter with the disillusionments of a strange lifetime, was to listen once more to the mellifluous enchantments of that extraordinary intelligence, which--so it seemed to her as she sat entranced--could never, never grow old.[ ] voltaire was not kept long in the bastille. for some time he had entertained a vague intention of visiting england, and he now begged for permission to leave the country. the authorities, whose one object was to prevent an unpleasant _fracas_, were ready enough to substitute exile for imprisonment; and thus, after a fortnight's detention, the 'fameux poète' was released on condition that he should depart forthwith, and remain, until further permission, at a distance of at least fifty leagues from versailles. it is from this point onwards that our information grows scanty and confused. we know that voltaire was in calais early in may, and it is generally agreed that he crossed over to england shortly afterwards. his subsequent movements are uncertain. we find him established at wandsworth in the middle of october, but it is probable that in the interval he had made a secret journey to paris with the object--in which he did not succeed--of challenging the chevalier de rohan to a duel. where he lived during these months is unknown, but apparently it was not in london. the date of his final departure from england is equally in doubt; m. foulet adduces some reasons for supposing that he returned secretly to france in november , and in that case the total length of the english visit was just two and a half years. churton collins, however, prolongs it until march . a similar obscurity hangs over all the details of voltaire's stay. not only are his own extant letters during this period unusually few, but allusions to him in contemporary english correspondences are almost entirely absent. we have to depend upon scattered hints, uncertain inferences, and conflicting rumours. we know that he stayed for some time at wandsworth with a certain everard falkener in circumstances which he described to thieriot in a letter in english--an english quaintly flavoured with the gay impetuosity of another race. 'at my coming to london,' he wrote, 'i found my damned jew was broken.' (he had depended upon some bills of exchange drawn upon a jewish broker.) i was without a penny, sick to dye of a violent ague, stranger, alone, helpless, in the midst of a city wherein i was known to nobody; my lord and lady bolingbroke were into the country; i could not make bold to see our ambassadour in so wretched a condition. i had never undergone such distress; but i am born to run through all the misfortunes of life. in these circumstances my star, that among all its direful influences pours allways on me some kind refreshment, sent to me an english gentleman unknown to me, who forced me to receive some money that i wanted. another london citisen that i had seen but once at paris, carried me to his own country house, wherein i lead an obscure and charming life since that time, without going to london, and quite given over to the pleasures of indolence and friendshipp. the true and generous affection of this man who soothes the bitterness of my life brings me to love you more and more. all the instances of friendshipp indear my friend tiriot to me. i have seen often mylord and mylady bolinbroke; i have found their affection still the same, even increased in proportion to my unhappiness; they offered me all, their money, their house; but i have refused all, because they are lords, and i have accepted all from mr. faulknear because he is a single gentleman. we know that the friendship thus begun continued for many years, but as to who or what everard falkener was--besides the fact that he was a 'single gentleman'--we have only just information enough to make us wish for more. 'i am here,' he wrote after voltaire had gone, 'just as you left me, neither merrier nor sadder, nor richer nor poorer, enjoying perfect health, having everything that makes life agreeable, without love, without avarice, without ambition, and without envy; and as long as all this lasts i shall take the liberty to call myself a very happy man.' this stoical englishman was a merchant who eventually so far overcame his distaste both for ambition and for love, as to become first ambassador at constantinople and then postmaster-general--has anyone, before or since, ever held such a singular succession of offices?--and to wind up by marrying, as we are intriguingly told, at the age of sixty-three, 'the illegitimate daughter of general churchill.' we have another glimpse of voltaire at wandsworth in a curious document brought to light by m. lanson. edward higginson, an assistant master at a quaker's school there, remembered how the excitable frenchman used to argue with him for hours in latin on the subject of 'water-baptism,' until at last higginson produced a text from st. paul which seemed conclusive. some time after, voltaire being at the earl temple's seat in fulham, with pope and others such, in their conversation fell on the subject of water-baptism. voltaire assumed the part of a quaker, and at length came to mention that assertion of paul. they questioned there being such an assertion in all his writings; on which was a large wager laid, as near as i remember of £ : and voltaire, not retaining where it was, had one of the earl's horses, and came over the ferry from fulham to putney.... when i came he desired me to give him in writing the place where paul said, _he was not sent to baptize_; which i presently did. then courteously taking his leave, he mounted and rode back-- and, we must suppose, won his wager. he seemed so taken with me (adds higginson) as to offer to buy out the remainder of my time. i told him i expected my master would be very exorbitant in his demand. he said, let his demand be what it might, he would give it on condition i would yield to be his companion, keeping the same company, and i should always, in every respect, fare as he fared, wearing my clothes like his and of equal value: telling me then plainly, he was a deist; adding, so were most of the noblemen in france and in england; deriding the account given by the four evangelists concerning the birth of christ, and his miracles, etc., so far that i desired him to desist: for i could not bear to hear my saviour so reviled and spoken against. whereupon he seemed under a disappointment, and left me with some reluctance. in london itself we catch fleeting visions of the eager gesticulating figure, hurrying out from his lodgings in billiter square--'belitery square' he calls it--or at the sign of the 'white whigg' in maiden lane, covent garden, to go off to the funeral of sir isaac newton in westminster abbey, or to pay a call on congreve, or to attend a quaker's meeting. one would like to know in which street it was that he found himself surrounded by an insulting crowd, whose jeers at the 'french dog' he turned to enthusiasm by jumping upon a milestone, and delivering a harangue beginning--'brave englishmen! am i not sufficiently unhappy in not having been born among you?' then there are one or two stories of him in the great country houses--at bubb dodington's where he met dr. young and disputed with him upon the episode of sin and death in _paradise lost_ with such vigour that at last young burst out with the couplet: you are so witty, profligate, and thin, at once we think you milton, death, and sin; and at blenheim, where the old duchess of marlborough hoped to lure him into helping her with her decocted memoirs, until she found that he had scruples, when in a fury she snatched the papers out of his hands. 'i thought,' she cried, 'the man had sense; but i find him at bottom either a fool or a philosopher.' it is peculiarly tantalising that our knowledge should be almost at its scantiest in the very direction in which we should like to know most, and in which there was most reason to hope that our curiosity might have been gratified. of voltaire's relations with the circle of pope, swift, and bolingbroke only the most meagre details have reached us. his correspondence with bolingbroke, whom he had known in france and whose presence in london was one of his principal inducements in coming to england--a correspondence which must have been considerable--has completely disappeared. nor, in the numerous published letters which passed about between the members of that distinguished group, is there any reference to voltaire's name. now and then some chance remark raises our expectations, only to make our disappointment more acute. many years later, for instance, in , a certain major broome paid a visit to ferney, and made the following entry in his diary: dined with mons. voltaire, who behaved very politely. he is very old, was dressed in a robe-de-chambre of blue sattan and gold spots on it, with a sort of blue sattan cap and tassle of gold. he spoke all the time in english.... his house is not very fine, but genteel, and stands upon a mount close to the mountains. he is tall and very thin, has a very piercing eye, and a look singularly vivacious. he told me of his acquaintance with pope, swift (with whom he lived for three months at lord peterborough's) and gay, who first showed him the _beggar's opera_ before it was acted. he says he admires swift, and loved gay vastly. he said that swift had a great deal of the ridiculum acre. and then major broome goes on to describe the 'handsome new church' at ferney, and the 'very neat water-works' at geneva. but what a vision has he opened out for us, and, in that very moment, shut away for ever from our gaze in that brief parenthesis--'with whom he lived for three months at lord peterborough's'! what would we not give now for no more than one or two of the bright intoxicating drops from that noble river of talk which flowed then with such a careless abundance!--that prodigal stream, swirling away, so swiftly and so happily, into the empty spaces of forgetfulness and the long night of time! so complete, indeed, is the lack of precise and well-authenticated information upon this, by far the most obviously interesting side of voltaire's life in england, that some writers have been led to adopt a very different theory from that which is usually accepted, and to suppose that his relations with pope's circle were in reality of a purely superficial, or even of an actually disreputable, kind. voltaire himself, no doubt, was anxious to appear as the intimate friend of the great writers of england; but what reason is there to believe that he was not embroidering upon the facts, and that his true position was not that of a mere literary hanger-on, eager simply for money and _réclame_, with, perhaps, no particular scruples as to his means of getting hold of those desirable ends? the objection to this theory is that there is even less evidence to support it than there is to support voltaire's own story. there are a few rumours and anecdotes; but that is all. voltaire was probably the best-hated man in the eighteenth century, and it is only natural that, out of the enormous mass of mud that was thrown at him, some handfuls should have been particularly aimed at his life in england. accordingly, we learn that somebody was told by somebody else--'avec des détails que je ne rapporterai point'--that 'm. de voltaire se conduisit très-irrégulièrement en angleterre: qu'il s'y est fait beaucoup d'ennemis, par des procédés qui n'accordaient pas avec les principes d'une morale exacte.' and we are told that he left england 'under a cloud'; that before he went he was 'cudgelled' by an infuriated publisher; that he swindled lord peterborough out of large sums of money, and that the outraged nobleman drew his sword upon the miscreant, who only escaped with his life by a midnight flight. a more circumstantial story has been given currency by dr. johnson. voltaire, it appears, was a spy in the pay of walpole, and was in the habit of betraying bolingbroke's political secrets to the government. the tale first appears in a third-rate life of pope by owen ruffhead, who had it from warburton, who had it from pope himself. oddly enough churton collins apparently believed it, partly from the evidence afforded by the 'fulsome flattery' and 'exaggerated compliments' to be found in voltaire's correspondence, which, he says, reveal a man in whom 'falsehood and hypocrisy are of the very essence of his composition. there is nothing, however base, to which he will not stoop: there is no law in the code of social honour which he is not capable of violating.' such an extreme and sweeping conclusion, following from such shadowy premises, seems to show that some of the mud thrown in the eighteenth century was still sticking in the twentieth. m. foulet, however, has examined ruffhead's charge in a very different spirit, with conscientious minuteness, and has concluded that it is utterly without foundation. it is, indeed, certain that voltaire's acquaintanceship was not limited to the extremely bitter opposition circle which centred about the disappointed and restless figure of bolingbroke. he had come to london with letters of introduction from horace walpole, the english ambassador at paris, to various eminent persons in the government. 'mr. voltaire, a poet and a very ingenious one,' was recommended by walpole to the favour and protection of the duke of newcastle, while dodington was asked to support the subscription to 'an excellent poem, called "henry iv.," which, on account of some bold strokes in it against persecution and the priests, cannot be printed here.' these letters had their effect, and voltaire rapidly made friends at court. when he brought out his london edition of the _henriade_, there was hardly a great name in england which was not on the subscription list. he was allowed to dedicate the poem to queen caroline, and he received a royal gift of £ . now it is also certain that just before this time bolingbroke and swift were suspicious of a 'certain pragmatical spy of quality, well known to act in that capacity by those into whose company he insinuates himself,' who, they believed, were betraying their plans to the government. but to conclude that this detected spy was voltaire, whose favour at court was known to be the reward of treachery to his friends, is, apart from the inherent improbability of the supposition, rendered almost impossible, owing to the fact that bolingbroke and swift were themselves subscribers to the _henriade_--bolingbroke took no fewer than twenty copies--and that swift was not only instrumental in obtaining a large number of irish subscriptions, but actually wrote a preface to the dublin edition of another of voltaire's works. what inducement could bolingbroke have had for such liberality towards a man who had betrayed him? who can conceive of the redoubtable dean of st. patrick, then at the very summit of his fame, dispensing such splendid favours to a wretch whom he knew to be engaged in the shabbiest of all traffics at the expense of himself and his friends? voltaire's literary activities were as insatiable while he was in england as during every other period of his career. besides the edition of the _henriade_, which was considerably altered and enlarged--one of the changes was the silent removal of the name of sully from its pages--he brought out a volume of two essays, written in english, upon the french civil wars and upon epic poetry, he began an adaptation of _julius caesar_ for the french stage, he wrote the opening acts of his tragedy of _brutus_, and he collected a quantity of material for his history of charles xii. in addition to all this, he was busily engaged with the preparations for his _lettres philosophiques_. the _henriade_ met with a great success. every copy of the magnificent quarto edition was sold before publication; three octavo editions were exhausted in as many weeks; and voltaire made a profit of at least ten thousand francs. m. foulet thinks that he left england shortly after this highly successful transaction, and that he established himself secretly in some town in normandy, probably rouen, where he devoted himself to the completion of the various works which he had in hand. be this as it may, he was certainly in france early in april ; a few days later he applied for permission to return to paris; this was granted on the th of april, and the remarkable incident which had begun at the opera more than three years before came to a close. it was not until five years later that the _lettres philosophiques_ appeared. this epoch-making book was the lens by means of which voltaire gathered together the scattered rays of his english impressions into a focus of brilliant and burning intensity. it so happened that the nation into whose midst he had plunged, and whose characteristics he had scrutinised with so avid a curiosity, had just reached one of the culminating moments in its history. the great achievement of the revolution and the splendid triumphs of marlborough had brought to england freedom, power, wealth, and that sense of high exhilaration which springs from victory and self-confidence. her destiny was in the hands of an aristocracy which was not only capable and enlightened, like most successful aristocracies, but which possessed the peculiar attribute of being deep-rooted in popular traditions and popular sympathies and of drawing its life-blood from the popular will. the agitations of the reign of anne were over; the stagnation of the reign of walpole had not yet begun. there was a great outburst of intellectual activity and aesthetic energy. the amazing discoveries of newton seemed to open out boundless possibilities of speculation; and in the meantime the great nobles were building palaces and reviving the magnificence of the augustan age, while men of letters filled the offices of state. never, perhaps, before or since, has england been so thoroughly english; never have the national qualities of solidity and sense, independence of judgment and idiosyncrasy of temperament, received a more forcible and complete expression. it was the england of walpole and carteret, of butler and berkeley, of swift and pope. the two works which, out of the whole range of english literature, contain in a supreme degree those elements of power, breadth, and common sense, which lie at the root of the national genius--'gulliver's travels' and the 'dunciad'--both appeared during voltaire's visit. nor was it only in the high places of the nation's consciousness that these signs were manifest; they were visible everywhere, to every stroller through the london streets--in the royal exchange, where all the world came crowding to pour its gold into english purses, in the meeting houses of the quakers, where the holy spirit rushed forth untrammelled to clothe itself in the sober garb of english idiom, and in the taverns of cheapside, where the brawny fellow-countrymen of newton and shakespeare sat, in an impenetrable silence, over their english beef and english beer. it was only natural that such a society should act as a powerful stimulus upon the vivid temperament of voltaire, who had come to it with the bitter knowledge fresh in his mind of the medieval futility, the narrow-minded cynicism of his own country. yet the book which was the result is in many ways a surprising one. it is almost as remarkable for what it does not say as for what it does. in the first place, voltaire makes no attempt to give his readers an account of the outward surface, the social and spectacular aspects of english life. it is impossible not to regret this, especially since we know, from a delightful fragment which was not published until after his death, describing his first impressions on arriving in london, in how brilliant and inimitable a fashion he would have accomplished the task. a full-length portrait of hanoverian england from the personal point of view, by voltaire, would have been a priceless possession for posterity; but it was never to be painted. the first sketch revealing in its perfection the hand of the master, was lightly drawn, and then thrown aside for ever. and in reality it is better so. voltaire decided to aim at something higher and more important, something more original and more profound. he determined to write a book which should be, not the sparkling record of an ingenious traveller, but a work of propaganda and a declaration of faith. that new mood, which had come upon him first in sully's dining-room and is revealed to us in the quivering phrases of the note to madame de bernières, was to grow, in the congenial air of england, into the dominating passion of his life. henceforth, whatever quips and follies, whatever flouts and mockeries might play upon the surface, he was to be in deadly earnest at heart. he was to live and die a fighter in the ranks of progress, a champion in the mighty struggle which was now beginning against the powers of darkness in france. the first great blow in that struggle had been struck ten years earlier by montesquieu in his _lettres persanes_; the second was struck by voltaire in the _lettres philosophiques_. the intellectual freedom, the vigorous precision, the elegant urbanity which characterise the earlier work appear in a yet more perfect form in the later one. voltaire's book, as its title indicates, is in effect a series of generalised reflections upon a multitude of important topics, connected together by a common point of view. a description of the institutions and manners of england is only an incidental part of the scheme: it is the fulcrum by means of which the lever of voltaire's philosophy is brought into operation. the book is an extremely short one--it fills less than two hundred small octavo pages; and its tone and style have just that light and airy gaiety which befits the ostensible form of it--a set of private letters to a friend. with an extraordinary width of comprehension, an extraordinary pliability of intelligence, voltaire touches upon a hundred subjects of the most varied interest and importance--from the theory of gravitation to the satires of lord rochester, from the effects of inoculation to the immortality of the soul--and every touch tells. it is the spirit of humanism carried to its furthest, its quintessential point; indeed, at first sight, one is tempted to think that this quality of rarefied universality has been exaggerated into a defect. the matters treated of are so many and so vast, they are disposed of and dismissed so swiftly, so easily, so unemphatically, that one begins to wonder whether, after all, anything of real significance can have been expressed. but, in reality, what, in those few small pages, has been expressed is simply the whole philosophy of voltaire. he offers one an exquisite dish of whipped cream; one swallows down the unsubstantial trifle, and asks impatiently if that is all? at any rate, it is enough. into that frothy sweetness his subtle hand has insinuated a single drop of some strange liquor--is it a poison or is it an elixir of life?--whose penetrating influence will spread and spread until the remotest fibres of the system have felt its power. contemporary french readers, when they had shut the book, found somehow that they were looking out upon a new world; that a process of disintegration had begun among their most intimate beliefs and feelings; that the whole rigid frame-work of society--of life itself--the hard, dark, narrow, antiquated structure of their existence--had suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, become a faded, shadowy thing. it might have been expected that, among the reforms which such a work would advocate, a prominent place would certainly have been given to those of a political nature. in england a political revolution had been crowned with triumph, and all that was best in english life was founded upon the political institutions which had been then established. the moral was obvious: one had only to compare the state of england under a free government with the state of france, disgraced, bankrupt, and incompetent, under autocratic rule. but the moral is never drawn by voltaire. his references to political questions are slight and vague; he gives a sketch of english history, which reaches magna charta, suddenly mentions henry vii., and then stops; he has not a word to say upon the responsibility of ministers, the independence of the judicature, or even the freedom of the press. he approves of the english financial system, whose control by the commons he mentions, but he fails to indicate the importance of the fact. as to the underlying principles of the constitution, the account which he gives of them conveys hardly more to the reader than the famous lines in the _henriade_: aux murs de westminster on voit paraître ensemble trois pouvoirs étonnés du noeud qui les rassemble. apparently voltaire was aware of these deficiencies, for in the english edition of the book he caused the following curious excuses to be inserted in the preface: some of his _english_ readers may perhaps be dissatisfied at his not expatiating farther on their constitution and their laws, which most of them revere almost to idolatry; but, this reservedness is an effect of _m. de voltaire's_ judgment. he contented himself with giving his opinion of them in general reflexions, the cast of which is entirely new, and which prove that he had made this part of the _british_ polity his particular study. besides, how was it possible for a foreigner to pierce thro' their politicks, that gloomy labyrinth, in which such of the _english_ themselves as are best acquainted with it, confess daily that they are bewilder'd and lost? nothing could be more characteristic of the attitude, not only of voltaire himself, but of the whole host of his followers in the later eighteenth century, towards the actual problems of politics. they turned away in disgust from the 'gloomy labyrinth' of practical fact to take refuge in those charming 'general reflexions' so dear to their hearts, 'the cast of which was entirely new'--and the conclusion of which was also entirely new, for it was the french revolution. it was, indeed, typical of voltaire and of his age that the _lettres philosophiques_ should have been condemned by the authorities, not for any political heterodoxy, but for a few remarks which seemed to call in question the immortality of the soul. his attack upon the _ancien régime_ was, in the main, a theoretical attack; doubtless its immediate effectiveness was thereby diminished, but its ultimate force was increased. and the _ancien régime_ itself was not slow to realise the danger: to touch the ark of metaphysical orthodoxy was in its eyes the unforgiveable sin. voltaire knew well enough that he must be careful. il n'y a qu'une lettre touchant m. loke [he wrote to a friend]. la seule matière philosophique que j'y traite est la petite bagatelle de l'immortalité de l'âme; mais la chose a trop de conséquence pour la traiter sérieusement. il a fallu l'égorger pour ne pas heurter de front nos seigneurs les théologiens, gens qui voient si clairement la spiritualité de l'âme qu'ils feraient brûler, s'ils pouvaient, les corps de ceux qui en doutent. nor was it only 'm. loke' whom he felt himself obliged to touch so gingerly; the remarkable movement towards deism, which was then beginning in england, voltaire only dared to allude to in a hardly perceivable hint. he just mentions, almost in a parenthesis, the names of shaftesbury, collins, and toland, and then quickly passes on. in this connexion, it may be noticed that the influence upon voltaire of the writers of this group has often been exaggerated. to say, as lord morley says, that 'it was the english onslaught which sowed in him the seed of the idea ... of a systematic and reasoned attack' upon christian theology, is to misjudge the situation. in the first place it is certain both that voltaire's opinions upon those matters were fixed, and that his proselytising habits had begun, long before he came to england. there is curious evidence of this in an anonymous letter, preserved among the archives of the bastille, and addressed to the head of the police at the time of voltaire's imprisonment. vous venez de mettre à la bastille [says the writer, who, it is supposed, was an ecclesiastic] un homme que je souhaitais y voir il y a plus de années. the writer goes on to speak of the métier que faisait l'homme en question, prêchant le déisme tout à découvert aux toilettes de nos jeunes seigneurs ... l'ancien testament, selon lui, n'est qu'un tissu de contes et de fables, les apôtres étaient de bonnes gens idiots, simples, et crédules, et les pères de l'eglise, saint bernard surtout, auquel il en veut le plus, n'étaient que des charlatans et des suborneurs. 'je voudrais être homme d'authorité,' he adds, 'pour un jour seulement, afin d'enfermer ce poète entre quatre murailles pour toute sa vie.' that voltaire at this early date should have already given rise to such pious ecclesiastical wishes shows clearly enough that he had little to learn from the deists of england. and, in the second place, the deists of england had very little to teach a disciple of bayle, fontenelle, and montesquieu. they were, almost without exception, a group of second-rate and insignificant writers whose 'onslaught' upon current beliefs was only to a faint extent 'systematic and reasoned.' the feeble and fluctuating rationalism of toland and wollaston, the crude and confused rationalism of collins, the half-crazy rationalism of woolston, may each and all, no doubt, have furnished voltaire with arguments and suggestions, but they cannot have seriously influenced his thought. bolingbroke was a more important figure, and he was in close personal relation with voltaire; but his controversial writings were clumsy and superficial to an extraordinary degree. as voltaire himself said, 'in his works there are many leaves and little fruit; distorted expressions and periods intolerably long.' tindal and middleton were more vigorous; but their work did not appear until a later period. the masterly and far-reaching speculations of hume belong, of course, to a totally different class. apart from politics and metaphysics, there were two directions in which the _lettres philosophiques_ did pioneer work of a highly important kind: they introduced both newton and shakespeare to the french public. the four letters on newton show voltaire at his best--succinct, lucid, persuasive, and bold. the few paragraphs on shakespeare, on the other hand, show him at his worst. their principal merit is that they mention his existence--a fact hitherto unknown in france; otherwise they merely afford a striking example of the singular contradiction in voltaire's nature which made him a revolutionary in intellect and kept him a high tory in taste. never was such speculative audacity combined with such aesthetic timidity; it is as if he had reserved all his superstition for matters of art. from his account of shakespeare, it is clear that he had never dared to open his eyes and frankly look at what he should see before him. all was 'barbare, dépourvu de bienséances, d'ordre, de vraisemblance'; in the hurly-burly he was dimly aware of a figured and elevated style, and of some few 'lueurs étonnantes'; but to the true significance of shakespeare's genius he remained utterly blind. characteristically enough, voltaire, at the last moment, did his best to reinforce his tentative metaphysical observations on 'm. loke' by slipping into his book, as it were accidentally, an additional letter, quite disconnected from the rest of the work, containing reflexions upon some of the _pensées_ of pascal. he no doubt hoped that these reflexions, into which he had distilled some of his most insidious venom, might, under cover of the rest, pass unobserved. but all his subterfuges were useless. it was in vain that he pulled wires and intrigued with high personages; in vain that he made his way to the aged minister, cardinal fleury, and attempted, by reading him some choice extracts on the quakers, to obtain permission for the publication of his book. the old cardinal could not help smiling, though voltaire had felt that it would be safer to skip the best parts--'the poor man!' he said afterwards, 'he didn't realise what he had missed'--but the permission never came. voltaire was obliged to have recourse to an illicit publication; and then the authorities acted with full force. the _lettres philosophiques_ were officially condemned; the book was declared to be scandalous and 'contraire à la religion, aux bonnes moeurs, et au respect dû aux puissances,' and it was ordered to be publicly burned by the executioner. the result was precisely what might have been expected: the prohibitions and fulminations, so far from putting a stop to the sale of such exciting matter, sent it up by leaps and bounds. england suddenly became the fashion; the theories of m. loke and sir newton began to be discussed; even the plays of 'ce fou de shakespeare' began to be read. and, at the same time, the whispered message of tolerance, of free inquiry, of enlightened curiosity, was carried over the land. the success of voltaire's work was complete. he himself, however, had been obliged to seek refuge from the wrath of the government in the remote seclusion of madame du châtelet's country house at cirey. in this retirement he pursued his studies of newton, and a few years later produced an exact and brilliant summary of the work of the great english philosopher. once more the authorities intervened, and condemned voltaire's book. the newtonian system destroyed that of descartes, and descartes still spoke in france with the voice of orthodoxy; therefore, of course, the voice of newton must not be heard. but, somehow or other, the voice of newton _was_ heard. the men of science were converted to the new doctrine; and thus it is not too much to say that the wonderful advances in the study of mathematics which took place in france during the later years of the eighteenth century were the result of the illuminating zeal of voltaire. with his work on newton, voltaire's direct connexion with english influences came to an end. for the rest of his life, indeed, he never lost his interest in england; he was never tired of reading english books, of being polite to english travellers, and of doing his best, in the intervals of more serious labours, to destroy the reputation of that deplorable english buffoon, whom, unfortunately, he himself had been so foolish as first to introduce to the attention of his countrymen. but it is curious to notice how, as time went on, the force of voltaire's nature inevitably carried him further and further away from the central standpoints of the english mind. the stimulus which he had received in england only served to urge him into a path which no englishman has ever trod. the movement of english thought in the eighteenth century found its perfect expression in the profound, sceptical, and yet essentially conservative, genius of hume. how different was the attitude of voltaire! with what a reckless audacity, what a fierce uncompromising passion he charged and fought and charged again! he had no time for the nice discriminations of an elaborate philosophy, and no desire for the careful balance of the judicial mind; his creed was simple and explicit, and it also possessed the supreme merit of brevity: 'Écrasez l'infâme!' was enough for him. . notes: [footnote : _correspondance de voltaire_ ( - ). by lucien foulet. paris: hachette, .] [footnote : 'il est aussi animé qu'il ait jamais été. il a quatre-vingt-quatre ans, et en vérité je le crois immortel; il jouit de tous ses sens, aucun même n'est affaibli; c'est un être bien singulier, et en vérité fort supérieur.' madame du deffand to horace walpole, avril .] a dialogue between moses, diogenes, and mr. loke diogenes confess, oh _moses_! your miracles were but conjuring-tricks, your prophecies lucky hazards, and your laws a _gallimaufry_ of commonplaces and absurdities. mr. loke confess that you were more skill'd in flattering the vulgar than in ascertaining the truth, and that your reputation in the world would never have been so high, had your lot fallen among a nation of philosophers. diogenes confess that when you taught the _jews_ to spoil the _egyptians_ you were a sad rogue. mr. loke confess that it was a fable to give horses to pharaoh and an uncloven hoof to the hare. diogenes confess that you did never see the _back parts_ of the lord. mr. loke confess that your style had too much singularity and too little taste to be that of the holy ghost. moses all this may be true, my good friends; but what are the conclusions you would draw from your raillery? do you suppose that i am ignorant of all that a wise man might urge against my conduct, my tales, and my language? but alas! my path was chalk'd out for me not by choice but by necessity. i had not the happiness of living in _england_ or a _tub_. i was the leader of an ignorant and superstitious people, who would never have heeded the sober counsels of good sense and toleration, and who would have laughed at the refinements of a nice philosophy. it was necessary to flatter their vanity by telling them that they were the favour'd children of god, to satisfy their passions by allowing them to be treacherous and cruel to their enemies, and to tickle their ears by stories and farces by turns ridiculous and horrible, fit either for a nursery or _bedlam_. by such contrivances i was able to attain my ends and to establish the welfare of my countrymen. do you blame me? it is not the business of a ruler to be truthful, but to be politick; he must fly even from virtue herself, if she sit in a different quarter from expediency. it is his duty to _sacrifice_ the best, which is impossible, to a _little good_, which is close at hand. i was willing to lay down a multitude of foolish laws, so that, under their cloak, i might slip in a few wise ones; and, had i not shown myself to be both cruel and superstitious, the _jews_ would never have escaped from the bondage of the _egyptians_. diogenes. perhaps that would not have been an overwhelming disaster. but, in truth, you are right. there is no viler profession than the government of nations. he who dreams that he can lead a great crowd of fools without a great store of knavery is a fool himself. mr. loke are not you too hasty? does not history show that there have been great rulers who were good men? solon, henry of _navarre_, and milord somers were certainly not fools, and yet i am unwilling to believe that they were knaves either. moses no, not knaves; but dissemblers. in their different degrees, they all juggled; but 'twas not because jugglery pleas'd 'em; 'twas because men cannot be governed without it. mr. loke i would be happy to try the experiment. if men were told the truth, might they not believe it? if the opportunity of virtue and wisdom is never to be offer'd 'em, how can we be sure that they would not be willing to take it? let rulers be _bold_ and _honest_, and it is possible that the folly of their peoples will disappear. diogenes a pretty phantastick vision! but history is against you. moses and prophecy. diogenes and common observation. look at the world at this moment, and what do we see? it is as it has always been, and always will be. so long as it endures, the world will continue to be rul'd by cajolery, by injustice, and by imposture. mr. loke if that be so, i must take leave to lament the _destiny_ of the human race. voltaire's tragedies the historian of literature is little more than a historian of exploded reputations. what has he to do with shakespeare, with dante, with sophocles? has he entered into the springs of the sea? or has he walked in the search of the depth? the great fixed luminaries of the firmament of letters dazzle his optic glass; and he can hardly hope to do more than record their presence, and admire their splendours with the eyes of an ordinary mortal. his business is with the succeeding ages of men, not with all time; but _hyperion_ might have been written on the morrow of salamis, and the odes of pindar dedicated to george the fourth. the literary historian must rove in other hunting grounds. he is the geologist of literature, whose study lies among the buried strata of forgotten generations, among the fossil remnants of the past. the great men with whom he must deal are the great men who are no longer great--mammoths and ichthyosauri kindly preserved to us, among the siftings of so many epochs, by the impartial benignity of time. it is for him to unravel the jokes of erasmus, and to be at home among the platitudes of cicero. it is for him to sit up all night with the spectral heroes of byron; it is for him to exchange innumerable alexandrines with the faded heroines of voltaire. the great potentate of the eighteenth century has suffered cruelly indeed at the hands of posterity. everyone, it is true, has heard of him; but who has read him? it is by his name that ye shall know him, and not by his works. with the exception of his letters, of _candide_, of _akakia_, and of a few other of his shorter pieces, the vast mass of his productions has been already consigned to oblivion. how many persons now living have travelled through _la henriade_ or _la pucelle_? how many have so much as glanced at the imposing volumes of _l'esprit des moeurs_? _zadig_ and _zaïre, mérope_ and _charles xii_. still linger, perhaps, in the schoolroom; but what has become of _oreste_, and of _mahomet_, and of _alzire_? _où sont les neiges d'antan_? though voltaire's reputation now rests mainly on his achievements as a precursor of the revolution, to the eighteenth century he was as much a poet as a reformer. the whole of europe beheld at ferney the oracle, not only of philosophy, but of good taste; for thirty years every scribbler, every rising genius, and every crowned head, submitted his verses to the censure of voltaire; voltaire's plays were performed before crowded houses; his epic was pronounced superior to homer's, virgil's, and milton's; his epigrams were transcribed by every letter-writer, and got by heart by every wit. nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the gulf which divides us from our ancestors of the eighteenth century, than a comparison between our thoughts and their thoughts, between our feelings and their feelings, with regard to one and the same thing--a tragedy by voltaire. for us, as we take down the dustiest volume in our bookshelf, as we open it vaguely at some intolerable tirade, as we make an effort to labour through the procession of pompous commonplaces which meets our eyes, as we abandon the task in despair, and hastily return the book to its forgotten corner--to us it is well-nigh impossible to imagine the scene of charming brilliance which, five generations since, the same words must have conjured up. the splendid gaiety, the refined excitement, the pathos, the wit, the passion--all these things have vanished as completely from our perceptions as the candles, the powder, the looking-glasses, and the brocades, among which they moved and had their being. it may be instructive, or at least entertaining, to examine one of these forgotten masterpieces a little more closely; and we may do so with the less hesitation, since we shall only be following in the footsteps of voltaire himself. his examination of _hamlet_ affords a precedent which is particularly applicable, owing to the fact that the same interval of time divided him from shakespeare as that which divides ourselves from him. one point of difference, indeed, does exist between the relative positions of the two authors. voltaire, in his study of shakespeare, was dealing with a living, and a growing force; our interest in the dramas of voltaire is solely an antiquarian interest. at the present moment,[ ] a literal translation of _king lear_ is drawing full houses at the théâtre antoine. as a rule it is rash to prophesy; but, if that rule has any exceptions, this is certainly one of them--hundred years hence a literal translation of _zaïre_ will not be holding the english boards. it is not our purpose to appreciate the best, or to expose the worst, of voltaire's tragedies. our object is to review some specimen of what would have been recognised by his contemporaries as representative of the average flight of his genius. such a specimen is to be found in _alzire, ou les américains_, first produced with great success in , when voltaire was forty-two years of age and his fame as a dramatist already well established. _act i_.--the scene is laid in lima, the capital of peru, some years after the spanish conquest of america. when the play opens, don gusman, a spanish grandee, has just succeeded his father, don alvarez, in the governorship of peru. the rule of don alvarez had been beneficent and just; he had spent his life in endeavouring to soften the cruelty of his countrymen; and his only remaining wish was to see his son carry on the work which he had begun. unfortunately, however, don gusman's temperament was the very opposite of his father's; he was tyrannical, harsh, headstrong, and bigoted. l'américain farouche est un monstre sauvage qui mord en frémissant le frein de l'esclavage ... tout pouvoir, en un mot, périt par l'indulgence, et la sévérité produit l'obéissance. such were the cruel maxims of his government--maxims which he was only too ready to put into practice. it was in vain that don alvarez reminded his son that the true christian returns good for evil, and that, as he epigrammatically put it, 'le vrai dieu, mon fils, est un dieu qui pardonne.' to enforce his argument, the good old man told the story of how his own life had been spared by a virtuous american, who, as he said, 'au lieu de me frapper, embrassa mes genoux.' but don gusman remained unmoved by such narratives, though he admitted that there was one consideration which impelled him to adopt a more lenient policy. he was in love with alzire, alzire the young and beautiful daughter of montèze, who had ruled in lima before the coming of the spaniards. 'je l'aime, je l'avoue,' said gusman to his father, 'et plus que je ne veux.' with these words, the dominating situation of the play becomes plain to the spectator. the wicked spanish governor is in love with the virtuous american princess. from such a state of affairs, what interesting and romantic developments may not follow? alzire, we are not surprised to learn, still fondly cherished the memory of a peruvian prince, who had been slain in an attempt to rescue his country from the tyranny of don gusman. yet, for the sake of montèze, her ambitious and scheming father, she consented to give her hand to the governor. she consented; but, even as she did so, she was still faithful to zamore. 'sa foi me fut promise,' she declared to don gusman, 'il eut pour moi des charmes.' il m'aima: son trépas me coûte encore des larmes: vous, loin d'oser ici condamner ma douleur, jugez de ma constance, et connaissez mon coeur. the ruthless don did not allow these pathetic considerations to stand in the way of his wishes, and gave orders that the wedding ceremony should be immediately performed. but, at the very moment of his apparent triumph, the way was being prepared for the overthrow of all his hopes. _act ii_.--it was only natural to expect that a heroine affianced to a villain should turn out to be in love with a hero. the hero adored by alzire had, it is true, perished; but then what could be more natural than his resurrection? the noble zamore was not dead; he had escaped with his life from the torture-chamber of don gusman, had returned to avenge himself, had been immediately apprehended, and was lying imprisoned in the lowest dungeon of the castle, while his beloved princess was celebrating her nuptials with his deadly foe. in this distressing situation, he was visited by the venerable alvarez, who had persuaded his son to grant him an order for the prisoner's release. in the gloom of the dungeon, it was at first difficult to distinguish the features of zamore; but the old man at last discovered that he was addressing the very american who, so many years ago, instead of hitting him, had embraced his knees. he was overwhelmed by this extraordinary coincidence. 'approach. o heaven! o providence! it is he, behold the object of my gratitude. ... my benefactor! my son!' but let us not pry further into so affecting a passage; it is sufficient to state that don alvarez, after promising his protection to zamore, hurried off to relate this remarkable occurrence to his son, the governor. act iii.--meanwhile, alzire had been married. but she still could not forget her peruvian lover. while she was lamenting her fate, and imploring the forgiveness of the shade of zamore, she was informed that a released prisoner begged a private interview. 'admit him.' he was admitted. 'heaven! such were his features, his gait, his voice: zamore!' she falls into the arms of her confidante. 'je succombe; à peine je respire.' zamore: reconnais ton amant. alzire: zamore aux pieds d'alzire! est-ce une illusion? it was no illusion; and the unfortunate princess was obliged to confess to her lover that she was already married to don gusman. zamore was at first unable to grasp the horrible truth, and, while he was still struggling with his conflicting emotions, the door was flung open, and don gusman, accompanied by his father, entered the room. a double recognition followed. zamore was no less horrified to behold in don gusman the son of the venerable alvarez, than don gusman was infuriated at discovering that the prisoner to whose release he had consented was no other than zamore. when the first shock of surprise was over, the peruvian hero violently insulted his enemy, and upbraided him with the tortures he had inflicted. the governor replied by ordering the instant execution of the prince. it was in vain that don alvarez reminded his son of zamore's magnanimity; it was in vain that alzire herself offered to sacrifice her life for that of her lover. zamore was dragged from the apartment; and alzire and don alvarez were left alone to bewail the fate of the peruvian hero. yet some faint hopes still lingered in the old man's breast. 'gusman fut inhumain,' he admitted, 'je le sais, j'en frémis; mais il est ton époux, il t'aime, il est mon fils: son âme à la pitié se peut ouvrir encore.' 'hélas!' (replied alzire), 'que n'êtes-vous le père de zamore!' _act iv_.--even don gusman's heart was, in fact, unable to steel itself entirely against the prayers and tears of his father and his wife; and he consented to allow a brief respite to zamore's execution. alzire was not slow to seize this opportunity of doing her lover a good turn; for she immediately obtained his release by the ingenious stratagem of bribing the warder of the dungeon. zamore was free. but alas! alzire was not; was she not wedded to the wicked gusman? her lover's expostulations fell on unheeding ears. what mattered it that her marriage vow had been sworn before an alien god? 'j'ai promis; il suffit; il n'importe à quel dieu!' zamore: ta promesse est un crime; elle est ma perte; adieu. périssent tes serments et ton dieu que j'abhorre! alzire: arrête; quels adieux! arrête, cher zamore! but the prince tore himself away, with no further farewell upon his lips than an oath to be revenged upon the governor. alzire, perplexed, deserted, terrified, tortured by remorse, agitated by passion, turned for comfort to that god, who, she could not but believe, was, in some mysterious way, the father of all. great god, lead zamore in safety through the desert places. ... ah! can it be true that thou art but the deity of another universe? have the europeans alone the right to please thee? art thou after all the tyrant of one world and the father of another? ... no! the conquerors and the conquered, miserable mortals as they are, all are equally the work of thy hands.... her reverie was interrupted by an appalling sound. she heard shrieks; she heard a cry of 'zamore!' and her confidante, rushing in, confusedly informed her that her lover was in peril of his life. ah, chère emire [she exclaimed], allons le secourir! emire: que pouvez-vous, madame? o ciel! alzire: je puis mourir. hardly was the epigram out of her mouth when the door opened, and an emissary of don gusman announced to her that she must consider herself under arrest. she demanded an explanation in vain, and was immediately removed to the lowest dungeon. _act v_.--it was not long before the unfortunate princess learnt the reason of her arrest. zamore, she was informed, had rushed straight from her apartment into the presence of don gusman, and had plunged a dagger into his enemy's breast. the hero had then turned to don alvarez and, with perfect tranquillity, had offered him the bloodstained poniard. j'ai fait ce que j'ai dû, j'ai vengé mon injure; fais ton devoir, dit-il, et venge la nature. before don alvarez could reply to this appeal, zamore had been haled off by the enraged soldiery before the council of grandees. don gusman had been mortally wounded; and the council proceeded at once to condemn to death, not only zamore, but also alzire, who, they found, had been guilty of complicity in the murder. it was the unpleasant duty of don alvarez to announce to the prisoners the council's sentence. he did so in the following manner: good god, what a mixture of tenderness and horror! my own liberator is the assassin of my son. zamore!... yes, it is to thee that i owe this life which i detest; how dearly didst thou sell me that fatal gift.... i am a father, but i am also a man; and, in spite of thy fury, in spite of the voice of that blood which demands vengeance from my agitated soul, i can still hear the voice of thy benefactions. and thou, who wast my daughter, thou whom in our misery i yet call by a name which makes our tears to flow, ah! how far is it from thy father's wishes to add to the agony which he already feels the horrible pleasure of vengeance. i must lose, by an unheard-of catastrophe, at once my liberator, my daughter, and my son. the council has sentenced you to death. upon one condition, however, and upon one alone, the lives of the culprits were to be spared--that of zamore's conversion to christianity. what need is there to say that the noble peruvians did not hesitate for a moment? 'death, rather than dishonour!' exclaimed zamore, while alzire added some elegant couplets upon the moral degradation entailed by hypocritical conversion. don alvarez was in complete despair, and was just beginning to make another speech, when don gusman, with the pallor of death upon his features, was carried into the room. the implacable governor was about to utter his last words. alzire was resigned; alvarez was plunged in misery; zamore was indomitable to the last. but lo! when the governor spoke, it was seen at once that an extraordinary change had come over his mind. he was no longer proud, he was no longer cruel, he was no longer unforgiving; he was kind, humble, and polite; in short, he had repented. everybody was pardoned, and everybody recognised the truth of christianity. and their faith was particularly strengthened when don gusman, invoking a final blessing upon alzire and zamore, expired in the arms of don alvarez. for thus were the guilty punished, and the virtuous rewarded. the noble zamore, who had murdered his enemy in cold blood, and the gentle alzire who, after bribing a sentry, had allowed her lover to do away with her husband, lived happily ever afterwards. that they were able to do so was owing entirely to the efforts of the wicked don gusman; and the wicked don gusman very properly descended to the grave. such is the tragedy of _alzire_, which, it may be well to repeat, was in its day one of the most applauded of its author's productions. it was upon the strength of works of this kind that his contemporaries recognised voltaire's right to be ranked in a sort of dramatic triumvirate, side by side with his great predecessors, corneille and racine. with racine, especially, voltaire was constantly coupled; and it is clear that he himself firmly believed that the author of _alzire_ was a worthy successor of the author of _athalie_. at first sight, indeed, the resemblance between the two dramatists is obvious enough; but a closer inspection reveals an ocean of differences too vast to be spanned by any superficial likeness. a careless reader is apt to dismiss the tragedies of racine as mere _tours de force_; and, in one sense, the careless reader is right. for, as mere displays of technical skill, those works are certainly unsurpassed in the whole range of literature. but the notion of 'a mere _tour de force_' carries with it something more than the idea of technical perfection; for it denotes, not simply a work which is technically perfect, but a work which is technically perfect and nothing more. the problem before a writer of a chant royal is to overcome certain technical difficulties of rhyme and rhythm; he performs his _tour de force_, the difficulties are overcome, and his task is accomplished. but racine's problem was very different. the technical restrictions he laboured under were incredibly great; his vocabulary was cribbed, his versification was cabined, his whole power of dramatic movement was scrupulously confined; conventional rules of every conceivable denomination hurried out to restrain his genius, with the alacrity of lilliputians pegging down a gulliver; wherever he turned he was met by a hiatus or a pitfall, a blind-alley or a _mot bas_. but his triumph was not simply the conquest of these refractory creatures; it was something much more astonishing. it was the creation, in spite of them, nay, by their very aid, of a glowing, living, soaring, and enchanting work of art. to have brought about this amazing combination, to have erected, upon a structure of alexandrines, of unities, of noble personages, of stilted diction, of the whole intolerable paraphernalia of the classical stage, an edifice of subtle psychology, of exquisite poetry, of overwhelming passion--that is a _tour de force_ whose achievement entitles jean racine to a place among the very few consummate artists of the world. voltaire, unfortunately, was neither a poet nor a psychologist; and, when he took up the mantle of racine, he put it, not upon a human being, but upon a tailor's block. to change the metaphor, racine's work resembled one of those elaborate paper transparencies which delighted our grandmothers, illuminated from within so as to present a charming tinted picture with varying degrees of shadow and of light. voltaire was able to make the transparency, but he never could light the candle; and the only result of his efforts was some sticky pieces of paper, cut into curious shapes, and roughly daubed with colour. to take only one instance, his diction is the very echo of racine's. there are the same pompous phrases, the same inversions, the same stereotyped list of similes, the same poor bedraggled company of words. it is amusing to note the exclamations which rise to the lips of voltaire's characters in moments of extreme excitement--_qu'entends-je? que vois-je? où suis-je? grands dieux! ah, c'en est trop, seigneur! juste ciel! sauve-toi de ces lieux! madame, quelle horreur_ ... &c. and it is amazing to discover that these are the very phrases with which racine has managed to express all the violence of human terror, and rage, and love. voltaire at his best never rises above the standard of a sixth-form boy writing hexameters in the style of virgil; and, at his worst, he certainly falls within measurable distance of a flogging. he is capable, for instance, of writing lines as bad as the second of this couplet-- c'est ce même guerrier dont la main tutélaire, de gusman, votre époux, sauva, dit-on, le père, or as qui les font pour un temps rentrer tous en eux-mêmes, or vous comprenez, seigneur, que je ne comprends pas. voltaire's most striking expressions are too often borrowed from his predecessors. alzire's 'je puis mourir,' for instance, is an obvious reminiscence of the 'qu'il mourût!' of le vieil horace; and the cloven hoof is shown clearly enough by the 'o ciel!' with which alzire's confidante manages to fill out the rest of the line. many of these blemishes are, doubtless, the outcome of simple carelessness; for voltaire was too busy a man to give over-much time to his plays. 'this tragedy was the work of six days,' he wrote to d'alembert, enclosing _olympie_. 'you should not have rested on the seventh,' was d'alembert's reply. but, on the whole, voltaire's verses succeed in keeping up to a high level of mediocrity; they are the verses, in fact, of a very clever man. it is when his cleverness is out of its depth, that he most palpably fails. a human being by voltaire bears the same relation to a real human being that stage scenery bears to a real landscape; it can only be looked at from in front. the curtain rises, and his villains and his heroes, his good old men and his exquisite princesses, display for a moment their one thin surface to the spectator; the curtain falls, and they are all put back into their box. the glance which the reader has taken into the little case labelled _alzire_ has perhaps given him a sufficient notion of these queer discarded marionettes. voltaire's dramatic efforts were hampered by one further unfortunate incapacity; he was almost completely devoid of the dramatic sense. it is only possible to write good plays without the power of character-drawing, upon one condition--that of possessing the power of creating dramatic situations. the _oedipus tyrannus_ of sophocles, for instance, is not a tragedy of character; and its vast crescendo of horror is produced by a dramatic treatment of situation, not of persons. one of the principal elements in this stupendous example of the manipulation of a great dramatic theme has been pointed out by voltaire himself. the guilt of oedipus, he says, becomes known to the audience very early in the play; and, when the _dénouement_ at last arrives, it comes as a shock, not to the audience, but to the king. there can be no doubt that voltaire has put his finger upon the very centre of those underlying causes which make the _oedipus_ perhaps the most awful of tragedies. to know the hideous truth, to watch its gradual dawn upon one after another of the characters, to see oedipus at last alone in ignorance, to recognise clearly that he too must know, to witness his struggles, his distraction, his growing terror, and, at the inevitable moment, the appalling revelation--few things can be more terrible than this. but voltaire's comment upon the master-stroke by which such an effect has been obtained illustrates, in a remarkable way, his own sense of the dramatic. 'nouvelle preuve,' he remarks, 'que sophocle n'avait pas perfectionné son art.' more detailed evidence of voltaire's utter lack of dramatic insight is to be found, of course, in his criticisms of shakespeare. throughout these, what is particularly striking is the manner in which voltaire seems able to get into such intimate contact with his great predecessor, and yet to remain as absolutely unaffected by him as shakespeare himself was by voltaire. it is unnecessary to dwell further upon so hackneyed a subject; but one instance may be given of the lengths to which this dramatic insensibility of voltaire's was able to go--his adaptation of _julius caesar_ for the french stage. a comparison of the two pieces should be made by anyone who wishes to realise fully, not only the degradation of the copy, but the excellence of the original. particular attention should be paid to the transmutation of antony's funeral oration into french alexandrines. in voltaire's version, the climax of the speech is reached in the following passage; it is an excellent sample of the fatuity of the whole of his concocted rigmarole:-- antoine: brutus ... où suis-je? o ciel! o crime! o barbarie!' chers amis, je succombe; et mes sens interdits ... brutus, son assassin!... ce monstre était son fils! romains: ah dieux! if voltaire's demerits are obvious enough to our eyes, his merits were equally clear to his contemporaries, whose vision of them was not perplexed and retarded by the conventions of another age. the weight of a reigning convention is like the weight of the atmosphere--it is so universal that no one feels it; and an eighteenth-century audience came to a performance of _alzire_ unconscious of the burden of the classical rules. they found instead an animated procession of events, of scenes just long enough to be amusing and not too long to be dull, of startling incidents, of happy _mots_. they were dazzled by an easy display of cheap brilliance, and cheap philosophy, and cheap sentiment, which it was very difficult to distinguish from the real thing, at such a distance, and under artificial light. when, in _mérope_, one saw la dumesnil; 'lorsque,' to quote voltaire himself, 'les yeux égarés, la voix entrecoupée, levant une main tremblante, elle allait immoler son propre fils; quand narbas l'arrêta; quand, laissant tomber son poignard, on la vit s'évanouir entre les bras de ses femmes, et qu'elle sortit de cet état de mort avec les transports d'une mère; lorsque, ensuite, s'élançant aux yeux de polyphonte, traversant en un clin d'oeil tout le théâtre, les larmes dans les yeux, la pâleur sur le front, les sanglots à la bouche, les bras étendus, elle s'écria: "barbare, il est mon fils!"'--how, face to face with splendours such as these, could one question for a moment the purity of the gem from which they sparkled? alas! to us, who know not la dumesnil, to us whose _mérope_ is nothing more than a little sediment of print, the precious stone of our forefathers has turned out to be a simple piece of paste. its glittering was the outcome of no inward fire, but of a certain adroitness in the manufacture; to use our modern phraseology, voltaire was able to make up for his lack of genius by a thorough knowledge of 'technique,' and a great deal of 'go.' and to such titles of praise let us not dispute his right. his vivacity, indeed, actually went so far as to make him something of an innovator. he introduced new and imposing spectacular effects; he ventured to write tragedies in which no persons of royal blood made their appearance; he was so bold as to rhyme 'père' with 'terre.' the wild diversity of his incidents shows a trend towards the romantic, which, doubtless, under happier influences, would have led him much further along the primrose path which ended in the bonfire of . but it was his misfortune to be for ever clogged by a tradition of decorous restraint; so that the effect of his plays is as anomalous as would be--let us say--that of a shilling shocker written by miss yonge. his heroines go mad in epigrams, while his villains commit murder in inversions. amid the hurly-burly of artificiality, it was all his cleverness could do to keep its head to the wind; and he was only able to remain afloat at all by throwing overboard his humour. the classical tradition has to answer for many sins; perhaps its most infamous achievement was that it prevented molière from being a great tragedian. but there can be no doubt that its most astonishing one was to have taken--if only for some scattered moments--the sense of the ridiculous from voltaire. notes: [footnote : april, .] voltaire and frederick the great at the present time,[ ] when it is so difficult to think of anything but of what is and what will be, it may yet be worth while to cast occasionally a glance backward at what was. such glances may at least prove to have the humble merit of being entertaining: they may even be instructive as well. certainly it would be a mistake to forget that frederick the great once lived in germany. nor is it altogether useless to remember that a curious old gentleman, extremely thin, extremely active, and heavily bewigged, once decided that, on the whole, it would be as well for him _not_ to live in france. for, just as modern germany dates from the accession of frederick to the throne of prussia, so modern france dates from the establishment of voltaire on the banks of the lake of geneva. the intersection of those two momentous lives forms one of the most curious and one of the most celebrated incidents in history. to english readers it is probably best known through the few brilliant paragraphs devoted to it by macaulay; though carlyle's masterly and far more elaborate narrative is familiar to every lover of _the history of friedrich ii_. since carlyle wrote, however, fifty years have passed. new points of view have arisen, and a certain amount of new material--including the valuable edition of the correspondence between voltaire and frederick published from the original documents in the archives at berlin--has become available. it seems, therefore, in spite of the familiarity of the main outlines of the story, that another rapid review of it will not be out of place. voltaire was forty-two years of age, and already one of the most famous men of the day, when, in august , he received a letter from the crown prince of prussia. this letter was the first in a correspondence which was to last, with a few remarkable intervals, for a space of over forty years. it was written by a young man of twenty-four, of whose personal qualities very little was known, and whose importance seemed to lie simply in the fact that he was heir-apparent to one of the secondary european monarchies. voltaire, however, was not the man to turn up his nose at royalty, in whatever form it might present itself; and it was moreover clear that the young prince had picked up at least a smattering of french culture, that he was genuinely anxious to become acquainted with the tendencies of modern thought, and, above all, that his admiration for the author of the _henriade_ and _zaïre_ was unbounded. la douceur et le support [wrote frederick] que vous marquez pour tous ceux qui se vouent aux arts et aux sciences, me font espérer que vous ne m'exclurez pas du nombre de ceux que vous trouvez dignes de vos instructions. je nomme ainsi votre commerce de lettres, qui ne peut être que profitable à tout être pensant. j'ose même avancer, sans déroger au mérite d'autrui, que dans l'univers entier il n'y aurait pas d'exception à faire de ceux dont vous ne pourriez être le maître. the great man was accordingly delighted; he replied with all that graceful affability of which he was a master, declared that his correspondent was 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes heureux,' and showed that he meant business by plunging at once into a discussion of the metaphysical doctrines of 'le sieur wolf,' whom frederick had commended as 'le plus célèbre philosophe de nos jours.' for the next four years the correspondence continued on the lines thus laid down. it was a correspondence between a master and a pupil: frederick, his passions divided between german philosophy and french poetry, poured out with equal copiousness disquisitions upon free will and _la raison suffisante_, odes _sur la flatterie_, and epistles _sur l'humanité_, while voltaire kept the ball rolling with no less enormous philosophical replies, together with minute criticisms of his royal highness's mistakes in french metre and french orthography. thus, though the interest of these early letters must have been intense to the young prince, they have far too little personal flavour to be anything but extremely tedious to the reader of to-day. only very occasionally is it possible to detect, amid the long and careful periods, some faint signs of feeling or of character. voltaire's _empressement_ seems to take on, once or twice, the colours of something like a real enthusiasm; and one notices that, after two years, frederick's letters begin no longer with 'monsieur' but with 'mon cher ami,' which glides at last insensibly into 'mon cher voltaire'; though the careful poet continues with his 'monseigneur' throughout. then, on one occasion, frederick makes a little avowal, which reads oddly in the light of future events. souffrez [he says] que je vous fasse mon caractère, afin que vous ne vous y mépreniez plus ... j'ai peu de mérite et peu de savoir; mais j'ai beaucoup de bonne volonté, et un fonds inépuisable d'estime et d'amitié pour les personnes d'une vertu distinguée, et avec cela je suis capable de toute la constance que la vraie amitié exige. j'ai assez de jugement pour vous rendre toute la justice que vous méritez; mais je n'en ai pas assez pour m'empêcher de faire de mauvais vers. but this is exceptional; as a rule, elaborate compliments take the place of personal confessions; and, while voltaire is never tired of comparing frederick to apollo, alcibiades, and the youthful marcus aurelius, of proclaiming the rebirth of 'les talents de virgile et les vertus d'auguste,' or of declaring that 'socrate ne m'est rien, c'est frédéric que j'aime,' the crown prince is on his side ready with an equal flow of protestations, which sometimes rise to singular heights. 'ne croyez pas,' he says, 'que je pousse mon scepticisime à outrance ... je crois, par exemple, qu'il n'y a qu'un dieu et qu'un voltaire dans le monde; je crois encore que ce dieu avait besoin dans ce siècle d'un voltaire pour le rendre aimable.' decidedly the prince's compliments were too emphatic, and the poet's too ingenious; as voltaire himself said afterwards, 'les épithètes ne nous coûtaient rien'; yet neither was without a little residue of sincerity. frederick's admiration bordered upon the sentimental; and voltaire had begun to allow himself to hope that some day, in a provincial german court, there might be found a crowned head devoting his life to philosophy, good sense, and the love of letters. both were to receive a curious awakening. in frederick became king of prussia, and a new epoch in the relations between the two men began. the next ten years were, on both sides, years of growing disillusionment. voltaire very soon discovered that his phrase about 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes heureux' was indeed a phrase and nothing more. his _prince philosophe_ started out on a career of conquest, plunged all europe into war, and turned prussia into a great military power. frederick, it appeared, was at once a far more important and a far more dangerous phenomenon than voltaire had suspected. and, on the other hand, the matured mind of the king was not slow to perceive that the enthusiasm of the prince needed a good deal of qualification. this change of view, was, indeed, remarkably rapid. nothing is more striking than the alteration of the tone in frederick's correspondence during the few months which followed his accession: the voice of the raw and inexperienced youth is heard no more, and its place is taken--at once and for ever--by the self-contained caustic utterance of an embittered man of the world. in this transformation it was only natural that the wondrous figure of voltaire should lose some of its glitter--especially since frederick now began to have the opportunity of inspecting that figure in the flesh with his own sharp eyes. the friends met three or four times, and it is noticeable that after each meeting there is a distinct coolness on the part of frederick. he writes with a sudden brusqueness to accuse voltaire of showing about his manuscripts, which, he says, had only been sent him on the condition of _un secret inviolable_. he writes to jordan complaining of voltaire's avarice in very stringent terms. 'ton avare boira la lie de son insatiable désir de s'enrichir ... son apparition de six jours me coûtera par journée cinq cent cinquante écus. c'est bien payer un fou; jamais bouffon de grand seigneur n'eut de pareils gages.' he declares that 'la cervelle du poète est aussi légère que le style de ses ouvrages,' and remarks sarcastically that he is indeed a man _extraordinaire en tout_. yet, while his opinion of voltaire's character was rapidly growing more and more severe, his admiration of his talents remained undiminished. for, though he had dropped metaphysics when he came to the throne, frederick could never drop his passion for french poetry; he recognised in voltaire the unapproachable master of that absorbing art; and for years he had made up his mind that, some day or other, he would _posséder_--for so he put it--the author of the _henriade_, would keep him at berlin as the brightest ornament of his court, and, above all, would have him always ready at hand to put the final polish on his own verses. in the autumn of it seemed for a moment that his wish would be gratified. voltaire spent a visit of several weeks in berlin; he was dazzled by the graciousness of his reception and the splendour of his surroundings; and he began to listen to the honeyed overtures of the prussian majesty. the great obstacle to frederick's desire was voltaire's relationship with madame du châtelet. he had lived with her for more than ten years; he was attached to her by all the ties of friendship and gratitude; he had constantly declared that he would never leave her--no, not for all the seductions of princes. she would, it is true, have been willing to accompany voltaire to berlin; but such a solution would by no means have suited frederick. he was not fond of ladies--even of ladies like madame du châtelet--learned enough to translate newton and to discuss by the hour the niceties of the leibnitzian philosophy; and he had determined to _posséder_ voltaire either completely or not at all. voltaire, in spite of repeated temptations, had remained faithful; but now, for the first time, poor madame du châtelet began to be seriously alarmed. his letters from berlin grew fewer and fewer, and more and more ambiguous; she knew nothing of his plans; 'il est ivre absolument' she burst out in her distress to d'argental, one of his oldest friends. by every post she dreaded to learn at last that he had deserted her for ever. but suddenly voltaire returned. the spell of berlin had been broken, and he was at her feet once more. what had happened was highly characteristic both of the poet and of the king. each had tried to play a trick on the other, and each had found the other out. the french government had been anxious to obtain an insight into the diplomatic intentions of frederick, in an unofficial way; voltaire had offered his services, and it had been agreed that he should write to frederick declaring that he was obliged to leave france for a time owing to the hostility of a member of the government, the bishop of mirepoix, and asking for frederick's hospitality. frederick had not been taken in: though he had not disentangled the whole plot, he had perceived clearly enough that voltaire's visit was in reality that of an agent of the french government; he also thought he saw an opportunity of securing the desire of his heart. voltaire, to give verisimilitude to his story, had, in his letter to frederick, loaded the bishop of mirepoix with ridicule and abuse; and frederick now secretly sent this letter to mirepoix himself. his calculation was that mirepoix would be so outraged that he would make it impossible for voltaire ever to return to france; and in that case--well, voltaire would have no other course open to him but to stay where he was, in berlin, and madame du châtelet would have to make the best of it. of course, frederick's plan failed, and voltaire was duly informed by mirepoix of what had happened. he was naturally very angry. he had been almost induced to stay in berlin of his own accord, and now he found that his host had been attempting, by means of treachery and intrigue, to force him to stay there whether he liked it or not. it was a long time before he forgave frederick. but the king was most anxious to patch up the quarrel; he still could not abandon the hope of ultimately securing voltaire; and besides, he was now possessed by another and a more immediate desire--to be allowed a glimpse of that famous and scandalous work which voltaire kept locked in the innermost drawer of his cabinet and revealed to none but the most favoured of his intimates--_la pucelle_. accordingly the royal letters became more frequent and more flattering than ever; the royal hand cajoled and implored. 'ne me faites point injustice sur mon caractère; d'ailleurs il vous est permis de badiner sur mon sujet comme il vous plaira.' '_la pucelle! la pucelle! la pucelle!_ et encore _la pucelle_!' he exclaims. 'pour l'amour de dieu, ou plus encore pour l'amour de vous-même, envoyez-la-moi.' and at last voltaire was softened. he sent off a few fragments of his _pucelle_--just enough to whet frederick's appetite--and he declared himself reconciled, 'je vous ai aimé tendrement,' he wrote in march ; 'j'ai été fâché contre vous, je vous ai pardonné, et actuellement je vous aime à la folie.' within a year of this date his situation had undergone a complete change. madame du châtelet was dead; and his position at versailles, in spite of the friendship of madame de pompadour, had become almost as impossible as he had pretended it to have been in . frederick eagerly repeated his invitation; and this time voltaire did not refuse. he was careful to make a very good bargain; obliged frederick to pay for his journey; and arrived at berlin in july . he was given rooms in the royal palaces both at berlin and potsdam; he was made a court chamberlain, and received the order of merit, together with a pension of £ a year. these arrangements caused considerable amusement in paris; and for some days hawkers, carrying prints of voltaire dressed in furs, and crying 'voltaire le prussien! six sols le fameux prussien!' were to be seen walking up and down the quays. the curious drama that followed, with its farcical [greek: peripeteia] and its tragi-comic _dénouement_, can hardly be understood without a brief consideration of the feelings and intentions of the two chief actors in it. the position of frederick is comparatively plain. he had now completely thrown aside the last lingering remnants of any esteem which he may once have entertained for the character of voltaire. he frankly thought him a scoundrel. in september , less than a year before voltaire's arrival, and at the very period of frederick's most urgent invitations, we find him using the following language in a letter to algarotti: 'voltaire vient de faire un tour qui est indigne.' (he had been showing to all his friends a garbled copy of one of frederick's letters). il mériterait d'être fleurdelisé au parnasse. c'est bien dommage qu'une âme aussi lâche soit unie à un aussi beau génie. il a les gentillesses et les malices d'un singe. je vous conterai ce que c'est, lorsque je vous reverrai; cependant je ne ferai semblant de rien, car j'en ai besoin pour l'étude de l'élocution française. on peut apprendre de bonnes choses d'un scélérat. je veux savoir son français; que m'importe sa morale? cet homme a trouvé le moyen de réunir tous les contraires. on admire son esprit, en même temps qu'on méprise son caractère. there is no ambiguity about this. voltaire was a scoundrel; but he was a scoundrel of genius. he would make the best possible teacher of _l'élocution française_; therefore it was necessary that he should come and live in berlin. but as for anything more--as for any real interchange of sympathies, any genuine feeling of friendliness, of respect, or even of regard--all that was utterly out of the question. the avowal is cynical, no doubt; but it is at any rate straightforward, and above all it is peculiarly devoid of any trace of self-deception. in the face of these trenchant sentences, the view of frederick's attitude which is suggested so assiduously by carlyle--that he was the victim of an elevated misapprehension, that he was always hoping for the best, and that, when the explosion came he was very much surprised and profoundly disappointed--becomes obviously untenable. if any man ever acted with his eyes wide open, it was frederick when he invited voltaire to berlin. yet, though that much is clear, the letter to algarotti betrays, in more than one direction, a very singular state of mind. a warm devotion to _l'élocution française_ is easy enough to understand; but frederick's devotion was much more than warm; it was so absorbing and so intense that it left him no rest until, by hook or by crook, by supplication, or by trickery, or by paying down hard cash, he had obtained the close and constant proximity of--what?--of a man whom he himself described as a 'singe' and a 'scélérat,' a man of base soul and despicable character. and frederick appears to see nothing surprising in this. he takes it quite as a matter of course that he should be, not merely willing, but delighted to run all the risks involved by voltaire's undoubted roguery, so long as he can be sure of benefiting from voltaire's no less undoubted mastery of french versification. this is certainly strange; but the explanation of it lies in the extraordinary vogue--a vogue, indeed, so extraordinary that it is very difficult for the modern reader to realise it--enjoyed throughout europe by french culture and literature during the middle years of the eighteenth century. frederick was merely an extreme instance of a universal fact. like all germans of any education, he habitually wrote and spoke in french; like every lady and gentleman from naples to edinburgh, his life was regulated by the social conventions of france; like every amateur of letters from madrid to st. petersburg, his whole conception of literary taste, his whole standard of literary values, was french. to him, as to the vast majority of his contemporaries, the very essence of civilisation was concentrated in french literature, and especially in french poetry; and french poetry meant to him, as to his contemporaries, that particular kind of french poetry which had come into fashion at the court of louis xiv. for this curious creed was as narrow as it was all-pervading. the _grand siècle_ was the church infallible; and it was heresy to doubt the gospel of boileau. frederick's library, still preserved at potsdam, shows us what literature meant in those days to a cultivated man: it is composed entirely of the french classics, of the works of voltaire, and of the masterpieces of antiquity translated into eighteenth-century french. but frederick was not content with mere appreciation; he too would create; he would write alexandrines on the model of racine, and madrigals after the manner of chaulieu; he would press in person into the sacred sanctuary, and burn incense with his own hands upon the inmost shrine. it was true that he was a foreigner; it was true that his knowledge of the french language was incomplete and incorrect; but his sense of his own ability urged him forward, and his indefatigable pertinacity kept him at his strange task throughout the whole of his life. he filled volumes, and the contents of those volumes afford probably the most complete illustration in literature of the very trite proverb--_poeta nascitur, non fit_. the spectacle of that heavy german muse, with her feet crammed into pointed slippers, executing, with incredible conscientiousness, now the stately measure of a versailles minuet, and now the spritely steps of a parisian jig, would be either ludicrous or pathetic--one hardly knows which--were it not so certainly neither the one nor the other, but simply dreary with an unutterable dreariness, from which the eyes of men avert themselves in shuddering dismay. frederick himself felt that there was something wrong--something, but not really very much. all that was wanted was a little expert advice; and obviously voltaire was the man to supply it--voltaire, the one true heir of the great age, the dramatist who had revived the glories of racine (did not frederick's tears flow almost as copiously over _mahomet_ as over _britannicus_?), the epic poet who had eclipsed homer and virgil (had not frederick every right to judge, since he had read the 'iliad' in french prose and the 'aeneid' in french verse?), the lyric master whose odes and whose epistles occasionally even surpassed (frederick confessed it with amazement) those of the marquis de la fare. voltaire, there could be no doubt, would do just what was needed; he would know how to squeeze in a little further the waist of the german calliope, to apply with his deft fingers precisely the right dab of rouge to her cheeks, to instil into her movements the last _nuances_ of correct deportment. and, if he did that, of what consequence were the blemishes of his personal character? 'on peut apprendre de bonnes choses d'un scélérat.' and, besides, though voltaire might be a rogue, frederick felt quite convinced that he could keep him in order. a crack or two of the master's whip--a coldness in the royal demeanour, a hint at a stoppage of the pension--and the monkey would put an end to his tricks soon enough. it never seems to have occurred to frederick that the possession of genius might imply a quality of spirit which was not that of an ordinary man. this was his great, his fundamental error. it was the ingenuous error of a cynic. he knew that he was under no delusion as to voltaire's faults, and so he supposed that he could be under no delusion as to his merits. he innocently imagined that the capacity for great writing was something that could be as easily separated from the owner of it as a hat or a glove. 'c'est bien dommage qu'une âme aussi lâche soit unie à un aussi beau génie.' _c'est bien dommage_!--as if there was nothing more extraordinary in such a combination than that of a pretty woman and an ugly dress. and so frederick held his whip a little tighter, and reminded himself once more that, in spite of that _beau génie_, it was a monkey that he had to deal with. but he was wrong: it was not a monkey; it was a devil, which is a very different thing. a devil--or perhaps an angel? one cannot be quite sure. for, amid the complexities of that extraordinary spirit, where good and evil were so mysteriously interwoven, where the elements of darkness and the elements of light lay crowded together in such ever-deepening ambiguity, fold within fold, the clearer the vision the greater the bewilderment, the more impartial the judgment the profounder the doubt. but one thing at least is certain: that spirit, whether it was admirable or whether it was odious, was moved by a terrific force. frederick had failed to realise this; and indeed, though voltaire was fifty-six when he went to berlin, and though his whole life had been spent in a blaze of publicity, there was still not one of his contemporaries who understood the true nature of his genius; it was perhaps hidden even from himself. he had reached the threshold of old age, and his life's work was still before him; it was not as a writer of tragedies and epics that he was to take his place in the world. was he, in the depths of his consciousness, aware that this was so? did some obscure instinct urge him forward, at this late hour, to break with the ties of a lifetime, and rush forth into the unknown? what his precise motives were in embarking upon the berlin adventure it is very difficult to say. it is true that he was disgusted with paris--he was ill-received at court, and he was pestered by endless literary quarrels and jealousies; it would be very pleasant to show his countrymen that he had other strings to his bow, that, if they did not appreciate him, frederick the great did. it is true, too, that he admired frederick's intellect, and that he was flattered by his favour. 'il avait de l'esprit,' he said afterwards, 'des grâces, et, de plus, il était roi; ce qui fait toujours une grande séduction, attendu la faiblesse humaine.' his vanity could not resist the prestige of a royal intimacy; and no doubt he relished to the full even the increased consequence which came to him with his chamberlain's key and his order--to say nothing of the addition of £ to his income. yet, on the other hand, he was very well aware that he was exchanging freedom for servitude, and that he was entering into a bargain with a man who would make quite sure that he was getting his money's worth; and he knew in his heart that he had something better to do than to play, however successfully, the part of a courtier. nor was he personally attached to frederick; he was personally attached to no one on earth. certainly he had never been a man of feeling, and now that he was old and hardened by the uses of the world he had grown to be completely what in essence he always was--a fighter, without tenderness, without scruples, and without remorse. no, he went to berlin for his own purposes--however dubious those purposes may have been. and it is curious to observe that in his correspondence with his niece, madame denis, whom he had left behind him at the head of his paris establishment and in whom he confided--in so far as he can be said to have confided in anyone--he repeatedly states that there is nothing permanent about his visit to berlin. at first he declares that he is only making a stay of a few weeks with frederick, that he is going on to italy to visit 'sa sainteté' and to inspect 'la ville souterraine,' that he will be back in paris in the autumn. the autumn comes, and the roads are too muddy to travel by; he must wait till the winter, when they will be frozen hard. winter comes, and it is too cold to move; but he will certainly return in the spring. spring comes, and he is on the point of finishing his _siècle de louis xiv_.; he really must wait just a few weeks more. the book is published; but then how can he appear in paris until he is quite sure of its success? and so he lingers on, delaying and prevaricating, until a whole year has passed, and still he lingers on, still he is on the point of going, and still he does not go. meanwhile, to all appearances, he was definitely fixed, a salaried official, at frederick's court; and he was writing to all his other friends, to assure them that he had never been so happy, that he could see no reason why he should ever come away. what were his true intentions? could he himself have said? had he perhaps, in some secret corner of his brain, into which even he hardly dared to look, a premonition of the future? at times, in this berlin adventure, he seems to resemble some great buzzing fly, shooting suddenly into a room through an open window and dashing frantically from side to side; when all at once, as suddenly, he swoops away and out through another window which opens in quite a different direction, towards wide and flowery fields; so that perhaps the reckless creature knew where he was going after all. in any case, it is evident to the impartial observer that voltaire's visit could only have ended as it did--in an explosion. the elements of the situation were too combustible for any other conclusion. when two confirmed egotists decide, for purely selfish reasons, to set up house together, everyone knows what will happen. for some time their sense of mutual advantage may induce them to tolerate each other, but sooner or later human nature will assert itself, and the _ménage_ will break up. and, with voltaire and frederick, the difficulties inherent in all such cases were intensified by the fact that the relationship between them was, in effect, that of servant and master; that voltaire, under a very thin disguise, was a paid menial, while frederick, condescend as he might, was an autocrat whose will was law. thus the two famous and perhaps mythical sentences, invariably repeated by historians of the incident, about orange-skins and dirty linen, do in fact sum up the gist of the matter. 'when one has sucked the orange, one throws away the skin,' somebody told voltaire that the king had said, on being asked how much longer he would put up with the poet's vagaries. and frederick, on his side, was informed that voltaire, when a batch of the royal verses were brought to him for correction, had burst out with 'does the man expect me to go on washing his dirty linen for ever?' each knew well enough the weak spot in his position, and each was acutely and uncomfortably conscious that the other knew it too. thus, but a very few weeks after voltaire's arrival, little clouds of discord become visible on the horizon; electrical discharges of irritability began to take place, growing more and more frequent and violent as time goes on; and one can overhear the pot and the kettle, in strictest privacy, calling each other black. 'the monster,' whispers voltaire to madame denis, 'he opens all our letters in the post'--voltaire, whose light-handedness with other people's correspondence was only too notorious. 'the monkey,' mutters frederick, 'he shows my private letters to his friends'--frederick, who had thought nothing of betraying voltaire's letters to the bishop of mirepoix. 'how happy i should be here,' exclaims the callous old poet, 'but for one thing--his majesty is utterly heartless!' and meanwhile frederick, who had never let a farthing escape from his close fist without some very good reason, was busy concocting an epigram upon the avarice of voltaire. it was, indeed, voltaire's passion for money which brought on the first really serious storm. three months after his arrival in berlin, the temptation to increase his already considerable fortune by a stroke of illegal stock-jobbing proved too strong for him; he became involved in a series of shady financial transactions with a jew; he quarrelled with the jew; there was an acrimonious lawsuit, with charges and countercharges of the most discreditable kind; and, though the jew lost his case on a technical point, the poet certainly did not leave the court without a stain upon his character. among other misdemeanours, it is almost certain--the evidence is not quite conclusive--that he committed forgery in order to support a false oath. frederick was furious, and for a moment was on the brink of dismissing voltaire from berlin. he would have been wise if he had done so. but he could not part with his _beau génie_ so soon. he cracked his whip, and, setting the monkey to stand in the corner, contented himself with a shrug of the shoulders and the exclamation 'c'est l'affaire d'un fripon qui a voulu tromper un filou.' a few weeks later the royal favour shone forth once more, and voltaire, who had been hiding himself in a suburban villa, came out and basked again in those refulgent beams. and the beams were decidedly refulgent--so much so, in fact, that they almost satisfied even the vanity of voltaire. almost, but not quite. for, though his glory was great, though he was the centre of all men's admiration, courted by nobles, flattered by princesses--there is a letter from one of them, a sister of frederick's, still extant, wherein the trembling votaress ventures to praise the great man's works, which, she says, 'vous rendent si célèbre et immortel'--though he had ample leisure for his private activities, though he enjoyed every day the brilliant conversation of the king, though he could often forget for weeks together that he was the paid servant of a jealous despot--yet, in spite of all, there was a crumpled rose-leaf amid the silken sheets, and he lay awake o' nights. he was not the only frenchman at frederick's court. that monarch had surrounded himself with a small group of persons--foreigners for the most part--whose business it was to instruct him when he wished to improve his mind, to flatter him when he was out of temper, and to entertain him when he was bored. there was hardly one of them that was not thoroughly second-rate. algarotti was an elegant dabbler in scientific matters--he had written a book to explain newton to the ladies; d'argens was an amiable and erudite writer of a dull free-thinking turn; chasot was a retired military man with too many debts, and darget was a good-natured secretary with too many love affairs; la mettrie was a doctor who had been exiled from france for atheism and bad manners; and pöllnitz was a decaying baron who, under stress of circumstances, had unfortunately been obliged to change his religion six times. these were the boon companions among whom frederick chose to spend his leisure hours. whenever he had nothing better to do, he would exchange rhymed epigrams with algarotti, or discuss the jewish religion with d'argens, or write long improper poems about darget, in the style of _la pucelle_. or else he would summon la mettrie, who would forthwith prove the irrefutability of materialism in a series of wild paradoxes, shout with laughter, suddenly shudder and cross himself on upsetting the salt, and eventually pursue his majesty with his buffooneries into a place where even royal persons are wont to be left alone. at other times frederick would amuse himself by first cutting down the pension of pöllnitz, who was at the moment a lutheran, and then writing long and serious letters to him suggesting that if he would only become a catholic again he might be made a silesian abbot. strangely enough, frederick was not popular, and one or other of the inmates of his little menagerie was constantly escaping and running away. darget and chasot both succeeded in getting through the wires; they obtained leave to visit paris, and stayed there. poor d'argens often tried to follow their example; more than once he set off for france, secretly vowing never to return; but he had no money, frederick was blandishing, and the wretch was always lured back to captivity. as for la mettrie, he made his escape in a different manner--by dying after supper one evening of a surfeit of pheasant pie. 'jésus! marie!' he gasped, as he felt the pains of death upon him. 'ah!' said a priest who had been sent for, 'vous voilà enfin retourné à ces noms consolateurs.' la mettrie, with an oath, expired; and frederick, on hearing of this unorthodox conclusion, remarked, 'j'en suis bien aise, pour le repos de son âme.' among this circle of down-at-heel eccentrics there was a single figure whose distinction and respectability stood out in striking contrast from the rest--that of maupertuis, who had been, since , the president of the academy of sciences at berlin. maupertuis has had an unfortunate fate: he was first annihilated by the ridicule of voltaire, and then recreated by the humour of carlyle; but he was an ambitious man, very anxious to be famous, and his desire has been gratified in over-flowing measure. during his life he was chiefly known for his voyage to lapland, and his observations there, by which he was able to substantiate the newtonian doctrine of the flatness of the earth at the poles. he possessed considerable scientific attainments, he was honest, he was energetic; he appeared to be just the man to revive the waning glories of prussian science; and when frederick succeeded in inducing him to come to berlin as president of his academy the choice seemed amply justified. maupertuis had, moreover, some pretensions to wit; and in his earlier days his biting and elegant sarcasms had more than once overwhelmed his scientific adversaries. such accomplishments suited frederick admirably. maupertuis, he declared, was an _homme d'esprit_, and the happy president became a constant guest at the royal supper-parties. it was the happy--the too happy--president who was the rose-leaf in the bed of voltaire. the two men had known each other slightly for many years, and had always expressed the highest admiration for each other; but their mutual amiability was now to be put to a severe test. the sagacious buffon observed the danger from afar: 'ces deux hommes,' he wrote to a friend, 'ne sont pas faits pour demeurer ensemble dans la même chambre.' and indeed to the vain and sensitive poet, uncertain of frederick's cordiality, suspicious of hidden enemies, intensely jealous of possible rivals, the spectacle of maupertuis at supper, radiant, at his ease, obviously protected, obviously superior to the shady mediocrities who sat around--that sight was gall and wormwood; and he looked closer, with a new malignity; and then those piercing eyes began to make discoveries, and that relentless brain began to do its work. maupertuis had very little judgment; so far from attempting to conciliate voltaire, he was rash enough to provoke hostilities. it was very natural that he should have lost his temper. he had been for five years the dominating figure in the royal circle, and now suddenly he was deprived of his pre-eminence and thrown completely into the shade. who could attend to maupertuis while voltaire was talking?--voltaire, who as obviously outshone maupertuis as maupertuis outshone la mettrie and darget and the rest. in his exasperation the president went to the length of openly giving his protection to a disreputable literary man, la beaumelle, who was a declared enemy of voltaire. this meant war, and war was not long in coming. some years previously maupertuis had, as he believed, discovered an important mathematical law--the 'principle of least action.' the law was, in fact, important, and has had a fruitful history in the development of mechanical theory; but, as mr. jourdain has shown in a recent monograph, maupertuis enunciated it incorrectly without realising its true import, and a far more accurate and scientific statement of it was given, within a few months, by euler. maupertuis, however, was very proud of his discovery, which, he considered, embodied one of the principal reasons for believing in the existence of god; and he was therefore exceedingly angry when, shortly after voltaire's arrival in berlin, a swiss mathematician, koenig, published a polite memoir attacking both its accuracy and its originality, and quoted in support of his contention an unpublished letter by leibnitz, in which the law was more exactly expressed. instead of arguing upon the merits of the case, maupertuis declared that the letter of leibnitz was a forgery, and that therefore koenig's remarks deserved no further consideration. when koenig expostulated, maupertuis decided upon a more drastic step. he summoned a meeting of the berlin academy of sciences, of which koenig was a member, laid the case before it, and moved that it should solemnly pronounce koenig a forger, and the letter of leibnitz supposititious and false. the members of the academy were frightened; their pensions depended upon the president's good will; and even the illustrious euler was not ashamed to take part in this absurd and disgraceful condemnation. voltaire saw at once that his opportunity had come. maupertuis had put himself utterly and irretrievably in the wrong. he was wrong in attributing to his discovery a value which it did not possess; he was wrong in denying the authenticity of the leibnitz letter; above all he was wrong in treating a purely scientific question as the proper subject for the disciplinary jurisdiction of an academy. if voltaire struck now, he would have his enemy on the hip. there was only one consideration to give him pause, and that was a grave one: to attack maupertuis upon this matter was, in effect, to attack the king. not only was frederick certainly privy to maupertuis' action, but he was extremely sensitive of the reputation of his academy and of its president, and he would certainly consider any interference on the part of voltaire, who himself drew his wages from the royal purse, as a flagrant act of disloyalty. but voltaire decided to take the risk. he had now been more than two years in berlin, and the atmosphere of a court was beginning to weigh upon his spirit; he was restless, he was reckless, he was spoiling for a fight; he would take on maupertuis singly or maupertuis and frederick combined--he did not much care which, and in any case he flattered himself that he would settle the hash of the president. as a preparatory measure, he withdrew all his spare cash from berlin, and invested it with the duke of wurtemberg. 'je mets tout doucement ordre à mes affaires,' he told madame denis. then, on september , , there appeared in the papers a short article entitled 'réponse d'un académicien de berlin à un académicien de paris.' it was a statement, deadly in its bald simplicity, its studied coldness, its concentrated force, of koenig's case against maupertuis. the president must have turned pale as he read it; but the king turned crimson. the terrible indictment could, of course only have been written by one man, and that man was receiving a royal pension of £ a year and carrying about a chamberlain's gold key in his pocket. frederick flew to his writing-table, and composed an indignant pamphlet which he caused to be published with the prussian arms on the title-page. it was a feeble work, full of exaggerated praises of maupertuis, and of clumsy invectives against voltaire: the president's reputation was gravely compared to that of homer; the author of the 'réponse d'un académicien de berlin' was declared to be a 'faiseur de libelles sans génie,' an 'imposteur effronté,' a 'malheureux écrivain' while the 'réponse' itself was a 'grossièreté plate,' whose publication was an 'action malicieuse, lâche, infâme,' a 'brigandage affreux.' the presence of the royal insignia only intensified the futility of the outburst. 'l'aigle, le sceptre, et la couronne,' wrote voltaire to madame denis, 'sont bien étonnés de se trouver là.' but one thing was now certain: the king had joined the fray. voltaire's blood was up, and he was not sorry. a kind of exaltation seized him; from this moment his course was clear--he would do as much damage as he could, and then leave prussia for ever. and it so happened that just then an unexpected opportunity occurred for one of those furious onslaughts so dear to his heart, with that weapon which he knew so well how to wield. 'je n'ai point de sceptre,' he ominously shot out to madame denis, 'mais j'ai une plume.' meanwhile the life of the court--which passed for the most part at potsdam, in the little palace of sans souci which frederick had built for himself--proceeded on its accustomed course. it was a singular life, half military, half monastic, rigid, retired, from which all the ordinary pleasures of society were strictly excluded. 'what do you do here?' one of the royal princes was once asked. 'we conjugate the verb _s'ennuyer_,' was the reply. but, wherever he might be, that was a verb unknown to voltaire. shut up all day in the strange little room, still preserved for the eyes of the curious, with its windows opening on the formal garden, and its yellow walls thickly embossed with the brightly coloured shapes of fruits, flowers, birds, and apes, the indefatigable old man worked away at his histories, his tragedies, his _pucelle_, and his enormous correspondence. he was, of course, ill--very ill; he was probably, in fact, upon the brink of death; but he had grown accustomed to that situation; and the worse he grew the more furiously he worked. he was a victim, he declared, of erysipelas, dysentery, and scurvy; he was constantly attacked by fever, and all his teeth had fallen out. but he continued to work. on one occasion a friend visited him, and found him in bed. 'j'ai quatre maladies mortelles,' he wailed. 'pourtant,' remarked the friend, 'vous avez l'oeil fort bon.' voltaire leapt up from the pillows: 'ne savez-vous pas,' he shouted, 'que les scorbutiques meurent l'oeil enflammé?' when the evening came it was time to dress, and, in all the pomp of flowing wig and diamond order, to proceed to the little music-room, where his majesty, after the business of the day, was preparing to relax himself upon the flute. the orchestra was gathered together; the audience was seated; the concerto began. and then the sounds of beauty flowed and trembled, and seemed, for a little space, to triumph over the pains of living and the hard hearts of men; and the royal master poured out his skill in some long and elaborate cadenza, and the adagio came, the marvellous adagio, and the conqueror of rossbach drew tears from the author of _candide_. but a moment later it was supper-time; and the night ended in the oval dining-room, amid laughter and champagne, the ejaculations of la mettrie, the epigrams of maupertuis, the sarcasms of frederick, and the devastating coruscations of voltaire. yet, in spite of all the jests and roses, everyone could hear the rumbling of the volcano under the ground. everyone could hear, but nobody would listen; the little flames leapt up through the surface, but still the gay life went on; and then the irruption came. voltaire's enemy had written a book. in the intervals of his more serious labours, the president had put together a series of 'letters,' in which a number of miscellaneous scientific subjects were treated in a mildly speculative and popular style. the volume was rather dull, and very unimportant; but it happened to appear at this particular moment, and voltaire pounced upon it with the swift swoop of a hawk on a mouse. the famous _diatribe du docteur akakia_ is still fresh with a fiendish gaiety after a hundred and fifty years; but to realise to the full the skill and malice which went to the making of it, one must at least have glanced at the flat insipid production which called it forth, and noted with what a diabolical art the latent absurdities in poor maupertuis' _rêveries_ have been detected, dragged forth into the light of day, and nailed to the pillory of an immortal ridicule. the _diatribe_, however, is not all mere laughter; there is a real criticism in it, too. for instance, it was not simply a farcical exaggeration to say that maupertuis had set out to prove the existence of god by 'a plus b divided by z'; in substance, the charge was both important and well founded. 'lorsque la métaphysique entre dans la géometrie,' voltaire wrote in a private letter some months afterwards, 'c'est arimane qui entre dans le royaume d'oromasde, et qui y apporte des ténèbres'; and maupertuis had in fact vitiated his treatment of the 'principle of least action' by his metaphysical pre-occupations. indeed, all through voltaire's pamphlet, there is an implied appeal to true scientific principles, an underlying assertion of the paramount importance of the experimental method, a consistent attack upon _a priori_ reasoning, loose statement, and vague conjecture. but of course, mixed with all this, and covering it all, there is a bubbling, sparkling fountain of effervescent raillery--cruel, personal, insatiable--the raillery of a demon with a grudge. the manuscript was shown to frederick, who laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. but, between his gasps, he forbade voltaire to publish it on pain of his most terrible displeasure. naturally voltaire was profuse with promises, and a few days later, under a royal licence obtained for another work, the little book appeared in print. frederick still managed to keep his wrath within bounds: he collected all the copies of the edition and had them privately destroyed; he gave a furious wigging to voltaire; and he flattered himself that he had heard the last of the business. ne vous embarrassez de rien, mon cher maupertuis [he wrote to the president in his singular orthography]; l'affaire des libelles est finie. j'ai parlé si vrai à l'hôme, je lui ai lavé si bien la tête que je ne crois pas qu'il y retourne, et je connais son âme lache, incapable de sentiments d'honneur. je l'ai intimidé du côté de la boursse, ce qui a fait tout l'effet que j'attendais. je lui ai déclaré enfin nettement que ma maison devait être un sanctuaire et non une retraite de brigands ou de célérats qui distillent des poissons. apparently it did not occur to frederick that this declaration had come a little late in the day. meanwhile maupertuis, overcome by illness and by rage, had taken to his bed. 'un peu trop d'amour-propre,' frederick wrote to darget, 'l'a rendu trop sensible aux manoeuvres d'un singe qu'il devait mépriser après qu'on l'avait fouetté.' but now the monkey _had_ been whipped, and doubtless all would be well. it seems strange that frederick should still, after more than two years of close observation, have had no notion of the material he was dealing with. he might as well have supposed that he could stop a mountain torrent in spate with a wave of his hand, as have imagined that he could impose obedience upon voltaire in such a crisis by means of a lecture and a threat 'du côté de la boursse.' before the month was out all germany was swarming with _akakias_; thousands of copies were being printed in holland; and editions were going off in paris like hot cakes. it is difficult to withold one's admiration from the audacious old spirit who thus, on the mere strength of his mother-wits, dared to defy the enraged master of a powerful state. 'votre effronterie m'étonne,' fulminated frederick in a furious note, when he suddenly discovered that all europe was ringing with the absurdity of the man whom he had chosen to be the president of his favourite academy, whose cause he had publicly espoused, and whom he had privately assured of his royal protection. 'ah! mon dieu, sire,' scribbled voltaire on the same sheet of paper, 'dans l'état où je suis!' (he was, of course, once more dying.) 'quoi! vous me jugeriez sans entendre! je demande justice et la mort.' frederick replied by having copies of _akakia_ burnt by the common hangman in the streets of berlin. voltaire thereupon returned his order, his gold key, and his pension. it might have been supposed that the final rupture had now really come at last. but three months elapsed before frederick could bring himself to realise that all was over, and to agree to the departure of his extraordinary guest. carlyle's suggestion that this last delay arose from the unwillingness of voltaire to go, rather than from frederick's desire to keep him, is plainly controverted by the facts. the king not only insisted on voltaire's accepting once again the honours which he had surrendered, but actually went so far as to write him a letter of forgiveness and reconciliation. but the poet would not relent; there was a last week of suppers at potsdam--'soupers de damoclès' voltaire called them; and then, on march , , the two men parted for ever. the storm seemed to be over; but the tail of it was still hanging in the wind. voltaire, on his way to the waters of plombières, stopped at leipzig, where he could not resist, in spite of his repeated promises to the contrary, the temptation to bring out a new and enlarged edition of _akakia_. upon this maupertuis utterly lost his head: he wrote to voltaire, threatening him with personal chastisement. voltaire issued yet another edition of _akakia_, appended a somewhat unauthorised version of the president's letter, and added that if the dangerous and cruel man really persisted in his threat he would be received with a vigorous discharge from those instruments of intimate utility which figure so freely in the comedies of molière. this stroke was the _coup de grâce_ of maupertuis. shattered in body and mind, he dragged himself from berlin to die at last in basle under the ministration of a couple of capuchins and a protestant valet reading aloud the genevan bible. in the meantime frederick had decided on a violent measure. he had suddenly remembered that voltaire had carried off with him one of the very few privately printed copies of those poetical works upon which he had spent so much devoted labour; it occurred to him that they contained several passages of a highly damaging kind; and he could feel no certainty that those passages would not be given to the world by the malicious frenchman. such, at any rate, were his own excuses for the step which he now took; but it seems possible that he was at least partly swayed by feelings of resentment and revenge which had been rendered uncontrollable by the last onslaught upon maupertuis. whatever may have been his motives, it is certain that he ordered the prussian resident in frankfort, which was voltaire's next stopping-place, to hold the poet in arrest until he delivered over the royal volume. a multitude of strange blunders and ludicrous incidents followed, upon which much controversial and patriotic ink has been spilt by a succession of french and german biographers. to an english reader it is clear that in this little comedy of errors none of the parties concerned can escape from blame--that voltaire was hysterical, undignified, and untruthful, that the prussian resident was stupid and domineering, that frederick was careless in his orders and cynical as to their results. nor, it is to be hoped, need any englishman be reminded that the consequences of a system of government in which the arbitrary will of an individual takes the place of the rule of law are apt to be disgraceful and absurd. after five weeks' detention at frankfort, voltaire was free--free in every sense of the word--free from the service of kings and the clutches of residents, free in his own mind, free to shape his own destiny. he hesitated for several months, and then settled down by the lake of geneva. there the fires, which had lain smouldering so long in the profundities of his spirit, flared up, and flamed over europe, towering and inextinguishable. in a few years letters began to flow once more to and from berlin. at first the old grievances still rankled; but in time even the wrongs of maupertuis and the misadventures of frankfort were almost forgotten. twenty years passed, and the king of prussia was submitting his verses as anxiously as ever to voltaire, whose compliments and cajoleries were pouring out in their accustomed stream. but their relationship was no longer that of master and pupil, courtier and king; it was that of two independent and equal powers. even frederick the great was forced to see at last in the patriarch of ferney something more than a monkey with a genius for french versification. he actually came to respect the author of _akakia_, and to cherish his memory. 'je lui fais tous les matins ma prière,' he told d'alembert, when voltaire had been two years in the grave; 'je lui dis, divin voltaire, _ora pro nobis_.' . notes: [footnote : october .] the rousseau affair no one who has made the slightest expedition into that curious and fascinating country, eighteenth-century france, can have come away from it without at least _one_ impression strong upon him--that in no other place and at no other time have people ever squabbled so much. france in the eighteenth century, whatever else it may have been--however splendid in genius, in vitality, in noble accomplishment and high endeavour--was certainly not a quiet place to live in. one could never have been certain, when one woke up in the morning, whether, before the day was out, one would not be in the bastille for something one had said at dinner, or have quarrelled with half one's friends for something one had never said at all. of all the disputes and agitations of that agitated age none is more remarkable than the famous quarrel between rousseau and his friends, which disturbed french society for so many years, and profoundly affected the life and the character of the most strange and perhaps the most potent of the precursors of the revolution. the affair is constantly cropping up in the literature of the time; it occupies a prominent place in the later books of the _confessions_; and there is an account of its earlier phases--an account written from the anti-rousseau point of view--in the _mémoires_ of madame d'epinay. the whole story is an exceedingly complex one, and all the details of it have never been satisfactorily explained; but the general verdict of subsequent writers has been decidedly hostile to rousseau, though it has not subscribed to all the virulent abuse poured upon him by his enemies at the time of the quarrel. this, indeed, is precisely the conclusion which an unprejudiced reader of the _confessions_ would naturally come to. rousseau's story, even as he himself tells it, does not carry conviction. he would have us believe that he was the victim of a vast and diabolical conspiracy, of which grimm and diderot were the moving spirits, which succeeded in alienating from him his dearest friends, and which eventually included all the ablest and most distinguished persons of the age. not only does such a conspiracy appear, upon the face of it, highly improbable, but the evidence which rousseau adduces to prove its existence seems totally insufficient; and the reader is left under the impression that the unfortunate jean-jacques was the victim, not of a plot contrived by rancorous enemies, but of his own perplexed, suspicious, and deluded mind. this conclusion is supported by the account of the affair given by contemporaries, and it is still further strengthened by rousseau's own writings subsequent to the _confessions_, where his endless recriminations, his elaborate hypotheses, and his wild inferences bear all the appearance of mania. here the matter has rested for many years; and it seemed improbable that any fresh reasons would arise for reopening the question. mrs. f. macdonald, however, in a recently-published work[ ], has produced some new and important evidence, which throws entirely fresh light upon certain obscure parts of this doubtful history; and is possibly of even greater interest. for it is mrs. macdonald's contention that her new discovery completely overturns the orthodox theory, establishes the guilt of grimm, diderot, and the rest of the anti-rousseau party, and proves that the story told in the _confessions_ is simply the truth. if these conclusions really do follow from mrs. macdonald's newly-discovered data, it would be difficult to over-estimate the value of her work, for the result of it would be nothing less than a revolution in our judgments upon some of the principal characters of the eighteenth century. to make it certain that diderot was a cad and a cheat, that d'alembert was a dupe, and hume a liar--that, surely, were no small achievement. and, even if these conclusions do not follow from mrs. macdonald's data, her work will still be valuable, owing to the data themselves. her discoveries are important, whatever inferences may be drawn from them; and for this reason her book, 'which represents,' as she tells us, 'twenty years of research,' will be welcome to all students of that remarkable age. mrs. macdonald's principal revelations relate to the _mémoires_ of madame d'epinay. this work was first printed in , and the concluding quarter of it contains an account of the rousseau quarrel, the most detailed of all those written from the anti-rousseau point of view. it has, however, always been doubtful how far the _mémoires_ were to be trusted as accurate records of historical fact. the manuscript disappeared; but it was known that the characters who, in the printed book, appear under the names of real persons, were given pseudonyms in the original document; and many of the minor statements contradicted known events. had madame d'epinay merely intended to write a _roman à clef_? what seemed, so far as concerned the rousseau narrative, to put this hypothesis out of court was the fact that the story of the quarrel as it appears in the _mémoires_ is, in its main outlines, substantiated both by grimm's references to rousseau in his _correspondance littéraire_, and by a brief memorandum of rousseau's misconduct, drawn up by diderot for his private use, and not published until many years after madame d'epinay's death. accordingly most writers on the subject have taken the accuracy of the _mémoires_ for granted; sainte-beuve, for instance, prefers the word of madame d'epinay to that of rousseau, when there is a direct conflict of testimony; and lord morley, in his well-known biography, uses the _mémoires_ as an authority for many of the incidents which he relates. mrs. macdonald's researches, however, have put an entirely different complexion on the case. she has discovered the manuscript from which the _mémoires_ were printed, and she has examined the original draft of this manuscript, which had been unearthed some years ago, but whose full import had been unaccountably neglected by previous scholars. from these researches, two facts have come to light. in the first place, the manuscript differs in many respects from the printed book, and, in particular, contains a conclusion of two hundred sheets, which has never been printed at all; the alterations were clearly made in order to conceal the inaccuracies of the manuscript; and the omitted conclusion is frankly and palpably a fiction. and in the second place, the original draft of the manuscript turns out to be the work of several hands; it contains, especially in those portions which concern rousseau, many erasures, corrections, and notes, while several pages have been altogether cut out; most of the corrections were made by madame d'epinay herself; but in nearly every case these corrections carry out the instructions in the notes; and the notes themselves are in the handwriting of diderot and grimm. mrs. macdonald gives several facsimiles of pages in the original draft, which amply support her description of it; but it is to be hoped that before long she will be able to produce a new and complete edition of the _mémoires_, with all the manuscript alterations clearly indicated; for until then it will be difficult to realise the exact condition of the text. however, it is now beyond dispute both that madame d'epinay's narrative cannot be regarded as historically accurate, and that its agreement with the statements of grimm and diderot is by no means an independent confirmation of its truth, for grimm and diderot themselves had a hand in its compilation. thus far we are on firm ground. but what are the conclusions which mrs. macdonald builds up from these foundations? the account, she says, of rousseau's conduct and character, as it appears in the printed version, is hostile to him, but it was not the account which madame d'epinay herself originally wrote. the hostile narrative was, in effect, composed by grimm and diderot, who induced madame d'epinay to substitute it for her own story; and thus her own story could not have agreed with theirs. madame d'epinay knew the truth; she knew that rousseau's conduct had been honourable and wise; and so she had described it in her book; until, falling completely under the influence of grimm and diderot, she had allowed herself to become the instrument for blackening the reputation of her old friend. mrs. macdonald paints a lurid picture of the conspirators at work--of diderot penning his false and malignant instructions, of madame d'epinay's half-unwilling hand putting the last touches to the fraud, of grimm, rushing back to paris at the time of the revolution, and risking his life in order to make quite certain that the result of all these efforts should reach posterity. well! it would be difficult--perhaps it would be impossible--to prove conclusively that none of these things ever took place. the facts upon which mrs. macdonald lays so much stress--the mutilations, the additions, the instructing notes, the proved inaccuracy of the story the manuscripts tell--these facts, no doubt, may be explained by mrs. macdonald's theories; but there are other facts--no less important, and no less certain--which are in direct contradiction to mrs. macdonald's view, and over which she passes as lightly as she can. putting aside the question of the _mémoires_, we know nothing of diderot which would lead us to entertain for a moment the supposition that he was a dishonourable and badhearted man; we do know that his writings bear the imprint of a singularly candid, noble, and fearless mind; we do know that he devoted his life, unflinchingly and unsparingly, to a great cause. we know less of grimm; but it is at least certain that he was the intimate friend of diderot, and of many more of the distinguished men of the time. is all this evidence to be put on one side as of no account? are we to dismiss it, as mrs. macdonald dismisses it, as merely 'psychological'? surely diderot's reputation as an honest man is as much a fact as his notes in the draft of the _mémoires_. it is quite true that his reputation _may_ have been ill-founded, that d'alembert, and turgot, and hume _may_ have been deluded, or _may_ have been bribed, into admitting him to their friendship; but is it not clear that we ought not to believe any such hypotheses as these until we have before us such convincing proof of diderot's guilt that we _must_ believe them? mrs. macdonald declares that she has produced such proof; and she points triumphantly to her garbled and concocted manuscripts. if there is indeed no explanation of these garblings and concoctions other than that which mrs. macdonald puts forward--that they were the outcome of a false and malicious conspiracy to blast the reputation of rousseau--then we must admit that she is right, and that all our general 'psychological' considerations as to diderot's reputation in the world must be disregarded. but, before we come to this conclusion, how careful must we be to examine every other possible explanation of mrs. macdonald's facts, how rigorously must we sift her own explanation of them, how eagerly must we seize upon every loophole of escape! it is, i believe, possible to explain the condition of the d'epinay manuscript without having recourse to the iconoclastic theory of mrs. macdonald. to explain everything, indeed, would be out of the question, owing to our insufficient data, and the extreme complexity of the events; all that we can hope to do is to suggest an explanation which will account for the most important of the known facts. not the least interesting of mrs. macdonald's discoveries went to show that the _mémoires_, so far from being historically accurate, were in reality full of unfounded statements, that they concluded with an entirely imaginary narrative, and that, in short, they might be described, almost without exaggeration, in the very words with which grimm himself actually did describe them in his _correspondance littéraire_, as 'l'ébauche d'un long roman.' mrs. macdonald eagerly lays emphasis upon this discovery, because she is, of course, anxious to prove that the most damning of all the accounts of rousseau's conduct is an untrue one. but she has proved too much. the _mémoires_, she says, are a fiction; therefore the writers of them were liars. the answer is obvious: why should we not suppose that the writers were not liars at all, but simply novelists? will not this hypothesis fit into the facts just as well as mrs. macdonald's? madame d'epinay, let us suppose, wrote a narrative, partly imaginary and partly true, based upon her own experiences, but without any strict adherence to the actual course of events, and filled with personages whose actions were, in many cases, fictitious, but whose characters were, on the whole, moulded upon the actual characters of her friends. let us suppose that when she had finished her work--a work full of subtle observation and delightful writing--she showed it to grimm and diderot. they had only one criticism to make: it related to her treatment of the character which had been moulded upon that of rousseau. 'your rousseau, chère madame, is a very poor affair indeed! the most salient points in his character seem to have escaped you. we know what that man really was. we know how he behaved at that time. _c'était un homme à faire peur_. you have missed a great opportunity of drawing a fine picture of a hypocritical rascal.' whereupon they gave her their own impressions of rousseau's conduct, they showed her the letters that had passed between them, and they jotted down some notes for her guidance. she rewrote the story in accordance with their notes and their anecdotes; but she rearranged the incidents, she condensed or amplified the letters, as she thought fit--for she was not writing a history, but 'l'ébauche d'un long roman.' if we suppose that this, or something like this, was what occurred, shall we not have avoided the necessity for a theory so repugnant to common-sense as that which would impute to a man of recognised integrity the meanest of frauds? to follow mrs. macdonald into the inner recesses and elaborations of her argument would be a difficult and tedious task. the circumstances with which she is principally concerned--the suspicions, the accusations, the anonymous letters, the intrigues, the endless problems as to whether madame d'epinay was jealous of madame d'houdetot, whether thérèse told fibs, whether, on the th of the month, grimm was grossly impertinent, and whether, on the th, rousseau was outrageously rude, whether rousseau revealed a secret to diderot, which diderot revealed to saint-lambert, and whether, if diderot revealed it, he believed that rousseau had revealed it before--these circumstances form, as lord morley says, 'a tale of labyrinthine nightmares,' and mrs. macdonald has done very little to mitigate either the contortions of the labyrinths or the horror of the dreams. her book is exceedingly ill-arranged; it is enormously long, filling two large volumes, with an immense apparatus of appendices and notes; it is full of repetitions and of irrelevant matter; and the argument is so indistinctly set forth that even an instructed reader finds great difficulty in following its drift. without, however, plunging into the abyss of complications which yawns for us in mrs. macdonald's pages, it may be worth while to touch upon one point with which she has dealt (perhaps wisely for her own case!) only very slightly--the question of the motives which could have induced grimm and diderot to perpetuate a series of malignant lies. it is, doubtless, conceivable that grimm, who was madame d'epinay's lover, was jealous of rousseau, who was madame d'epinay's friend. we know very little of grimm's character, but what we do know seems to show that he was a jealous man and an ambitious man; it is possible that a close alliance with madame d'epinay may have seemed to him a necessary step in his career; and it is conceivable that he may have determined not to rest until his most serious rival in madame d'epinay's affections was utterly cast out. he was probably prejudiced against rousseau from the beginning, and he may have allowed his prejudices to colour his view of rousseau's character and acts. the violence of the abuse which grimm and the rest of the encyclopaedists hurled against the miserable jean-jacques was certainly quite out of proportion to the real facts of the case. whenever he is mentioned one is sure of hearing something about _traître_ and _mensonge_ and _scélératesse_. he is referred to as often as not as if he were some dangerous kind of wild beast. this was grimm's habitual language with regard to him; and this was the view of his character which madame d'epinay finally expressed in her book. the important question is--did grimm know that rousseau was in reality an honourable man, and, knowing this, did he deliberately defame him in order to drive him out of madame d'epinay's affections? the answer, i think, must be in the negative, for the following reason. if grimm had known that there was something to be ashamed of in the notes with which he had supplied madame d'epinay, and which led to the alteration of her _mémoires_, he certainly would have destroyed the draft of the manuscript, which was the only record of those notes having ever been made. as it happens, we know that he had the opportunity of destroying the draft, and he did not do so. he came to paris at the risk of his life in , and stayed there for four months, with the object, according to his own account, of collecting papers belonging to the empress catherine, or, according to mrs. macdonald's account, of having the rough draft of the _mémoires_ copied out by his secretary. whatever his object, it is certain that the copy--that from which ultimately the _mémoires_ were printed--was made either at that time, or earlier; and that there was nothing on earth to prevent him, during the four months of his stay in paris, from destroying the draft. mrs. macdonald's explanation of this difficulty is lamentably weak. grimm, she says, must have wished to get away from paris 'without arousing suspicion by destroying papers.' this is indeed an 'exquisite reason,' which would have delighted that good knight sir andrew aguecheek. grimm had four months at his disposal; he was undisturbed in his own house; why should he not have burnt the draft page by page as it was copied out? there can be only one reply: why _should_ he? if it is possible to suggest some fairly plausible motives which might conceivably have induced grimm to blacken rousseau's character, the case of diderot presents difficulties which are quite insurmountable. mrs. macdonald asserts that diderot was jealous of rousseau. why? because he was tired of hearing rousseau described as 'the virtuous'; that is all. surely mrs. macdonald should have been the first to recognise that such an argument is a little too 'psychological.' the truth is that diderot had nothing to gain by attacking rousseau. he was not, like grimm, in love with madame d'epinay; he was not a newcomer who had still to win for himself a position in the parisian world. his acquaintance with madame d'epinay was slight; and, if there were any advances, they were from her side, for he was one of the most distinguished men of the day. in fact, the only reason that he could have had for abusing rousseau was that he believed rousseau deserved abuse. whether he was right in believing so is a very different question. most readers, at the present day, now that the whole noisy controversy has long taken its quiet place in the perspective of time, would, i think, agree that diderot and the rest of the encyclopaedists were mistaken. as we see him now, in that long vista, rousseau was not a wicked man; he was an unfortunate, a distracted, a deeply sensitive, a strangely complex, creature; and, above all else, he possessed one quality which cut him off from his contemporaries, which set an immense gulf betwixt him and them: he was modern. among those quick, strong, fiery people of the eighteenth century, he belonged to another world--to the new world of self-consciousness, and doubt, and hesitation, of mysterious melancholy and quiet intimate delights, of long reflexions amid the solitudes of nature, of infinite introspections amid the solitudes of the heart. who can wonder that he was misunderstood, and buffeted, and driven mad? who can wonder that, in his agitations, his perplexities, his writhings, he seemed, to the pupils of voltaire, little less than a frenzied fiend? 'cet homme est un forcené!' diderot exclaims. 'je tâche en vain de faire de la poésie, mais cet homme me revient tout à travers mon travail; il me trouble, et je suis comme si j'avais à côté de moi un damné: il est damné, cela est sûr. ... j'avoue que je n'ai jamais éprouvé un trouble d'âme si terrible que celui que j'ai ... que je ne revoie plus cet homme-là, il me ferait croire au diable et à l'enfer. si je suis jamais forcé de retourner chez lui, je suis sûr que je frémirai tout le long du chemin: j'avais la fièvre en revenant ... on entendait ses cris jusqu'au bout du jardin; et je le voyais!... les poètes ont bien fait de mettre un intervalle immense entre le ciel et les enfers. en vérité, la main me tremble.' every word of that is stamped with sincerity; diderot was writing from his heart. but he was wrong; the 'intervalle immense,' across which, so strangely and so horribly, he had caught glimpses of what he had never seen before, was not the abyss between heaven and hell, but between the old world and the new. . notes: [footnote : _jean jacques rousseau: a new criticism_, by frederika macdonald. in two volumes. chapman and hall. .] the poetry of blake[ ] the new edition of blake's poetical works, published by the clarendon press, will be welcomed by every lover of english poetry. the volume is worthy of the great university under whose auspices it has been produced, and of the great artist whose words it will help to perpetuate. blake has been, hitherto, singularly unfortunate in his editors. with a single exception, every edition of his poems up to the present time has contained a multitude of textual errors which, in the case of any other writer of equal eminence, would have been well-nigh inconceivable. the great majority of these errors were not the result of accident: they were the result of deliberate falsification. blake's text has been emended and corrected and 'improved,' so largely and so habitually, that there was a very real danger of its becoming permanently corrupted; and this danger was all the more serious, since the work of mutilation was carried on to an accompaniment of fervent admiration of the poet. 'it is not a little bewildering,' says mr. sampson, the present editor, 'to find one great poet and critic extolling blake for the "glory of metre" and "the sonorous beauty of lyrical work" in the two opening lyrics of the _songs of experience_, while he introduces into the five short stanzas quoted no less than seven emendations of his own, involving additions of syllables and important changes of meaning.' this is procrustes admiring the exquisite proportions of his victim. as one observes the countless instances accumulated in mr. sampson's notes, of the clippings and filings to which the free and spontaneous expression of blake's genius has been subjected, one is reminded of a verse in one of his own lyrics, where he speaks of the beautiful garden in which-- priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, and binding with briers my joys and desires; and one cannot help hazarding the conjecture, that blake's prophetic vision recognised, in the lineaments of the 'priests in black gowns,' most of his future editors. perhaps, though, if blake's prescience had extended so far as this, he would have taken a more drastic measure; and we shudder to think of the sort of epigram with which the editorial efforts of his worshippers might have been rewarded. the present edition, however, amply compensates for the past. mr. sampson gives us, in the first place, the correct and entire text of the poems, so printed as to afford easy reading to those who desire access to the text and nothing more. at the same time, in a series of notes and prefaces, he has provided an elaborate commentary, containing, besides all the variorum readings, a great mass of bibliographical and critical matter; and, in addition, he has enabled the reader to obtain a clue through the labyrinth of blake's mythology, by means of ample quotations from those passages in the _prophetic books_, which throw light upon the obscurities of the poems. the most important blake document--the rossetti ms.--has been freshly collated, with the generous aid of the owner, mr. w.a. white, to whom the gratitude of the public is due in no common measure; and the long-lost pickering ms.--the sole authority for some of the most mystical and absorbing of the poems--was, with deserved good fortune, discovered by mr. sampson in time for collation in the present edition. thus there is hardly a line in the volume which has not been reproduced from an original, either written or engraved by the hand of blake. mr. sampson's minute and ungrudging care, his high critical acumen, and the skill with which he has brought his wide knowledge of the subject to bear upon the difficulties of the text, combine to make his edition a noble and splendid monument of english scholarship. it will be long indeed before the poems of blake cease to afford matter for fresh discussions and commentaries and interpretations; but it is safe to predict that, so far as their form is concerned, they will henceforward remain unchanged. there will be no room for further editing. the work has been done by mr. sampson, once and for all. in the case of blake, a minute exactitude of text is particularly important, for more than one reason. many of his effects depend upon subtle differences of punctuation and of spelling, which are too easily lost in reproduction. 'tiger, tiger, burning bright,' is the ordinary version of one of his most celebrated lines. but in blake's original engraving the words appear thus--'tyger! tyger! burning bright'; and who can fail to perceive the difference? even more remarkable is the change which the omission of a single stop has produced in the last line of one of the succeeding stanzas of the same poem. and what shoulder, and what art, could twist the sinews of thy heart? and when thy heart began to beat, what dread hand? and what dread feet? so blake engraved the verse; and, as mr. sampson points out,'the terrible, compressed force' of the final line vanishes to nothing in the 'languid punctuation' of subsequent editions:--'what dread hand and what dread feet?' it is hardly an exaggeration to say, that the re-discovery of this line alone would have justified the appearance of the present edition. but these considerations of what may be called the mechanics of blake's poetry are not--important as they are--the only justification for a scrupulous adherence to his autograph text. blake's use of language was not guided by the ordinarily accepted rules of writing; he allowed himself to be trammelled neither by prosody nor by grammar; he wrote, with an extraordinary audacity, according to the mysterious dictates of his own strange and intimate conception of the beautiful and the just. thus his compositions, amenable to no other laws than those of his own making, fill a unique place in the poetry of the world. they are the rebels and atheists of literature, or rather, they are the sanctuaries of an unknown god; and to invoke that deity by means of orthodox incantations is to run the risk of hell fire. editors may punctuate afresh the text of shakespeare with impunity, and perhaps even with advantage; but add a comma to the text of blake, and you put all heaven in a rage. you have laid your hands upon the ark of the covenant. nor is this all. when once, in the case of blake, the slightest deviation has been made from the authoritative version, it is hardly possible to stop there. the emendator is on an inclined plane which leads him inevitably from readjustments of punctuation to corrections of grammar, and from corrections of grammar to alterations of rhythm; if he is in for a penny, he is in for a pound. the first poem in the rossetti ms. may be adduced as one instance--out of the enormous number which fill mr. sampson's notes--of the dangers of editorial laxity. i told my love, i told my love, i told her all my heart; trembling, cold, in ghastly fears, ah! she doth depart. this is the first half of the poem; and editors have been contented with an alteration of stops, and the change of 'doth' into 'did.' but their work was not over; they had, as it were, tasted blood; and their version of the last four lines of the poem is as follows: soon after she was gone from me, a traveller came by, silently, invisibly: he took her with a sigh. reference to the ms., however, shows that the last line had been struck out by blake, and another substituted in its place--a line which is now printed for the first time by mr. sampson. so that the true reading of the verse is: soon as she was gone from me, a traveller came by, silently, invisibly-- o! was no deny. after these exertions, it must have seemed natural enough to rossetti and his successors to print four other expunged lines as part of the poem, and to complete the business by clapping a title to their concoction--'love's secret'--a title which there is no reason to suppose had ever entered the poet's mind. besides illustrating the shortcomings of his editors, this little poem is an admirable instance of blake's most persistent quality--his triumphant freedom from conventional restraints. his most characteristic passages are at once so unexpected and so complete in their effect, that the reader is moved by them, spontaneously, to some conjecture of 'inspiration.' sir walter raleigh, indeed, in his interesting introduction to a smaller edition of the poems, protests against such attributions of peculiar powers to blake, or indeed to any other poet. 'no man,' he says, 'destitute of genius, could live for a day.' but even if we all agree to be inspired together, we must still admit that there are degrees of inspiration; if mr. f's aunt was a woman of genius, what are we to say of hamlet? and blake, in the hierarchy of the inspired, stands very high indeed. if one could strike an average among poets, it would probably be true to say that, so far as inspiration is concerned, blake is to the average poet, as the average poet is to the man in the street. all poetry, to be poetry at all, must have the power of making one, now and then, involuntarily ejaculate: 'what made him think of that?' with blake, one is asking the question all the time. blake's originality of manner was not, as has sometimes been the case, a cloak for platitude. what he has to say belongs no less distinctly to a mind of astonishing self-dependence than his way of saying it. in english literature, as sir walter raleigh observes, he 'stands outside the regular line of succession.' all that he had in common with the great leaders of the romantic movement was an abhorrence of the conventionality and the rationalism of the eighteenth century; for the eighteenth century itself was hardly more alien to his spirit than that exaltation of nature--the 'vegetable universe,' as he called it--from which sprang the pantheism of wordsworth and the paganism of keats. 'nature is the work of the devil,' he exclaimed one day; 'the devil is in us as far as we are nature.' there was no part of the sensible world which, in his philosophy, was not impregnated with vileness. even the 'ancient heavens' were not, to his uncompromising vision, 'fresh and strong'; they were 'writ with curses from pole to pole,' and destined to vanish into nothingness with the triumph of the everlasting gospel. there are doubtless many to whom blake is known simply as a charming and splendid lyrist, as the author of _infant joy_, and _the tyger_, and the rest of the _songs of innocence and experience_. these poems show but faint traces of any system of philosophy; but, to a reader of the rossetti and pickering mss., the presence of a hidden and symbolic meaning in blake's words becomes obvious enough--a meaning which receives its fullest expression in the _prophetic books_. it was only natural that the extraordinary nature of blake's utterance in these latter works should have given rise to the belief that he was merely an inspired idiot--a madman who happened to be able to write good verses. that belief, made finally impossible by mr. swinburne's elaborate essay, is now, happily, nothing more than a curiosity of literary history; and indeed signs are not wanting that the whirligig of time, which left blake for so long in the paradise of fools, is now about to place him among the prophets. anarchy is the most fashionable of creeds; and blake's writings, according to sir walter raleigh, contain a complete exposition of its doctrines. the same critic asserts that blake was 'one of the most consistent of english poets and thinkers.' this is high praise indeed; but there seems to be some ambiguity in it. it is one thing to give blake credit for that sort of consistency which lies in the repeated enunciation of the same body of beliefs throughout a large mass of compositions and over a long period of time, and which could never be possessed by a, madman or an incoherent charlatan. it is quite another thing to assert that his doctrines form in themselves a consistent whole, in the sense in which that quality would be ordinarily attributed to a system of philosophy. does sir walter mean to assert that blake is, in this sense too, 'consistent'? it is a little difficult to discover. referring, in his introduction, to blake's abusive notes on bacon's _essays_, he speaks of-- the sentimental enthusiast, who worships all great men indifferently, [and who] finds himself in a distressful position when his gods fall out among themselves. his case [sir walter wittily adds] is not much unlike that of terah, the father of abraham, who (if the legend be true) was a dealer in idols among the chaldees, and, coming home to his shop one day, after a brief absence, found that the idols had quarrelled, and the biggest of them had smashed the rest to atoms. blake is a dangerous idol for any man to keep in his shop. we wonder very much whether he is kept in sir walter raleigh's. it seems clear, at any rate, that no claim for a 'consistency' which would imply freedom from self-contradiction can be validly made for blake. his treatment of the problem of evil is enough to show how very far he was from that clarity of thought without which even prophets are liable, when the time comes, to fall into disrepute. 'plato,' said blake, 'knew of nothing but the virtues and vices, and good and evil. there is nothing in all that. everything is good in god's eyes.' and this is the perpetual burden of his teaching. 'satan's empire is the empire of nothing'; there is no such thing as evil--it is a mere 'negation.' and the 'moral virtues,' which attempt to discriminate between right and wrong, are the idlest of delusions; they are merely 'allegories and dissimulations,' they 'do not exist.' such was one of the most fundamental of blake's doctrines; but it requires only a superficial acquaintance with his writings to recognise that their whole tenour is an implicit contradiction of this very belief. every page he wrote contains a moral exhortation; bad thoughts and bad feelings raised in him a fury of rage and indignation which the bitterest of satirists never surpassed. his epigrams on reynolds are masterpieces of virulent abuse; the punishment which he devised for klopstock--his impersonation of 'flaccid fluency and devout sentiment'--is unprintable; as for those who attempt to enforce moral laws, they shall be 'cast out,' for they 'crucify christ with the head downwards.' the contradiction is indeed glaring. 'there is no such thing as wickedness,' blake says in effect, 'and you are wicked if you think there is.' if it is true that evil does not exist, all blake's denunciations are so much empty chatter; and, on the other hand, if there is a real distinction between good and bad, if everything, in fact, is _not_ good in god's eyes--then why not say so? really blake, as politicians say, 'cannot have it both ways.' but of course, his answer to all this is simple enough. to judge him according to the light of reason is to make an appeal to a tribunal whose jurisdiction he had always refused to recognise as binding. in fact, to blake's mind, the laws of reason were nothing but a horrible phantasm deluding and perplexing mankind, from whose clutches it is the business of every human soul to free itself as speedily as possible. reason is the 'spectre' of blake's mythology, that spectre, which, he says, around me night and day like a wild beast guards my way. it is a malignant spirit, for ever struggling with the 'emanation,' or imaginative side of man, whose triumph is the supreme end of the universe. ever since the day when, in his childhood, blake had seen god's forehead at the window, he had found in imaginative vision the only reality and the only good. he beheld the things of this world 'not with, but through, the eye': with my inward eye, 'tis an old man grey, with my outward, a thistle across my way. it was to the imagination, and the imagination alone, that blake yielded the allegiance of his spirit. his attitude towards reason was the attitude of the mystic; and it involved an inevitable dilemma. he never could, in truth, quite shake himself free of his 'spectre'; struggle as he would, he could not escape altogether from the employment of the ordinary forms of thought and speech; he is constantly arguing, as if argument were really a means of approaching the truth; he was subdued to what he worked in. as in his own poem, he had, somehow or other, been locked into a crystal cabinet--the world of the senses and of reason--a gilded, artificial, gimcrack dwelling, after 'the wild' where he had danced so merrily before. i strove to seize the inmost form with ardour fierce and hands of flame, but burst the crystal cabinet, and like a weeping babe became-- a weeping babe upon the wild.... to be able to lay hands upon 'the inmost form,' one must achieve the impossible; one must be inside and outside the crystal cabinet at the same time. but blake was not to be turned aside by such considerations. he would have it both ways; and whoever demurred was crucifying christ with the head downwards. besides its unreasonableness, there is an even more serious objection to blake's mysticism--and indeed to all mysticism: its lack of humanity. the mystic's creed--even when arrayed in the wondrous and ecstatic beauty of blake's verse--comes upon the ordinary man, in the rigidity of its uncompromising elevation, with a shock which is terrible, and almost cruel. the sacrifices which it demands are too vast, in spite of the divinity of what it has to offer. what shall it profit a man, one is tempted to exclaim, if he gain his own soul, and lose the whole world? the mystic ideal is the highest of all; but it has no breadth. the following lines express, with a simplicity and an intensity of inspiration which he never surpassed, blake's conception of that ideal: and throughout all eternity i forgive you, you forgive me. as our dear redeemer said: 'this the wine, & this the bread.' it is easy to imagine the sort of comments to which voltaire, for instance, with his 'wracking wheel' of sarcasm and common-sense, would have subjected such lines as these. his criticism would have been irrelevant, because it would never have reached the heart of the matter at issue; it would have been based upon no true understanding of blake's words. but that they do admit of a real, an unanswerable criticism, it is difficult to doubt. charles lamb, perhaps, might have made it; incidentally, indeed, he has. 'sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and _irony itself_'--do these things form no part of your eternity? the truth is plain: blake was an intellectual drunkard. his words come down to us in a rapture of broken fluency from impossible intoxicated heights. his spirit soared above the empyrean; and, even as it soared, it stumbled in the gutter of felpham. his lips brought forth, in the same breath, in the same inspired utterance, the _auguries of innocence_ and the epigrams on sir joshua reynolds. he was in no condition to chop logic, or to take heed of the existing forms of things. in the imaginary portrait of himself, prefixed to sir walter raleigh's volume, we can see him, as he appeared to his own 'inward eye,' staggering between the abyss and the star of heaven, his limbs cast abroad, his head thrown back in an ecstasy of intoxication, so that, to the frenzy of his rolling vision, the whole universe is upside down. we look, and, as we gaze at the strange image and listen to the marvellous melody, we are almost tempted to go and do likewise. but it is not as a prophet, it is as an artist, that blake deserves the highest honours and the most enduring fame. in spite of his hatred of the 'vegetable universe,' his poems possess the inexplicable and spontaneous quality of natural objects; they are more like the works of heaven than the works of man. they have, besides, the two most obvious characteristics of nature--loveliness and power. in some of his lyrics there is an exquisite simplicity, which seems, like a flower or a child, to be unconscious of itself. in his poem of _the birds_--to mention, out of many, perhaps a less known instance--it is not the poet that one hears, it is the birds themselves. o thou summer's harmony, i have lived and mourned for thee; each day i mourn along the wood, and night hath heard my sorrows loud. in his other mood--the mood of elemental force--blake produces effects which are unique in literature. his mastery of the mysterious suggestions which lie concealed in words is complete. he who torments the chafer's sprite weaves a bower in endless night. what dark and terrible visions the last line calls up! and, with the aid of this control over the secret springs of language, he is able to produce in poetry those vast and vague effects of gloom, of foreboding, and of terror, which seem to be proper to music alone. sometimes his words are heavy with the doubtful horror of an approaching thunderstorm: the guests are scattered thro' the land, for the eye altering alters all; the senses roll themselves in fear, and the flat earth becomes a ball; the stars, sun, moon, all shrink away, a desart vast without a bound, and nothing left to eat or drink, and a dark desart all around. and sometimes blake invests his verses with a sense of nameless and infinite ruin, such as one feels when the drum and the violin mysteriously come together, in one of beethoven's symphonies, to predict the annihilation of worlds: on the shadows of the moon, climbing through night's highest noon: in time's ocean falling, drowned: in aged ignorance profound, holy and cold, i clipp'd the wings of all sublunary things: but when once i did descry the immortal man that cannot die, thro' evening shades i haste away to close the labours of my day. the door of death i open found, and the worm weaving in the ground; thou'rt my mother, from the womb; wife, sister, daughter, to the tomb: weaving to dreams the sexual strife, and weeping over the web of life. such music is not to be lightly mouthed by mortals; for us, in our weakness, a few strains of it, now and then, amid the murmur of ordinary converse, are enough. for blake's words will always be strangers on this earth; they could only fall with familiarity from the lips of his own gods: above time's troubled fountains, on the great atlantic mountains, in my golden house on high. they belong to the language of los and rahab and enitharmon; and their mystery is revealed for ever in the land of the sunflower's desire. . notes: [footnote : _the poetical works of william blake. a new and verbatim text from the manuscript, engraved, and letter-press originals, with variorum readings and bibliographical notes and prefaces._ by john sampson, librarian in the university of liverpool. oxford: at the clarendon press, . _the lyrical poems of william blake._ text by john sampson, with an introduction by walter raleigh. oxford: at the clarendon press, .] the last elizabethan the shrine of poetry is a secret one; and it is fortunate that this should be the case; for it gives a sense of security. the cult is too mysterious and intimate to figure upon census papers; there are no turnstiles at the temple gates; and so, as all inquiries must be fruitless, the obvious plan is to take for granted a good attendance of worshippers, and to pass on. yet, if apollo were to come down (after the manner of deities) and put questions--must we suppose to the laureate?--as to the number of the elect, would we be quite sure of escaping wrath and destruction? let us hope for the best; and perhaps, if we were bent upon finding out the truth, the simplest way would be to watch the sales of the new edition of the poems of beddoes, which messrs. routledge have lately added to the 'muses' library.' how many among apollo's pew-renters, one wonders, have ever read beddoes, or, indeed, have ever heard of him? for some reason or another, this extraordinary poet has not only never received the recognition which is his due, but has failed almost entirely to receive any recognition whatever. if his name is known at all, it is known in virtue of the one or two of his lyrics which have crept into some of the current anthologies. but beddoes' highest claim to distinction does not rest upon his lyrical achievements, consummate as those achievements are; it rests upon his extraordinary eminence as a master of dramatic blank verse. perhaps his greatest misfortune was that he was born at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and not at the end of the sixteenth. his proper place was among that noble band of elizabethans, whose strong and splendid spirit gave to england, in one miraculous generation, the most glorious heritage of drama that the world has known. if charles lamb had discovered his tragedies among the folios of the british museum, and had given extracts from them in the _specimens of dramatic poets_, beddoes' name would doubtless be as familiar to us now as those of marlowe and webster, fletcher and ford. as it happened, however, he came as a strange and isolated phenomenon, a star which had wandered from its constellation, and was lost among alien lights. it is to very little purpose that mr. ramsay colles, his latest editor, assures us that 'beddoes is interesting as marking the transition from shelley to browning'; it is to still less purpose that he points out to us a passage in _death's jest book_ which anticipates the doctrines of _the descent of man._ for beddoes cannot be hoisted into line with his contemporaries by such methods as these; nor is it in the light of such after-considerations that the value of his work must be judged. we must take him on his own merits, 'unmixed with seconds'; we must discover and appraise his peculiar quality for its own sake. he hath skill in language; and knowledge is in him, root, flower, and fruit, a palm with winged imagination in it, whose roots stretch even underneath the grave; and on them hangs a lamp of magic science in his soul's deepest mine, where folded thoughts lie sleeping on the tombs of magi dead. if the neglect suffered by beddoes' poetry may be accounted for in more ways than one, it is not so easy to understand why more curiosity has never been aroused by the circumstances of his life. for one reader who cares to concern himself with the intrinsic merit of a piece of writing there are a thousand who are ready to explore with eager sympathy the history of the writer; and all that we know both of the life and the character of beddoes possesses those very qualities of peculiarity, mystery, and adventure, which are so dear to the hearts of subscribers to circulating libraries. yet only one account of his career has ever been given to the public; and that account, fragmentary and incorrect as it is, has long been out of print. it was supplemented some years ago by mr. gosse, who was able to throw additional light upon one important circumstance, and who has also published a small collection of beddoes' letters. the main biographical facts, gathered from these sources, have been put together by mr. ramsay colles, in his introduction to the new edition; but he has added nothing fresh; and we are still in almost complete ignorance as to the details of the last twenty years of beddoes' existence--full as those years certainly were of interest and even excitement. nor has the veil been altogether withdrawn from that strange tragedy which, for the strange tragedian, was the last of all. readers of miss edgeworth's letters may remember that her younger sister anne, married a distinguished clifton physician, dr. thomas beddoes. their eldest son, born in , was named thomas lovell, after his father and grandfather, and grew up to be the author of _the brides' tragedy_ and _death's jest book_. dr. beddoes was a remarkable man, endowed with high and varied intellectual capacities and a rare independence of character. his scientific attainments were recognised by the university of oxford, where he held the post of lecturer in chemistry, until the time of the french revolution, when he was obliged to resign it, owing to the scandal caused by the unconcealed intensity of his liberal opinions. he then settled at clifton as a physician, established a flourishing practice, and devoted his leisure to politics and scientific research. sir humphry davy, who was his pupil, and whose merit he was the first to bring to light, declared that 'he had talents which would have exalted him to the pinnacle of philosophical eminence, if they had been applied with discretion.' the words are curiously suggestive of the history of his son; and indeed the poet affords a striking instance of the hereditary transmission of mental qualities. not only did beddoes inherit his father's talents and his father's inability to make the best use of them; he possessed in a no less remarkable degree his father's independence of mind. in both cases, this quality was coupled with a corresponding eccentricity of conduct, which occasionally, to puzzled onlookers, wore the appearance of something very near insanity. many stories are related of the queer behaviour of dr. beddoes. one day he astonished the ladies of clifton by appearing at a tea-party with a packet of sugar in his hand; he explained that it was east indian sugar, and that nothing would induce him to eat the usual kind, which came from jamaica and was made by slaves. more extraordinary were his medical prescriptions; for he was in the habit of ordering cows to be conveyed into his patients' bedrooms, in order, as he said, that they might 'inhale the animals' breath.' it is easy to imagine the delight which the singular spectacle of a cow climbing upstairs into an invalid's bedroom must have given to the future author of _harpagus_ and _the oviparous tailor_. but 'little tom,' as miss edgeworth calls him, was not destined to enjoy for long the benefit of parental example; for dr. beddoes died in the prime of life, when the child was not yet six years old. the genius at school is usually a disappointing figure, for, as a rule, one must be commonplace to be a successful boy. in that preposterous world, to be remarkable is to be overlooked; and nothing less vivid than the white-hot blaze of a shelley will bring with it even a distinguished martyrdom. but beddoes was an exception, though he was not a martyr. on the contrary, he dominated his fellows as absolutely as if he had been a dullard and a dunce. he was at charterhouse; and an entertaining account of his existence there has been preserved to us in a paper of school reminiscences, written by mr. c.d. bevan, who had been his fag. though his place in the school was high, beddoes' interests were devoted not so much to classical scholarship as to the literature of his own tongue. cowley, he afterwards told a friend, had been the first poet he had understood; but no doubt he had begun to understand poetry many years before he went to charterhouse; and, while he was there, the reading which he chiefly delighted in was the elizabethan drama. 'he liked acting,' says mr. bevan, 'and was a good judge of it, and used to give apt though burlesque imitations of the popular actors, particularly kean and macready. though his voice was harsh and his enunciation offensively conceited, he read with so much propriety of expression and manner, that i was always glad to listen: even when i was pressed into the service as his accomplice, his enemy, or his love, with a due accompaniment of curses, caresses, or kicks, as the course of his declamation required. one play in particular, marlowe's _tragedy of dr. faustus_, excited my admiration in this way; and a liking for the old english drama, which i still retain, was created and strengthened by such recitations.' but beddoes' dramatic performances were not limited to the works of others; when the occasion arose he was able to supply the necessary material himself. a locksmith had incurred his displeasure by putting a bad lock on his bookcase; beddoes vowed vengeance; and when next the man appeared he was received by a dramatic interlude, representing his last moments, his horror and remorse, his death, and the funeral procession, which was interrupted by fiends, who carried off body and soul to eternal torments. such was the realistic vigour of the performance that the locksmith, according to mr. bevan, 'departed in a storm of wrath and execrations, and could not be persuaded, for some time, to resume his work.' besides the interlude of the wicked locksmith, beddoes' school compositions included a novel in the style of fielding (which has unfortunately disappeared), the beginnings of an elizabethan tragedy, and much miscellaneous verse. in he left charterhouse, and went to pembroke college, oxford, where, in the following year, while still a freshman, he published his first volume, _the improvisatore_, a series of short narratives in verse. the book had been written in part while he was at school; and its immaturity is obvious. it contains no trace of the nervous vigour of his later style; the verse is weak, and the sentiment, to use his own expression, 'moorish.' indeed, the only interest of the little work lies in the evidence which it affords that the singular pre-occupation which eventually dominated beddoes' mind had, even in these early days, made its appearance. the book is full of death. the poems begin on battle-fields and end in charnel-houses; old men are slaughtered in cold blood, and lovers are struck by lightning into mouldering heaps of corruption. the boy, with his elaborate exhibitions of physical horror, was doing his best to make his readers' flesh creep. but the attempt was far too crude; and in after years, when beddoes had become a past-master of that difficult art, he was very much ashamed of his first publication. so eager was he to destroy every trace of its existence, that he did not spare even the finely bound copies of his friends. the story goes that he amused himself by visiting their libraries with a penknife, so that, when next they took out the precious volume, they found the pages gone. beddoes, however, had no reason to be ashamed of his next publication, _the brides' tragedy_, which appeared in . in a single bound, he had reached the threshold of poetry, and was knocking at the door. the line which divides the best and most accomplished verse from poetry itself--that subtle and momentous line which every one can draw, and no one can explain--beddoes had not yet crossed. but he had gone as far as it was possible to go by the aid of mere skill in the art of writing, and he was still in his twentieth year. many passages in _the brides' tragedy_ seem only to be waiting for the breath of inspiration which will bring them into life; and indeed, here and there, the breath has come, the warm, the true, the vital breath of apollo. no one, surely, whose lips had not tasted of the waters of helicon, could have uttered such words as these: here's the blue violet, like pandora's eye, when first it darkened with immortal life or a line of such intense imaginative force as this: i've huddled her into the wormy earth; or this splendid description of a stormy sunrise: the day is in its shroud while yet an infant; and night with giant strides stalks o'er the world, like a swart cyclops, on its hideous front one round, red, thunder-swollen eye ablaze. the play was written on the elizabethan model, and, as a play, it is disfigured by beddoes' most characteristic faults: the construction is weak, the interest fluctuates from character to character, and the motives and actions of the characters themselves are for the most part curiously remote from the realities of life. yet, though the merit of the tragedy depends almost entirely upon the verse, there are signs in it that, while beddoes lacked the gift of construction, he nevertheless possessed one important dramatic faculty--the power of creating detached scenes of interest and beauty. the scene in which the half-crazed leonora imagines to herself, beside the couch on which her dead daughter lies, that the child is really living after all, is dramatic in the highest sense of the word; the situation, with all its capabilities of pathetic irony, is conceived and developed with consummate art and absolute restraint. leonora's speech ends thus: ... speak, i pray thee, floribel, speak to thy mother; do but whisper 'aye'; well, well, i will not press her; i am sure she has the welcome news of some good fortune, and hoards the telling till her father comes; ... ah! she half laughed. i've guessed it then; come tell me, i'll be secret. nay, if you mock me, i must be very angry till you speak. now this is silly; some of these young boys have dressed the cushions with her clothes in sport. 'tis very like her. i could make this image act all her greetings; she shall bow her head: 'good-morrow, mother'; and her smiling face falls on my neck.--oh, heaven, 'tis she indeed! i know it all--don't tell me. the last seven words are a summary of anguish, horror, and despair, such as webster himself might have been proud to write. _the brides' tragedy_ was well received by critics; and a laudatory notice of beddoes in the _edinburgh_, written by bryan waller procter--better known then than now under his pseudonym of barry cornwall--led to a lasting friendship between the two poets. the connection had an important result, for it was through procter that beddoes became acquainted with the most intimate of all his friends--thomas forbes kelsall, then a young lawyer at southampton. in the summer of beddoes stayed at southampton for several months, and, while ostensibly studying for his oxford degree, gave up most of his time to conversations with kelsall and to dramatic composition. it was a culminating point in his life: one of those moments which come, even to the most fortunate, once and once only--when youth, and hope, and the high exuberance of genius combine with circumstance and opportunity to crown the marvellous hour. the spade-work of _the brides' tragedy_ had been accomplished; the seed had been sown; and now the harvest was beginning. beddoes, 'with the delicious sense,' as kelsall wrote long afterwards, 'of the laurel freshly twined around his head,' poured out, in these southampton evenings, an eager stream of song. 'his poetic composition,' says his friend, 'was then exceedingly facile: more than once or twice has he taken home with him at night some unfinished act of a drama, in which the editor [kelsall] had found much to admire, and, at the next meeting, has produced a new one, similar in design, but filled with other thoughts and fancies, which his teeming imagination had projected, in its sheer abundance, and not from any feeling, right or fastidious, of unworthiness in its predecessor. of several of these very striking fragments, large and grand in their aspect as they each started into form, like the red outline of beginning adam, ... the only trace remaining is literally the impression thus deeply cut into their one observer's mind. the fine verse just quoted is the sole remnant, indelibly stamped on the editor's memory, of one of these extinct creations.' fragments survive of at least four dramas, projected, and brought to various stages of completion, at about this time. beddoes was impatient of the common restraints; he was dashing forward in the spirit of his own advice to another poet: creep not nor climb, as they who place their topmost of sublime on some peak of this planet, pitifully. dart eaglewise with open wings, and fly until you meet the gods! eighteen months after his southampton visit, beddoes took his degree at oxford, and, almost immediately, made up his mind to a course of action which had the profoundest effect upon his future life. he determined to take up the study of medicine; and with that end in view established himself, in , at the university at göttingen. it is very clear, however, that he had no intention of giving up his poetical work. he took with him to germany the beginnings of a new play--'a very gothic-styled tragedy,' he calls it, 'for which i have a jewel of a name--death's jest-book; of course,' he adds, 'no one will ever read it'; and, during his four years at göttingen, he devoted most of his leisure to the completion of this work. he was young; he was rich; he was interested in medical science; and no doubt it seemed to him that he could well afford to amuse himself for half-a-dozen years, before he settled down to the poetical work which was to be the serious occupation of his life. but, as time passed, he became more and more engrossed in the study of medicine, for which he gradually discovered he had not only a taste but a gift; so that at last he came to doubt whether it might not be his true vocation to be a physician, and not a poet after all. engulfed among the students of göttingen, england and english ways of life, and even english poetry, became dim to him; 'dir, dem anbeter der seligen gottheiten der musen, u.s.w.,' he wrote to kelsall, 'was unterhaltendes kann der liebhaber von knochen, der fleissige botaniker und phisiolog mittheilen?' in he was still hesitating between the two alternatives. 'i sometimes wish,' he told the same friend, 'to devote myself exclusively to the study of anatomy and physiology in science, of languages, and dramatic poetry'; his pen had run away with him; and his 'exclusive' devotion turned out to be a double one, directed towards widely different ends. while he was still in this state of mind, a new interest took possession of him--an interest which worked havoc with his dreams of dramatic authorship and scientific research: he became involved in the revolutionary movement which was at that time beginning to agitate europe. the details of his adventures are unhappily lost to us, for we know nothing more of them than can be learnt from a few scanty references in his rare letters to english friends; but it is certain that the part he played was an active, and even a dangerous one. he was turned out of würzburg by 'that ingenious jackanapes,' the king of bavaria; he was an intimate friend of hegetschweiler, one of the leaders of liberalism in switzerland; and he was present in zurich when a body of six thousand peasants, 'half unarmed, and the other half armed with scythes, dungforks and poles, entered the town and overturned the liberal government.' in the tumult hegetschweiler was killed, and beddoes was soon afterwards forced to fly the canton. during the following years we catch glimpses of him, flitting mysteriously over germany and switzerland, at berlin, at baden, at giessen, a strange solitary figure, with tangled hair and meerschaum pipe, scribbling lampoons upon the king of prussia, translating grainger's _spinal cord_ into german, and schoenlein's _diseases of europeans_ into english, exploring pilatus and the titlis, evolving now and then some ghostly lyric or some rabelaisian tale, or brooding over the scenes of his 'gothic-styled tragedy,' wondering if it were worthless or inspired, and giving it--as had been his wont for the last twenty years--just one more touch before he sent it to the press. he appeared in england once or twice, and in made a stay of several months, visiting the procters in london, and going down to southampton to be with kelsall once again. eccentricity had grown on him; he would shut himself for days in his bedroom, smoking furiously; he would fall into fits of long and deep depression. he shocked some of his relatives by arriving at their country house astride a donkey; and he amazed the procters by starting out one evening to set fire to drury lane theatre with a lighted five-pound note. after this last visit to england, his history becomes even more obscure than before. it is known that in he was in frankfort, where he lived for six months in close companionship with a young baker called degen--'a nice-looking young man, nineteen years of age,' we are told, 'dressed in a blue blouse, fine in expression, and of a natural dignity of manner'; and that, in the spring of the following year, the two friends went off to zurich, where beddoes hired the theatre for a night in order that degen might appear on the stage in the part of hotspur. at basel, however, for some unexplained reason, the friends parted, and beddoes fell immediately into the profoundest gloom. 'il a été misérable,' said the waiter at the cigogne hotel, where he was staying, 'il a voulu se tuer.' it was true. he inflicted a deep wound in his leg with a razor, in the hope, apparently, of bleeding to death. he was taken to the hospital, where he constantly tore off the bandages, until at last it was necessary to amputate the leg below the knee. the operation was successful, beddoes began to recover, and, in the autumn, degen came back to basel. it seemed as if all were going well; for the poet, with his books around him, and the blue-bloused degen by his bedside, talked happily of politics and literature, and of an italian journey in the spring. he walked out twice; was he still happy? who can tell? was it happiness, or misery, or what strange impulse, that drove him, on his third walk, to go to a chemist's shop in the town, and to obtain there a phial of deadly poison? on the evening of that day--the th of january, --dr. ecklin, his physician, was hastily summoned, to find beddoes lying insensible upon the bed. he never recovered consciousness, and died that night. upon his breast was found a pencil note, addressed to one of his english friends. 'my dear philips,' it began, 'i am food for what i am good for--worms.' a few testamentary wishes followed. kelsall was to have the manuscripts; and--'w. beddoes must have a case ( bottles) of champagne moet, growth, to drink my death in ... i ought to have been, among other things,' the gruesome document concluded, 'a good poet. life was too great a bore on one peg, and that a bad one. buy for dr. ecklin one of reade's best stomach-pumps.' it was the last of his additions to death's jest book, and the most _macabre_ of all. kelsall discharged his duties as literary executor with exemplary care. the manuscripts were fragmentary and confused. there were three distinct drafts of _death's jest book_, each with variations of its own; and from these kelsall compiled his first edition of the drama, which appeared in . in the following year he brought out the two volumes of poetical works, which remained for forty years the only record of the full scope and power of beddoes' genius. they contain reprints of _the brides' tragedy_ and _death's jest book_, together with two unfinished tragedies, and a great number of dramatic fragments and lyrics; and the poems are preceded by kelsall's memoir of his friend. of these rare and valuable volumes the muses' library edition is almost an exact reprint, except that it omits the memoir and revives _the improvisatore_. only one other edition of beddoes exists--the limited one brought out by mr. gosse in , and based upon a fresh examination of the manuscripts. mr. gosse was able to add ten lyrics and one dramatic fragment to those already published by kelsall; he made public for the first time the true story of beddoes' suicide, which kelsall had concealed; and, in , he followed up his edition of the poems by a volume of beddoes' letters. it is clear, therefore, that there is no one living to whom lovers of beddoes owe so much as to mr. gosse. he has supplied most important materials for the elucidation of the poet's history: and, among the lyrics which he has printed for the first time, are to be found one of the most perfect specimens of beddoes' command of unearthly pathos--_the old ghost_--and one of the most singular examples of his vein of grotesque and ominous humour--_the oviparous tailor_. yet it may be doubted whether even mr. gosse's edition is the final one. there are traces in beddoes' letters of unpublished compositions which may still come to light. what has happened, one would like to know, to _the ivory gate_, that 'volume of prosaic poetry and poetical prose,' which beddoes talked of publishing in ? only a few fine stanzas from it have ever appeared. and, as mr. gosse himself tells us, the variations in _death's jest book_ alone would warrant the publication of a variorum edition of that work--'if,' he wisely adds, for the proviso contains the gist of the matter--'if the interest in beddoes should continue to grow.' 'say what you will, i am convinced the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold, trampling fellow--no creeper into worm-holes--no reviver even--however good. these reanimations are vampire-cold.' the words occur in one of beddoes' letters, and they are usually quoted by critics, on the rare occasions on which his poetry is discussed, as an instance of the curious incapacity of artists to practise what they preach. but the truth is that beddoes was not a 'creeper into worm-holes,' he was not even a 'reviver'; he was a reincarnation. everything that we know of him goes to show that the laborious and elaborate effort of literary reconstruction was quite alien to his spirit. we have kelsall's evidence as to the ease and abundance of his composition; we have the character of the man, as it shines forth in his letters and in the history of his life--records of a 'bold, trampling fellow,' if ever there was one; and we have the evidence of his poetry itself. for the impress of a fresh and vital intelligence is stamped unmistakably upon all that is best in his work. his mature blank verse is perfect. it is not an artificial concoction galvanized into the semblance of life; it simply lives. and, with beddoes, maturity was precocious, for he obtained complete mastery over the most difficult and dangerous of metres at a wonderfully early age. blank verse is like the djin in the arabian nights; it is either the most terrible of masters, or the most powerful of slaves. if you have not the magic secret, it will take your best thoughts, your bravest imaginations, and change them into toads and fishes; but, if the spell be yours, it will turn into a flying carpet and lift your simplest utterance into the highest heaven. beddoes had mastered the 'open, sesame' at an age when most poets are still mouthing ineffectual wheats and barleys. in his twenty-second year, his thoughts filled and moved and animated his blank verse as easily and familiarly as a hand in a glove. he wishes to compare, for instance, the human mind, with its knowledge of the past, to a single eye receiving the light of the stars; and the object of the comparison is to lay stress upon the concentration on one point of a vast multiplicity of objects. there could be no better exercise for a young verse-writer than to attempt his own expression of this idea, and then to examine these lines by beddoes--lines where simplicity and splendour have been woven together with the ease of accomplished art. how glorious to live! even in one thought the wisdom of past times to fit together, and from the luminous minds of many men catch a reflected truth; as, in one eye, light, from unnumbered worlds and farthest planets of the star-crowded universe, is gathered into one ray. the effect is, of course, partly produced by the diction; but the diction, fine as it is, would be useless without the phrasing--that art by which the two forces of the metre and the sense are made at once to combat, to combine with, and to heighten each other. it is, however, impossible to do more than touch upon this side--the technical side--of beddoes' genius. but it may be noticed that in his mastery of phrasing--as in so much besides--he was a true elizabethan. the great artists of that age knew that without phrasing dramatic verse was a dead thing; and it is only necessary to turn from their pages to those of an eighteenth-century dramatist--addison, for instance--to understand how right they were. beddoes' power of creating scenes of intense dramatic force, which had already begun to show itself in _the brides' tragedy_, reached its full development in his subsequent work. the opening act of _the second brother_--the most nearly complete of his unfinished tragedies--is a striking example of a powerful and original theme treated in such a way that, while the whole of it is steeped in imaginative poetry, yet not one ounce of its dramatic effectiveness is lost. the duke's next brother, the heir to the dukedom of ferrara, returns to the city, after years of wandering, a miserable and sordid beggar--to find his younger brother, rich, beautiful, and reckless, leading a life of gay debauchery, with the assurance of succeeding to the dukedom when the duke dies. the situation presents possibilities for just those bold and extraordinary contrasts which were so dear to beddoes' heart. while marcello, the second brother, is meditating over his wretched fate, orazio, the third, comes upon the stage, crowned and glorious, attended by a train of singing revellers, and with a courtesan upon either hand. 'wine in a ruby!' he exclaims, gazing into his mistress's eyes: i'll solemnize their beauty in a draught pressed from the summer of an hundred vines. meanwhile marcello pushes himself forward, and attempts to salute his brother. _orazio_. insolent beggar! _marcello_. prince! but we must shake hands. look you, the round earth's like a sleeping serpent, who drops her dusky tail upon her crown just here. oh, we are like two mountain peaks of two close planets, catching in the air: you, king olympus, a great pile of summer, wearing a crown of gods; i, the vast top of the ghosts' deadly world, naked and dark, with nothing reigning on my desolate head but an old spirit of a murdered god, palaced within the corpse of saturn's father. they begin to dispute, and at last marcello exclaims-- aye, prince, you have a brother-- _orazio_. the duke--he'll scourge you. _marcello_. nay, _the second_, sir, who, like an envious river, flows between your footsteps and ferrara's throne.... _orazio_. stood he before me there, by you, in you, as like as you're unlike, straight as you're bowed, young as you are old, and many years nearer than him to death, the falling brilliancy of whose white sword your ancient locks so silverly reflect, i would deny, outswear, and overreach, and pass him with contempt, as i do you. jove! how we waste the stars: set on, my friends. and so the revelling band pass onward, singing still, as they vanish down the darkened street: strike, you myrtle-crownèd boys, ivied maidens, strike together!... and marcello is left alone: i went forth joyfully, as the soul of one who closes his pillowed eyes beside an unseen murderer, and like its horrible return was mine, to find the heart, wherein i breathed and beat, cold, gashed, and dead. let me forget to love, and take a heart of venom: let me make a staircase of the frightened breasts of men, and climb into a lonely happiness! and thou, who only art alone as i, great solitary god of that one sun, i charge thee, by the likeness of our state, undo these human veins that tie me close to other men, and let your servant griefs unmilk me of my mother, and pour in salt scorn and steaming hate! a moment later he learnt that the duke has suddenly died, and that the dukedom is his. the rest of the play affords an instance of beddoes' inability to trace out a story, clearly and forcibly, to an appointed end. the succeeding acts are crowded with beautiful passages, with vivid situations, with surprising developments, but the central plot vanishes away into nothing, like a great river dissipating itself among a thousand streams. it is, indeed, clear enough that beddoes was embarrassed with his riches, that his fertile mind conceived too easily, and that he could never resist the temptation of giving life to his imaginations, even at the cost of killing his play. his conception of orazio, for instance, began by being that of a young bacchus, as he appears in the opening scene. but beddoes could not leave him there; he must have a romantic wife, whom he has deserted; and the wife, once brought into being, must have an interview with her husband. the interview is an exquisitely beautiful one, but it shatters orazio's character, for, in the course of it, he falls desperately in love with his wife; and meanwhile the wife herself has become so important and interesting a figure that she must be given a father, who in his turn becomes the central character in more than one exciting scene. but, by this time, what has happened to the second brother? it is easy to believe that beddoes was always ready to begin a new play rather than finish an old one. but it is not so certain that his method was quite as inexcusable as his critics assert. to the reader, doubtless, his faulty construction is glaring enough; but beddoes wrote his plays to be acted, as a passage in one of his letters very clearly shows. 'you are, i think,' he writes to kelsall, 'disinclined to the stage: now i confess that i think this is the highest aim of the dramatist, and should be very desirous to get on it. to look down on it is a piece of impertinence, as long as one chooses to write in the form of a play, and is generally the result of one's own inability to produce anything striking and affecting in that way.' and it is precisely upon the stage that such faults of construction as those which disfigure beddoes' tragedies matter least. an audience, whose attention is held and delighted by a succession of striking incidents clothed in splendid speech, neither cares nor knows whether the effect of the whole, as a whole, is worthy of the separate parts. it would be foolish, in the present melancholy condition of the art of dramatic declamation, to wish for the public performance of _death's jest book_; but it is impossible not to hope that the time may come when an adequate representation of that strange and great work may be something more than 'a possibility more thin than air.' then, and then only, shall we be able to take the true measure of beddoes' genius. perhaps, however, the ordinary reader finds beddoes' lack of construction a less distasteful quality than his disregard of the common realities of existence. not only is the subject-matter of the greater part of his poetry remote and dubious; his very characters themselves seem to be infected by their creator's delight in the mysterious, the strange, and the unreal. they have no healthy activity; or, if they have, they invariably lose it in the second act; in the end, they are all hypochondriac philosophers, puzzling over eternity and dissecting the attributes of death. the central idea of _death's jest book_--the resurrection of a ghost--fails to be truly effective, because it is difficult to see any clear distinction between the phantom and the rest of the characters. the duke, saved from death by the timely arrival of wolfram, exclaims 'blest hour!' and then, in a moment, begins to ponder, and agonise, and dream: and yet how palely, with what faded lips do we salute this unhoped change of fortune! thou art so silent, lady; and i utter shadows of words, like to an ancient ghost, arisen out of hoary centuries where none can speak his language. orazio, in his brilliant palace, is overcome with the same feelings: methinks, these fellows, with their ready jests, are like to tedious bells, that ring alike marriage or death. and his description of his own revels applies no less to the whole atmosphere of beddoes' tragedies: voices were heard, most loud, which no man owned: there were more shadows too than there were men; and all the air more dark and thick than night was heavy, as 'twere made of something more than living breaths. it would be vain to look, among such spectral imaginings as these, for guidance in practical affairs, or for illuminating views on men and things, or for a philosophy, or, in short, for anything which may be called a 'criticism of life.' if a poet must be a critic of life, beddoes was certainly no poet. he belongs to the class of writers of which, in english literature, spenser, keats, and milton are the dominant figures--the writers who are great merely because of their art. sir james stephen was only telling the truth when he remarked that milton might have put all that he had to say in _paradise lost_ into a prose pamphlet of two or three pages. but who cares about what milton had to say? it is his way of saying it that matters; it is his expression. take away the expression from the _satires_ of pope, or from _the excursion_, and, though you will destroy the poems, you will leave behind a great mass of thought. take away the expression from _hyperion_, and you will leave nothing at all. to ask which is the better of the two styles is like asking whether a peach is better than a rose, because, both being beautiful, you can eat the one and not the other. at any rate, beddoes is among the roses: it is in his expression that his greatness lies. his verse is an instrument of many modulations, of exquisite delicacy, of strange suggestiveness, of amazing power. playing on it, he can give utterance to the subtlest visions, such as this: just now a beam of joy hung on his eyelash; but, as i looked, it sunk into his eye, like a bruised worm writhing its form of rings into a darkening hole. or to the most marvellous of vague and vast conceptions, such as this: i begin to hear strange but sweet sounds, and the loud rocky dashing of waves, where time into eternity falls over ruined worlds. or he can evoke sensations of pure loveliness, such as these: so fair a creature! of such charms compact as nature stints elsewhere: which you may find under the tender eyelid of a serpent, or in the gurge of a kiss-coloured rose, by drops and sparks: but when she moves, you see, like water from a crystal overfilled, fresh beauty tremble out of her and lave her fair sides to the ground. or he can put into a single line all the long memories of adoration: my love was much; my life but an inhabitant of his. or he can pass in a moment from tiny sweetness to colossal turmoil: i should not say how thou art like the daisy in noah's meadow, on which the foremost drop of rain fell warm and soft at evening: so the little flower wrapped up its leaves, and shut the treacherous water close to the golden welcome of its breast, delighting in the touch of that which led the shower of oceans, in whose billowy drops tritons and lions of the sea were warring, and sometimes ships on fire sunk in the blood, of their own inmates; others were of ice, and some had islands rooted in their waves, beasts on their rocks, and forest-powdering winds, and showers tumbling on their tumbling self, and every sea of every ruined star was but a drop in the world-melting flood. he can express alike the beautiful tenderness of love, and the hectic, dizzy, and appalling frenzy of extreme rage:-- ... what shall i do? i speak all wrong, and lose a soul-full of delicious thought by talking. hush! let's drink each other up by silent eyes. who lives, but thou and i, my heavenly wife?... i'll watch thee thus, till i can tell a second by thy cheek's change. in that, one can almost feel the kisses; and, in this, one can almost hear the gnashing of the teeth. 'never!' exclaims the duke to his son torrismond: there lies no grain of sand between my loved and my detested! wing thee hence, or thou dost stand to-morrow on a cobweb spun o'er the well of clotted acheron, whose hydrophobic entrails stream with fire! and may this intervening earth be snow, and my step burn like the mid coal of aetna, plunging me, through it all, into the core, where in their graves the dead are shut like seeds, if i do not--o, but he is my son! is not that tremendous? but, to find beddoes in his most characteristic mood, one must watch him weaving his mysterious imagination upon the woof of mortality. one must wander with him through the pages of _death's jest book_, one must grow accustomed to the dissolution of reality, and the opening of the nettled lips of graves; one must learn that 'the dead are most and merriest,' one must ask--'are the ghosts eaves-dropping?'--one must realise that 'murder is full of holes.' among the ruins of his gothic cathedral, on whose cloister walls the dance of death is painted, one may speculate at ease over the fragility of existence, and, within the sound of that dark ocean, whose tumultuous waves are heaped, contending ghosts, one may understand how it is that death is mightier, stronger, and more faithful to man than life. lingering there, one may watch the deaths come down from their cloister, and dance and sing amid the moonlight; one may laugh over the grotesque contortions of skeletons; one may crack jokes upon corruption; one may sit down with phantoms, and drink to the health of death. in private intercourse beddoes was the least morbid of human beings. his mind was like one of those gothic cathedrals of which he was so fond--mysterious within, and filled with a light at once richer and less real than the light of day; on the outside, firm, and towering, and immediately impressive; and embellished, both inside and out, with grinning gargoyles. his conversation, kelsall tells us, was full of humour and vitality, and untouched by any trace of egoism or affectation. he loved discussion, plunging into it with fire, and carrying it onward with high dexterity and good-humoured force. his letters are excellent: simple, spirited, spicy, and as original as his verse; flavoured with that vein of rattling open-air humour which had produced his school-boy novel in the style of fielding. he was a man whom it would have been a rare delight to know. his character, so eminently english, compact of courage, of originality, of imagination, and with something coarse in it as well, puts one in mind of hamlet: not the melodramatic sentimentalist of the stage; but the real hamlet, horatio's hamlet, who called his father's ghost old truepenny, who forged his uncle's signature, who fought laertes, and ranted in a grave, and lugged the guts into the neighbour room. his tragedy, like hamlet's, was the tragedy of an over-powerful will--a will so strong as to recoil upon itself, and fall into indecision. it is easy for a weak man to be decided--there is so much to make him so; but a strong man, who can do anything, sometimes leaves everything undone. fortunately beddoes, though he did far less than he might have done, possessed so rich a genius that what he did, though small in quantity, is in quality beyond price. 'i might have been, among other things, a good poet,' were his last words. 'among other things'! aye, there's the rub. but, in spite of his own 'might have been,' a good poet he was. perhaps for him, after all, there was very little to regret; his life was full of high nobility; and what other way of death would have befitted the poet of death? there is a thought constantly recurring throughout his writings--in his childish as in his most mature work--the thought of the beauty and the supernal happiness of soft and quiet death. he had visions of 'rosily dying,' of 'turning to daisies gently in the grave,' of a 'pink reclining death,' of death coming like a summer cloud over the soul. 'let her deathly life pass into death,' says one of his earliest characters, 'like music on the night wind.' and, in _death's jest book_, sibylla has the same thoughts: o death! i am thy friend, i struggle not with thee, i love thy state: thou canst be sweet and gentle, be so now; and let me pass praying away into thee, as twilight still does into starry night. did his mind, obsessed and overwhelmed by images of death, crave at last for the one thing stranger than all these--the experience of it? it is easy to believe so, and that, ill, wretched, and abandoned by degen at the miserable cigogne hotel, he should seek relief in the gradual dissolution which attends upon loss of blood. and then, when he had recovered, when he was almost happy once again, the old thoughts, perhaps, came crowding back upon him--thoughts of the futility of life, and the supremacy of death and the mystical whirlpool of the unknown, and the long quietude of the grave. in the end, death had grown to be something more than death to him--it was, mysteriously and transcendentally, love as well. death's darts are sometimes love's. so nature tells, when laughing waters close o'er drowning men; when in flowers' honied corners poison dwells; when beauty dies: and the unwearied ken of those who seek a cure for long despair will learn ... what learning was it that rewarded him? what ghostly knowledge of eternal love? if there are ghosts to raise, what shall i call, out of hell's murky haze, heaven's blue pall? --raise my loved long-lost boy to lead me to his joy.-- there are no ghosts to raise; out of death lead no ways; vain is the call. --know'st thou not ghosts to sue? no love thou hast. else lie, as i will do, and breathe thy last. so out of life's fresh crown fall like a rose-leaf down. thus are the ghosts to woo; thus are all dreams made true, ever to last! . henri beyle in the whole of french literature it would be difficult to point to a figure at once so important, so remarkable, and so little known to english readers as henri beyle. most of us are, no doubt, fairly familiar with his pseudonym of 'stendhal'; some of us have read _le rouge et le noir_ and _la chartreuse de parme_; but how many of us have any further knowledge of a man whose works are at the present moment appearing in paris in all the pomp of an elaborate and complete edition, every scrap of whose manuscripts is being collected and deciphered with enthusiastic care, and in honour of whose genius the literary periodicals of the hour are filling entire numbers with exegesis and appreciation? the eminent critic, m. andré gide, when asked lately to name the novel which stands in his opinion first among the novels of france, declared that since, without a doubt, the place belongs to one or other of the novels of stendhal, his only difficulty was in making his choice among these; and he finally decided upon _la chartreuse de parme_. according to this high authority, henri beyle was indisputably the creator of the greatest work of fiction in the french language, yet on this side of the channel we have hardly more than heard of him! nor is it merely as a writer that beyle is admired in france. as a man, he seems to have come in, sixty or seventy years after his death, for a singular devotion. there are 'beylistes,' or 'stendhaliens,' who dwell with rapture upon every detail of the master's private life, who extend with pious care the long catalogue of his amorous adventures, who discuss the shades of his character with the warmth of personal friendship, and register his opinions with a zeal which is hardly less than sectarian. but indeed it is precisely in these extremes of his french devotees that we shall find a clue to the explanation of our own indifference. beyle's mind contained, in a highly exaggerated form, most of the peculiarly distinctive elements of the french character. this does not mean that he was a typical frenchman; far from it. he did not, like voltaire or hugo, strike a note to which the whole national genius vibrated in response. he has never been, it is unlikely that he ever will be, a popular writer. his literary reputation in france has been confined, until perhaps quite lately, to a small distinguished circle. 'on me lira,' he was fond of saying, 'vers '; and the 'beylistes' point to the remark in triumph as one further proof of the almost divine prescience of the great man. but in truth beyle was always read by the _élite_ of french critics and writers--'the happy few,' as he used to call them; and among these he has never been without enthusiastic admirers. during his lifetime balzac, in an enormous eulogy of _la chartreuse de parme_, paid him one of the most magnificent compliments ever received by a man of letters from a fellow craftsman. in the next generation taine declared himself his disciple; a little later--'vers ,' in fact--we find zola describing him as 'notre père à tous,' and m. bourget followed with elaborate incense. to-day we have writers of such different tendencies as m. barrès and m. gide acclaiming him as a supreme master, and the fashionable idolatry of the 'beylistes.' yet, at the same time, running parallel to this stream of homage, it is easy to trace a line of opinion of a totally different kind. it is the opinion of the more solid, the more middle-class elements of french life. thus sainte-beuve, in two characteristic 'lundis,' poured a great deal of very tepid water upon balzac's flaming panegyric. then flaubert--'vers ,' too--confessed that he could see very little in stendhal. and, only a few years ago, m. chuquet, of the institute, took the trouble to compose a thick book in which he has collected with scrupulous detail all the known facts concerning the life and writings of a man whom he forthwith proceeds to damn through five hundred pages of faint praise. these discrepancies are curious: how can we account for such odd differences of taste? how are we to reconcile the admiration of balzac with the dislike of flaubert, the raptures of m. bourget and m. barrès with the sniffs of sainte-beuve and m. chuquet of the institute? the explanation seems to be that beyle occupies a position in france analogous to that of shelley in england. shelley is not a national hero, not because he lacked the distinctive qualities of an englishman, but for the opposite reason--because he possessed so many of them in an extreme degree. the idealism, the daring, the imagination, and the unconventionality which give shakespeare, nelson, and dr. johnson their place in our pantheon--all these were shelley's, but they were his in too undiluted and intense a form, with the result that, while he will never fail of worshippers among us, there will also always be englishmen unable to appreciate him at all. such, _mutatis mutandis_--and in this case the proviso is a very large one--is the position of beyle in france. after all, when bunthorne asked for a not-too-french french bean he showed more commonsense than he intended. beyle is a too-french french writer--too french even for the bulk of his own compatriots; and so for us it is only natural that he should be a little difficult. yet this very fact is in itself no bad reason for giving him some attention. an understanding of this very gallic individual might give us a new insight into the whole strange race. and besides, the curious creature is worth looking at for his own sake too. but, when one tries to catch him and pin him down on the dissecting-table, he turns out to be exasperatingly elusive. even his most fervent admirers cannot agree among themselves as to the true nature of his achievements. balzac thought of him as an artist, taine was captivated by his conception of history, m. bourget adores him as a psychologist, m. barrès lays stress upon his 'sentiment d'honneur,' and the 'beylistes' see in him the embodiment of modernity. certainly very few writers have had the good fortune to appeal at once so constantly and in so varied a manner to succeeding generations as henri beyle. the circumstances of his life no doubt in part account for the complexity of his genius. he was born in , when the _ancien régime_ was still in full swing; his early manhood was spent in the turmoil of the napoleonic wars; he lived to see the bourbon reaction, the romantic revival, the revolution of , and the establishment of louis philippe; and when he died, at the age of sixty, the nineteenth century was nearly half-way through. thus his life exactly spans the interval between the old world and the new. his family, which belonged to the magistracy of grenoble, preserved the living tradition of the eighteenth century. his grandfather was a polite, amiable, periwigged sceptic after the manner of fontenelle, who always spoke of 'm. de voltaire' with a smile 'mélangé de respect et d'affection'; and when the terror came, two representatives of the people were sent down to grenoble, with the result that beyle's father was pronounced (with a hundred and fifty others) 'notoirement suspect' of disaffection to the republic, and confined to his house. at the age of sixteen beyle arrived in paris, just after the _coup d'état_ of the th brumaire had made bonaparte first consul, and he immediately came under the influence of his cousin daru, that extraordinary man to whose terrific energies was due the organisation of napoleon's greatest armies, and whose leisure moments--for apparently he had leisure moments--were devoted to the composition of idylls in the style of tibullus and to an enormous correspondence on literary topics with the poetasters of the day. it was as a subordinate to this remarkable personage that beyle spent nearly the whole of the next fifteen years of his life--in paris, in italy, in germany, in russia--wherever the whirling tempest of the napoleonic policy might happen to carry him. his actual military experience was considerably slighter than what, in after years, he liked to give his friends to understand it had been. for hardly more than a year, during the italian campaign, he was in the army as a lieutenant of dragoons: the rest of his public service was spent in the commissariat department. the descriptions which he afterwards delighted to give of his adventures at marengo, at jéna, at wagram, or at the crossing of the niémen have been shown by m. chuquet's unkind researches to have been imaginary. beyle was present at only one great battle--bautzen. 'nous voyons fort bien,' he wrote in his journal on the following day, 'de midi à trois heures, tout ce qu'on peut voir d'une bataille, c'est à dire rien.' he was, however, at moscow in , and he accompanied the army through the horrors of the retreat. when the conflagration had broken out in the city he had abstracted from one of the deserted palaces a finely bound copy of the _facéties_ of voltaire; the book helped to divert his mind as he lay crouched by the campfire through the terrible nights that followed; but, as his companions showed their disapproval of anyone who could smile over akakia and pompignan in such a situation, one day he left the red-morocco volume behind him in the snow. the fall of napoleon threw beyle out of employment, and the period of his literary activity began. his books were not successful; his fortune gradually dwindled; and he drifted in paris and italy, and even in england, more and more disconsolately, with thoughts of suicide sometimes in his head. but in the tide of his fortunes turned. the revolution of july, by putting his friends into power, brought him a competence in the shape of an italian consulate; and in the same year he gained for the first time some celebrity by the publication of _le rouge et le noir_. the rest of his life was spent in the easy discharge of his official duties at civita vecchia, alternating with periods of leave--one of them lasted for three years--spent in paris among his friends, of whom the most distinguished was prosper mérimée. in appeared his last published work--_la chartreuse de parme_; and three years later he died suddenly in paris. his epitaph, composed by himself with the utmost care, was as follows: qui giace arrigo beyle milanese visse, scrisse, amo. the words, read rightly, indicate many things--his adoration of italy and milan, his eccentricity, his scorn of the conventions of society and the limits of nationality, his adventurous life, his devotion to literature, and, lastly, the fact that, through all the varieties of his experience--in the earliest years of his childhood, in his agitated manhood, in his calm old age--there had never been a moment when he was not in love. beyle's work falls into two distinct groups--the first consisting of his novels, and the second of his miscellaneous writings, which include several biographies, a dissertation on love, some books of criticism and travel, his letters and various autobiographical fragments. the bulk of the latter group is large; much of it has only lately seen the light; and more of it, at present in ms. at the library of grenoble, is promised us by the indefatigable editors of the new complete edition which is now appearing in paris. the interest of this portion of beyle's writings is almost entirely personal: that of his novels is mainly artistic. it was as a novelist that beyle first gained his celebrity, and it is still as a novelist--or rather as the author of _le rouge et le noir_ and _la chartreuse de parme_ (for an earlier work, _armance_, some short stories, and some later posthumous fragments may be left out of account)--that he is most widely known to-day. these two remarkable works lose none of their significance if we consider the time at which they were composed. it was in the full flood of the romantic revival, that marvellous hour in the history of french literature when the tyranny of two centuries was shattered for ever, and a boundless wealth of inspirations, possibilities, and beauties before undreamt-of suddenly burst upon the view. it was the hour of hugo, vigny, musset, gautier, balzac, with their new sonorities and golden cadences, their new lyric passion and dramatic stress, their new virtuosities, their new impulse towards the strange and the magnificent, their new desire for diversity and the manifold comprehension of life. but, if we turn to the contemporaneous pages of stendhal, what do we find? we find a succession of colourless, unemphatic sentences; we find cold reasoning and exact narrative; we find polite irony and dry wit. the spirit of the eighteenth century is everywhere; and if the old gentleman with the perruque and the 'm. de voltaire' could have taken a glance at his grandson's novels, he would have rapped his snuff-box and approved. it is true that beyle joined the ranks of the romantics for a moment with a _brochure_ attacking racine at the expense of shakespeare; but this was merely one of those contradictory changes of front which were inherent in his nature; and in reality the whole romantic movement meant nothing to him. there is a story of a meeting in the house of a common friend between him and hugo, in which the two men faced each other like a couple of cats with their backs up and their whiskers bristling. no wonder! but beyle's true attitude towards his great contemporaries was hardly even one of hostility: he simply could not open their books. as for chateaubriand, the god of their idolatry, he loathed him like poison. he used to describe how, in his youth, he had been on the point of fighting a duel with an officer who had ventured to maintain that a phrase in _atala_--'la cime indéterminée des forêts'--was not intolerable. probably he was romancing (m. chuquet says so); but at any rate the story sums up symbolically beyle's attitude towards his art. to him the whole apparatus of 'fine writing'--the emphatic phrase, the picturesque epithet, the rounded rhythm--was anathema. the charm that such ornaments might bring was in reality only a cloak for loose thinking and feeble observation. even the style of the eighteenth century was not quite his ideal; it was too elegant; there was an artificial neatness about the form which imposed itself upon the substance, and degraded it. no, there was only one example of the perfect style, and that was the _code napoléon_; for there alone everything was subordinated to the exact and complete expression of what was to be said. a statement of law can have no place for irrelevant beauties, or the vagueness of personal feeling; by its very nature, it must resemble a sheet of plate glass through which every object may be seen with absolute distinctness, in its true shape. beyle declared that he was in the habit of reading several paragraphs of the code every morning after breakfast 'pour prendre le ton.' this again was for long supposed to be one of his little jokes; but quite lately the searchers among the mss. at grenoble have discovered page after page copied out from the code in beyle's handwriting. no doubt, for that wayward lover of paradoxes, the real joke lay in everybody taking for a joke what _he_ took quite seriously. this attempt to reach the exactitude and the detachment of an official document was not limited to beyle's style; it runs through the whole tissue of his work. he wished to present life dispassionately and intellectually, and if he could have reduced his novels to a series of mathematical symbols, he would have been charmed. the contrast between his method and that of balzac is remarkable. that wonderful art of materialisation, of the sensuous evocation of the forms, the qualities, the very stuff and substance of things, which was perhaps balzac's greatest discovery, beyle neither possessed nor wished to possess. such matters were to him of the most subordinate importance, which it was no small part of the novelist's duty to keep very severely in their place. in the earlier chapters of _le rouge et le noir_, for instance, he is concerned with almost the same subject as balzac in the opening of _les illusions perdues_--the position of a young man in a provincial town, brought suddenly from the humblest surroundings into the midst of the leading society of the place through his intimate relations with a woman of refinement. but while in balzac's pages what emerges is the concrete vision of provincial life down to the last pimple on the nose of the lowest footman, beyle concentrates his whole attention on the personal problem, hints in a few rapid strokes at what balzac has spent all his genius in describing, and reveals to us instead, with the precision of a surgeon at an operation, the inmost fibres of his hero's mind. in fact, beyle's method is the classical method--the method of selection, of omission, of unification, with the object of creating a central impression of supreme reality. zola criticises him for disregarding 'le milieu.' il y a [he says] un épisode célèbre dans 'le rouge et le noir,' la scène où julien, assis un soir à côté de mme. de rénal, sous les branches noires d'un arbre, se fait un devoir de lui prendre la main, pendant qu'elle cause avec mme. derville. c'est un petit drame muet d'une grande puissance, et stendhal y a analysé merveilleusement les états d'âme de ses deux personnages. or, le milieu n'apparaît pas une seule fois. nous pourrions être n'importe où dans n'importe quelles conditions, la scène resterait la même pourvu qu'il fit noir ... donnez l'épisode à un écrivain pour qui les milieux existent, et dans la défaite de cette femme, il fera entrer la nuit, avec ses odeurs, avec ses voix, avec ses voluptés molles. et cet écrivain sera dans la vérité, son tableau sera plus complet. more complete, perhaps; but would it be more convincing? zola, with his statistical conception of art, could not understand that you could tell a story properly unless you described in detail every contingent fact. he could not see that beyle was able, by simply using the symbol 'nuit,' to suggest the 'milieu' at once to the reader's imagination. everybody knows all about the night's accessories--'ses odeurs, ses voix, ses voluptés molles'; and what a relief it is to be spared, for once in a way, an elaborate expatiation upon them! and beyle is perpetually evoking the gratitude of his readers in this way. 'comme il insiste peu!' as m. gide exclaims. perhaps the best test of a man's intelligence is his capacity for making a summary. beyle knew this, and his novels are full of passages which read like nothing so much as extraordinarily able summaries of some enormous original narrative which has been lost. it was not that he was lacking in observation, that he had no eye for detail, or no power of expressing it; on the contrary, his vision was of the sharpest, and his pen could call up pictorial images of startling vividness, when he wished. but he very rarely did wish: it was apt to involve a tiresome insistence. in his narratives he is like a brilliant talker in a sympathetic circle, skimming swiftly from point to point, taking for granted the intelligence of his audience, not afraid here and there to throw out a vague 'etc.' when the rest of the sentence is too obvious to state; always plain of speech, never self-assertive, and taking care above all things never to force the note. his famous description of the battle of waterloo in _la chartreuse de parme_ is certainly the finest example of this side of his art. here he produces an indelible impression by a series of light touches applied with unerring skill. unlike zola, unlike tolstoi, he shows us neither the loathsomeness nor the devastation of a battlefield, but its insignificance, its irrelevant detail, its unmeaning grotesquenesses and indignities, its incoherence, and its empty weariness. remembering his own experience at bautzen, he has made his hero--a young italian impelled by napoleonic enthusiasm to join the french army as a volunteer on the eve of the battle--go through the great day in such a state of vague perplexity that in the end he can never feel quite certain that he really _was_ at waterloo. he experiences a succession of trivial and unpleasant incidents, culminating in his being hoisted off his horse by two of his comrades, in order that a general, who has had his own shot from under him, might be supplied with a mount; for the rest, he crosses and recrosses some fields, comes upon a dead body in a ditch, drinks brandy with a _vivandière_, gallops over a field covered with dying men, has an indefinite skirmish in a wood--and it is over. at one moment, having joined the escort of some generals, the young man allows his horse to splash into a stream, thereby covering one of the generals with muddy water from head to foot. the passage that follows is a good specimen of beyle's narrative style: en arrivant sur l'autre rive, fabrice y avait trouvé les généraux tout seuls; le bruit du canon lui sembla redoubler; ce fut à peine s'il entendit le général, par lui si bien mouillé, qui criait à son oreille: où as-tu pris ce cheval? fabrice était tellement troublé, qu'il répondit en italien: _l'ho comprato poco fa_. (je viens de l'acheter à l'instant.) que dis-tu? lui cria le général. mais le tapage devint tellement fort en ce moment, que fabrice ne put lui répondre. nous avouerons que notre héros était fort peu héros en ce moment. toutefois, la peur ne venait chez lui qu'en seconde ligne; il était surtout scandalisé de ce bruit qui lui faisait mal aux oreilles. l'escorte prit le galop; on traversait une grande pièce de terre labourée, située au delà du canal, et ce champ était jonché de cadavres. how unemphatic it all is! what a paucity of epithet, what a reticence in explanation! how a romantic would have lingered over the facial expression of the general, and how a naturalist would have analysed that 'tapage'! and yet, with all their efforts, would they have succeeded in conveying that singular impression of disturbance, of cross-purposes, of hurry, and of ill-defined fear, which beyle with his quiet terseness has produced? it is, however, in his psychological studies that the detached and intellectual nature of beyle's method is most clearly seen. when he is describing, for instance, the development of julien sorel's mind in _le rouge et le noir_, when he shows us the soul of the young peasant with its ignorance, its ambition, its pride, going step by step into the whirling vortex of life--then we seem to be witnessing not so much the presentment of a fiction as the unfolding of some scientific fact. the procedure is almost mathematical: a proposition is established, the inference is drawn, the next proposition follows, and so on until the demonstration is complete. here the influence of the eighteenth century is very strongly marked. beyle had drunk deeply of that fountain of syllogism and analysis that flows through the now forgotten pages of helvétius and condillac; he was an ardent votary of logic in its austerest form--'la lo-gique' he used to call it, dividing the syllables in a kind of awe-inspired emphasis; and he considered the ratiocinative style of montesquieu almost as good as that of the _code civil_. if this had been all, if we could sum him up simply as an acute and brilliant writer who displays the scientific and prosaic sides of the french genius in an extreme degree, beyle's position in literature would present very little difficulty. he would take his place at once as a late--an abnormally late--product of the eighteenth century. but he was not that. in his blood there was a virus which had never tingled in the veins of voltaire. it was the virus of modern life--that new sensibility, that new passionateness, which rousseau had first made known to the world, and which had won its way over europe behind the thunder of napoleon's artillery. beyle had passed his youth within earshot of that mighty roar, and his inmost spirit could never lose the echo of it. it was in vain that he studied condillac and modelled his style on the code; in vain that he sang the praises of _la lo-gique_, shrugged his shoulders at the romantics, and turned the cold eye of a scientific investigator upon the phenomena of life; he remained essentially a man of feeling. his unending series of _grandes passions_ was one unmistakable sign of this; another was his intense devotion to the fine arts. though his taste in music and painting was the taste of his time--the literary and sentimental taste of the age of rossini and canova--he nevertheless brought to the appreciation of works of art a kind of intimate gusto which reveals the genuineness of his emotion. the 'jouissances d'ange,' with which at his first entrance into italy he heard at novara the _matrimonio segreto_ of cimarosa, marked an epoch in his life. he adored mozart: 'i can imagine nothing more distasteful to me,' he said, 'than a thirty-mile walk through the mud; but i would take one at this moment if i knew that i should hear a good performance of _don giovanni_ at the end of it.' the virgins of guido reni sent him into ecstasies and the goddesses of correggio into raptures. in short, as he himself admitted, he never could resist 'le beau' in whatever form he found it. _le beau!_ the phrase is characteristic of the peculiar species of ingenuous sensibility which so oddly agitated this sceptical man of the world. his whole vision of life was coloured by it. his sense of values was impregnated with what he called his 'espagnolisme'--his immense admiration for the noble and the high-sounding in speech or act or character--an admiration which landed him often enough in hysterics and absurdity. yet this was the soil in which a temperament of caustic reasonableness had somehow implanted itself. the contrast is surprising, because it is so extreme. other men have been by turns sensible and enthusiastic: but who before or since has combined the emotionalism of a schoolgirl with the cold penetration of a judge on the bench? beyle, for instance, was capable of writing, in one of those queer epitaphs of himself which he was constantly composing, the high-falutin' words 'il respecta un seul homme: napoléon'; and yet, as he wrote them, he must have remembered well enough that when he met napoleon face to face his unabashed scrutiny had detected swiftly that the man was a play-actor, and a vulgar one at that. such were the contradictions of his double nature, in which the elements, instead of being mixed, came together, as it were, in layers, like superimposed strata of chalk and flint. in his novels this cohabitation of opposites is responsible both for what is best and what is worst. when the two forces work in unison the result is sometimes of extraordinary value--a product of a kind which it would be difficult to parallel in any other author. an eye of icy gaze is turned upon the tumultuous secrets of passion, and the pangs of love are recorded in the language of euclid. the image of the surgeon inevitably suggests itself--the hand with the iron nerve and the swift knife laying bare the trembling mysteries within. it is the intensity of beyle's observation, joined with such an exactitude of exposition, that makes his dry pages sometimes more thrilling than the wildest tale of adventure or all the marvels of high romance. the passage in _la chartreuse de parme_ describing count mosca's jealousy has this quality, which appears even more clearly in the chapters of _le rouge et le noir_ concerning julien sorel and mathilde de la mole. here beyle has a subject after his own heart. the loves of the peasant youth and the aristocratic girl, traversed and agitated by their overweening pride, and triumphing at last rather over themselves than over each other--these things make up a gladiatorial combat of 'espagnolismes,' which is displayed to the reader with a supreme incisiveness. the climax is reached when mathilde at last gives way to her passion, and throws herself into the arms of julien, who forces himself to make no response: ses bras se roidirent, tant l'effort imposé par la politique était pénible. je ne dois pas même me permettre de presser contre mon coeur ce corps souple et charmant; ou elle me méprise, ou elle me maltraite. quel affreux caractère! et en maudissant le caractère de mathilde, il l'en aimait cent fois plus; il lui semblait avoir dans ses bras une reine. l'impassible froideur de julien redoubla le malheur de mademoiselle de la mole. elle était loin d'avoir le sang-froid nécessaire pour chercher à deviner dans ses yeux ce qu'il sentait pour elle en cet instant. elle ne put se résoudre à le regarder; elle tremblait de rencontrer l'expression du mépris. assise sur le divan de la bibliothèque, immobile et la tête tournée du côté opposé à julien, elle était en proie aux plus vives douleurs que l'orgueil et l'amour puissent faire éprouver à une âme humaine. dans quelle atroce démarche elle venait de tomber! il m'était réservé, malheureuse que je suis! de voir repoussées les avances les plus indécentes! et repoussées par qui? ajoutait l'orgueil fou de douleur, repoussées par un domestique de mon père. c'est ce que je ne souffrirai pas, dit-elle à haute voix. at that moment she suddenly sees some unopened letters addressed to julien by another woman. --ainsi, s'écria-t-elle hors d'elle-même, non seulement vous êtes bien avec elle, mais encore vous la méprisez. vous, un homme de rien, mépriser madame la maréchale de fervaques! --ah! pardon, mon ami, ajouta-t-elle en se jetant à ses genoux, méprise-moi si tu veux, mais aime-moi, je ne puis plus vivre privée de ton amour. et elle tomba tout à fait évanouie. --la voilà donc, cette orgueilleuse, à mes pieds! se dit julien. such is the opening of this wonderful scene, which contains the concentrated essence of beyle's genius, and which, in its combination of high passion, intellectual intensity, and dramatic force, may claim comparison with the great dialogues of corneille. 'je fais tous les efforts possibles pour être _sec_,' he says of himself. 'je veux imposer silence à mon coeur, qui croit avoir beaucoup à dire. je tremble toujours de n'avoir écrit qu'un soupir, quand je crois avoir noté une vérité.' often he succeeds, but not always. at times his desire for dryness becomes a mannerism and fills whole pages with tedious and obscure argumentation. and, at other times, his sensibility gets the upper hand, throws off all control, and revels in an orgy of melodrama and 'espagnolisme.' do what he will, he cannot keep up a consistently critical attitude towards the creatures of his imagination: he depreciates his heroes with extreme care, but in the end they get the better of him and sweep him off his feet. when, in _la chartreuse de parme_, fabrice kills a man in a duel, his first action is to rush to a looking-glass to see whether his beauty has been injured by a cut in the face; and beyle does not laugh at this; he is impressed by it. in the same book he lavishes all his art on the creation of the brilliant, worldly, sceptical duchesse de sanseverina, and then, not quite satisfied, he makes her concoct and carry out the murder of the reigning prince in order to satisfy a desire for amorous revenge. this really makes her perfect. but the most striking example of beyle's inability to resist the temptation of sacrificing his head to his heart is in the conclusion of _le rouge et le noir_, where julien, to be revenged on a former mistress who defames him, deliberately goes down into the country, buys a pistol, and shoots the lady in church. not only is beyle entranced by the _bravura_ of this senseless piece of brutality, but he destroys at a blow the whole atmosphere of impartial observation which fills the rest of the book, lavishes upon his hero the blindest admiration, and at last, at the moment of julien's execution, even forgets himself so far as to write a sentence in the romantic style: 'jamais cette tête n'avait été aussi poétique qu'au moment où elle allait tomber.' just as beyle, in his contrary mood, carries to an extreme the french love of logical precision, so in these rhapsodies he expresses in an exaggerated form a very different but an equally characteristic quality of his compatriots--their instinctive responsiveness to fine poses. it is a quality that englishmen in particular find it hard to sympathise with. they remain stolidily unmoved when their neighbours are in ecstasies. they are repelled by the 'noble' rhetoric of the french classical drama; they find the tirades of napoleon, which animated the armies of france to victory, pieces of nauseous clap-trap. and just now it is this side--to us the obviously weak side--of beyle's genius that seems to be most in favour with french critics. to judge from m. barrès, writing dithyrambically of beyle's 'sentiment d'honneur,' that is his true claim to greatness. the sentiment of honour is all very well, one is inclined to mutter on this side of the channel; but oh, for a little sentiment of humour too! the view of beyle's personality which his novels give us may be seen with far greater detail in his miscellaneous writings. it is to these that his most modern admirers devote their main attention--particularly to his letters and his autobiographies; but they are all of them highly characteristic of their author, and--whatever the subject may be, from a guide to rome to a life of napoleon--one gathers in them, scattered up and down through their pages, a curious, dimly adumbrated philosophy--an ill-defined and yet intensely personal point of view--_le beylisme_. it is in fact almost entirely in this secondary quality that their interest lies; their ostensible subject-matter is unimportant. an apparent exception is the book in which beyle has embodied his reflections upon love. the volume, with its meticulous apparatus of analysis, definition, and classification, which gives it the air of being a parody of _l'esprit des lois_, is yet full of originality, of lively anecdote and keen observation. nobody but beyle could have written it; nobody but beyle could have managed to be at once so stimulating and so jejune, so clear-sighted and so exasperating. but here again, in reality, it is not the question at issue that is interesting--one learns more of the true nature of love in one or two of la bruyère's short sentences than in all beyle's three hundred pages of disquisition; but what is absorbing is the sense that comes to one, as one reads it, of the presence, running through it all, of a restless and problematical spirit. 'le beylisme' is certainly not susceptible of any exact definition; its author was too capricious, too unmethodical, in spite of his _lo-gique_, ever to have framed a coherent philosophy; it is essentially a thing of shreds and patches, of hints, suggestions, and quick visions of flying thoughts. m. barrès says that what lies at the bottom of it is a 'passion de collectionner les belles énergies.' but there are many kinds of 'belles énergies,' and some of them certainly do not fit into the framework of 'le beylisme.' 'quand je suis arrêté par des voleurs, ou qu'on me tire des coups de fusil, je me sens une grande colère contre le gouvernement et le curé de l'endroit. quand au voleur, il me plaît, s'il est énergique, car il m'amuse.' it was the energy of self-assertiveness that pleased beyle; that of self-restraint did not interest him. the immorality of the point of view is patent, and at times it appears to be simply based upon the common selfishness of an egotist. but in reality it was something more significant than that. the 'chasse au bonheur' which beyle was always advocating was no respectable epicureanism; it had about it a touch of the fanatical. there was anarchy in it--a hatred of authority, an impatience with custom, above all a scorn for the commonplace dictates of ordinary morality. writing his memoirs at the age of fifty-two, beyle looked back with pride on the joy that he had felt, as a child of ten, amid his royalist family at grenoble, when the news came of the execution of louis xvi. his father announced it: --c'en est fait, dit-il avec un gros soupir, ils l'ont assassiné. je fus saisi d'un des plus vifs mouvements de joie que j'ai éprouvé en ma vie. le lecteur pensera peut-être que je suis cruel, mais tel j'étais à x , tel je suis à x + ... je puis dire que l'approbation des êtres, que je regarde comme faibles, m'est absolument indifférente. these are the words of a born rebel, and such sentiments are constantly recurring in his books. he is always discharging his shafts against some established authority; and, of course, he reserved his bitterest hatred for the proudest and most insidious of all authorities--the roman catholic church. it is odd to find some of the 'beylistes' solemnly hailing the man whom the power of the jesuits haunted like a nightmare, and whose account of the seminary in _le rouge et le noir_ is one of the most scathing pictures of religious tyranny ever drawn, as a prophet of the present catholic movement in france. for in truth, if beyle was a prophet of anything he was a prophet of that spirit of revolt in modern thought which first reached a complete expression in the pages of nietzsche. his love of power and self-will, his aristocratic outlook, his scorn of the christian virtues, his admiration of the italians of the renaissance, his repudiation of the herd and the morality of the herd--these qualities, flashing strangely among his observations on rossini and the coliseum, his reflections on the memories of the past and his musings on the ladies of the present, certainly give a surprising foretaste of the fiery potion of zarathustra. the creator of the duchesse de sanseverina had caught more than a glimpse of the transvaluation of all values. characteristically enough, the appearance of this new potentiality was only observed by two contemporary forces in european society--goethe and the austrian police. it is clear that goethe alone among the critics of the time understood that beyle was something more than a novelist, and discerned an uncanny significance in his pages. 'i do not like reading m. de stendhal,' he observed to winckelmann, 'but i cannot help doing so. he is extremely free and extremely impertinent, and ... i recommend you to buy all his books.' as for the austrian police, they had no doubt about the matter. beyle's book of travel, _rome, naples et florence_, was, they decided, pernicious and dangerous in the highest degree; and the poor man was hunted out of milan in consequence. it would be a mistake to suppose that beyle displayed in his private life the qualities of the superman. neither his virtues nor his vices were on the grand scale. in his own person he never seems to have committed an 'espagnolisme.' perhaps his worst sin was that of plagiarism: his earliest book, a life of haydn, was almost entirely 'lifted' from the work of a learned german; and in his next he embodied several choice extracts culled from the _edinburgh review_. on this occasion he was particularly delighted, since the _edinburgh_, in reviewing the book, innocently selected for special approbation the very passages which he had stolen. it is singular that so original a writer should have descended to pilfering. but beyle was nothing if not inconsistent. with all his classicism he detested racine; with all his love of music he could see nothing in beethoven; he adored italy, and, so soon as he was given his italian consulate, he was usually to be found in paris. as his life advanced he grew more and more wayward, capricious, and eccentric. he indulged in queer mystifications, covering his papers with false names and anagrams--for the police, he said, were on his track, and he must be careful. his love-affairs became less and less fortunate; but he was still sometimes successful, and when he was he registered the fact--upon his braces. he dreamed and drifted a great deal. he went up to san pietro in montorio, and looking over rome, wrote the initials of his past mistresses in the dust. he tried to make up his mind whether napoleon after all _was_ the only being he respected; no--there was also mademoiselle de lespinasse. he went to the opera at naples and noted that 'la musique parfaite, comme la pantomime parfaite, me fait songer à ce qui forme actuellement l'objet de mes rêveries et me fait venir des idées excellentes: ... or, ce soir, je ne puis me dissimuler que j'ai le malheur _of being too great an admirer of lady l...._' he abandoned himself to 'les charmantes visions du beau qui souvent encore remplissent ma tête à l'âge de _fifty-two_.' he wondered whether montesquieu would have thought his writings worthless. he sat scribbling his reminiscences by the fire till the night drew on and the fire went out, and still he scribbled, more and more illegibly, until at last the paper was covered with hieroglyphics undecipherable even by m. chuquet himself. he wandered among the ruins of ancient rome, playing to perfection the part of cicerone to such travellers as were lucky enough to fall in with him; and often his stout and jovial form, with the satyric look in the sharp eyes and the compressed lips, might be seen by the wayside in the campagna, as he stood and jested with the reapers or the vine-dressers or with the girls coming out, as they had come since the days of horace, to draw water from the fountains of tivoli. in more cultivated society he was apt to be nervous; for his philosophy was never proof against the terror of being laughed at. but sometimes, late at night, when the surroundings were really sympathetic, he could be very happy among his friends. 'un salon de huit ou dix personnes,' he said, 'dont toutes les femmes ont eu des amants, où la conversation est gaie, anecdotique, et où l'on prend du punch léger à minuit et demie, est l'endroit du monde où je me trouve le mieux.' and in such a paradise of frenchmen we may leave henri beyle. lady hester stanhope the pitt nose has a curious history. one can watch its transmigrations through three lives. the tremendous hook of old lord chatham, under whose curve empires came to birth, was succeeded by the bleak upward-pointing nose of william pitt the younger--the rigid symbol of an indomitable _hauteur_. with lady hester stanhope came the final stage. the nose, still with an upward tilt in it, had lost its masculinity; the hard bones of the uncle and the grandfather had disappeared. lady hester's was a nose of wild ambitions, of pride grown fantastical, a nose that scorned the earth, shooting off, one fancies, towards some eternally eccentric heaven. it was a nose, in fact, altogether in the air. noses, of course, are aristocratic things; and lady hester was the child of a great aristocracy. but, in her case, the aristocratic impulse, which had carried her predecessors to glory, had less fortunate results. there has always been a strong strain of extravagance in the governing families of england; from time to time they throw off some peculiarly ill-balanced member, who performs a strange meteoric course. a century earlier, lady mary wortley montagu was an illustrious example of this tendency: that splendid comet, after filling half the heavens, vanished suddenly into desolation and darkness. lady hester stanhope's spirit was still more uncommon; and she met with a most uncommon fate. she was born in , the eldest daughter of that extraordinary earl stanhope, jacobin and inventor, who made the first steamboat and the first calculating machine, who defended the french revolution in the house of lords and erased the armorial bearings--'damned aristocratical nonsense'--from his carriages and his plate. her mother, chatham's daughter and the favourite sister of pitt, died when she was four years old. the second lady stanhope, a frigid woman of fashion, left her stepdaughters to the care of futile governesses, while 'citizen stanhope' ruled the household from his laboratory with the violence of a tyrant. it was not until lady hester was twenty-four that she escaped from the slavery of her father's house, by going to live with her grandmother, lady chatham. on lady chatham's death, three years later, pitt offered her his protection, and she remained with him until his death in . her three years with pitt, passed in the very centre of splendid power, were brilliant and exciting. she flung herself impetuously into the movement and the passion of that vigorous society; she ruled her uncle's household with high vivacity; she was liked and courted; if not beautiful, she was fascinating--very tall, with a very fair and clear complexion, and dark-blue eyes, and a countenance of wonderful expressiveness. her talk, full of the trenchant nonchalance of those days, was both amusing and alarming: 'my dear hester, what are you saying?' pitt would call out to her from across the room. she was devoted to her uncle, who warmly returned her affection. she was devoted, too--but in a more dangerous fashion--to the intoxicating antinous, lord granville leveson gower. the reckless manner in which she carried on this love-affair was the first indication of something overstrained, something wild and unaccountable, in her temperament. lord granville, after flirting with her outrageously, declared that he could never marry her, and went off on an embassy to st. petersburg. her distraction was extreme: she hinted that she would follow him to russia; she threatened, and perhaps attempted, suicide; she went about telling everybody that he had jilted her. she was taken ill, and then there were rumours of an accouchement, which, it was said, she took care to _afficher_, by appearing without rouge and fainting on the slightest provocation. in the midst of these excursions and alarums there was a terrible and unexpected catastrophe. pitt died. and lady hester suddenly found herself a dethroned princess, living in a small house in montague square on a pension of £ a year. she did not abandon society, however, and the tongue of gossip continued to wag. her immediate marriage with a former lover, mr. hill, was announced: 'il est bien bon,' said lady bessborough. then it was whispered that canning was 'le régnant'--that he was with her 'not only all day, but almost all night.' she quarrelled with canning and became attached to sir john moore. whether she was actually engaged to marry him--as she seems to have asserted many years later--is doubtful; his letters to her, full as they are of respectful tenderness, hardly warrant the conclusion; but it is certain that he died with her name on his lips. her favourite brother, charles, was killed beside him; and it was natural that under this double blow she should have retired from london. she buried herself in wales; but not for long. in she set sail for gibraltar with her brother james, who was rejoining his regiment in the peninsula. she never returned to england. there can be no doubt that at the time of her departure the thought of a lifelong exile was far from her mind. it was only gradually, as she moved further and further eastward, that the prospect of life in england--at last even in europe--grew distasteful to her; as late as she was talking of a visit to provence. accompanied by two or three english fellow travellers, her english maid, mrs. fry, her private physician, dr. meryon, and a host of servants, she progressed, slowly and in great state, through malta and athens, to constantinople. she was conveyed in battleships, and lodged with governors and ambassadors. after spending many months in constantinople, lady hester discovered that she was 'dying to see napoleon with her own eyes,' and attempted accordingly to obtain passports to france. the project was stopped by stratford canning, the english minister, upon which she decided to visit egypt, and, chartering a greek vessel, sailed for alexandria in the winter of . off the island of rhodes a violent storm sprang up; the whole party were forced to abandon the ship, and to take refuge upon a bare rock, where they remained without food or shelter for thirty hours. eventually, after many severe privations, alexandria was reached in safety; but this disastrous voyage was a turning-point in lady hester's career. at rhodes she was forced to exchange her torn and dripping raiment for the attire of a turkish gentleman--a dress which she never afterwards abandoned. it was the first step in her orientalization. she passed the next two years in a triumphal progress. her appearance in cairo caused the greatest sensation, and she was received in state by the pasha, mehemet ali. her costume on this occasion was gorgeous: she wore a turban of cashmere, a brocaded waistcoat, a priceless pelisse, and a vast pair of purple velvet pantaloons embroidered all over in gold. she was ushered by chamberlains with silver wands through the inner courts of the palace to a pavilion in the harem, where the pasha, rising to receive her, conversed with her for an hour. from cairo she turned northwards, visiting jaffa, jerusalem, acre, and damascus. her travelling dress was of scarlet cloth trimmed with gold, and, when on horseback, she wore over the whole a white-hooded and tasselled burnous. her maid, too, was forced, protesting, into trousers, though she absolutely refused to ride astride. poor mrs. fry had gone through various and dreadful sufferings--shipwreck and starvation, rats and black-beetles unspeakable--but she retained her equanimity. whatever her ladyship might think fit to be, _she_ was an englishwoman to the last, and philippaki was philip parker and mustapha mr. farr. outside damascus, lady hester was warned that the town was the most fanatical in turkey, and that the scandal of a woman entering it in man's clothes, unveiled, would be so great as to be dangerous. she was begged to veil herself, and to make her entry under cover of darkness. 'i must take the bull by the horns,' she replied, and rode into the city unveiled at midday. the population were thunderstruck; but at last their amazement gave way to enthusiasm, and the incredible lady was hailed everywhere as queen, crowds followed her, coffee was poured out before her, and the whole bazaar rose as she passed. yet she was not satisfied with her triumphs; she would do something still more glorious and astonishing; she would plunge into the desert and visit the ruins of palmyra, which only half-a-dozen of the boldest travellers had ever seen. the pasha of damascus offered her a military escort, but she preferred to throw herself upon the hospitality of the bedouin arabs, who, overcome by her horsemanship, her powers of sight, and her courage, enrolled her a member of their tribe. after a week's journey in their company, she reached palmyra, where the inhabitants met her with wild enthusiasm, and under the corinthian columns of zenobia's temple crowned her head with flowers. this happened in march ; it was the apogee of lady hester's life. henceforward her fortunes gradually but steadily declined. the rumour of her exploits had spread through syria, and from the year onwards, her reputation was enormous. she was received everywhere as a royal, almost as a supernatural, personage: she progressed from town to town amid official prostrations and popular rejoicings. but she herself was in a state of hesitation and discontent. her future was uncertain; she had grown scornful of the west--must she return to it? the east alone was sympathetic, the east alone was tolerable--but could she cut herself off for ever from the past? at laodicea she was suddenly struck down by the plague, and, after months of illness, it was borne in upon her that all was vanity. she rented an empty monastery on the slopes of mount lebanon, not far from sayda (the ancient sidon), and took up her abode there. then her mind took a new surprising turn; she dashed to ascalon, and, with the permission of the sultan, began excavations in a ruined temple with the object of discovering a hidden treasure of three million pieces of gold. having unearthed nothing but an antique statue, which, in order to prove her disinterestedness, she ordered her appalled doctor to break into little bits, she returned to her monastery. finally, in , she moved to another house, further up mount lebanon, and near the village of djoun; and at djoun she remained until her death, more than twenty years later. thus, almost accidentally as it seems, she came to the end of her wanderings, and the last, long, strange, mythical period of her existence began. certainly the situation that she had chosen was sublime. her house, on the top of a high bare hill among great mountains, was a one-storied group of buildings, with many ramifying courts and out-houses, and a garden of several acres surrounded by a rampart wall. the garden, which she herself had planted and tended with the utmost care, commanded a glorious prospect. on every side but one the vast mountains towered, but to the west there was an opening, through which, in the far distance, the deep blue mediterranean was revealed. from this romantic hermitage, her singular renown spread over the world. european travellers who had been admitted to her presence brought back stories full of eastern mystery; they told of a peculiar grandeur, a marvellous prestige, an imperial power. the precise nature of lady hester's empire was, indeed, dubious; she was in fact merely the tenant of her djoun establishment, for which she paid a rent of £ a year. but her dominion was not subject to such limitations. she ruled imaginatively, transcendentally; the solid glory of chatham had been transmuted into the phantasy of an arabian night. no doubt she herself believed that she was something more than a chimerical empress. when a french traveller was murdered in the desert, she issued orders for the punishment of the offenders; punished they were, and lady hester actually received the solemn thanks of the french chamber. it seems probable, however, that it was the sultan's orders rather than lady hester's which produced the desired effect. in her feud with her terrible neighbour, the emir beshyr, she maintained an undaunted front. she kept the tyrant at bay; but perhaps the emir, who, so far as physical force was concerned, held her in the hollow of his hand, might have proceeded to extremities if he had not received a severe admonishment from stratford canning at constantinople. what is certain is that the ignorant and superstitious populations around her feared and loved her, and that she, reacting to her own mysterious prestige, became at last even as they. she plunged into astrology and divination; she awaited the moment when, in accordance with prophecy, she should enter jerusalem side by side with the mahdi, the messiah; she kept two sacred horses, destined, by sure signs, to carry her and him to their last triumph. the orient had mastered her utterly. she was no longer an englishwoman, she declared; she loathed england; she would never go there again; and if she went anywhere, it would be to arabia, to 'her own people.' her expenses were immense--not only for herself but for others, for she poured out her hospitality with a noble hand. she ran into debt, and was swindled by the moneylenders; her steward cheated her, her servants pilfered her; her distress was at last acute. she fell into fits of terrible depression, bursting into dreadful tears and savage cries. her habits grew more and more eccentric. she lay in bed all day, and sat up all night, talking unceasingly for hour upon hour to dr. meryon, who alone of her english attendants remained with her, mrs. fry having withdrawn to more congenial scenes long since. the doctor was a poor-spirited and muddle-headed man, but he was a good listener; and there he sat while that extraordinary talk flowed on--talk that scaled the heavens and ransacked the earth, talk in which memories of an abolished past--stories of mr. pitt and of george iii., vituperations against mr. canning, mimicries of the duchess of devonshire--mingled phantasmagorically with doctrines of fate and planetary influence, and speculations on the arabian origin of the scottish clans, and lamentations over the wickedness of servants; till the unaccountable figure, with its robes and its long pipe, loomed through the tobacco-smoke like some vision of a sibyl in a dream. she might be robbed and ruined, her house might crumble over her head; but she talked on. she grew ill and desperate; yet still she talked. did she feel that the time was coming when she should talk no more? her melancholy deepened into a settled gloom when the news came of her brother james's death. she had quarrelled with all her english friends, except lord hardwicke--with her eldest brother, with her sister, whose kind letters she left unanswered; she was at daggers drawn with the english consul at alexandria, who worried her about her debts. ill and harassed, she hardly moved from her bedroom, while her servants rifled her belongings and reduced the house to a condition of indescribable disorder and filth. three dozen hungry cats ranged through the rooms, filling the courts with frightful noises. dr. meryon, in the midst of it all, knew not whether to cry or laugh. at moments the great lady regained her ancient fire; her bells pealed tumultuously for hours together; or she leapt up, and arraigned the whole trembling household before her, with her arab war-mace in her hand. her finances grew more and more involved--grew at length irremediable. it was in vain that the faithful lord hardwicke pressed her to return to england to settle her affairs. return to england, indeed! to england, that ungrateful, miserable country, where, so far as she could see, they had forgotten the very name of mr. pitt! the final blow fell when a letter came from the english authorities threatening to cut off her pension for the payment of her debts. upon that, after dispatching a series of furious missives to lord palmerston, to queen victoria, to the duke of wellington, she renounced the world. she commanded dr. meryon to return to europe, and he--how could he have done it?--obeyed her. her health was broken, she was over sixty, and, save for her vile servants, absolutely alone. she lived for nearly a year after he left her--we know no more. she had vowed never again to pass through the gate of her house; but did she sometimes totter to her garden--that beautiful garden which she had created, with its roses and its fountains, its alleys and its bowers--and look westward at the sea? the end came in june . her servants immediately possessed themselves of every moveable object in the house. but lady hester cared no longer: she was lying back in her bed--inexplicable, grand, preposterous, with her nose in the air. . mr. creevey clio is one of the most glorious of the muses; but, as everyone knows, she (like her sister melpomene) suffers from a sad defect: she is apt to be pompous. with her buskins, her robes, and her airs of importance she is at times, indeed, almost intolerable. but fortunately the fates have provided a corrective. they have decreed that in her stately advances she should be accompanied by certain apish, impish creatures, who run round her tittering, pulling long noses, threatening to trip the good lady up, and even sometimes whisking to one side the corner of her drapery, and revealing her undergarments in a most indecorous manner. they are the diarists and letter-writers, the gossips and journalists of the past, the pepyses and horace walpoles and saint-simons, whose function it is to reveal to us the littleness underlying great events and to remind us that history itself was once real life. among them is mr. creevey. the fates decided that mr. creevey should accompany clio, with appropriate gestures, during that part of her progress which is measured by the thirty years preceding the accession of victoria; and the little wretch did his job very well. it might almost be said that thomas creevey was 'born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly.' at any rate, we know nothing of his youth, save that he was educated at cambridge, and he presents himself to us in the early years of the nineteenth century as a middle-aged man, with a character and a habit of mind already fixed and an established position in the world. in we find him what he was to be for the rest of his life--a member of parliament, a familiar figure in high society, an insatiable gossip with a rattling tongue. that he should have reached and held the place he did is a proof of his talents, for he was a very poor man; for the greater part of his life his income was less than £ a year. but those were the days of patrons and jobs, pocket-boroughs and sinecures; they were the days, too, of vigorous, bold living, torrential talk, and splendid hospitality; and it was only natural that mr. creevey, penniless and immensely entertaining, should have been put into parliament by a duke, and welcomed in every great whig house in the country with open arms. it was only natural that, spending his whole political life as an advanced whig, bent upon the destruction of abuses, he should have begun that life as a member for a pocket-borough and ended it as the holder of a sinecure. for a time his poverty was relieved by his marriage with a widow who had means of her own; but mrs. creevey died, her money went to her daughters by her previous husband, and mr. creevey reverted to a possessionless existence--without a house, without servants, without property of any sort--wandering from country mansion to country mansion, from dinner-party to dinner-party, until at last in his old age, on the triumph of the whigs, he was rewarded with a pleasant little post which brought him in about £ a year. apart from these small ups and downs of fortune, mr. creevey's life was static--static spiritually, that is to say; for physically he was always on the move. his adventures were those of an observer, not of an actor; but he was an observer so very near the centre of things that he was by no means dispassionate; the rush of great events would whirl him round into the vortex, like a leaf in an eddy of wind; he would rave, he would gesticulate, with the fury of a complete partisan; and then, when the wind dropped, he would be found, like the leaf, very much where he was before. luckily, too, he was not merely an agitated observer, but an observer who delighted in passing on his agitations, first with his tongue, and then--for so the fates had decided--with his pen. he wrote easily, spicily, and persistently; he had a favourite stepdaughter, with whom he corresponded for years; and so it happens that we have preserved to us, side by side with the majestic march of clio (who, of course, paid not the slightest attention to him), mr. creevey's exhilarating _pas de chat_. certainly he was not over-given to the praise of famous men. there are no great names in his vocabulary--only nicknames: george iii. is 'old nobs,' the regent 'prinney,' wellington 'the beau,' lord john russell 'pie and thimble,' brougham, with whom he was on friendly terms, is sometimes 'bruffam,' sometimes 'beelzebub,' and sometimes 'old wickedshifts'; and lord durham, who once remarked that one could 'jog along on £ , a year,' is 'king jog.' the latter was one of the great whig potentates, and it was characteristic of creevey that his scurrility should have been poured out with a special gusto over his own leaders. the tories were villains, of course--canning was all perfidy and 'infinite meanness,' huskisson a mass of 'intellectual confusion and mental dirt,' castlereagh ... but all that was obvious and hardly worth mentioning; what was really too exacerbating to be borne was the folly and vileness of the whigs. 'king jog,' the 'bogey,' 'mother cole,' and the rest of them--they were either knaves or imbeciles. lord grey was an exception; but then lord grey, besides passing the reform bill, presented mr. creevey with the treasurership of the ordnance, and in fact was altogether a most worthy man. another exception was the duke of wellington, whom, somehow or other, it was impossible not to admire. creevey, throughout his life, had a trick of being 'in at the death' on every important occasion; in the house, at brooks's, at the pavilion, he invariably popped up at the critical moment; and so one is not surprised to find him at brussels during waterloo. more than that, he was the first english civilian to see the duke after the battle, and his report of the conversation is admirable; one can almost hear the 'it has been a damned serious business. blücher and i have lost , men. it has been a damned nice thing--the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,' and the 'by god! i don't think it would have done if i had not been there.' on this occasion the beau spoke, as was fitting, 'with the greatest gravity all the time, and without the least approach to anything like triumph or joy.' but at other times he was jocular, especially when 'prinney' was the subject. 'by god! you never saw such a figure in your life as he is. then he speaks and swears so like old falstaff, that damn me if i was not ashamed to walk into the room with him.' when, a few years later, the trial of queen caroline came on, it was inevitable that creevey should be there. he had an excellent seat in the front row, and his descriptions of 'mrs. p.,' as he preferred to call her majesty, are characteristic: two folding doors within a few feet of me were suddenly thrown open, and in entered her majesty. to describe to you her appearance and manner is far beyond my powers. i had been taught to believe she was as much improved in looks as in dignity of manners; it is therefore with much pain i am obliged to observe that the nearest resemblance i can recollect to this much injured princess is a toy which you used to call fanny royds (a dutch doll). there is another toy of a rabbit or a cat, whose tail you squeeze under its body, and then out it jumps in half a minute off the ground into the air. the first of these toys you must suppose to represent the person of the queen; the latter the manner by which she popped all at once into the house, made a _duck_ at the throne, another to the peers, and a concluding jump into the chair which was placed for her. her dress was black figured gauze, with a good deal of trimming, lace, &c., her sleeves white, and perfectly episcopal; a handsome white veil, so thick as to make it very difficult to me, who was as near to her as anyone, to see her face; such a back for variety and inequality of ground as you never beheld; with a few straggling ringlets on her neck, which i flatter myself from their appearance were not her majesty's own property. mr. creevey, it is obvious, was not the man to be abashed by the presence of royalty. but such public episodes were necessarily rare, and the main stream of his life flowed rapidly, gaily, and unobtrusively through the fat pastures of high society. everywhere and always he enjoyed himself extremely, but his spirits and his happiness were at their highest during his long summer sojourns at those splendid country houses whose hospitality he chronicles with indefatigable _verve_. 'this house,' he says at raby, 'is itself _by far_ the most magnificent and unique in several ways that i have ever seen.... as long as i have heard of anything, i have heard of being driven into the hall of this house in one's carriage, and being set down by the fire. you can have no idea of the magnificent perfection with which this is accomplished.' at knowsley 'the new dining-room is opened; it is feet by , and such a height that it destroys the effect of all the other apartments.... there are two fireplaces; and the day we dined there, there were wax candles over the table, on it, and ten great lamps on tall pedestals about the room.' at thorp perrow 'all the living rooms are on the ground floor, one a very handsome one about feet long, with a great bow furnished with rose-coloured satin, and the whole furniture of which cost £ .' at goodwood the rooms were done up in 'brightest yellow satin,' and at holkham the walls were covered with genoa velvet, and there was gilding worth a fortune on 'the roofs of all the rooms and the doors.' the fare was as sumptuous as the furniture. life passed amid a succession of juicy chops, gigantic sirloins, plump fowls, pheasants stuffed with pâté de foie gras, gorgeous madeiras, ancient ports. wine had a double advantage: it made you drunk; it also made you sober: it was its own cure. on one occasion, when sheridan, after days of riotous living, showed signs of exhaustion, mr. and mrs. creevey pressed upon him 'five or six glasses of light french wine' with excellent effect. then, at midnight, when the talk began to flag and the spirits grew a little weary, what could be more rejuvenating than to ring the bell for a broiled bone? and one never rang in vain--except, to be sure, at king jog's. there, while the host was guzzling, the guests starved. this was too much for mr. creevey, who, finding he could get nothing for breakfast, while king jog was 'eating his own fish as comfortably as could be,' fairly lost his temper. my blood beginning to boil, i said: 'lambton, i wish you could tell me what quarter i am to apply to for some fish.' to which he replied in the most impertinent manner: 'the servant, i suppose.' i turned to mills and said pretty loud: 'now, if it was not for the fuss and jaw of the thing, i would leave the room and the house this instant'; and dwelt on the damned outrage. mills said: 'he hears every word you say': to which i said: 'i hope he does.' it was a regular scene. a few days later, however, mr. creevey was consoled by finding himself in a very different establishment, where 'everything is of a piece--excellent and plentiful dinners, a fat service of plate, a fat butler, a table with a barrel of oysters and a hot pheasant, &c., wheeled into the drawing-room every night at half-past ten.' it is difficult to remember that this was the england of the six acts, of peterloo, and of the industrial revolution. mr. creevey, indeed, could hardly be expected to remember it, for he was utterly unconscious of the existence--of the possibility--of any mode of living other than his own. for him, dining-rooms feet long, bottles of madeira, broiled bones, and the brightest yellow satin were as necessary and obvious a part of the constitution of the universe as the light of the sun and the law of gravity. only once in his life was he seriously ruffled; only once did a public question present itself to him as something alarming, something portentous, something more than a personal affair. the occasion is significant. on march , , he writes: i have come to the conclusion that our ferguson is _insane._ he quite foamed at the mouth with rage in our railway committee in support of this infernal nuisance--the loco-motive monster, carrying _eighty tons_ of goods, and navigated by a tail of smoke and sulphur, coming thro' every man's grounds between manchester and liverpool. his perturbation grew. he attended the committee assiduously, but in spite of his efforts it seemed that the railway bill would pass. the loco-motive was more than a joke. he sat every day from to ; he led the opposition with long speeches. 'this railway,' he exclaims on may , 'is the devil's own.' next day, he is in triumph: he had killed the monster. well--this devil of a railway is strangled at last.... to-day we had a clear majority in committee in our favour, and the promoters of the bill withdrew it, and took their leave of us. with a sigh of relief he whisked off to ascot, for the festivities of which he was delighted to note that 'prinney' had prepared 'by having oz. of blood taken from him by cupping.' old age hardly troubled mr. creevey. he grew a trifle deaf, and he discovered that it was possible to wear woollen stockings under his silk ones; but his activity, his high spirits, his popularity, only seemed to increase. at the end of a party ladies would crowd round him. 'oh, mr. creevey, how agreeable you have been!' 'oh, thank you, mr. creevey! how useful you have been!' 'dear mr. creevey, i laughed out loud last night in bed at one of your stories.' one would like to add (rather late in the day, perhaps) one's own praises. one feels almost affectionate; a certain sincerity, a certain immediacy in his response to stimuli, are endearing qualities; one quite understands that it was natural, on the pretext of changing house, to send him a dozen of wine. above all, one wants him to go on. why should he stop? why should he not continue indefinitely telling us about 'old salisbury' and 'old madagascar'? but it could not be. le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, madame; las! le temps non, mais nous, nous en allons. it was fitting that, after fulfilling his seventy years, he should catch a glimpse of 'little vic' as queen of england, laughing, eating, and showing her gums too much at the pavilion. but that was enough: the piece was over; the curtain had gone down; and on the new stage that was preparing for very different characters, and with a very different style of decoration, there would be no place for mr. creevey. . index algarotti, , , anne, queen, arnold, matthew, arouet. _see_ 'voltaire' bailey, mr. john, - , - , , , , , , , balzac, , , , , barrès, m., , , beddoes, dr. thomas, - beddoes, thos. lovell, - beethoven, berkeley, bernhardt, bernières, madame de, , bernstorff, berry, miss, , beshyr, emir, bessborough, lady, bevan, mr. c.d., beyle, henri, - blake, , , - blücher, boileau, bolingbroke, , , , , bonaparte, boswell, boufflers, comtesse de, boufflers, marquise de, bourget, m., , brandes, dr., , brink, mr. ten, broome, major, brougham, browne, sir thomas, - buffon, , burke, butler, bishop, , canning, george, , , canning, stratford, , caraccioli, carlyle, , , , caroline, queen, carteret, castlereagh, cellini, chasot, , chateaubriand, châtelet, madame du, , - chatham, lady, chatham, lord, chesterfield, lord, choiseul, duc de, choiseul, duchesse de, , , chuquet, m., , , , cicero, cimarosa, claude, coleridge, , , , colles, mr. ramsay, , collins, anthony, , collins, churton, , , condillac, congreve, conti, prince de, corneille, , correggio, cowley, creevey, mr., - d'alembert, , , , , dante, d'argens, d'argental, darget, daru, davy, sir humphry, deffand, madame du, - , degen, d'egmont, madame, denham, denis, madame, , d'epinay, madame, , , , , - descartes, desnoiresterres devonshire, duchess of, d'houdetot, madame, diderot, , - diogenes, donne, dowden, prof., , , , , dryden, , , , durham, lord, ecklin, dr., , edgeworth, miss, , euler, , falkener, everard, fielding, , flaubert, , fleury, cardinal, fontenelle, , foulet, m. lucien, , , , , , fox, charles james, , frederick the great, fry, mrs., , , furnivall, dr., , gautier, gay, george iii, , gibbon, , , gide, m. andré, , , goethe, gollancz, sir i., , goncourts, de, gosse, mr., - , , , , gramont, madame de, granville, lord, gray, , grey, lord, grimm, - hardwicke, lord, hegetschweiler, helvétius, hénault, , herrick, higginson, edward, hill, dr. george birkbeck, , hill, mr., hugo, victor, , hume, , , , , huskisson, ingres, johnson, dr., , - , , - , , jordan, jourdain, mr., keats, kelsall, thomas forbes, , , , klopstock, koenig, la beaumelle, lamb, charles, , , lambton, la mettrie, - , lanson, m., , latimer, lecouvreur, adrienne, lee, sir sidney, leibnitz, lemaître, m., - , , lemaur, lespinasse, mlle. de, , , , , leveson gower, lord granville, locke, , , , , louis philippe, louis xiv., lulli, luxembourg, maréchale de, , macaulay, macdonald, mrs. frederika, - maine, duchesse du, , malherbe, marlborough, duke of, marlborough, duchess of, marlowe, massillon, matignon, marquis de, maupertuis, - , , , mehemet ali, mérimée, prosper, meryon, dr., , , middleton, milton, , , mirepoix, bishop of, mirepoix, maréchale de, molière, moncrif, montagu, lady mary wortley, montespan, madame de, montesquieu, , , , moore, sir john, morley, lord, , , moses, mozart, , musset, napoleon, , , , , necker, nelson, newton, sir isaac, , , , pascal, , pater, peterborough, lord, , pitt, william, the younger, - , plato, pöllnitz, pompadour, madame de, pont-de-veyle, , pope, , , , , , , prie, madame de, , , prior, proctor, bryan waller, , puffendorf, quinault, racine, - , , - , , raleigh, sir walter, , , , regent, the prince, reni, guido, reynolds, sir joshua, , , richardson, richelieu, rohan-chabot, chevalier de, , , rossetti, rousseau, , - , rubens, russell, lord john, sainte-beuve, , , , , , saint-lambert, saint-simon, , - sampson, mr. john, - sanadon, mlle., shaftesbury, shakespeare, , , , , - , , , , , shelley, , sheridan, sophocles, spenser, stanhope, lady hester, - 'stendhal.' _see_ beyle, henri stephen, sir james, sully, duc de, , swift, , , , swinburne, taine, , thévenart, thomson, tindal, toland, , tolstoi, toynbee, mrs. paget, - , turgot, , velasquez, vigny, virgil, , voltaire, , , , , - , , - , - , - , , walpole, horace, , , , , - , , , - , - , , , webster, wellington, duke of, white, w.a., winckelmann, wolf, wollaston, woolston, wordsworth, , , , würtemberg, duke of, yonge, miss, young, dr., zola, , ,