Madame Mignon, reading her daughter's soul, was therefore right. Modeste loved; she loved with that rare platonic love, so little understood, the first illusion of a young girl, the most delicate of all sentiments, a very dainty of the heart. She drank deep draughts from the chalice of the unknown, the vague, the visionary. She admired the blue plumage of the bird that sings afar in the paradise of young girls, which no hand can touch, no gun can cover, as it flits across the sight; she loved those magic colors, like sparkling jewels dazzling to the eye, which youth can see, and never sees again when Reality, the hideous hag, appears with witnesses accompanied by the mayor. To live the very poetry of love and not to see the lover—ah, what sweet intoxication! what visionary rapture! a chimera with flowing man and outspread wings!

The following is the puerile and even silly event which decided the future life of this young girl.

Modeste happened to see in a bookseller's window a lithographic portrait of one of her favorites, Canalis. We all know what lies such pictures tell,—being as they are the result of a shameless speculation, which seizes upon the personality of celebrated individuals as if their faces were public property.

In this instance Canalis, sketched in a Byronic pose, was offering to public admiration his dark locks floating in the breeze, a bare throat, and the unfathomable brow which every bard ought to possess. Victor Hugo's forehead will make more persons shave their heads than the number of incipient marshals ever killed by the glory of Napoleon. This portrait of Canalis (poetic through mercantile necessity) caught Modeste's eye. The day on which it caught her eye one of Arthez's best books happened to be published. We are compelled to admit, though it may be to Modeste's injury, that she hesitated long between the illustrious poet and the illustrious prose-writer. Which of these celebrated men was free?—that was the question.

Modeste began by securing the co-operation of Francoise Cochet, a maid taken from Havre and brought back again by poor Bettina, whom Madame Mignon and Madame Dumay now employed by the day, and who lived in Havre. Modeste took her to her own room and assured her that she would never cause her parents any grief, never pass the bounds of a young girl's propriety, and that as to Francoise herself she would be well provided for after the return of Monsieur Mignon, on condition that she would do a certain service and keep it an inviolable secret. What was it? Why, a nothing—perfectly innocent. All that Modeste wanted of her accomplice was to put certain letters into the post at Havre and to bring some back which would be directed to herself, Francoise Cochet. The treaty concluded, Modeste wrote a polite note to Dauriat, publisher of the poems of Canalis, asking, in the interest of that great poet, for some particulars about him, among others if he were married. She requested the publisher to address his answer to Mademoiselle Francoise, "poste restante," Havre.

Dauriat, incapable of taking the epistle seriously, wrote a reply in presence of four or five journalists who happened to be in his office at the time, each of whom added his particular stroke of wit to the production.

Mademoiselle,—Canalis (Baron of), Constant Cys Melchior, member of the French Academy, born in 1800, at Canalis (Correze), five feet four inches in height, of good standing, vaccinated, spotless birth, has given a substitute to the conscription, enjoys perfect health, owns a small patrimonial estate in the Correze, and wishes to marry, but the lady must be rich.

He beareth per pale, gules an axe or, sable three escallops argent, surmounted by a baron's coronet; supporters, two larches, vert. Motto: "Or et fer" (no allusion to Ophir or auriferous).

The original Canalis, who went to the Holy Land with the First Crusade, is cited in the chronicles of Auvergne as being armed with an axe on account of the family indigence, which to this day weighs heavily on the race. This noble baron, famous for discomfiting a vast number of infidels, died, without "or" or "fer," as naked as a worm, near Jerusalem, on the plains of Ascalon, ambulances not being then invented.

The chateau of Canalis (the domain yields a few chestnuts) consists of two dismantled towers, united by a piece of wall covered by a fine ivy, and is taxed at twenty-two francs.

The undersigned (publisher) calls attention to the fact that he pays ten thousand francs for every volume of poetry written by Monsieur de Canalis, who does not give his shells, or his nuts either, for nothing.

The chanticler of the Correze lives in the rue de Paradis-Poissoniere, number 29, which is a highly suitable location for a poet of the angelic school. Letters must be post-paid.

Noble dames of the faubourg Saint-Germain are said to take the path to Paradise and protect its god. The king, Charles X., thinks so highly of this great poet as to believe him capable of governing the country; he has lately made him officer of the Legion of honor, and (what pays him better) president of the court of Claims at the foreign office. These functions do not hinder this great genius from drawing an annuity out of the fund for the encouragement of the arts and belles letters.

The last edition of the works of Canalis, printed on vellum, royal 8vo, from the press of Didot, with illustrations by Bixiou, Joseph Bridau, Schinner, Sommervieux, etc., is in five volumes, price, nine francs post-paid.

This letter fell like a cobble-stone on a tulip. A poet, secretary of claims, getting a stipend in a public office, drawing an annuity, seeking a decoration, adored by the women of the faubourg Saint-Germain—was that the muddy minstrel lingering along the quays, sad, dreamy, worn with toil, and re-entering his garret fraught with poetry? However, Modeste perceived the irony of the envious bookseller, who dared to say, "I invented Canalis; I made Nathan!" Besides, she re-read her hero's poems,—verses extremely seductive, insincere, and hypocritical, which require a word of analysis, were it only to explain her infatuation.

Canalis may be distinguished from Lamartine, chief of the angelic school, by a wheedling tone like that of a sick-nurse, a treacherous sweetness, and a delightful correctness of diction. If the chief with his strident cry is an eagle, Canalis, rose and white, is a flamingo. In him women find the friend they seek, their interpreter, a being who understands them, who explains them to themselves, and a safe confidant. The wide margins given by Didot to the last edition were crowded with Modeste's pencilled sentiments, expressing her sympathy with this tender and dreamy spirit. Canalis does not possess the gift of life; he cannot breathe existence into his creations; but he knows how to calm vague sufferings like those which assailed Modeste. He speaks to young girls in their own language; he can allay the anguish of a bleeding wound and lull the moans, even the sobs of woe. His gift lies not in stirring words, nor in the remedy of strong emotions, he contents himself with saying in harmonious tones which compel belief, "I suffer with you; I understand you; come with me; let us weep together beside the brook, beneath the willows." And they follow him! They listen to his empty and sonorous poetry like infants to a nurse's lullaby. Canalis, like Nodier, enchants the reader by an artlessness which is genuine in the prose writer and artificial in the poet, by his tact, his smile, the shedding of his rose-leaves, in short by his infantile philosophy. He imitates so well the language of our early youth that he leads us back to the prairie-land of our illusions. We can be pitiless to the eagles, requiring from them the quality of the diamond, incorruptible perfection; but as for Canalis, we take him for what he is and let the rest go. He seems a good fellow; the affectations of the angelic school have answered his purpose and succeeded, just as a woman succeeds when she plays the ingenue cleverly, and simulates surprise, youth, innocence betrayed, in short, the wounded angel.

Modeste, recovering her first impression, renewed her confidence in that soul, in that countenance as ravishing as the face of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. She paid no further attention to the publisher. And so, about the beginning of the month of August she wrote the following letter to this Dorat of the sacristy, who still ranks as a star of the modern Pleiades.

To Monsieur de Canalis,—Many a time, monsieur, I have wished to write to you; and why? Surely you guess why,—to tell you how much I admire your genius. Yes, I feel the need of expressing to you the admiration of a poor country girl, lonely in her little corner, whose only happiness is to read your thoughts. I have read Rene, and I come to you. Sadness leads to reverie. How many other women are sending you the homage of their secret thoughts? What chance have I for notice among so many? This paper, filled with my soul,—can it be more to you than the perfumed letters which already beset you. I come to you with less grace than others, for I wish to remain unknown and yet to receive your entire confidence —as though you had long known me.

Answer my letter and be friendly with me. I cannot promise to make myself known to you, though I do not positively say I will not some day do so.

What shall I add? Read between the lines of this letter, monsieur, the great effort which I am making: permit me to offer you my hand,—that of a friend, ah! a true friend.

Your servant, O. d'Este M.

P.S.—If you do me the favor to answer this letter address your reply, if you please, to Mademoiselle F. Cochet, "poste restante," Havre.



CHAPTER VII. A POET OF THE ANGELIC SCHOOL

All young girls, romantic or otherwise, can imagine the impatience in which Modeste lived for the next few days. The air was full of tongues of fire. The trees were like a plumage. She was not conscious of a body; she hovered in space, the earth melted away under her feet. Full of admiration for the post-office, she followed her little sheet of paper on its way; she was happy, as we all are happy at twenty years of age, in the first exercise of our will. She was possessed, as in the middle ages. She made pictures in her mind of the poet's abode, of his study; she saw him unsealing her letter; and then followed myriads of suppositions.

After sketching the poetry we cannot do less than give the profile of the poet. Canalis is a short, spare man, with an air of good-breeding, a dark-complexioned, moon-shaped face, and a rather mean head like that of a man who has more vanity than pride. He loves luxury, rank, and splendor. Money is of more importance to him than to most men. Proud of his birth, even more than of his talent, he destroys the value of his ancestors by making too much of them in the present day,—after all, the Canalis are not Navarreins, nor Cadignans, nor Grandlieus. Nature, however, helps him out in his pretensions. He has those eyes of Eastern effulgence which we demand in a poet, a delicate charm of manner, and a vibrant voice; yet a taint of natural charlatanism destroys the effect of nearly all these advantages; he is a born comedian. If he puts forward his well-shaped foot, it is because the attitude has become a habit; if he uses exclamatory terms they are part of himself; if he poses with high dramatic action he has made that deportment his second nature. Such defects as these are not incompatible with a general benevolence and a certain quality of errant and purely ideal chivalry, which distinguishes the paladin from the knight. Canalis has not devotion enough for a Don Quixote, but he has too much elevation of thought not to put himself on the nobler side of questions and things. His poetry, which takes the town by storm on all profitable occasions, really injures the man as a poet; for he is not without mind, but his talent prevents him from developing it; he is overweighted by his reputation, and is always aiming to make himself appear greater than he has the credit of being. Thus, as often happens, the man is entirely out of keeping with the products of his thought. The author of these naive, caressing, tender little lyrics, these calm idylls pure and cold as the surface of a lake, these verses so essentially feminine, is an ambitious little creature in a tightly buttoned frock-coat, with the air of a diplomat seeking political influence, smelling of the musk of aristocracy, full of pretension, thirsting for money, already spoiled by success in two directions, and wearing the double wreath of myrtle and of laurel. A government situation worth eight thousand francs, three thousand francs' annuity from the literary fund, two thousand from the Academy, three thousand more from the paternal estate (less the taxes and the cost of keeping it in order),—a total fixed income of fifteen thousand francs, plus the ten thousand bought in, one year with another, by his poetry; in all twenty-five thousand francs,—this for Modeste's hero was so precarious and insufficient an income that he usually spent five or six thousand francs more every year; but the king's privy purse and the secret funds of the foreign office had hitherto supplied the deficit. He wrote a hymn for the king's coronation which earned him a whole silver service,—having refused a sum of money on the ground that a Canalis owed his duty to his sovereign.

But about this time Canalis had, as the journalists say, exhausted his budget. He felt himself unable to invent any new form of poetry; his lyre did not have seven strings, it had one; and having played on that one string so long, the public allowed him no other alternative but to hang himself with it, or to hold his tongue. De Marsay, who did not like Canalis, made a remark whose poisoned shaft touched the poet to the quick of his vanity. "Canalis," he said, "always reminds me of that brave man whom Frederic the Great called up and commended after a battle because his trumpet had never ceased tooting its one little tune." Canalis's ambition was to enter political life, and he made capital of a journey he had taken to Madrid as secretary to the embassy of the Duc de Chaulieu, though it was really made, according to Parisian gossip, in the capacity of "attache to the duchess." How many times a sarcasm or a single speech has decided the whole course of a man's life. Colla, the late president of the Cisalpine republic, and the best lawyer in Piedmont, was told by a friend when he was forty years of age that he knew nothing of botany. He was piqued, became a second Jussieu, cultivated flowers, and compiled and published "The Flora of Piedmont," in Latin, a labor of ten years. "I'll master De Marsay some of these days!" thought the crushed poet; "after all, Canning and Chateaubriand are both in politics."

Canalis would gladly have brought forth some great political poem, but he was afraid of the French press, whose criticisms are savage upon any writer who takes four alexandrines to express one idea. Of all the poets of our day only three, Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and De Vigny, have been able to win the double glory of poet and prose-writer, like Racine and Voltaire, Moliere, and Rabelais,—a rare distinction in the literature of France, which ought to give a man a right to the crowning title of poet.

So then, the bard of the faubourg Saint-Germain was doing a wise thing in trying to house his little chariot under the protecting roof of the present government. When he became president of the court of Claims at the foreign office, he stood in need of a secretary,—a friend who could take his place in various ways; cook up his interests with publishers, see to his glory in the newspapers, help him if need be in politics,—in short, a cat's paw and satellite. In Paris many men of celebrity in art, science, and literature have one or more train-bearers, captains of the guard, chamberlains as it were, who live in the sunshine of their presence,—aides-de-camp entrusted with delicate missions, allowing themselves to be compromised if necessary; workers round the pedestal of the idol; not exactly his servants, nor yet his equals; bold in his defence, first in the breach, covering all retreats, busy with his business, and devoted to him just so long as their illusions last, or until the moment when they have got all they wanted. Some of these satellites perceive the ingratitude of their great man; others feel that they are simply made tools of; many weary of the life; very few remain contented with that sweet equality of feeling and sentiment which is the only reward that should be looked for in an intimacy with a superior man,—a reward that contented Ali when Mohammed raised him to himself.

Many of these men, misled by vanity, think themselves quite as capable as their patron. Pure devotion, such as Modeste conceived it, without money and without price, and more especially without hope, is rare. Nevertheless there are Mennevals to be found, more perhaps in Paris than elsewhere, men who value a life in the background with its peaceful toil; these are the wandering Benedictines of our social world, which offers them no other monastery. These brave, meek hearts live, by their actions and in their hidden lives, the poetry that poets utter. They are poets themselves in soul, in tenderness, in their lonely vigils and meditations,—as truly poets as others of the name on paper, who fatten in the fields of literature at so much a verse; like Lord Byron, like all who live, alas, by ink, the Hippocrene water of to-day, for want of a better.

Attracted by the fame of Canalis, also by the prospect of political interest, and advised thereto by Madame d'Espard, who acted in the matter for the Duchesse de Chaulieu, a young lawyer of the court of Claims became secretary and confidential friend of the poet, who welcomed and petted him very much as a broker caresses his first dabbler in the funds. The beginning of this companionship bore a very fair resemblance to friendship. The young man had already held the same relation to a minister, who went out of office in 1827, taking care before he did so to appoint his young secretary to a place in the foreign office. Ernest de La Briere, then about twenty-seven years of age, was decorated with the Legion of honor but was without other means than his salary; he was accustomed to the management of business and had learned a good deal of life during his four years in a minister's cabinet. Kindly, amiable, and over-modest, with a heart full of pure and sound feelings, he was averse to putting himself in the foreground. He loved his country, and wished to serve her, but notoriety abashed him. To him the place of secretary to a Napoleon was far more desirable than that of the minister himself. As soon as he became the friend and secretary of Canalis he did a great amount of labor for him, but by the end of eighteen months he had learned to understand the barrenness of a nature that was poetic through literary expression only. The truth of the old proverb, "The cowl doesn't make the monk," is eminently shown in literature. It is extremely rare to find among literary men a nature and a talent that are in perfect accord. The faculties are not the man himself. This disconnection, whose phenomena are amazing, proceeds from an unexplored, possibly an unexplorable mystery. The brain and its products of all kinds (for in art the hand of man is a continuation of his brain) are a world apart, which flourishes beneath the cranium in absolute independence of sentiments, feelings, and all that is called virtue, the virtue of citizens, fathers, and private life. This, however true, is not absolutely so; nothing is absolutely true of man. It is certain that a debauched man will dissipate his talent, that a drunkard will waste it in libations; while, on the other hand, no man can give himself talent by wholesome living: nevertheless, it is all but proved that Virgil, the painter of love, never loved a Dido, and that Rousseau, the model citizen, had enough pride to had furnished forth an aristocracy. On the other hand Raphael and Michael Angelo do present the glorious conjunction of genius with the lines of character. Talent in men is therefore, in all moral points, very much what beauty is in women,—simply a promise. Let us, therefore, doubly admire the man in whom both heart and character equal the perfection of his genius.

When Ernest discovered within his poet an ambitious egoist, the worst species of egoist (for there are some amiable forms of the vice), he felt a delicacy in leaving him. Honest natures cannot easily break the ties that bind them, especially if they have tied them voluntarily. The secretary was therefore still living in domestic relations with the poet when Modeste's letter arrived,—in such relations, be it said, as involved a perpetual sacrifice of his feelings. La Briere admitted the frankness with which Canalis had laid himself bare before him. Moreover, the defects of the man, who will always be considered a great poet during his lifetime and flattered as Martmontel was flattered, were only the wrong side of his brilliant qualities. Without his vanity and his magniloquence it is possible that he might never have acquired the sonorous elocution which is so useful and even necessary an instrument in political life. His cold-bloodedness touched at certain points on rectitude and loyalty; his ostentation had a lining of generosity. Results, we must remember, are to the profit of society; motives concern God.

But after the arrival of Modeste's letter Ernest deceived himself no longer as to Canalis. The pair had just finished breakfast and were talking together in the poet's study, which was on the ground-floor of a house standing back in a court-yard, and looked into a garden.

"There!" exclaimed Canalis, "I was telling Madame de Chaulieu the other day that I ought to bring out another poem; I knew admiration was running short, for I have had no anonymous letters for a long time."

"Is it from an unknown woman?"

"Unknown? yes!—a D'Este, in Havre; evidently a feigned name."

Canalis passed the letter to La Briere. The little poem, with all its hidden enthusiasms, in short, poor Modeste's heart, was disdainfully handed over, with the gesture of a spoiled dandy.

"It is a fine thing," said the lawyer, "to have the power to attract such feelings; to force a poor woman to step out of the habits which nature, education, and the world dictate to her, to break through conventions. What privileges genius wins! A letter such as this, written by a young girl—a genuine young girl—without hidden meanings, with real enthusiasm—"

"Well, what?" said Canalis.

"Why, a man might suffer as much as Tasso and yet feel recompensed," cried La Briere.

"So he might, my dear fellow, by a first letter of that kind, and even a second; but how about the thirtieth? And suppose you find out that these young enthusiasts are little jades? Or imagine a poet rushing along the brilliant path in search of her, and finding at the end of it an old Englishwoman sitting on a mile-stone and offering you her hand! Or suppose this post-office angel should really be a rather ugly girl in quest of a husband? Ah, my boy! the effervescence then goes down."

"I begin to perceive," said La Briere, smiling, "that there is something poisonous in glory, as there is in certain dazzling flowers."

"And then," resumed Canalis, "all these women, even when they are simple-minded, have ideals, and you can't satisfy them. They never say to themselves that a poet is a vain man, as I am accused of being; they can't conceive what it is for an author to be at the mercy of a feverish excitement, which makes him disagreeable and capricious; they want him always grand, noble; it never occurs to them that genius is a disease, or that Nathan lives with Florine; that D'Arthez is too fat, and Joseph Bridau is too thin; that Beranger limps, and that their own particular deity may have the snuffles! A Lucien de Rubempre, poet and cupid, is a phoenix. And why should I go in search of compliments only to pull the string of a shower-bath of horrid looks from some disillusioned female?"

"Then the true poet," said La Briere, "ought to remain hidden, like God, in the centre of his worlds, and be only seen in his own creations."

"Glory would cost too dear in that case," answered Canalis. "There is some good in life. As for that letter," he added, taking a cup of tea, "I assure you that when a noble and beautiful woman loves a poet she does not hide in the corner boxes, like a duchess in love with an actor; she feels that her beauty, her fortune, her name are protection enough, and she dares to say openly, like an epic poem: 'I am the nymph Calypso, enamored of Telemachus.' Mystery and feigned names are the resources of little minds. For my part I no longer answer masks—"

"I should love a woman who came to seek me," cried La Briere. "To all you say I reply, my dear Canalis, that it cannot be an ordinary girl who aspires to a distinguished man; such a girl has too little trust, too much vanity; she is too faint-hearted. Only a star, a—"

"—princess!" cried Canalis, bursting into a shout of laughter; "only a princess can descend to him. My dear fellow, that doesn't happen once in a hundred years. Such a love is like that flower that blossoms every century. Princesses, let me tell you, if they are young, rich, and beautiful, have something else to think of; they are surrounded like rare plants by a hedge of fools, well-bred idiots as hollow as elder-bushes! My dream, alas! the crystal of my dream, garlanded from hence to the Correze with roses—ah! I cannot speak of it—it is in fragments at my feet, and has long been so. No, no, all anonymous letters are begging letters; and what sort of begging? Write yourself to that young woman, if you suppose her young and pretty, and you'll find out. There is nothing like experience. As for me, I can't reasonably be expected to love every woman; Apollo, at any rate he of Belvedere, is a delicate consumptive who must take care of his health."

"But when a woman writes to you in this way her excuse must certainly be in her consciousness that she is able to eclipse in tenderness and beauty every other woman," said Ernest, "and I should think you might feel some curiosity—"

"Ah," said Canalis, "permit me, my juvenile friend, to abide by the beautiful duchess who is all my joy."

"You are right, you are right!" cried Ernest. However, the young secretary read and re-read Modeste's letter, striving to guess the mind of its hidden writer.

"There is not the least fine-writing here," he said, "she does not even talk of your genius; she speaks to your heart. In your place I should feel tempted by this fragrance of modesty,—this proposed agreement—"

"Then, sign it!" cried Canalis, laughing; "answer the letter and go to the end of the adventure yourself. You shall tell me the results three months hence—if the affair lasts so long."

Four days later Modeste received the following letter, written on extremely fine paper, protected by two envelopes, and sealed with the arms of Canalis.

Mademoiselle,—The admiration for fine works (allowing that my books are such) implies something so lofty and sincere as to protect you from all light jesting, and to justify before the sternest judge the step you have taken in writing to me.

But first I must thank you for the pleasure which such proofs of sympathy afford, even though we may not merit them,—for the maker of verses and the true poet are equally certain of the intrinsic worth of their writings,—so readily does self-esteem lend itself to praise. The best proof of friendship that I can give to an unknown lady in exchange for a faith which allays the sting of criticism, is to share with her the harvest of my own experience, even at the risk of dispelling her most vivid illusions.

Mademoiselle, the noblest adornment of a young girl is the flower of a pure and saintly and irreproachable life. Are you alone in the world? If you are, there is no need to say more. But if you have a family, a father or a mother, think of all the sorrow that might come to them from such a letter as yours addressed to a poet of whom you know nothing personally. All writers are not angels; they have many defects. Some are frivolous, heedless, foppish, ambitious, dissipated; and, believe me, no matter how imposing innocence may be, how chivalrous a poet is, you will meet with many a degenerate troubadour in Paris ready to cultivate your affection only to betray it. By such a man your letter would be interpreted otherwise than it is by me. He would see a thought that is not in it, which you, in your innocence, have not suspected. There are as many natures as there are writers. I am deeply flattered that you have judged me capable of understanding you; but had you, perchance, fallen upon a hypocrite, a scoffer, one whose books may be melancholy but whose life is a perpetual carnival, you would have found as the result of your generous imprudence an evil-minded man, the frequenter of green-rooms, perhaps a hero of some gay resort. In the bower of clematis where you dream of poets, can you smell the odor of the cigar which drives all poetry from the manuscript?

But let us look still further. How could the dreamy, solitary life you lead, doubtless by the sea-shore, interest a poet, whose mission it is to imagine all, and to paint all? What reality can equal imagination? The young girls of the poets are so ideal that no living daughter of Eve can compete with them. And now tell me, what will you gain,—you, a young girl, brought up to be the virtuous mother of a family,—if you learn to comprehend the terrible agitations of a poet's life in this dreadful capital, which may be defined by one sentence,—the hell in which men love.

If the desire to brighten the monotonous existence of a young girl thirsting for knowledge has led you to take your pen in hand and write to me, has not the step itself the appearance of degradation? What meaning am I to give to your letter? Are you one of a rejected caste, and do you seek a friend far away from you? Or, are you afflicted with personal ugliness, yet feeling within you a noble soul which can give and receive a confidence? Alas, alas, the conclusion to be drawn is grievous. You have said too much, or too little; you have gone too far, or not far enough. Either let us drop this correspondence, or, if you continue it, tell me more than in the letter you have now written me.

But, mademoiselle, if you are young, if you are beautiful, if you have a home, a family, if in your heart you have the precious ointment, the spikenard, to pour out, as did Magdalene on the feet of Jesus, let yourself be won by a man worthy of you; become what every pure young girl should be,—a good woman, the virtuous mother of a family. A poet is the saddest conquest that a girl can make; he is full of vanity, full of angles that will sharply wound a woman's proper pride, and kill a tenderness which has no experience of life. The wife of a poet should love him long before she marries him; she must train herself to the charity of angels, to their forbearance, to all the virtues of motherhood. Such qualities, mademoiselle, are but germs in a young girl.

Hear the whole truth,—do I not owe it to you in return for your intoxicating flattery? If it is a glorious thing to marry a great renown, remember also that you must soon discover a superior man to be, in all that makes a man, like other men. He therefore poorly realizes the hopes that attach to him as a phoenix. He becomes like a woman whose beauty is over-praised, and of whom we say: "I thought her far more lovely." She has not warranted the portrait painted by the fairy to whom I owe your letter,—the fairy whose name is Imagination.

Believe me, the qualities of the mind live and thrive only in a sphere invisible, not in daily life; the wife of a poet bears the burden; she sees the jewels manufactured, but she never wears them. If the glory of the position fascinates you, hear me now when I tell you that its pleasures are soon at an end. You will suffer when you find so many asperities in a nature which, from a distance, you thought equable, and such coldness at the shining summit. Moreover, as women never set their feet within the world of real difficulties, they cease to appreciate what they once admired as soon as they think they see the inner mechanism of it.

I close with a last thought, in which there is no disguised entreaty; it is the counsel of a friend. The exchange of souls can take place only between persons who are resolved to hide nothing from each other. Would you show yourself for such as you are to an unknown man? I dare not follow out the consequences of that idea.

Deign to accept, mademoiselle, the homage which we owe to all women, even those who are disguised and masked.

So this was the letter she had worn between her flesh and her corset above her palpitating heart throughout one whole day! For this she had postponed the reading until the midnight hour when the household slept, waiting for the solemn silence with the eager anxiety of an imagination on fire! For this she had blessed the poet by anticipation, reading a thousand letters ere she opened one,—fancying all things, except this drop of cold water falling upon the vaporous forms of her illusion, and dissolving them as prussic acid dissolves life. What could she do but hide herself in her bed, blow out her candle, bury her face in the sheets and weep?

All this happened during the first days of July. But Modeste presently got up, walked across the room and opened the window. She wanted air. The fragrance of the flowers came to her with the peculiar freshness of the odors of the night. The sea, lighted by the moon, sparkled like a mirror. A nightingale was singing in a tree. "Ah, there is the poet!" thought Modeste, whose anger subsided at once. Bitter reflections chased each other through her mind. She was cut to the quick; she wished to re-read the letter, and lit a candle; she studied the sentences so carefully studied when written; and ended by hearing the wheezing voice of the outer world.

"He is right, and I am wrong," she said to herself. "But who could ever believe that under the starry mantle of a poet I should find nothing but one of Moliere's old men?"

When a woman or young girl is taken in the act, "flagrante delicto," she conceives a deadly hatred to the witness, the author, or the object of her fault. And so the true, the single-minded, the untamed and untamable Modeste conceived within her soul an unquenchable desire to get the better of that righteous spirit, to drive him into some fatal inconsistency, and so return him blow for blow. This girl, this child, as we may call her, so pure, whose head alone had been misguided,—partly by her reading, partly by her sister's sorrows, and more perhaps by the dangerous meditations of her solitary life,—was suddenly caught by a ray of sunshine flickering across her face. She had been standing for three hours on the shores of the vast sea of Doubt. Nights like these are never forgotten. Modeste walked straight to her little Chinese table, a gift from her father, and wrote a letter dictated by the infernal spirit of vengeance which palpitates in the hearts of young girls.



CHAPTER VIII. BLADE TO BLADE

To Monsieur de Canalis:

Monsieur,—You are certainly a great poet, and you are something more,—an honest man. After showing such loyal frankness to a young girl who was stepping to the verge of an abyss, have you enough left to answer without hypocrisy or evasion the following question?

Would you have written the letter I now hold in answer to mine, —would your ideas, your language have been the same,—had some one whispered in your ear (what may prove true), Mademoiselle O. d'Este M. has six millions and does intend to have a dunce for a master?

Admit the supposition for a moment. Be with me what you are with yourself; fear nothing. I am wiser than my twenty years; nothing that is frank can hurt you in my mind. When I have read your confidence, if you deign to make it, you shall receive from me an answer to your first letter.

Having admired your talent, often so sublime, permit me to do homage to your delicacy and your integrity, which force me to remain always,

Your humble servant, O. d'Este M.

When Ernest de La Briere had held this letter in his hands for some little time he went to walk along the boulevards, tossed in mind like a tiny vessel by a tempest when the wind is blowing from all points of the compass. Most young men, specially true Parisians, would have settled the matter in a single phrase, "The girl is a little hussy." But for a youth whose soul was noble and true, this attempt to put him, as it were, upon his oath, this appeal to truth, had the power to awaken the three judges hidden in the conscience of every man. Honor, Truth, and Justice, getting on their feet, cried out in their several ways energetically.

"Ah, my dear Ernest," said Truth, "you never would have read that lesson to a rich heiress. No, my boy; you would have gone in hot haste to Havre to find out if the girl were handsome, and you would have been very unhappy indeed at her preference for genius; and if you could have tripped up your friend and supplanted him in her affections, Mademoiselle d'Este would have been a divinity."

"What?" cried Justice, "are you not always bemoaning yourselves, you penniless men of wit and capacity, that rich girls marry beings whom you wouldn't take as your servants? You rail against the materialism of the century which hastens to join wealth to wealth, and never marries some fine young man with brains and no money to a rich girl. What an outcry you make about it; and yet here is a young woman who revolts against that very spirit of the age, and behold! the poet replies with a blow at her heart!"

"Rich or poor, young or old, ugly or handsome, the girl is right; she has sense and judgment, she has tripped you over into the slough of self-interest and lets you know it," cried Honor. "She deserves an answer, a sincere and loyal and frank answer, and, above all, the honest expression of your thought. Examine yourself! sound your heart and purge it of its meannesses. What would Moliere's Alceste say?"

And La Briere, having started from the boulevard Poissoniere, walked so slowly, absorbed in these reflections, that he was more than an hour in reaching the boulevard des Capucines. Then he followed the quays, which led him to the Cour des Comptes, situated in that time close to the Saint-Chapelle. Instead of beginning on the accounts as he should have done, he remained at the mercy of his perplexities.

"One thing is evident," he said to himself; "she hasn't six millions; but that's not the point—"

Six days later, Modeste received the following letter:

Mademoiselle,—You are not a D'Este. The name is a feigned one to conceal your own. Do I owe the revelations which you solicit to a person who is untruthful about herself? Question for question: Are you of an illustrious family? or a noble family? or a middle-class family? Undoubtedly ethics and morality cannot change; they are one: but obligations vary in the different states of life. Just as the sun lights up a scene diversely and produces differences which we admire, so morality conforms social duty to rank, to position. The peccadillo of a soldier is a crime in a general, and vice-versa. Observances are not alike in all cases. They are not the same for the gleaner in the field, for the girl who sews at fifteen sous a day, for the daughter of a petty shopkeeper, for the young bourgoise, for the child of a rich merchant, for the heiress of a noble family, for a daughter of the house of Este. A king must not stoop to pick up a piece of gold, but a laborer ought to retrace his steps to find ten sous; though both are equally bound to obey the laws of economy. A daughter of Este, who is worth six millions, has the right to wear a broad-brimmed hat and plume, to flourish her whip, press the flanks of her barb, and ride like an amazon decked in gold lace, with a lackey behind her, into the presence of a poet and say: "I love poetry; and I would fain expiate Leonora's cruelty to Tasso!" but a daughter of the people would cover herself with ridicule by imitating her. To what class do you belong? Answer sincerely, and I will answer the question you have put to me.

As I have not the honor of knowing you personally, and yet am bound to you, in a measure, by the ties of poetic communion, I am unwilling to offer any commonplace compliments. Perhaps you have already won a malicious victory by thus embarrassing a maker of books.

The young man was certainly not wanting in the sort of shrewdness which is permissible to a man of honor. By return courier he received an answer:—

To Monsieur de Canalis,—You grow more and more sensible, my dear poet. My father is a count. The chief glory of our house was a cardinal, in the days when cardinals walked the earth by the side of kings. I am the last of our family, which ends in me; but I have the necessary quarterings to make my entry into any court or chapter-house in Europe. We are quite the equals of the Canalis. You will be so kind as to excuse me from sending you our arms.

Endeavor to answer me as truthfully as I have now answered you. I await your response to know if I can then sign myself as I do now,

Your servant, O. d'Este M.

"The little mischief! how she abuses her privileges," cried La Briere; "but isn't she frank!"

No young man can be four years private secretary to a cabinet minister, and live in Paris and observe the carrying on of many intrigues, with perfect impunity; in fact, the purest soul is more or less intoxicated by the heady atmosphere of the imperial city. Happy in the thought that he was not Canalis, our young secretary engaged a place in the mail-coach for Havre, after writing a letter in which he announced that the promised answer would be sent a few days later,—excusing the delay on the ground of the importance of the confession and the pressure of his duties at the ministry.

He took care to get from the director-general of the post-office a note to the postmaster at Havre, requesting secrecy and attention to his wishes. Ernest was thus enabled to see Francoise Cochet when she came for the letters, and to follow her without exciting observation. Guided by her, he reached Ingouville and saw Modeste Mignon at the window of the Chalet.

"Well, Francoise?" he heard the young girl say, to which the maid responded,—

"Yes, mademoiselle, I have one."

Struck by the girl's great beauty, Ernest retraced his steps and asked a man on the street the name of the owner of that magnificent estate.

"That?" said the man, nodding to the villa.

"Yes, my friend."

"Oh, that belongs to Monsieur Vilquin, the richest shipping merchant in Havre, so rich he doesn't know what he is worth."

"There is no Cardinal Vilquin that I know of in history," thought Ernest, as he walked back to Havre for the night mail to Paris. Naturally he questioned the postmaster about the Vilquin family, and learned that it possessed an enormous fortune. Monsieur Vilquin had a son and two daughters, one of whom was married to Monsieur Althor, junior. Prudence kept La Briere from seeming anxious about the Vilquins; the postmaster was already looking at him slyly.

"Is there there any one staying with them at the present moment," he asked, "besides the family?"

"The d'Herouville family is there just now. They do talk of a marriage between the young duke and the remaining Mademoiselle Vilquin."

"Ha!" thought Ernest; "there was a celebrated Cardinal d'Herouville under the Valois, and a terrible marshal whom they made a duke in the time of Henri IV."

Ernest returned to Paris having seen enough of Modeste to dream of her, and to think that, whether she were rich or whether she were poor, if she had a noble soul he would like to make her Madame de La Briere; and so thinking, he resolved to continue the correspondence.

Ah! you poor women of France, try to remain hidden if you can; try to weave the least little romance about your lives in the midst of a civilization which posts in the public streets the hours when the coaches arrive and depart; which counts all letters and stamps them twice over, first with the hour when they are thrown into the boxes, and next with that of their delivery; which numbers the houses, prints the tax of every tenant on a metal register at the doors (after verifying its particulars), and will soon possess one vast register of every inch of its territory down to the smallest parcel of land, and the most insignificant features of it,—a giant work ordained by a giant. Try, imprudent young ladies, to escape not only the eye of the police, but the incessant chatter which takes place in a country town about the veriest trifles,—how many dishes the prefect has at his dessert, how many slices of melon are left at the door of some small householder,—which strains its ear to catch the chink of the gold a thrifty man lays by, and spends its evenings in calculating the incomes of the village and the town and the department. It was mere chance that enabled Modeste to escape discovery through Ernest's reconnoitring expedition,—a step which he already regretted; but what Parisian can allow himself to be the dupe of a little country girl? Incapable of being duped! that horrid maxim is the dissolvent of all noble sentiments in man.

We can readily guess the struggle of feeling to which this honest young fellow fell a prey when we read the letter that he now indited, in which every stroke of the flail which scourged his conscience will be found to have left its trace.

This is what Modeste read a few days later, as she sat by her window on a fine summer's day:—

Mademoiselle,—Without hypocrisy or evasion, yes, if I had been certain that you possessed an immense fortune I should have acted differently. Why? I have searched for the reason; here it is. We have within us an inborn feeling, inordinately developed by social life, which drives us to the pursuit and to the possession of happiness. Most men confound happiness with the means that lead to it; money in their eyes is the chief element of happiness. I should, therefore, have endeavored to win you, prompted by that social sentiment which has in all ages made wealth a religion. At least, I think I should. It is not to be expected of a man still young that he can have the wisdom to substitute sound sense for the pleasure of the senses; within sight of a prey the brutal instincts hidden in the heart of man drive him on. Instead of that lesson, I should have sent you compliments and flatteries. Should I have kept my own esteem in so doing? I doubt it. Mademoiselle, in such a case success brings absolution; but happiness? That is another thing. Should I have distrusted my wife had I won her in that way? Most assuredly I should. Your advance on me would sooner or later have come between us. Your husband, however grand your fancy may make him, would have ended by reproaching you for having abased him. You, yourself, might have come, sooner or later, to despise him. The strong man forgives, but the poet whines. Such, mademoiselle, is the answer which my honesty compels me to make to you.

And now, listen to me. You have the triumph of forcing me to reflect deeply,—first on you, whom I do not sufficiently know; next, on myself, of whom I knew too little. You have had the power to stir up many of the evil thoughts which crouched in my heart, as in all hearts; but from them something good and generous has come forth, and I salute you with my most fervent benedictions, just as at sea we salute the lighthouse which shows the rocks on which we were about to perish. Here is my confession, for I would not lose your esteem nor my own for all the treasures of earth.

I wished to know who you are. I have just returned from Havre, where I saw Francoise Cochet, and followed her to Ingouville. You are as beautiful as the woman of a poet's dream; but I do not know if you are Mademoiselle Vilquin concealed under Mademoiselle d'Herouville, or Mademoiselle d'Herouville hidden under Mademoiselle Vilquin. Though all is fair in war, I blushed at such spying and stopped short in my inquiries. You have roused my curiosity; forgive me for being somewhat of a woman; it is, I believe, the privilege of a poet.

Now that I have laid bare my heart and allowed you to read it, you will believe in the sincerity of what I am about to add. Though the glimpse I had of you was all too rapid, it has sufficed to modify my opinion of your conduct. You are a poet and a poem, even more than you are a woman. Yes, there is in you something more precious than beauty; you are the beautiful Ideal of art, of fancy. The step you took, blamable as it would be in an ordinary young girl, allotted to an every-day destiny, has another aspect if endowed with the nature which I now attribute to you. Among the crowd of beings flung by fate into the social life of this planet to make up a generation there are exceptional souls. If your letter is the outcome of long poetic reveries on the fate which conventions bring to women, if, constrained by the impulse of a lofty and intelligent mind, you have wished to understand the life of a man to whom you attribute the gift of genius, to the end that you may create a friendship withdrawn from the ordinary relations of life, with a soul in communion with your own, disregarding thus the ordinary trammels of your sex,—then, assuredly, you are an exception. The law which rightly limits the actions of the crowd is too limited for you. But in that case, the remark in my first letter returns in greater force,—you have done too much or not enough.

Accept once more my thanks for the service you have rendered me, that of compelling me to sound my heart. You have corrected in me the false idea, only too common in France, that marriage should be a means of fortune. While I struggled with my conscience a sacred voice spoke to me. I swore solemnly to make my fortune myself, and not be led by motives of cupidity in choosing the companion of my life. I have also reproached myself for the blamable curiosity you have excited in me. You have not six millions. There is no concealment possible in Havre for a young lady who possesses such a fortune; you would be discovered at once by the pack of hounds of great families whom I see in Paris on the hunt after heiresses, and who have already sent one, the grand equerry, the young duke, among the Vilquins. Therefore, believe me, the sentiments I have now expressed are fixed in my mind as a rule of life, from which I have abstracted all influences of romance or of actual fact. Prove to me, therefore, that you have one of those souls which may be forgiven for its disobedience to the common law, by perceiving and comprehending the spirit of this letter as you did that of my first letter. If you are destined to a middle-class life, obey the iron law which holds society together. Lifted in mind above other women, I admire you; but if you seek to obey an impulse which you ought to repress, I pity you. The all-wise moral of that great domestic epic "Clarissa Harlowe" is that legitimate and honorable love led the poor victim to her ruin because it was conceived, developed, and pursued beyond the boundaries of family restraint. The family, however cruel and even foolish it may be, is in the right against the Lovelaces. The family is Society. Believe me, the glory of a young girl, of a woman, must always be that of repressing her most ardent impulses within the narrow sphere of conventions. If I had a daughter able to become a Madame de Stael I should wish her dead at fifteen. Can you imagine a daughter of yours flaunting on the stage of fame, exhibiting herself to win the plaudits of a crowd, and not suffer anguish at the thought? No matter to what heights a woman can rise by the inward poetry of her soul, she must sacrifice the outer signs of superiority on the altar of her home. Her impulse, her genius, her aspirations toward Good, the whole poem of a young girl's being, should belong to the man she accepts and the children whom she brings into the world. I think I perceive in you a secret desire to widen the narrow circle of the life to which all women are condemned, and to put love and passion into marriage. Ah! it is a lovely dream! it is not impossible; it is difficult, but if realized, may it not be to the despair of souls—forgive me the hackneyed word—"incompris"?

If you seek a platonic friendship it will be to your sorrow in after years. If your letter was a jest, discontinue it. Perhaps this little romance is to end here—is it? It has not been without fruit. My sense of duty is aroused, and you, on your side, will have learned something of Society. Turn your thoughts to real life; throw the enthusiasms you have culled from literature into the virtues of your sex.

Adieu, mademoiselle. Do me the honor to grant me your esteem. Having seen you, or one whom I believe to be you, I have known that your letter was simply natural; a flower so lovely turns to the sun—of poetry. Yes, love poetry as you love flowers, music, the grandeur of the sea, the beauties of nature; love them as an adornment of the soul, but remember what I have had the honor of telling you as to the nature of poets. Be cautious not to marry, as you say, a dunce, but seek the partner whom God has made for you. There are souls, believe me, who are fit to appreciate you, and to make you happy. If I were rich, if you were poor, I would lay my heart and my fortunes at your feet; for I believe your soul to be full of riches and of loyalty; to you I could confide my life and my honor in absolute security.

Once more, adieu, adieu, fairest daughter of Eve the fair.

The reading of this letter, swallowed like a drop of water in the desert, lifted the mountain which weighed heavily on Modeste's heart: then she saw the mistake she had made in arranging her plan, and repaired it by giving Francoise some envelopes directed to herself, in which the maid could put the letters which came from Paris and drop them again into the box. Modeste resolved to receive the postman herself on the steps of the Chalet at the hour when he made his delivery.

As to the feelings that this reply, in which the noble heart of poor La Briere beat beneath the brilliant phantom of Canalis, excited in Modeste, they were as multifarious and confused as the waves which rushed to die along the shore while with her eyes fixed on the wide ocean she gave herself up to the joy of having (if we dare say so) harpooned an angelic soul in the Parisian Gulf, of having divined that hearts of price might still be found in harmony with genius, and, above all, for having followed the magic voice of intuition.

A vast interest was now about to animate her life. The wires of her cage were broken: the bolts and bars of the pretty Chalet—where were they? Her thoughts took wings.

"Oh, father!" she cried, looking out to the horizon. "Come back and make us rich and happy."

The answer which Ernest de La Briere received some five days later will tell the reader more than any elaborate disquisition of ours.



CHAPTER IX. THE POWER OF THE UNSEEN

To Monsieur de Canalis:

My friend,—Suffer me to give you that name,—you have delighted me; I would not have you other than you are in this letter, the first—oh, may it not be the last! Who but a poet could have excused and understood a young girl so delicately?

I wish to speak with the sincerity that dictated the first lines of your letter. And first, let me say that most fortunately you do not know me. I can joyfully assure you than I am neither that hideous Mademoiselle Vilquin nor the very noble and withered Mademoiselle d'Herouville who floats between twenty and forty years of age, unable to decide on a satisfactory date. The Cardinal d'Herouville flourished in the history of the Church at least a century before the cardinal of whom we boast as our only family glory,—for I take no account of lieutenant-generals, and abbes who write trumpery little verses.

Moreover, I do not live in the magnificent villa Vilquin; there is not in my veins, thank God, the ten-millionth of a drop of that chilly blood which flows behind a counter. I come on one side from Germany, on the other from the south of France; my mind has a Teutonic love of reverie, my blood the vivacity of Provence. I am noble on my father's and on my mother's side. On my mother's I derive from every page of the Almanach de Gotha. In short, my precautions are well taken. It is not in any man's power, nor even in the power of the law, to unmask my incognito. I shall remain veiled, unknown.

As to my person and as to my "belongings," as the Normans say, make yourself easy. I am at least as handsome as the little girl (ignorantly happy) on whom your eyes chanced to light during your visit to Havre; and I do not call myself poverty-stricken, although ten sons of peers may not accompany me on my walks. I have seen the humiliating comedy of the heiress sought for her millions played on my account. In short, make no attempt, even on a wager, to reach me. Alas! though free as air, I am watched and guarded,—by myself, in the first place, and secondly, by people of nerve and courage who would not hesitate to put a knife in your heart if you tried to penetrate my retreat. I do not say this to excite your courage or stimulate your curiosity; I believe I have no need of such incentives to interest you and attach you to me.

I will now reply to the second edition, considerably enlarged, of your first sermon.

Will you have a confession? I said to myself when I saw you so distrustful, and mistaking me for Corinne (whose improvisations bore me dreadfully), that in all probability dozes of Muses had already led you, rashly curious, into their valleys, and begged you to taste the fruits of their boarding-school Parnassus. Oh! you are perfectly safe with me, my friend; I may love poetry, but I have no little verses in my pocket-book, and my stockings are, and will remain, immaculately white. You shall not be pestered with the "Flowers of my Heart" in one or more volumes. And, finally, should it ever happen that I say to you the word "Come!" you will not find—you know it now—an old maid, no, nor a poor and ugly one.

Ah! my friend, if you only knew how I regret that you came to Havre! You have lowered the charm of what you call my romance. God alone knew the treasure I was reserving for the man noble enough, and trusting enough, and perspicacious enough to come—having faith in my letters, having penetrated step by step into the depths of my heart—to come to our first meeting with the simplicity of a child: for that was what I dreamed to be the innocence of a man of genius. And now you have spoiled my treasure! But I forgive you; you live in Paris and, as you say, there is always a man within a poet.

Because I tell you this will you think me some little girl who cultivates a garden-full of illusions? You, who are witty and wise, have you not guessed that when Mademoiselle d'Este received your pedantic lesson she said to herself: "No, dear poet, my first letter was not the pebble which a vagabond child flings about the highway to frighten the owner of the adjacent fruit-trees, but a net carefully and prudently thrown by a fisherman seated on a rock above the sea, hoping and expecting a miraculous draught."

All that you say so beautifully about the family has my approval. The man who is able to please me, and of whom I believe myself worthy, will have my heart and my life,—with the consent of my parents, for I will neither grieve them, nor take them unawares: happily, I am certain of reigning over them; and, besides, they are wholly without prejudice. Indeed, in every way, I feel myself protected against any delusions in my dream. I have built the fortress with my own hands, and I have let it be fortified by the boundless devotion of those who watch over me as if I were a treasure,—not that I am unable to defend myself in the open, if need be; for, let me say, circumstances have furnished me with armor of proof on which is engraved the word "Disdain." I have the deepest horror of all that is calculating,—of all that is not pure, disinterested, and wholly noble. I worship the beautiful, the ideal, without being romantic; though I HAVE been, in my heart of hearts, in my dreams. But I recognize the truth of the various things, just even to vulgarity, which you have written me about Society and social life.

For the time being we are, and we can only be, two friends. Why seek an unseen friend? you ask. Your person may be unknown to me, but your mind, your heart I know; they please me, and I feel an infinitude of thoughts within my soul which need a man of genius for their confidant. I do not wish the poem of my heart to be wasted; I would have it known to you as it is to God. What a precious thing is a true comrade, one to whom we can tell all! You will surely not reject the unpublished leaflets of a young girl's thoughts when they fly to you like the pretty insects fluttering to the sun? I am sure you have never before met with this good fortune of the soul,—the honest confidences of an honest girl. Listen to her prattle; accept the music that she sings to you in her own heart. Later, if our souls are sisters, if our characters warrant the attempt, a white-haired old serving-man shall await you by the wayside and lead you to the cottage, the villa, the castle, the palace—I don't know yet what sort of bower it will be, nor what its color, nor whether this conclusion will ever be possible; but you will admit, will you not? that it is poetic, and that Mademoiselle d'Este has a complying disposition. Has she not left you free? Has she gone with jealous feet to watch you in the salons of Paris? Has she imposed upon you the labors of some high emprise, such as paladins sought voluntarily in the olden time? No, she asks a perfectly spiritual and mystic alliance. Come to me when you are unhappy, wounded, weary. Tell me all, hide nothing; I have balms for all your ills. I am twenty years of age, dear friend, but I have the sense of fifty, and unfortunately I have known through the experience of another all the horrors and the delights of love. I know what baseness the human heart can contain, what infamy; yet I myself am an honest girl. No, I have no illusions; but I have something better, something real,—I have beliefs and a religion. See! I open the ball of our confidences.

Whoever I marry—provided I choose him for myself—may sleep in peace or go to the East Indies sure that he will find me on his return working at the tapestry which I began before he left me; and in every stitch he shall read a verse of the poem of which he has been the hero. Yes, I have resolved within my heart never to follow my husband where he does not wish me to go. I will be the divinity of his hearth. That is my religion of humanity. But why should I not test and choose the man to whom I am to be like the life to the body? Is a man ever impeded by life? What can that woman be who thwarts the man she loves?—an illness, a disease, not life. By life, I mean that joyous health which makes each hour a pleasure.

But to return to your letter, which will always be precious to me. Yes, jesting apart, it contains that which I desired, an expression of prosaic sentiments which are as necessary to family life as air to the lungs; and without which no happiness is possible. To act as an honest man, to think as a poet, to love as women love, that is what I longed for in my friend, and it is now no longer a chimera.

Adieu, my friend. I am poor at this moment. That is one of the reasons why I cling to my concealment, my mask, my impregnable fortress. I have read your last verses in the "Revue,"—ah! with what delight, now that I am initiated in the austere loftiness of your secret soul.

Will it make you unhappy to know that a young girl prays for you; that you are her solitary thought,—without a rival except in her father and mother? Can there be any reason why you should reject these pages full of you, written for you, seen by no eye but yours? Send me their counterpart. I am so little of a woman yet that your confidences—provided they are full and true—will suffice for the happiness of your

O. d'Este M.

"Good heavens! can I be in love already?" cried the young secretary, when he perceived that he had held the above letter in his hands more than an hour after reading it. "What shall I do? She thinks she is writing to the great poet! Can I continue the deception? Is she a woman of forty, or a girl of twenty?"

Ernest was now fascinated by the great gulf of the unseen. The unseen is the obscurity of infinitude, and nothing is more alluring. In that sombre vastness fires flash, and furrow and color the abyss with fancies like those of Martin. For a busy man like Canalis, an adventure of this kind is swept away like a harebell by a mountain torrent, but in the more unoccupied life of the young secretary, this charming girl, whom his imagination persistently connected with the blonde beauty at the window, fastened upon his heart, and did as much mischief in his regulated life as a fox in a poultry-yard. La Briere allowed himself to be preoccupied by this mysterious correspondent; and he answered her last letter with another, a pretentious and carefully studied epistle, in which, however, passion begins to reveal itself through pique.

Mademoiselle,—Is it quite loyal in you to enthrone yourself in the heart of a poor poet with a latent intention of abandoning him if he is not exactly what you wish, leaving him to endless regrets,—showing him for a moment an image of perfection, were it only assumed, and at any rate giving him a foretaste of happiness? I was very short-sighted in soliciting this letter, in which you have begun to unfold the elegant fabric of your thoughts. A man can easily become enamored with a mysterious unknown who combines such fearlessness with such originality, so much imagination with so much feeling. Who would not wish to know you after reading your first confidence? It requires a strong effort on my part to retain my senses in thinking of you, for you combine all that can trouble the head or the heart of man. I therefore make the most of the little self-possession you have left me to offer you my humble remonstrances.

Do you really believe, mademoiselle, that letters, more or less true in relation to the life of the writers, more or less insincere,—for those which we write to each other are the expressions of the moment at which we pen them, and not of the general tenor of our lives,—do you believe, I say, that beautiful as they may be, they can at all replace the representation that we could make of ourselves to each other by the revelations of daily intercourse? Man is dual. There is a life invisible, that of the heart, to which letters may suffice; and there is a life material, to which more importance is, alas, attached than you are aware of at your age. These two existences must, however, be made to harmonize in the ideal which you cherish; and this, I may remark in passing, is very rare.

The pure, spontaneous, disinterested homage of a solitary soul which is both educated and chaste, is one of those celestial flowers whose color and fragrance console for every grief, for every wound, for every betrayal which makes up the life of a literary man; and I thank you with an impulse equal to your own. But after this poetical exchange of my griefs for the pearls of your charity, what next? what do you expect? I have neither the genius nor the splendid position of Lord Byron; above all, I have not the halo of his fictitious damnation and his false social woes. But what could you have hoped from him in like circumstances? His friendship? Well, he who ought to have felt only pride was eaten up by vanity of every kind,—sickly, irritable vanity which discouraged friendship. I, a thousand-fold more insignificant than he, may I not have discordances of character, and make friendship a burden heavy indeed to bear? In exchange for your reveries, what will you gain? The dissatisfaction of a life which will not be wholly yours. The compact is madness. Let me tell you why. In the first place, your projected poem is a plagiarism. A young German girl, who was not, like you, semi-German, but altogether so, adored Goethe with the rash intoxication of girlhood. She made him her friend, her religion, her god, knowing at the same time that he was married. Madame Goethe, a worthy German woman, lent herself to this worship with a sly good-nature which did not cure Bettina. But what was the end of it all? The young ecstatic married a man who was younger and handsomer than Goethe. Now, between ourselves, let us admit that a young girl who should make herself the handmaid of a man of genius, his equal through comprehension, and should piously worship him till death, like one of those divine figures sketched by the masters on the shutters of their mystic shrines, and who, when Germany lost him, should have retired to some solitude away from men, like the friend of Lord Bolingbroke,—let us admit, I say, that the young girl would have lived forever, inlaid in the glory of the poet as Mary Magdalene in the cross and triumph of our Lord. If that is sublime, what say you to the reverse of the picture? As I am neither Goethe nor Lord Byron, the colossi of poetry and egotism, but simply the author of a few esteemed verses, I cannot expect the honors of a cult. Neither am I disposed to be a martyr. I have ambition, and I have a heart; I am still young and I have my career to make. See me for what I am. The bounty of the king and the protection of his ministers give me sufficient means of living. I have the outward bearing of a very ordinary man. I go to the soirees in Paris like any other empty-headed fop; and if I drive, the wheels of my carriage do not roll on the solid ground, absolutely indispensable in these days, of property invested in the funds. But if I am not rich, neither do I have the reliefs and consolations of life in a garret, the toil uncomprehended, the fame in penury, which belong to men who are worth far more than I,—D'Arthez, for instance.

Ah! what prosaic conclusions will your young enthusiasm find to these enchanting visions. Let us stop here. If I have had the happiness of seeming to you a terrestrial paragon, you have been to me a thing of light and a beacon, like those stars that shine for a moment and disappear. May nothing ever tarnish this episode of our lives. Were we to continue it I might love you; I might conceive one of those mad passions which rend all obstacles, which light fires in the heart whose violence is greater than their duration. And suppose I succeeded in pleasing you? we should end our tale in the common vulgar way,—marriage, a household, children, Belise and Henriette Chrysale together!—could it be? Therefore, adieu.



CHAPTER X. THE MARRIAGE OF SOULS

To Monsieur de Canalis:

My Friend,—Your letter gives me as much pain as pleasure. But perhaps some day we shall find nothing but pleasure in writing to each other. Understand me thoroughly. The soul speaks to God and asks him for many things; he is mute. I seek to obtain in you the answers that God does not make to me. Cannot the friendship of Mademoiselle de Gournay and Montaigne be revived in us? Do you not remember the household of Sismonde de Sismondi in Geneva? The most lovely home ever known, as I have been told; something like that of the Marquis de Pescaire and his wife,—happy to old age. Ah! friend, is it impossible that two hearts, two harps, should exist as in a symphony, answering each other from a distance, vibrating with delicious melody in unison? Man alone of all creation is in himself the harp, the musician, and the listener. Do you think to find me uneasy and jealous like ordinary women? I know that you go into the world and meet the handsomest and the wittiest women in Paris. May I not suppose that some one of those mermaids has deigned to clasp you in her cold and scaly arms, and that she has inspired the answer whose prosaic opinions sadden me? There is something in life more beautiful than the garlands of Parisian coquetry; there grows a flower far up those Alpine peaks called men of genius, the glory of humanity, which they fertilize with the dews their lofty heads draw from the skies. I seek to cultivate that flower and make it bloom; for its wild yet gentle fragrance can never fail,—it is eternal.

Do me the honor to believe that there is nothing low or commonplace in me. Were I Bettina, for I know to whom you allude, I should never have become Madame von Arnim; and had I been one of Lord Byron's many loves, I should be at this moment in a cloister. You have touched me to the quick. You do not know me, but you shall know me. I feel within me something that is sublime, of which I dare speak without vanity. God has put into my soul the roots of that Alpine flower born on the summits of which I speak, and I cannot plant it in an earthen pot upon my window-sill and see it die. No, that glorious flower-cup, single in its beauty, intoxicating in its fragrance, shall not be dragged through the vulgarities of life! it is yours—yours, before any eye has blighted it, yours forever! Yes, my poet, to you belong my thoughts,—all, those that are secret, those that are gayest; my heart is yours without reserve and with its infinite affection. If you should personally not please me, I shall never marry. I can live in the life of the heart, I can exist on your mind, your sentiments; they please me, and I will always be what I am, your friend. Yours is a noble moral nature; I have recognized it, I have appreciated it, and that suffices me. In that is all my future. Do not laugh at a young and pretty handmaiden who shrinks not from the thought of being some day the old companion of a poet,—a sort of mother perhaps, or a housekeeper; the guide of his judgment and a source of his wealth. This handmaiden—so devoted, so precious to the lives of such as you—is Friendship, pure, disinterested friendship, to whom you will tell all, who listens and sometimes shakes her head; who knits by the light of the lamp and waits to be present when the poet returns home soaked with rain, or vexed in mind. Such shall be my destiny if I do not find that of a happy wife attached forever to her husband; I smile alike at the thought of either fate. Do you believe France will be any the worse if Mademoiselle d'Este does not give it two or three sons, and never becomes a Madame Vilquin-something-or-other? As for me, I shall never be an old maid. I shall make myself a mother, by taking care of others and by my secret co-operation in the existence of a great man, to whom also I shall carry all my thoughts and all my earthly efforts.

I have the deepest horror of commonplaceness. If I am free, if I am rich (and I know that I am young and pretty), I will never belong to any ninny just because he is the son of a peer of France, nor to a merchant who could ruin himself and me in a day, nor to a handsome creature who would be a sort of woman in the household, nor to a man of any kind who would make me blush twenty times a day for being his. Make yourself easy on that point. My father adores my wishes; he will never oppose them. If I please my poet, and he pleases me, the glorious structure of our love shall be built so high as to be inaccessible to any kind of misfortune. I am an eaglet; and you will see it in my eyes.

I shall not repeat what I have already said, but I will put its substance in the least possible number of words, and confess to you that I should be the happiest of women if I were imprisoned by love as I am now imprisoned by the wish and will of a father. Ah! my friend, may we bring to a real end the romance that has come to us through the first exercise of my will: listen to its argument:—

A young girl with a lively imagination, locked up in a tower, is weary with longing to run loose in the park where her eyes only are allowed to rove. She invents a way to loosen her bars; she jumps from the casement; she scales the park wall; she frolics along the neighbor's sward—it is the Everlasting comedy. Well, that young girl is my soul, the neighbor's park is your genius. Is it not all very natural? Was there ever a neighbor that did not complain that unknown feet broke down his trellises? I leave it to my poet to answer.

But does the lofty reasoner after the fashion of Moliere want still better reasons? Well, here they are. My dear Geronte, marriages are usually made in defiance of common-sense. Parents make inquiries about a young man. If the Leander—who is supplied by some friend, or caught in a ball-room—is not a thief, and has no visible rent in his reputation, if he has the necessary fortune, if he comes from a college or a law-school and so fulfils the popular ideas of education, and if he wears his clothes with a gentlemanly air, he is allowed to meet the young lady, whose mother has ordered her to guard her tongue, to let no sign of her heart or soul appear on her face, which must wear the smile of a danseuse finishing a pirouette. These commands are coupled with instructions as to the danger of revealing her real character, and the additional advice of not seeming alarmingly well educated. If the settlements have all been agreed upon, the parents are good-natured enough to let the pair see each other for a few moments; they are allowed to talk or walk together, but always without the slightest freedom, and knowing that they are bound by rigid rules. The man is as much dressed up in soul as he is in body, and so is the young girl. This pitiable comedy, mixed with bouquets, jewels, and theatre-parties is called "paying your addresses." It revolts me: I desire that actual marriage shall be the result of a previous and long marriage of souls. A young girl, a woman, has throughout her life only this one moment when reflection, second sight, and experience are necessary to her. She plays her liberty, her happiness, and she is not allowed to throw the dice; she risks her all, and is forced to be a mere spectator. I have the right, the will, the power to make my own unhappiness, and I use them, as did my mother, who, won by beauty and led by instinct, married the most generous, the most liberal, the most loving of men. I know that you are free, a poet, and noble-looking. Be sure that I should not have chosen one of your brothers in Apollo who was already married. If my mother was won by beauty, which is perhaps the spirit of form, why should I not be attracted by the spirit and the form united? Shall I not know you better by studying you in this correspondence than I could through the vulgar experience of "receiving your addresses"? This is the question, as Hamlet says.

But my proceedings, dear Chrysale, have at least the merit of not binding us personally. I know that love has its illusions, and every illusion its to-morrow. That is why there are so many partings among lovers vowed to each other for life. The proof of love lies in two things,—suffering and happiness. When, after passing through these double trials of life two beings have shown each other their defects as well as their good qualities, when they have really observed each other's character, then they may go to their grave hand in hand. My dear Argante, who told you that our little drama thus begun was to have no future? In any case shall we not have enjoyed the pleasures of our correspondence?

I await your orders, monseigneur, and I am with all my heart,

Your handmaiden,

O. d'Este M.

To Mademoiselle O. d'Este M.,—You are a witch, a spirit, and I love you! Is that what you desire of me, most original of girls? Perhaps you are only seeking to amuse your provincial leisure with the follies which are you able to make a poet commit. If so, you have done a bad deed. Your two letters have enough of the spirit of mischief in them to force this doubt into the mind of a Parisian. But I am no longer master of myself; my life, my future depend on the answer you will make me. Tell me if the certainty of an unbounded affection, oblivious of all social conventions, will touch you,—if you will suffer me to seek you. There is anxiety enough and uncertainty enough in the question as to whether I can personally please you. If your reply is favorable I change my life, I bid adieu to all the irksome pleasures which we have the folly to call happiness. Happiness, my dear and beautiful unknown, is what you dream it to be,—a fusion of feelings, a perfect accordance of souls, the imprint of a noble ideal (such as God does permit us to form in this low world) upon the trivial round of daily life whose habits we must needs obey, a constancy of heart more precious far than what we call fidelity. Can we say that we make sacrifices when the end in view is our eternal good, the dream of poets, the dream of maidens, the poem which, at the entrance of life when thought essays its wings, each noble intellect has pondered and caressed only to see it shivered to fragments on some stone of stumbling as hard as it is vulgar?—for to the great majority of men, the foot of reality steps instantly on that mysterious egg so seldom hatched.

I cannot speak to you any more of myself; not of my past life, nor of my character, nor of an affection almost maternal on one side, filial on mine, which you have already seriously changed—an effect upon my life which must explain my use of the word "sacrifice." You have already rendered me forgetful, if not ungrateful; does that satisfy you? Oh, speak! Say to me one word, and I will love you till my eyes close in death, as the Marquis de Pescaire loved his wife, as Romeo loved Juliet, and faithfully. Our life will be, for me at least, that "felicity untroubled" which Dante made the very element of his Paradiso,—a poem far superior to his Inferno. Strange, it is not myself that I doubt in the long reverie through which, like you, I follow the windings of a dreamed existence; it is you. Yes, dear, I feel within me the power to love, and to love endlessly,—to march to the grave with gentle slowness and a smiling eye, with my beloved on my arm, and with never a cloud upon the sunshine of our souls. Yes, I dare to face our mutual old age, to see ourselves with whitening heads, like the venerable historian of Italy, inspired always with the same affection but transformed in soul by our life's seasons. Hear me, I can no longer be your friend only. Though Chrysale, Geronte, and Argante re-live, you say, in me, I am not yet old enough to drink from the cup held to my lips by the sweet hands of a veiled woman without a passionate desire to tear off the domino and the mask and see the face. Either write me no more, or give me hope. Let me see you, or let me go. Must I bid you adieu? Will you permit me to sign myself,

Your Friend?

To Monsieur de Canalis,—What flattery! with what rapidity is the grave Anselme transformed into a handsome Leander! To what must I attribute such a change? to this black which I put upon this white? to these ideas which are to the flowers of my soul what a rose drawn in charcoal is to the roses in the garden? Or is it to a recollection of the young girl whom you took for me, and who is personally as like me as a waiting-woman is like her mistress? Have we changed roles? Have I the sense? have you the fancy? But a truce with jesting.

Your letter has made me know the elating pleasures of the soul; the first that I have known outside of my family affections. What, says a poet, are the ties of blood which are so strong in ordinary minds, compared to those divinely forged within us by mysterious sympathies? Let me thank you—no, we must not thank each other for such things—but God bless you for the happiness you have given me; be happy in the joy you have shed into my soul. You explain to me some of the apparent injustices in social life. There is something, I know not what, so dazzling, so virile in glory, that it belongs only to man; God forbids us women to wear its halo, but he makes love our portion, giving us the tenderness which soothes the brow scorched by his lightnings. I have felt my mission, and you have now confirmed it.

Sometimes, my friend, I rise in the morning in a state of inexpressible sweetness; a sort of peace, tender and divine, gives me an idea of heaven. My first thought is then like a benediction. I call these mornings my little German wakings, in opposition to my Southern sunsets, full of heroic deeds, battles, Roman fetes and ardent poems. Well, after reading your letter, so full of feverish impatience, I felt in my heart all the freshness of my celestial wakings, when I love the air about me and all nature, and fancy that I am destined to die for one I love. One of your poems, "The Maiden's Song," paints these delicious moments, when gaiety is tender, when aspiration is a need; it is one of my favorites. Do you want me to put all my flatteries into one?—well then, I think you worthy to be me!

Your letter, though short, enables me to read within you. Yes, I have guessed your tumultuous struggles, your piqued curiosity, your projects; but I do not yet know you well enough to satisfy your wishes. Hear me, dear; the mystery in which I am shrouded allows me to use that word, which lets you see to the bottom of my heart. Hear me: if we once meet, adieu to our mutual comprehension! Will you make a compact with me? Was the first disadvantageous to you? But remember it won you my esteem, and it is a great deal, my friend, to gain an admiration lined throughout with esteem. Here is the compact: write me your life in a few words; then tell me what you do in Paris, day by day, with no reservations, and as if you were talking to some old friend. Well, having done that, I will take a step myself—I will see you, I promise you that. And it is a great deal.

This, dear, is no intrigue, no adventure; no gallantry, as you men say, can come of it, I warn you frankly. It involves my life, and more than that,—something that causes me remorse for the many thoughts that fly to you in flocks—it involves my father's and my mother's life. I adore them, and my choice must please them; they must find a son in you.

Tell me, to what extent can the superb spirits of your kind, to whom God has given the wings of his angels, without always adding their amiability,—how far can they bend under a family yoke, and put up with its little miseries? That is a text I have meditated upon. Ah! though I said to my heart before I came to you, Forward! Onward! it did not tremble and palpitate any the less on the way; and I did not conceal from myself the stoniness of the path nor the Alpine difficulties I had to encounter. I thought of all in my long, long meditations. Do I not know that eminent men like you have known the love they have inspired quite as well as that which they themselves have felt; that they have had many romances in their lives,—you particularly, who send forth those airy visions of your soul that women rush to buy? Yet still I cried to myself, "Onward!" because I have studied, more than you give me credit for, the geography of the great summits of humanity, which you tell me are so cold. Did you not say that Goethe and Byron were the colossi of egoism and poetry? Ah, my friend, there you shared a mistake into which superficial minds are apt to fall; but in you perhaps it came from generosity, false modesty, or the desire to escape from me. Vulgar minds may mistake the effect of toil for the development of personal character, but you must not. Neither Lord Byron, nor Goethe, nor Walter Scott, nor Cuvier, nor any inventor, belongs to himself, he is the slave of his idea. And this mysterious power is more jealous than a woman; it sucks their blood, it makes them live, it makes them die for its sake. The visible developments of their hidden existence do seem, in their results, like egotism; but who shall dare to say that the man who has abnegated self to give pleasure, instruction, or grandeur to his epoch, is an egoist? Is a mother selfish when she immolates all things to her child? Well, the detractors of genius do not perceive its fecund maternity, that is all. The life of a poet is so perpetual a sacrifice that he needs a gigantic organization to bear even the ordinary pleasures of life. Therefore, into what sorrows may he not fall when, like Moliere, he wishes to live the life of feeling in its most poignant crises; to me, remembering his personal life, Moliere's comedy is horrible.