On the evening of the second of February, Dr. Verger received Angelique into his house. On that day and the next, upwards of one thousand persons came to see her. The constant experiments, which on that occasion were continued into the night, so fatigued the poor girl that the effects were sensibly diminished. Yet even then a small table brought near to her was thrown down so violently that it broke to pieces. It was of cherry-wood and varnished.

"In a general way," says Dr. Beaumont-Chardon, "I think the effects were more marked with me than with others, because I never evinced suspicion, and spared her all suffering; and I thought I could observe, that, although her powers were not under the control of her will, yet they were greatest when her mind was at ease, and she was in good spirits."[14] It appeared, also, that on waxed, or even tiled floors, but more especially on carpets, the effects were much less than on an earthen floor like that of the cottage where they originally showed themselves.

At first wooden furniture seemed exclusively affected; but at a later period metal also, as tongs and shovels, though in a less degree, appeared to be subjected to this extraordinary influence. When the child's powers were the most active, actual contact was not necessary. Articles of furniture and other small objects moved, if she accidentally approached them.

Up to the sixth of February she had been visited by more than two thousand persons, including distinguished physicians from the towns of Bellesme and Mortagne, and from all the neighborhood, magistrates, lawyers, ecclesiastics, and others. Some gave her money.

Then, in an evil hour, listening to mercenary suggestion, the parents conceived the idea that the poor girl might be made a source of pecuniary gain; and notwithstanding the advice and remonstrance of her true friends, M. de Faremont, Dr. Verger, M. Hebert, and others, her father resolved to exhibit her in Paris and elsewhere.

On the road they were occasionally subjected to serious annoyances. The report of the marvels above narrated had spread far and wide; and the populace, by hundreds, followed the carriage, hooting and abusing the sorceress.

Arrived at the French metropolis, they put up at the Hotel de Rennes, No. 23, Rue des Deux-Ecus. There, on the evening of the twelfth of February, Dr. Tanchon saw Angelique for the first time.

This gentleman soon verified, among other phenomena, the following. A chair, which he held firmly with both hands, was forced back as soon as she attempted to sit down; a middle-sized dining-table was displaced and repulsed by the touch of her dress; a large sofa, on which Dr. Tanchon was sitting, was pushed violently to the wall, as soon as the child sat down beside him. The Doctor remarked, that, when a chair was thrown back from under her, her clothes seemed attracted by it, and adhered to it, until it was repulsed beyond their reach; that the power was greater from the left hand than from the right, and that the former was warmer than the latter, and often trembled, agitated by unusual contractions; that the influence emanating from the girl was intermittent, not permanent, being usually most powerful from seven till nine o'clock in the evening, possibly influenced by the principal meal of the day, dinner, taken at six o'clock; that, if the girl was cut off from contact with the earth, either by placing her feet on a non-conductor or merely by keeping them raised from the ground, the power ceased, and she could remain seated quietly; that, during the paroxysm, if her left hand touched any object, she threw it from her as if it burned her, complaining that it pricked her, especially on the wrist; that, happening one day to touch accidentally the nape of her neck, the girl ran from him, crying out with pain; and that repeated observation assured him of the fact that there was, in the region of the cerebellum, and at the point where the superior muscles of the neck are inserted in the cranium, a point so acutely sensitive that the child would not suffer there the lightest touch; and, finally, that the girl's pulse, often irregular, usually varied from one hundred and five to one hundred and twenty beats a minute.

A curious observation made by this physician was, that, at the moment of greatest action, a cool breeze, or gaseous current, seemed to flow from her person. This he felt on his hand, as distinctly as one feels the breath during an ordinary expiration.[15]

He remarked, also, that the intermittence of the child's power seemed to depend in a measure on her state of mind. She was often in fear lest some one should touch her from behind; the phenomena themselves agitated her; in spite of a month's experience, each time they occurred she drew back, as if alarmed. And all such agitations seemed to diminish her power. When she was careless, and her mind was diverted to something else, the demonstrations were always the most energetic.

From the north pole of a magnet, if it touched her finger, she received a sharp shock; while the contact of the south pole produced upon her no effect whatever. This effect was uniform; and the girl could always tell which pole touched her.

Dr. Tanchon ascertained from the mother that no indications of puberty had yet manifested themselves in her daughter's case.

Such is a summary of the facts, embodied in a report drawn up by Dr. Tanchon on the fifteenth of February. He took it with him on the evening of the sixteenth to the Academy of Sciences, and asked M. Arago if he had seen the electric girl, and if he intended to bring her case that evening to the notice of the Academy. Arago replied to both questions in the affirmative, adding,—"If you have seen her, I shall receive from you with pleasure any communication you may have to make."

Dr. Tanchon then read to him the report; and at the session of that evening, Arago presented it, stated what he himself had seen, and proposed that a committee should be appointed to examine the case. His statement was received by his audience with many expressions of incredulity; but they acceded to his suggestion by naming, from the members of the Academy, a committee of six.

It appears that Arago had had but a single opportunity, and for the brief space of less than half an hour, of witnessing the phenomena to which he referred. M. Cholet, the speculator who advanced to her parents the money necessary to bring Angelique to Paris, had taken the girl and her parents to the Observatory, where Arago then was, who, at the earnest instance of Cholet, agreed to test the child's powers at once. There were present on this occasion, besides Arago, MM. Mathieu and Laugier, and an astronomer of the Observatory, named M. Goujon.

The experiment of the chair perfectly succeeded. It was projected with great violence against the wall, while the girl was thrown on the other side. This experiment was repeated several times by Arago himself, and each time with the same result. He could not, with all his force, hinder the chair from being thrown back. Then MM. Goujon and Laugier attempted to hold it, but with as little success. Finally, M. Goujon seated himself first on half the chair, and at the moment when Angelique was taking her seat beside him the chair was thrown down.

When Angelique approached a small table, at the instant that her apron touched it, it was repulsed.

These particulars were given in all the medical journals of the day,[16] as well as in the "Journal des Debats" of February 18, and the "Courrier Francais" of February 19, 1846.

The minutes of the session of the Academy touch upon them in the most studiously brief and guarded manner. They say, the sitting lasted only some minutes. They admit, however, the main fact, namely, that the movements of the chair, occurring as soon as Angelique seated herself upon it, were most violent ("d'une extreme violence"). But as to the other experiment, they allege that M. Arago did not clearly perceive the movement of the table by the mere intervention of the girl's apron, though the other observers did.[17] It is added, that the girl produced no effect on the magnetic needle.

Some accounts represent Arago as expressing himself much more decidedly. He may have done so, in addressing the Academy; but I find no official record of his remarks.

He did not assist at the sittings of the committee that had been appointed at his suggestion; but he signed their report, having confidence, as he declared, in their judgment, and sharing their mistrust.

That report, made on the ninth of March, is to the effect, that they witnessed no repulsive agency on a table or similar object; that they saw no effect produced by the girl's arm on a magnetic needle; that the girl did not possess the power to distinguish between the two poles of a magnet; and, finally, that the only result they obtained was sudden and violent movements of chairs on which the child was seated. They add, "Serious suspicions having arisen as to the manner in which these movements were produced, the committee decided to submit them to a strict examination, declaring, in plain terms, that they would endeavor to discover what part certain adroit and concealed manoeuvres of the hands and feet had in their production. From that moment we were informed that the young girl had lost her attractive and repulsive powers, and that we should be notified when they reappeared. Many days have elapsed; no notice has been sent us; yet we learn that Mademoiselle Cottin daily exhibits her experiments in private circles." And they conclude by recommending "that the communications addressed to them in her case be considered as not received" ("comme non avenues"). In a word, they officially branded the poor girl as an impostor.

That, without any inquiry into the antecedents of the patient, without the slightest attempt to obtain from those medical men who had followed up the case from its commencement what they had observed, and that, in advance of the strict examination which it was their duty to make, they should insult the unfortunate girl by declaring that they intended to find out the tricks with which she had been attempting to deceive them,—all this is not the less lamentable because it is common among those, who sit in the high places of science.

If these Academicians had been moved by a simple love of truth, not urged by a self-complacent eagerness to display their own sagacity, they might have found a more probable explanation of the cessation, after their first session, of some of Angelique's chief powers.

Such an explanation is furnished to us by Dr. Tanchon, who was present, by invitation, at the sittings of the committee.

He informs us that, at their first sitting, held at the Jardin des Plantes, on the seventeenth of February, after the committee had witnessed, twice repeated, the violent displacement of a chair held with all his strength by one of their number, (M. Rayet,) instead of following up similar experiments and patiently waiting to observe the phenomena as they presented themselves, they proceeded at once to satisfy their own preconceptions. They brought Angelique into contact with a voltaic battery. Then they placed on the bare arm of the child a dead frog, anatomically prepared after the manner of Matteucci, that is, the skin removed, and the animal dissected so as to expose the lumbar nerves. By a galvanic current, they caused this frog to move, apparently to revive, on the girl's arm. The effect upon her may be imagined. The ignorant child, terrified out of her senses, spoke of nothing else the rest of the day, dreamed of dead frogs coming to life all night, and began to talk eagerly about it again the first thing the next morning.[18] From that time her attractive and repulsive powers gradually declined.

In addition to the privilege of much accumulated learning, in addition to the advantages of varied scientific research, we must have something else, if we would advance yet farther in true knowledge. We must be imbued with a simple, faithful spirit, not presuming, not preoccupied. We must be willing to sit down at the feet of Truth, humble, patient, docile, single-hearted. We must not be wise in our own conceit; else the fool's chance is better than ours, to avoid error, and distinguish truth.

M. Cohu, a medical man of Mortagne, writing, in March, 1846, in reply to some inquiries of Dr. Tanchon, after stating that the phenomenon of the chair, repeatedly observed by himself, had been witnessed also by more than a thousand persons, adds,—"It matters not what name we may give to this; the important point is, to verify the reality of a repulsive agency, and of one that is distinctly marked; the effects it is impossible to deny. We may assign to this agency what seat we please, in the cerebellum, in the pelvis, or elsewhere; the fact is material, visible, incontestable. Here in the Province, Sir, we are not very learned, but we are often very mistrustful. In the present case we have examined, reexamined, taken every possible precaution against deception; and the more we have seen, the deeper has been our conviction of the reality of the phenomenon. Let the Academy decide as it will. We have seen; it has not seen. We are, therefore, in a condition to decide better than it can, I do not say what cause was operating, but what effects presented themselves, under circumstances that remove even the shadow of a doubt."[19]

M. Hebert, too, states a truth of great practical value, when he remarks, that, in the examination of phenomena of so fugitive and seemingly capricious a character, involving the element of vitality, and the production of which at any given moment depends not upon us, we "ought to accommodate ourselves to the nature of the fact, not insist that it should accommodate itself to us."

For myself, I do not pretend to offer any positive opinion as to what was ultimately the real state of the case. I do not assume to determine whether the attractive and repulsive phenomena, after continuing for upwards of a month, happened to be about to cease at the very time the committee began to observe them,—or whether the harsh suspicious and terror-inspiring tests of these gentlemen so wrought on the nervous system of an easily daunted and superstitious girl, that some of her abnormal powers, already on the wane, presently disappeared,—or whether the poor child, it may be at the instigation of her parents, left without the means of support,[20] really did at last simulate phenomena that once were real, manufacture a counterfeit of what was originally genuine. I do not take upon myself to decide between these various hypotheses. I but express my conviction, that, for the first few weeks at least, the phenomena actually occurred,—and that, had not the gentlemen of the Academy been very unfortunate or very injudicious, they could not have failed to perceive their reality. And I seek in vain some apology for the conduct of these learned Academicians, called upon to deal with a case so fraught with interest to science, when I find them, merely because they do not at once succeed in personally verifying sufficient to convince them of the existence of certain novel phenomena, not only neglecting to seek evidence elsewhere, but even rejecting that which a candid observer had placed within their reach.

This appears to have been the judgment of the medical public of Paris. The "Gazette des Hopitaux," in its issue of March 17, 1846, protests against the committee's mode of ignoring the matter, declaring that it satisfied nobody. "Not received!" said the editor (alluding to the words of the report); "that would be very convenient, if it were only possible!"[21]

And the "Gazette Medicale" very justly remarks,—"The non-appearance of the phenomena at such or such a given moment proves nothing in itself. It is but a negative fact, and, as such, cannot disprove the positive fact of their appearance at another moment, if that be otherwise satisfactorily attested." And the "Gazette" goes on to argue, from the nature of the facts, that it is in the highest degree improbable that they should have been the result of premeditated imposture.

The course adopted by the Academy's committee is the less defensible, because, though the attractive and repulsive phenomena ceased after their first session, other phenomena, sufficiently remarkable, still continued. As late as the tenth of March, the day after the committee made their report, Angelique being then at Dr. Tanchon's house, a table touched by her apron, while her hands were behind her and her feet fifteen inches distant from it, was raised entirely from the ground, though no part of her body touched it. This was witnessed, besides Dr. Tanchon, by Dr. Charpentier-Mericourt, who had stationed himself so as to observe it from the side. He distinctly saw the table rise, with all four legs, from the floor, and he noticed that the two legs of the table farthest from the girl rose first. He declares, that, during the whole time, he perceived not the slightest movement either of her hands or her feet; and he regarded deception, under the circumstances, to be utterly impossible.[22]

On the twelfth of March, in presence of five physicians, Drs. Amedee Latour, Lachaise, Deleau, Pichard, and Soule, the same phenomenon occurred twice.

And yet again on the fourteenth, four physicians being present, the table was raised a single time, but with startling force. It was of mahogany, with two drawers, and was four feet long by two feet and a half wide. We may suppose it to have weighed some fifty or sixty pounds; so that the girl's power, in this particular, appears to have much decreased since that day, about the end of January, when M. de Faremont saw repeatedly raised from the ground a block of one hundred and fifty pounds' weight, with three men seated on it,—in all, not less than five to six hundred pounds.

By the end of March the whole of the phenomena had almost totally ceased; and it does not appear that they have ever shown themselves since that time.

Dr. Tanchon considered them electrical. M. de Faremont seems to have doubted that they were strictly so. In a letter, dated Monti-Mer, November 1, 1846, and addressed to the Marquis de Mirville, that gentleman says,—"The electrical effects I have seen produced in this case varied so much,—since under certain circumstances good conductors operated, and then again, in others, no effect was observable,—that, if one follows the ordinary laws of electrical phenomena, one finds evidence both for and against. I am well convinced, that, in the case of this child, there is some power other than electricity."[23]

But as my object is to state facts, rather than to moot theories, I leave this debatable ground to others, and here close a narrative, compiled with much care, of this interesting and instructive case. I was the rather disposed to examine it critically and report it in detail, because it seems to suggest valuable hints, if it does not afford some clue, as to the character of subsequent manifestations in the United States and elsewhere.

* * * * *

This case is not an isolated one. My limits however, prevent me from here reproducing, as I might, sundry other recent narratives more or less analogous to that of the girl Cottin. To one only shall I briefly advert: a case related in the Paris newspaper, the "Siecle," of March 4, 1846, published when all Paris was talking of Arago's statement in regard to the electric girl.

It is there given on the authority of a principal professor in one of the Royal Colleges of Paris. The case, very similar to that of Angelique Cottin, occurred in the month of December previous, in the person of a young girl, not quite fourteen years old, apprenticed to a colorist, in the Rue Descartes. The occurrences were quite as marked as those in the Cottin case. The professor, seated one day near the girl, was raised from the floor, along with the chair on which he sat. There were occasional knockings. The phenomena commenced December 2, 1845; and lasted twelve days.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Journal du Magnetisme, for 1846, pp. 80-84.

[2] Pp. 89-106.

[3] In Dr. Tanchon's pamphlet, pp. 46-53.

[4] Enquete, sur l'Authenticite des Phenomenes Electriques d'Angelique Cottin, par le Dr. Tanchon. Bailliere, Paris, 1846.

[5] See Minutes of the Academy, Session of Monday, February 16, 1846.

[6] Enquete, etc., p. 49.

[7] Ibid. p. 40.

[8] Ibid. p. 42.

[9] Ibid. p. 22.

[10] Enquete, etc., p. 22.

[11] Ibid. p. 43.

[12] Ibid. p. 47.

[13] Ibid. p. 49.

[14] Enquete, etc., p. 35. They were greater, also, after meals than before; so Hebert observed. p. 22.

[15] Enquete, etc., p. 5.

[16] I extract them from the "Journal des Connaissances Medico-Chirurgicales," No. 3.

[17] The words are,—"M. Arago n'a pas apercu nettement les agitations annoncees comme etant engendrees a distance, par l'intermediaire d'un tablier, sur un gueridon en bois: d'autres observateurs ont trouve que les agitations etaient sensibles."

[18] Enquete, etc., p. 25.

[19] Enquete, etc., p. 36.

[20] M. Cholet, the individual who, in the hope of gain, furnished the funds to bring Angelique to Paris for exhibition, as soon as he perceived that the speculation was a failure, left the girl and her parents in that city, dependent on the charity of strangers for daily support, and for the means of returning to their humble home.—Enquete, etc., p. 24.

[21] "Non avenues! ce serait commode, si c'etait possible!"

[22] Enquete, etc., p. 30.

[23] Des Esprits et de leurs Manifestations Fluidiques, par le Marquis de Mirville, pp. 379, 380.



LITERARY LIFE IN PARIS.

THE DRAWING-ROOM.

PART II.

It was at this same period of time I made the acquaintance of Monsieur Edmond About. When I met him he had just appeared as an author, and his friends everywhere declared that Voltaire's mantle had fallen on his shoulders. He had, like Voltaire, discovered instantly that mankind were divided into hammers and anvils, and he determined to be one of the hammers. He began his career by ridiculing a poetical country, Greece, whose guest he had been, and whose sovereign and ministers had received him with confidence,—repaying three years of hospitality by a satire of three hundred pages. "Greece and the Greeks" was translated into several languages. This edifying publication, which put the laughers on his side, was followed by a different sort of work, which came near producing on this budding reputation the effect of an April frost upon an almond-tree in blossom. Voltaire's heir had found no better mode of writing natural and true novels (so the scandalous chronicle said) than to copy an original correspondence, and indiscreet "detectives" of letters menaced him with publishing the whole Italian work from which he "conveyed" the best part of "Tolla." All the literary world cried, Havoc! upon the sprightly fellow laden with Italian relics. It was a critical moment in his life.

Monsieur Edmond About was introduced to me by a fascinating lady;—who can resist the charms of the other sex? I saw before me a man some eight-and-twenty years old, of a slender figure; his features were irregular, but intellectual, and he looked at people like an excessively near-sighted person who abused the advantages of being near-sighted. He wore no spectacles. His eyes were small, cold, bright, and were well wadded with such thick eyebrows and eyelashes it seemed these must absorb them. I subsequently found, in a strange American book,[24] some descriptions which may be applied to his odd expression of eye. Monsieur Edmond About's mouth was sneering and sensual, and even then affected Voltaire's sarcastic grimace. His bitter and equivocal smile put you in mind of the grinding of an epigram-mill. One could detect in his attitude, his physiognomy, and his language, that obsequious malice, that familiarity, at the same time flattering and jeering, which Voltaire turned to such good account in his commerce with the great people of his day, and which his disciple was learning to practise in his intercourse with the powerful of these times,—the parvenus and the wealthy. I was struck by the face of this college Macchiavelli: on it were written the desire of success and the longing to enjoy; the calculations of the ambitious man were allied with the maliciousness of the giddy child. Of course he overwhelmed me with compliments and flattery. He had, or thought he had, use for me. I benevolently became the defender of the poor calumniated fellow in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," just as one undertakes out of pure kindness of heart to protect the widow and the orphan. Monsieur Edmond About thanked me orally with a flood of extraordinary gratitude; but he took good care to avoid writing a word upon the subject. A letter might have laid him under engagements, and might have embarrassed him one day or another. Whereas he aimed to be both a diplomatist and a literary man. He practised the art of good writing, and the art of turning it to the best advantage.

Some months after this he brought out a piece called "Guillery," at the French Comedy. The first night it was played, there was a hail-storm of hisses. No claqueur ever remembered to have heard the like before. The charitable dramatic critics—delicate fellows, who cannot bear to see people possess talents without their permission and despite them—attacked the piece as blood-hounds the fugitive murderer. It seemed as if Monsieur Edmond About was a ruined man, who could never dare hold up his head again. He resisted the death-warrant. He had friends in influential houses. He soon found lint enough for his wounds. The next winter the town heard that Monsieur Edmond About's wounds had been well dressed and were cured, and that he was going to write in "Figaro." The amateurs of scandal began at once to reckon upon the gratification of their tastes. They were not mistaken. The moment his second contribution to "Figaro" appeared, it became evident to all that he had taken this warlike position at the advanced posts of light literature solely to shoot at those persons who had wounded his vanity. For three months he kept up such a sharp fire that every week numbered its dead. Such carnage had never been seen. Everybody was severely wounded: Jules Janin, Paulin Limayrac, Champfleury, Barbey d'Aurevilly, and a host of others. Everybody said, (a thrill of terror ran through them as they spoke,)—There is going to be one of these mornings a terrible butchery: that imprudent Edmond About will have at least ten duels on his hands. Not a bit of it! Not a bit of it! There were negotiations, embassies, explanations exchanged which explained nothing, and reparations made which repaired nothing. But there was not a shot fired. There was not a drop of blood drawn. O Lord! no! Third parties intervened, and demonstrated to the offended parties, that, when Monsieur Edmond About called them stupid boobies, humbugs, tumblers, he had no intention whatever of offending them. Good gracious! far otherwise! In fine, one day the farce was played, the curtain fell upon the well-spanked critics, and all this little company (so full of talents and chivalry!) went arm-in-arm, the insulter and the insulted, to breakfast together at Monsieur About's rooms, where, between a dozen oysters and a bottle of Sauterne, he asked his victims what they thought of some Titians he had just discovered, and which he wished to sell to the Louvre for a small fortune,—Titians which were not painted even by Mignard. The insulter and the insulted fell into each other's arms before these daubs, and they parted, each delighted with the other. These pseudo-Titians were for Monsieur About his Alcibiades's dog's-tail. He spent one every month. Literary, picturesque, romanesque, historical, agricultural, Greek, and Roman questions were never subjects to him: he considered them merely advertisements to puff the transcendent merits of Edmond About. Before he left "Figaro" he determined to show me what a grateful fellow he was. He made me the mark for all his epigrams, and I paid the price of peace with the others. I have heard, since then, that Monsieur Edmond About has made his way rapidly in the world. He is rich. He has the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. He excels in writing pamphlets. He is not afraid of the most startling truths. He writes about the Pope like a man who is not afraid of the spiritual powers, and he has demonstrated that Prince Napoleon won the Battle of the Alma and organized Algeria.

* * * * *

Among the numerous details of my grandeur and my decline, none exhibit in a clearer light our literary manners and customs than the history of my relations with Monsieur Louis Ulbach, the virtuous author, now, of "L'Homme aux Cinq Louis d'Or," "Suzanne Duchemin," "Monsieur et Madame Fernel," and other tales, which he hopes to see crowned by the French Academy. Monsieur Louis Ulbach at first belonged to a triumvirate which pretended to stand above the mob of democratic writers; and of a truth Monsieur Maxime du Camp and Monsieur Laurent Pichat, his two leaders, had none of those smoking-cafe vulgarities which have procured so many subscribers to the "Siecle" newspaper. Both poets, Laurent Pichat with remarkable loftiness, Maxime du Camp with bizarre energy, intent upon an ideal which democracy has a right to pursue, since it has not yet found it, men of the world, capable of discussing in full dress the most perplexed questions of Socialism, they accept none of those party-chains which so often bow down the noblest minds before idols made of plaster or of clay. Besides, both of them were known by admirable acts of generosity. There were in this triumvirate such dashes of aristocracy and of revolution that they were called "the Poles of literature."

Of course, when the storm burst which I had raised by my irreverent attacks on De Beranger, these gentlemen separated from their political friends, and complimented me. One of them even addressed me a letter, in which I read these words, which assuredly I would not have written: "That stupid De Beranger." There was a sort of alliance between us. Monsieur Louis Ulbach celebrated it by publishing in his magazine, "La Revue de Paris," an article in my honor, in which, after the usual reserves, and after declaring war upon my doctrines, he vowed my prose to be "fascinating," and complained of being so bewitched as to believe, at times, that he was converted to the cause of the throne and of the altar. This epithet, "fascinating," in turn fascinated me; and I thought that my prose was, like some serpent, about to fascinate all the butcher-birds and ducks of the democratic marsh. A year passed away; these fine friendships cooled: 't is the fate of these factitious tendernesses. With winter my second volume appeared, and Monsieur Louis Ulbach set to work again; but this time he found me merely "ingenious." It was a good deal more than I merited, and I would willingly have contented myself with this phrase. Unfortunately, I could not forget the austere counsel of Monsieur Louis Veuillot, and at this very epoch, Monsieur Louis Ulbach, who as a novelist could merit a great deal of praise, took it into his head to publish a thick volume of transcendental criticism, in which he attacked everything I admired and lauded everything I detested. I confess that I felt extremely embarrassed: those nice little words "fascinating" and "ingenious" stuck in my mind. Monsieur Louis Ulbach himself extricated me from my perplexity. I had insufficiently praised his last novel. He wrote a third article on my third work. Alas! the honeymoon had set. The "fascinating" prose of 1855, the "ingenious" prose of 1856, had become in 1857, in the opinion of the same judge, and in the language of the same pen, "pretentious and tiresome." This sudden change of things and epithets restored me to liberty. I walked abroad in all my strength and independence, and I dissected Monsieur Louis Ulbach's thick volume with a severity which was still tempered by the courteous forms and the dimensions of my few newspaper-columns. A year passed away. My fourth work appeared. Note that these several volumes were not different works, but a series of volumes expressing the same opinions in the very same style; in fine, they were but one work. Note, too, that Monsieur Ulbach's "Revue de Paris" and "L'Assemblee Nationale," in which I wrote, were both suppressed by the government on the same day, which established between us a fraternity of martyrdom. All this was as nothing. Louis Ulbach, this very same Louis Ulbach, was employed by a newspaper where he was sure to please by insulting me, and the very first thing he did was to give me a kick, such a kick as twenty horses covered with sleigh-bells could not give. He called me "ignoramus," and wondered what "this fellow" meant by his literary drivelling. The most curious part of the whole business is, that he did not write the article, all he did was to sign it! Four years, and a scratch given his vanity, had proved enough to produce this change!

* * * * *

Shall I speak to you now of Henry Murger? I wrote this chapter of my Memoirs during his life. I should have suppressed it, did I feel the least drop of bitterness mingled with the recollection of the acts of petty ingratitude of this charming writer. But my object in writing this work is less to satisfy sterile revenge than to exhibit to you a corner of literary life in Paris in the nineteenth century.

In 1850 Henry Murger published a book in which the manners and customs of people who live by their wits were painted in colors scarcely likely to fascinate healthy imaginations. He declared to the world that the novitiate of our future great authors was nothing but one incessant hunt after a half-dollar and a mutton-chop. The world was told by others that Henry Murger had learned to paint this existence by actual experience. There were, however, in his book some excellent flashes of fancy and youth; besides, the public then had grown tired of interminable adventures and novels in fifty volumes. So Henry Murger's first work, "La Vie de Boheme," was very popular; but it did not swell his purse or improve his wardrobe. He was introduced to me, and I shall never forget the low bow he made me. I was afraid for one moment that his bald head would fall between his legs. This precocious baldness gave to his delicate and sad face a singular physiognomy. He looked not so much like a young old man as like an old young man. Henry Murger's warmest desire was to write in the celebrated and influential "Revue des Deux Mondes," which we all abuse so violently when we have reason to complain of it, and which has but to make a sign to us and we instantly fall into its arms. I was then on the best terms with the "Revue des Deux Mondes." Monsieur Castil-Blaze, being from the same neighborhood with me, had obtained a place for me in the "Revue," which belonged to his son-in-law, Monsieur Buloz. I promised Henry Murger to speak a good word for him. A favorable opportunity of doing so occurred a few days afterwards.

"I do not know what is to become of us," said Monsieur Buloz to me; "our old contributors are dying, and no new ones make their appearance."

"They appear, but you refuse to see them. There is Henry Murger, for instance; he has just written an amusing book, which is the most successful of the season."

"Henry Murger! And is it you, Count Armand de Pontmartin, the literary nobleman, the aristocratic writer, who wear (as the world avers) a white cravat and white kid gloves from the time you get up, (I confess I have never seen you with them,)—is it you who propose to me to admit Henry Murger as a contributor to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,'—Henry Murger, the ringleader of people who live by their wits?"

"Why shouldn't I? We live in a day when white cravats have to be very respectful to red cravats. Besides, nothing is too strange to happen; and I would not bet you that Murger does not write in 'Le Moniteur' before I do."

"If you think I had better admit Henry Murger, I consent; but remember what I say to you: It will be the source of annoyance to you."

The next day a hack bore Henry Murger and me from the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue du Helder to the office of the "Revue des Deux Mondes." We talked on the way. If I had had any illusions left of the poetical dreams and virginal thoughts of young men fevered by literary ambition, these few minutes would have been enough to dispel them all. Henry Murger thought of nothing upon earth but money. How was he going to pay his quarter's rent, or rather his two or three quarters' rent? for he was two or three quarters behindhand. He still had credit with this restaurateur, but he owed so much to such another that he dared not show his face there. He was over head and ears in debt to his tailor. He was afraid to think of the amount of money he owed his shoemaker. The list was long, and "bills payable" lamentable. To end this dreary balance-sheet, I took it into my head to deliver him a lecture on the morality of literature and the duty of literary men. "Art," said I to him, "must escape the materialism which oppresses and will at last absorb it. We romantics of 1828 were mistaken. We thought we were reacting against the pagan and mummified school of the eighteenth century and of the First Empire. We did not perceive that a revolutionary Art can under no circumstances turn to the profit of grand spiritual and Christian traditions, to the worship of the ideal, to the elevation of intellects. We did not see that it would be a little sooner or a little later discounted by literary demagogues, who, without tradition, without a creed, without any law except their own whims, would become the slaves of every base passion, and of all physical and moral deformities. It is not yet too late. Let us repair our faults. Let us elevate, let us regenerate literature; let us bear it aloft to those noble spheres where the soul soars in her native majes"——

I was declaiming with fire, my enthusiasm was becoming more and more heated, when Henry Murger interrupted me by asking,—"Do you think Monsieur Buloz will pay me in advance?"

This question produced on my missionary's enthusiasm the same effect a tub of cold water would have upon an excited poodle-dog.

"Monsieur Murger," I replied, without being too much disconcerted, "you will arrange those details with Monsieur Buloz. All I can do is to introduce you."

We reached the office. I was afraid I might embarrass Monsieur Buloz and Monsieur Murger, if I remained with them; I therefore took a book and went into the garden. I was called back in twenty minutes, and was briefly told that Henry Murger had engaged to write a novel for the "Revue." We went out together; but we had scarcely passed three doors, when Murger said hurriedly to me,—"I beg your pardon, I have forgotten something!"—and he went back to the office. I afterwards found out that this "something" was an advance of money which he asked for upon a novel whose first syllable he had not yet written.

If I dwell upon these miserable details, it is not (God forbid!) to insult laborious poverty, or talent forced to struggle against the hardships of life or the embarrassments of improvident, careless youth. No,—but there was here, and this is the reason I speak of it, the trade-mark of that literary living-by-the wits which had taken entire possession of Henry Murger, against which he had struggled in vain all his life long, and which at last crushed him in its feverish grasp. Living by the wits was to Henry Murger what roulette is to the gambler, what brandy is to the drunkard, what the traps of the police are to the knave and the burglar: he cursed it, but he could not quit it; he lived in it, he lived by it, he died of it. The first time I talked with Murger, and every subsequent conversation I had with him, brought up money incessantly, in every tone, in every form; and when, having become more familiar with what he called my squeamishness, he talked more frankly to me, I saw that he required to support him a sum of money three times greater than the annual income of which a whole family of office-holders in the country, or even in Paris, live with ease. This brought on him protests, bailiffs, constables, incredible complications, continual uneasiness, a hankering after pecuniary success, eternal complaints against publishers, magazine-editors, theatre-managers, anxious negotiations, an immense loss of time, an incredible wear-and-tear of brain, annoyances and cares enough to put every thought to flight and to dry every source of inspiration and of poetry. Remember that Henry Murger is one of the luckiest of the new men who have appeared within these last fifteen years, for he received the cross of the Legion of Honor, which, as everybody knows, is never given except to men who deserve it. Judge, then, what the others must be! Judge what must be the abortions, the disdained, the supernumeraries,—those who sleep in lodging-houses at two cents a night, or who eat their pitiful dinner outside the barrier-gate in a wretched eating-house patronized by hack-drivers,—those who kill themselves with charcoal, or who hang themselves, murdered by madness or by hunger, the two pale goddesses of atheistical literatures!

"Well," said I to Henry Murger, after we were once more seated in our carriage, "are you pleased with Monsieur Buloz?"

"Yes—and no. The most difficult step is taken. He allows me to contribute my masterpieces to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' and I shall never forget the immense service you have done me. Although you and I do not serve the same literary gods, I am henceforward yours to the death! But—the book-keeper is deusedly hard on trigger. Will you believe it? I asked him to advance me forty dollars, and he refused!"

We parted excellent friends, and he continued to assure me of his gratitude, until the carriage stopped at my door.

Years passed away. Henry Murger's promised novel was long coming to the "Revue des Deux Mondes." At last it came; another followed eighteen months afterwards; then he contributed a third. He displayed unquestionable talents; he commanded moderate success. He had been told by so many people that it was a hard matter to please the readers of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," that it was necessary for him to free himself from all his studios' fun, and everything tinctured with the petty press, that he really believed for true everything he heard, and appeared awkward in his movements. His students, his grisettes, and his young artists were all on their good behavior, but were not more droll. Marivaux had come down one more flight of stairs. Alfred de Musset had steeped the powder and the patches in a glass of Champagne wine. Henry Murger soaked them in a bottle of brandy or in a flagon of beer.

Henry Murger's gratitude, whenever we met, continued to exhale in enthusiastic hymns. I lost sight of him for some time. I was told that he lived somewhere in the Forest of Fontainebleau, to escape his creditors' pursuit. At the critical moment of my literary life, I read one morning in a petty newspaper a biting burlesque of which I was the grotesque hero: I figured (my name was given in full) as a member of a temperance society, whose members were pledged to total abstinence from the use of ideas, wit, and style; at one of our monthly dinners, we were said to have devoured Balzac at the first course, De Beranger for the roast, Michelet for a side-dish, and George Sand for dessert. The next day, and every day the petty paper appeared, the joke was renewed with all sorts of variations. It was evidently a "rig" run on me. This joke was signed every day "Marcel," which was the name of one of the heroes of Henry Murger's novel, "La Vie de Boheme"; but I was very far indeed from thinking that the man who was under so many "obligations" to me (as Henry Murger always declared himself to be) should have joined the ranks of my persecutors. A few days afterwards I heard, on the best authority, that Henry Murger was the author of these articles. I felt a deep chagrin at this discovery. Literary men constantly call Philistines and Prudhommes those who lay great stress upon the absence of moral sense as one of the great defects of the school of literature and art to which Murger and his friends belong; and yet there should be a name for such conduct as this, if for no other reason, for the sake of the culprits themselves,—as, when poor Murger acted in this way to me, he was as unconscious of what he did as when he raised heaven and earth to hunt down a dollar. He was not guilty of a black heart, it was only absolute deficiency of everything like moral sense. Henry Murger was under obligations to me, as he said constantly; I had introduced and recommended him to a man and a magazine that are, as of right, difficult in the choice of their contributors; I had, for his sake, conquered their prejudices, borne their reproaches. Whenever his novels appeared, I treated them with indulgence, and gave them praise without examining too particularly into their moral tendency, to the great scandal of my usual readers, and despite the scoldings Monsieur Louis Veuillot gave me. There never was the least coolness between Henry Murger and myself; and yet, when I was attacked and harassed on every side, he hid himself under a pseudonyme, and added his sarcasms to all the others directed against me, that he might gratify his admiration for De Balzac and put a little money in his pocket.

By-and-by I continued to meet Henry Murger again on the Boulevard, and at the first performance of new pieces. Do you imagine he shunned me? Not a bit of it. He did not seem on these rare occasions to feel the least embarrassment. He gave me cordial shakes of the hand, or he bestowed on me one of those profound bows which brought his bald head on a level with his waistcoat-pockets. Then he published a novel in "Le Moniteur," after which he was decorated. Nothing was now heard from or of him for a long time. Not a line by Henry Murger appeared anywhere. I never heard that any piece by him was received, or even refused, by a single one of the eighteen theatres in Paris. At last I met him one day before the Varietes Theatre. I went up to speak to him, and ended by asking the invariable question between literary men,—"What are you at work on now? How comes it that so long a time has elapsed since you gave us something to read or to applaud?"

"I will tell you why," he replied, with melancholy sang-froid. "It is not a question of literature, it is a question of arithmetic. I owe eight hundred dollars to Madame Porcher, the wife of the 'authors'-tickets' dealer, who is always ready to advance money to dramatic authors, and to whom we are all constantly in debt. I owe four hundred dollars to the 'Moniteur,' and three hundred dollars to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' Follow my reasoning now: Were I to bring out a play, my excellent friend, Madame Porcher, would lay hands on all the proceeds, and I should receive nothing. Were I to give a novel to the 'Moniteur,' I should have to write twenty feuilletons (you know they pay twenty dollars a feuilleton there) before I cancelled my old debt. Were I to contribute to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' as soon as my six sheets (at fifty dollars a sheet, that would be three hundred dollars) were printed and published, the editor would say to me, 'We are even now.' So you see that it would be unpardonable prodigality on my part to publish anything; therefore I have determined not to work at all, in order to avoid spending my money, and I am lazy—from economy!"

His reply disarmed the little resentment I had left. I took his hand in mine, and said to him,—"See here, Murger, I must confess to you I was a little angry with you; but your arithmetic is more literary than you think it. You have given me a lesson of contemporary literature; and I say to you, as the 'Revue des Deux Mondes' would say, 'Murger, we are even!'"

I ran off without waiting for his reply, and whispered to myself, as I went, "And yet Henry Murger is the most talented and the most honest of them all!"

* * * * *

Let me continue the story of my misfortunes. The tempest was unchained against me. It is true, there were among my adversaries some persons under obligations to me,—some persons who were full of enthusiasm at my first manner, and who would have made wry faces enough, had I published their flattering letters to me,—other persons, to whom I had rendered pecuniary services,—others, again, who had come to me with hat in hand and supple knees, to beg my permission to allow them to dramatize my novels. But what were these miserable considerations, when the great interests of national literature, taste, and glory were at stake? I was the vile detractor, the impious scorner of these glories, and it was but justice that I should be put in the pillory and made the butt of rotten eggs. Voltaire blasphemed, Beranger insulted, Victor Hugo outraged, were offences which cried aloud for chastisement and for vengeance. Balzac's shade especially complained and clamored for justice. It is true, that, while Balzac was alive, he was not accustomed to anything like such admiration. He openly avowed that he detested newspaper-writers, and they returned the detestation with interest. Everybody, while he was alive, declared him to be odd, eccentric, half-crazy, absurd. His friends and his publishers, in fine, everybody who had anything to do with him, told rather disreputable stories about him. No matter for that. Balzac was dead, Balzac was a god, the god of all these livers-by-the-wits, who but for him would have been atheists. Monsieur Paulin Limayrac tore me to pieces in "La Presse." Monsieur Eugene Pelletan shot me in "Le Siecle." Monsieur Taxile Delord mauled me in "Le Charivari." To this episode of my exposition in the pillory belongs an anecdote which I cannot omit.

I was about to set off for the country, where I reckoned upon spending some weeks of the month of May, in order to recover somewhat from these incessant attacks made upon me. I had read in a cafe, while taking my beefsteak and cup of chocolate, the various details of the punishment I was about to undergo. One of my tormentors, who was a great deal more celebrated for his aversion to water and clean linen than for any article he had ever written, declared that I was about to be banished from everything like decent society; another vowed by all the deities of his Olympus that I was a mountebank and a skeptic, who had undertaken to defend sound doctrines and to tomahawk eminent writers simply by way of bringing myself into public notice; a third painted me as a poor wretch who had come from his provincial home with his pockets filled with manuscripts, and was going about Paris begging favorable notices as a means of touching publishers and booksellers; a fourth depicted me, on the other hand, as a wealthy fellow, who was so diseased with a mania for literature that I paid newspapers and reviews to publish my contributions, which no human being would have accepted gratuitously. As I left the cafe, one of my intimate friends ran up to me. His face expressed that mixture of cordial commiseration and desire to make a fuss about the matter which one's friends' faces always wear under these circumstances.

"Well," said he, "what do you think of the way they treat you?"

"Why, they are all at it,—Monsieur Edmond About, Monsieur Louis Ulbach, Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, Monsieur Henry Murger, Monsieur Taxile Delord,"——

"Ah! by the way, have you seen his article of yesterday?"

"No."

"You should have read that. Those in the morning's papers are nothing to it. Really, you ought not to leave town without seeing it." Looking very important, he added,—"In your position, you should know everything written against you."

I followed this friendly advice, and went to the Rue du Croissant, where the office of "Le Charivari" moulders. As the place is anything but attractive to well-bred persons, allow me to get there by the longest road, and to go through the Faubourg Saint Honore. A month before the conversation above reported took place in front of a cafe-door, I had the pleasure of meeting the Count de ——, an intellectual gentleman who occupies an influential place in some aristocratic drawing-rooms which still retain a partiality for literature. He said to me,—

"Do you know Monsieur Ernest Legouve?"

"Assuredly! The most polite and most agreeable of all the generals of Alexander Scribe; the author of 'Adrienne Lecouvreur,' which Rachel played so well, of 'Medee,' in which Madame Ristori shines; a charming gentleman, who, in our age of clubs, cigars, stables, jockeys, and slang, has had the good taste to like feminine society. He has a considerable estate; he belongs to the French Academy; his house is agreeable; his manners delightful; his dinners unequalled. If in all happiness there is a dash of management, where is the harm in Monsieur Ernest Legouve's case? Why should not gentlemen, too, be sometimes adroit? Rogues are so always! Besides, has not a little art always been necessary to effect an entrance into the French Academy?"

"Monsieur Ernest Legouve and I were at college together, and he bids me bear you an invitation which I am sure you will not refuse. He has written a play upon the delicate and thorny subject on which Monsieur Jules Sandeau has written his admirable comedy, 'Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier': with this difference, however: Monsieur Legouve has taken, not a ruined and brilliant noble who marries the daughter of a plebeian, but a young man, the architect of his own fortunes, with a most vulgar name, who, on the score of talents, energy, delicacy of head and heart, is loved by a young lady of noble birth, is accepted by her family, and enters by right of conquest into that society from which his birth excluded him."

"That theme is rather more difficult: for, when Mademoiselle Poirier marries the Marquis de Presles, she becomes the Marquise de Presles; whereas, when Mademoiselle de Montmorency marries Monsieur Bernard, she becomes plain Madame Bernard."

"True enough! But Monsieur Legouve is perplexed by a scruple which reflects the greatest honor upon him: he entertains sincere respect, great sympathy, for aristocratic distinctions; therefore he is anxious to assure himself, before his piece is brought out in public, that it does not contain a single scene or a single word which will be offensive or disagreeable to noble ears. To satisfy himself in this particular, he has asked me to allow him to read his comedy at my house. I shall invite the Duchess de ——, the Marquis de ——, the Countess de ——, the General de ——, the Duke de ——, the Marquise de ——, and the Baroness de ——. I shall add to these two or three critics known in good society, among whom I reckon upon you. In fine, this preliminary Areopagus will be composed of sons of the Crusaders, who are almost as sprightly as sons of Voltaire. Now Monsieur Ernest Legouve will not be satisfied with his comedy, unless these gentlefolk unanimously decide that he need not blot a single line of it. Will you come? Remember, Monsieur Ernest Legouve invites you."

"My dear Count, I willingly accept your proposition. Monsieur Legouve reads admirably, and his plays are all agreeable. Nevertheless, let me tell you that this trial will prove nothing. Our poor society is like Sganarelle's wife, who liked to be thrashed. It has borne smiling, and repaid with wealth and fame, much more ardent attacks than Monsieur Legouve can make."

Count de —— and I shook hands, and parted. A few evenings afterwards the reading took place. It was just what I expected. There were as many marquises and duchesses (real duchesses) as there were kings to applaud Talma in the Erfurt pit. The noble assembly listened to Monsieur Legouves's comedy with that rather absent-minded urbanity and with those charming exclamations of admiration which have been constantly given to everybody who has read a piece in a drawing-room, from the days of the Viscount d'Arlincourt and his "Le Solitaire," to the days of Monsieur Viennet, of the French Academy, and his "Arbogaste." Monsieur Legouve's play, which was then called "Le Nom du Mari," and which has since been played under the title of "Par Droit de Conquete," was pleasing. My ears were not so much offended by the antagonism of poor nobility and wealthy upstarts, which Monsieur Legouve treated neither better nor worse than any other has done, as by the details of roads, bridges, marsh-draining, canals, railways, coal, coke, and the like, which were dead-weights on Thalia's light robe; and the improbability of the plot was not so much the marriage of a noble girl to the son of an apple-dealer as was the perfection given to the young engineer: every virtue and every grace were showered on him. The piece was unanimously pronounced successful. The aristocratic audience applauded Monsieur Legouve with their little gloved hands, which never make much noise. He was complimented so delicately that he was sincerely touched. There was not the slightest objection, the lightest murmur made to the piece, and there trembled in my eye that little tear Madame de Sevigne speaks of.

But let us quit this drawing-room, and turn our steps towards the Rue du Croissant, where the office of "Le Charivari" is to be found. Balzac has described in "Les Illusions Perdues" the offices of these petty newspapers: the passage divided into two equal portions, one of which leads to the editor's room, and the other to the grated counter where the clerk sits to receive subscribers. Everybody knows the appearance of these old houses, these staircases, these flimsy partitions, with their bad light coming through a window whose panes are veiled with a triple coating of dust, smoke, and soot,—the whitewashed walls bearing innumerable traces of fingers covered with ink, mingled with pencil-caricatures and grotesque inscriptions. Although it was in the month of May that I made this visit, I shivered with cold as I entered this old house, and my gorge rose in disgust at the unaired smell and ignoble scenes which everywhere appeared. The clerk I applied to had the very face one might expect to find in such a place: one of those colorless, hard, sinister faces which are to be seen in nearly all the scenes of Paris reality. All things were in harmony in this shop: the air, and the light, and the house,—the letter as well as the spirit. I asked the clerk to give me the file for the month of April. I soon found and read Monsieur Taxile Delord's article. Monsieur Taxile Delord comes from some one of the southern departments of France. He made his first appearance in public in "Le Semaphore," the well-known newspaper of Marseilles; but the twilight of a provincial life could not suit this eagle, and in the course of a few years he came up to Paris. Alas! Monsieur Taxile Delord was soon obliged to add the secret sorrows of disappointed ambition to the original gayety of his character. His deepest sorrow was to look upon himself for a grave and thoughtful statesman, and be condemned by fate to a chronic state of fun and to hard labor at pun-making for life. Imagine Junius damned to lead Touchstone's life! He became sourness itself. His puns were lugubrious. His fun grew heavy, and his gayety was funereal. The pretensions of this checked gravity which settled upon his factitious hilarity were enough to melt the hearts even of his enemies, if such a fellow could pretend to have enemies. Once this galley-slave of fun tried to make his escape from the galley. He wrote a play; and as the manager of one of the theatres was his friend, he had it played. The democratic opinions of Monsieur Taxile Delord raised favorable prejudices among the school-boys of the Latin Quarter; but who can escape his fate? The masterpiece was hissed. Its title was "The End of the Comedy"; and a wretched witling pretended that the piece was ill-named, since the pit refused to see the end of the comedy. Thereupon Monsieur Taxile Delord adopted the method of Gulliver's tailor, who measured for clothes according to the rules of arithmetic: he demonstrated that his piece was played three times from beginning to end,—that, as the manager was his particular friend, and as the Odeon was always empty, he might have had it played thirty times,—and therefore that we were all bound to be grateful to him for his moderation. This last argument met no person bold enough to contradict it, and the subscribers to "Le Charivari" (which is the "Punch" of Paris) were seized with holy horror, when they thought, that, but for Monsieur Taxile Delord's moderation, "The End of the Comedy" might have been played seven-and-twenty times more.

What had I done to excite his ire? I had not treated Beranger with sufficient respect, and Monsieur Taxile Delord, though a joker by trade, would not hear of any fun on this subject. His genius had shaped itself exactly on Beranger's, and he resented as a personal affront every insult offered to the songster. Of a truth, Beranger's fate was a hard one, and all my attacks on him were not half so bad as this treatment he received at the hands of Monsieur Taxile Delord. Poor Beranger! So Monsieur Taxile Delord took up the quarrel on his account, and relieved his gall by throwing it on me. When I read his article, I felt humiliated,—but not as the writer desired,—I felt humiliated for the press, and for literature, and for Beranger, who really did not deserve this hard fate. The humid office, full of dirt and dust and printing-ink, disgusted and depressed me, and I involuntarily thought of Count de ——'s drawing-room, and that aristocratic society where everything was flowers, courtesy, perfumes, elegance, where people could not even feel hatred towards their enemies, and where the genial poet, Monsieur Ernest Legouve, surrounded by the most charming and most sprightly women of Paris, recently obtained so delightful a triumph.

All at once a sympathetic and clear voice, a voice which I thought I had heard in better society than where I was, reached my ears. Hid in the dark corner where I sat, and where nobody could discover me, I saw the door of the editor's room open and Monsieur Taxile Delord appear and escort to the door a visitor. It was Monsieur Ernest Legouve! They passed close to me, and I heard Monsieur Ernest Legouve say to Monsieur Delord,—"My dear Sir, I recommend my play, 'Le Nom du Mari,' to you; I hope you will be pleased with it!"

This contrast annoyed me. I was then horribly out of humor from an irritating prelection, and I felt towards Monsieur Legouve that sort of vexation the unlucky feel towards the lucky, the poor towards the rich, the hunchbacks towards handsome men, and the awkward towards the adroit. I said to myself,—"Armand, my poor Armand, you will never be aught but a most stupid fool!"

We add no commentary to this picture of literary life in Paris. We leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. He needs no assistance,—for the picture is painted in bright colors, and the light is thrown with no parsimonious hand upon every corner. It is a curious exhibition of a most unhealthy state of things. It explains a great many of those literary mysteries, which seem so unaccountable, in the most brilliant capital of the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Elsie Venner, by Oliver OEendell (sic) Holmes.



THE MASKERS.

Yesternight, as late I strayed Through the orchard's mottled shade,— Coming to the moonlit alleys, Where the sweet Southwind, that dallies All day with the Queen of Roses, All night on her breast reposes,— Drinking from the dewy blooms, Silences, and scented glooms Of the warm-breathed summer night, Long, deep draughts of pure delight,— Quick the shaken foliage parted, And from out its shadows darted Dwarf-like forms, with hideous faces, Cries, contortions, and grimaces. Still I stood beneath the lonely, Sighing lilacs, saying only,— "Little friends, you can't alarm me; Well I know you would not harm me!" Straightway dropped each painted mask, Sword of lath, and paper casque, And a troop of rosy girls Ran and kissed me through their curls.

Caught within their net of graces, I looked round on shining faces. Sweetly through the moonlit alleys Rang their laughter's silver sallies. Then along the pathway, light With the white bloom of the night, I went peaceful, pacing slow, Captive held in arms of snow. Happy maids! of you I learn Heavenly maskers to discern! So, when seeming griefs and harms Fill life's garden with alarms, Through its inner walks enchanted I will ever move undaunted. Love hath messengers that borrow Tragic masks of fear and sorrow, When they come to do us kindness,— And but for our tears and blindness, We should see, through each disguise, Cherub cheeks and angel eyes.



CULLET.

"Good morning! Is it really a rainy day?" asked Miselle, imploringly, as she seated herself at the breakfast-table, and glanced from Monsieur to the heavy sky and the vane upon the coach-house, steadily pointing west.

"Indeed, I hope not. Are you ready for Sandwich?" smilingly replied the host.

"More than ready,—eager. But the clouds."

"One learns here upon the coast to brave the clouds; we have, to be sure, a sea-turn just now, and perhaps there will be fog-showers by-and-by, but nothing that need prevent our excursion."

"Delightful!" exclaimed Optima, Miselle, and Madame, applying themselves to eggs and toast with that calm confidence in a masculine decision so sustaining to the feminine nature.

The early breakfast over, Monsieur, with a gentle hint to the ladies of haste in the matter of toilet, went to see that Gypsy and Fanny were properly harnessed, and that a due number of cushions, rugs, and water-proof wrappers were placed in the roomy carriage.

Surely, never were hats so hastily assumed, never did gloves condescend to be so easily found, never were fewer hasty returns for "something I have forgotten," and Monsieur had barely time to send two messages to the effect that all was ready, when the feminine trio descending upon him triumphantly disproved once and forever the hoary slander upon their sex of habitual unpunctuality.

With quiet self-sacrifice Optima placed herself beside Madame in the back of the carryall, leaving for Miselle the breezy seat in front, with all its facilities for seeing, hearing, smelling, breathing; and let us hope that the little banquet thus prepared for the conscience of that young woman gave her as much satisfaction as Miselle's feast of the senses did to her.

Arching their necks, tossing their manes, spattering the dewy sand with their little hoofs, Gypsy and Fanny rapidly whirled the carriage through the drowsy town, across the Pilgrim Brook, and so, by the pretty suburb of "T'other Side," (which no child of the Mayflower shall ever consent to call Wellingsley,) to the open road skirting the blue waters of the bay.

"Ah, this is fine!" cried Miselle, snatching from seaward deep breaths of the east wind laden with the wild life of ocean and the freedom of boundless space.

"Here we have it!" remarked Monsieur, somewhat irrelevantly, as he hastily unbuckled the apron and spread it over his own lap and Miselle's, just in time to catch a heavy dash of rain.

"I am afraid it is going to be stormy, after all," piteously murmured Miselle.

"I told you we should have fog-showers, you know," suggested Monsieur, with a quiet smile.

"But what must we do?—go home?"

"No, indeed!—we will go to Sandwich, let it rain twice, four times as hard as this,—unless, indeed, Madame gives orders to the contrary. What say you, Madame?"

"I say, let us go on for the present. We can turn round at any time, if it becomes necessary"; and Madame smiled benevolently at Miselle, down whose face the rain-drops streamed, but who stoutly asserted,—

"Oh, this is nothing. Only a fog-shower, you know. We shall have it fine directly."

"Not till we are out of Eel River. This valley gathers all the clouds, and they often get rain here when the sun is shining everywhere else."

"A regular vale of tears! Happy the remnant of the world that dwelleth not in Eel River!" murmured Miselle, surreptitiously pulling her water-proof cloak about her shoulders.

"Let me help you. Really, though, you are getting very wet, dear," remonstrated Optima.

"Not in the least. I enjoy it excessively. Besides, the shower is just over.—What church is that, Monsieur, with the very disproportionate steeple?" inquired Miselle, pointing to a square gray box, surmounted by a ludicrously short and obtuse spire, expressive of a certain dogged obstinacy of purpose.

"The church is an Orthodox meetinghouse, and the steeple is Orthodox too,—for the Cape. Anything else would blow down in the spring gales. Park-Street steeple, for instance, would stand a very poor chance here."

"Yes," said Miselle, vaguely, and she felt in her heart how this great ocean that dwarfs or prostrates the works of man replaces them by a temple builded in his own soul of proportions so lofty that God Himself may dwell visibly therein.

And now, having traversed the tearful valley, the road wound up the Delectable Mountains beyond, and so into the pine forest, through whose clashing needles glints of sunshine began to creep, while overhead the gray shaded softly into pearl and dazzling white and palest blue.

"There are deer in these Sandwich woods. See if we cannot find a pair of great brown eyes peering out at us from some of the thickets," suggested Madame.

"Charming! If only we might see one! How young this nation is, after all, when aboriginal deer roam the woods within fifty miles of Boston!"

"But without game-laws they will soon be exterminated. A great many are shot every winter, and the farmers complain bitterly of those that remain. Some of their crops are quite ruined by the deer, they say," remarked Monsieur.

"Never mind. There are plenty of crops, and but very few deer. I pronounce for the game-laws," recklessly declared Miselle.

But the impending battle of political economy was averted by Madame's exclamation of,—

"See, here is Sacrifice Rock. Let us stop and look at it a moment."

Gypsy and Fanny, wild with the sparkling upland air, were with difficulty persuaded to halt opposite a great flat granite boulder, sloping from the skirt of the forest toward the road, and nearly covered with pebbles and bits of decayed wood.

"It is Sacrifice Rock," explained Monsieur. "From the days of the Pilgrims to our own, no Indian passes this way without laying some offering upon it. It would have been buried long ago, but that the spring and autumn winds sweep away all the lighter deposits. You would find the hollow at its back half filled with them. Once there may have been human sacrifices,—tradition says so, at least; but now there is seldom anything more precious than what you see."

"But to what deity were the offerings made?"

"Some savage Manitou, no doubt, but no one can say with certainty anything about it. The degenerate half-breeds who live in this vicinity only keep up the custom from tradition. They are called Christians now, you know, and are quite above such idolatrous practices."

"At any rate, I will add my contribution to this altar of an unknown God. Besides, there are some blackberries that I must have," exclaimed Optima, releasing her active limbs from the carriage in a very summary fashion.

Tossing a little stick upon the rock, she hastened to gather the abundant fruit, a little for herself, a good deal for Madame and Miselle, until Gypsy and Fanny stamped and neighed with impatience, and Monsieur cried cheerily,—

"Come, young woman, come! We are not half-way to Sandwich, and the horses will be devoured by these flies as surely as Bishop Hatto was by mice."

And so on through miles of merry woodland, by fields and orchards, whose every crop is a fresh conquest of man over Nature in this one of her most niggardly phases, by desolate cabins and lonely farms, until at a sudden turn the broad, beautiful sea swept up to glorify the scene. And while Miselle with flushed cheeks and tearful eyes drank in the ever-new delight of its presence, Monsieur began a story of how a man, almost a stranger to him, had come one winter evening and begged him for God's love to go and help him search for the body of his brother, reported by a wandering madwoman to be lying on this beach, and how he begged so piteously that the listener could not choose but go.

And as Monsieur vividly pictured that long, lonely drive through the midnight woods, the desolate monotony of the beach, along whose margin curled the foam-wreaths of the rising tide, while beyond phosphorescent lights played over a world of weltering black waters,—as he told how, after hours of patient search, they found the poor sodden corpse and tenderly cared for it,—as Monsieur quietly told his tale and never knew that he was a hero, Miselle turned shuddering from sea and beach and the mocking play of the crested waves, as they leaped in the sunshine and then sank back to sport hideously with other corpses hidden beneath their smiling surface.

Presently the sea was again shut off by woodland, and the scattered houses closed into a village, nay, a town, the town of Sandwich; and swinging through it at an easy rate, the carriage halted before an odd-looking building, consisting of a quaint old inn, porched and gambrel-roofed, joined in most unholy union to a big, square, staring box, of true Yankee architecture.

Descending with reluctance, even after three hours of immobility, from her breezy seat, Miselle followed Madame into the quiet house, whose landlord, like many another man, makes moan for "the good old times" when summer tourists and commercial travellers filled his rooms and the long dining-table, now unoccupied, save by our travellers and two young men connected with the glass-manufactories.

Rest, plenty of cool water, and dinner having restored the energies of the travellers, it was proposed that they should proceed at once to the Glass Works. And now, indeed, did Fortune smile upon this band of adventurous spirits; for when the question of a guide arose, mine host of the inn announced himself not only willing to act in that capacity, but eminently qualified therefor by long experience as an operative in various departments of the works.

"How fortunate that the stage-coaches and peddlers no longer frequent Sandwich! If our friend had them to attend to, he could not devote himself to us in this charming manner," suggested Optima, as she and Miselle gayly followed Monsieur, Madame, and Cicerone down the long sunny street, whose loungers turned a glance of lazy wonder upon the strangers.

Passing presently a monotonous row of lodging-houses for the workmen, and a public square with a fountain, which, as Optima suggested, might be made very pretty with the addition of some water, the travellers approached a large brick building, many-windowed, many-chimneyed, and offering ingress through a low-browed arch of so gloomy an aspect that one looked at its key-stone half expecting to read there the well-known Dantean legend,—

"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi chi'ntrate!"

Nor was the illusion quite destroyed by handling, for through the arch and a short passage one entered a large, domed apartment, brick-floored and dimly lighted, whose atmosphere was the breath of a dozen flashing furnaces, whose occupants were grimy gnomes wildly sporting with strange shapes of molten metal.

"This is the glass-room, and in these furnaces the glass is melted; but perhaps you will go first and see how it is mixed, and how the pots are made to boil it in."

"Yes, let us begin at the beginning," said all, and were led from the Inferno across a cool, green yard, into a building specially devoted to the pots. In a great bin lay masses of soft brown clay in its crude condition, and upon the floor were heaped fragments of broken pots, calcined by use in the furnaces, and now waiting to be ground up into a fine powder between the wheels of a powerful mill working steadily in one corner of the building. In another, a row of boxes or pens were partially filled with a powdered mixture of the raw and burnt clay, and this, being moistened with water, was worked to a proper consistency beneath the bare feet of several stout men.

"This work, like the treading of the wine-press, can be properly performed only by human feet," remarked Monsieur.

"So when next we sip nectar from one of your straw-stemmed glasses, we will remember these gentlemen and their brothers of the wine-countries, and gratefully acknowledge that without their exertions we could have had neither wine nor goblet," said Miselle, maliciously.

"No," suggested Optima, "we will enjoy the result and forget the process. But what is that man about?"

"Making sausages out of cheese, I should say," replied Monsieur; and the comparison was almost unavoidable; for upon a coarse table lay masses of moulded clay, in form and size exactly like cheeses, from which the workman separated with a wooden knife a small portion to be rolled beneath his hand into cylindrical shapes some four inches in length by two in diameter.

These a lad carefully placed upon a long and narrow board to carry up to the pot-room, whither he was followed by the whole party.

Miselle's first impression, upon entering this great chamber, was, that she was following a drove of elephants; but as she skirted the regular ranks of the great dun monsters and came to the front, she concluded that she had stumbled upon the factory of Ali Baba's oil-jars. At any rate, the old picture in the "Arabian Nights" represented Morgiana in the act of pouring the boiling oil into vessels marvellously like these, and in each of these was room for at least four robbers of true melodramatic stature.

Among these jars, with the noiseless solicitude of a mother in her sleeping nursery, wandered their author and guardian, a pale, keen man, and so rare an enthusiast in his art that one listening to him could hardly fail to believe that the highest degree of thought, skill, and experience might worthily be expended upon the construction of these seething-pots for molten glass.

"Will you look at this one? It is my last," said he, tenderly removing a damp cloth from the surface of something like the half of a hogshead made in clay.

"I have not begun to dome it in yet; it must dry another day first," said the artist, passing his hand lovingly along the smooth surface of his work.

"Then you cannot go on with them at once?" asked Madame.

"Oh, no, Ma'am! They must dry and harden between the spells of work upon them, or they never would stand their own weight. This one, you see, is twelve inches thick in the bottom, and the sides are five inches thick at the base, and graduated to four where the curve begins. Now if I was to go right ahead, and put the roof on this mass of wet clay, I shouldn't get it done before the whole would crush in together. I have had them do so, Ma'am, when I was younger, but I know better now. I sha'n't have that to suffer again."

"And what are you at work upon while this dries?"

"Here. This one is just begun. Shall I show you how I do it? John, where are those rolls? Yes, I see. Now, Ma'am, this is the way."

Taking one of the rolls in his left hand, and manipulating it with his right, our artist laid it upon the top of the unfinished wall, and with his supple fingers began to dovetail and compact it into the mass, pressing and smoothing the whole carefully as he went on.

"You see I must be very careful not to leave any air-bubbles in my work; if I do, there will be a crack."

"When the pot dries?" asked Madame.

"No, Ma'am, when it is heated. I suppose the air expands and forces its way out," said the man, shyly, as if he were more in the habit of thinking philosophy than of talking it. "But see how smooth and fine this clay is," added he, enthusiastically, passing his finger through one of the rolls. "It is as close-grained and delicate as—as a lady's cheek."

"But, really, how could one describe the shape of these creatures?" asked Optima aside of Miselle, as she stood contemplating a completed monster.

"By comparing them to an Esquimaux lodge, with one little arched window just at the spring of the dome. Doesn't that give it?"

"Perhaps. I never saw an Esquimaux lodge; did you, my dear?"

"No, nor anything else in the least degree resembling these, unless it was the picture of the oil-jars. Choose, my Optima, between the two."

"Hark! we are losing something worth hearing."

So the young women opened their ears, and heard the pallid enthusiast tell how, after days and weeks of labor, and months of seasoning, the pots were laboriously carried to a kiln, where they were slowly brought to a red heat, and then suffered to cool as slowly. How the pot was then taken to one of the furnaces of the Inferno, and a portion of its side removed to receive it; how it was then built in, and reheated before the glass-material was thrown in; and how, after all this care and toil, it was perhaps not a week before it cracked or gave way at some point, and must be taken away to make room for another. But this was unusually "hard luck," and the pots sometimes held good as long as three months.

"And what becomes of the old ones?" asked Optima, sympathetically.

"Oh, they are all used over again, Miss. There must be a proportion of burnt clay mixed with the raw, or it would be too rich to harden."

"And what is the proportion?"

"About one-third of the cooked clay, and two-thirds of the raw."

"And where does the clay come from?"

"Nearly all from Sturbridge, in England. Some has been brought from Gay Head, on Martha's Vineyard; but it doesn't answer like the imported."

Leaving the courteous artist in glass-pots to his labors, the party, crossing again the breezy yard, entered a dismal brick-paved basement-room, where grim bakers were attending upon a number of huge ovens. One of these was just being filled; but instead of white and brown loaves, golden cake, or flaky pies, the two attendants were piling in short, thick bars of lead, and, hurry as they might, before they could put in the last of the appointed number, little shining streams of molten metal began to ooze from beneath the first, and trickle languidly toward the mouth of the oven.

But our bakers were ready for them. With hasty movement they threw in a quantity of moistened clay, shaping and compacting it with their shovels as they went on, until in a very few moments they had completed a neat little semi-circular dike just within the door, as effectual a barrier to the glowing pool behind it, wherein the softened bars were rapidly disappearing, as was ever the Dutchman's dike to the ocean, with whom he disputes the sovereignty of Holland.

A wooden door was now put up, and the baking was left to itself for about twenty-four hours, at the end of which time the lead would have become transformed into a yellowish powder, known as massicot.

"You will see it here. They are just beginning to clear this oven," said Cicerone, pointing to a row of large iron vessels which the workmen were filling with the contents of the just opened kiln.

"And what next? What is it to the glass?" asked Miselle, unblushing at her ignorance.

"Next, it is put into these other kilns, and kept in motion with the long rakes that you see here, and at the end of forty-eight hours it will have absorbed sufficient oxygen from the atmosphere to turn it from massicot to minium, or red-lead. Look at this, if you please."

Cicerone here pointed to other iron vessels, in shape like the bowl out of which the giant Blunderbore ate his bread and milk, while trembling little Jack peeped at him from the oven; but these bowls were filled with a beautiful scarlet powder of fine consistency.

"That is red-lead, one of the most important ingredients in fine flint-glass, as it gives it brilliancy and ductility. But it is not used in the coarser glasses. And here is the sand-room."

So saying, Cicerone led the way to a light and cheerful room of delicious temperature, even on that summer's day, where, upon a low, broad, iron table, heated from beneath by steam-pipes, lay a mass of what might indeed be sand, and yet differed as much from ordinary sand as a just washed pet-lamb differs from an old weather-beaten sheep.

Like the lamb, the sand had been washed with care and much water, and now lay reposing after its bath at lazy length, enjoying its kief, like a sworn Mussulman. This sand is principally brought from the banks of Hudson River and the coast of New Jersey; but a finer article of quartz sand is found in Lanesboro', Massachusetts.

In the centre of the room stood a great sifting-machine, worked by steam; and the sand, after being thoroughly dried, was passed through this, coming out a fine, glittering mass, very much resembling granulated sugar, so far as looks are concerned.

"Now it is ready to be sent up to the mixing-room; but if you will step on this drop, we will go up before it," said the civil workman here in charge.

So some of the party stepped upon a solid platform about six feet square, lying under a trap in the floor overhead, and were slowly wound up to the mixing-room, feeling quite sure, when they stepped upon the solid floor once more, that they had done a very heroic thing, and were not hereafter to be dismayed by travellers' tales of descents into coal-mines, or swinging to the tops of dizzy spires in creaking baskets.

Here, in the mixing-room, stood great boxes, filled with sand, with red-lead, or with sparkling soda and potash; and beside a trough stood, shovel in hand, a good-natured-looking man, who was busily mixing portions of these three ingredients into one mass.

Him Miselle assailed with questions, and learned that the trough contained

1400 pounds sand, 350 " ash, 100 " soda, 800 " red-lead, and about 100 " cullet.[25]

This was to be a fine quality of flint-glass, and to it might be added coloring-matter of any desired tint; but in the choice and proportion of this lay one of the principal secrets of the art.

All this information did the civil compounder vouchsafe to Miselle, with the indulgent air of one who humors a child by answering his questions, although quite sure that the subject is far above his comprehension; and he smiled in much amusement at seeing his answers jotted down upon her tablets. So Miselle thanked him, smiling a little in her turn, and they parted in mutual satisfaction.

"These trucks you see are ready-loaded with the frit, or glass-material, and are to be wheeled down to the furnaces presently," said Cicerone. "But, before following them, we had better go down and see the fires."

Descending a short flight of stone steps, the party now entered a long, dark passage, through which a torrent of wind swept, driving before it the ashes and glowing cinders that dropped continually from a circular grating overhead. The ground beneath was strewn with fire, and the whole arrangement offered a rare opportunity to any misanthrope whose preferences might point to death in the shape of a fiery shower-bath.

In a gloomy crypt, opening near the grating, stood a gnome whose duty it was to feed the furnace overhead with soft coal, which must be thrown in at a small door and then pushed up and forward until it lay upon the grating where it was consumed. Around this central fire the glass-pots, ten to each furnace, are arranged, their lower surfaces in actual contact with it, while the domed roof reverberates the heat upon them from above.

All around stood sturdy piers of brick and iron, and low-browed arches, crushed, one could not but fancy, out of their original proportions by the immense weight they were forced to uphold.

Returning to the Inferno, Cicerone led the way to a pot which was being filled with frit from one of the little covered cars that he had pointed out in the mixing-room. This process was to be effected gradually, as he explained,—a certain portion being at first placed in the heated pot, and suffered to melt, and then another, until the pot should be full, when the door of it would be put up and closed with cement.