UNDER THE STARS.
Hoping, yet scarcely expecting to see her, I went out upon my balcony the next night at the same hour; but the light of her lamp was bright within, no shadow obscured it, and no window opened. So, after waiting for more than an hour, I gave her up, and returned to my work. I did this for six nights in succession. On the seventh she came.
"You are fond of your balcony, fellow-student," said she. "I often hear you out here."
"My room gets heated," I replied, "and my eyes weary, after several hours of hard reading; and this keen, clear air puts new life into one's brains."
"Yes, it is delicious," said she, looking up into the night. "How dark the space of heaven is, and, how bright are the stars! What a night for the Alps! What a night to be upon some Alpine height, watching the moon through a good telescope, and waiting for the sunrise!"
"Defer that wish for a few months," I replied smiling. "You would scarcely like Switzerland in her winter robes."
"Nay, I prefer Switzerland in winter," she said. "I passed through part of the Jura about ten days ago, and saw nothing but snow. It was magnificent--like a paradise of pure marble awaiting the souls of all the sculptors of all the ages."
"A fantastic idea," said I, "and spoken like an artist."
"Like an artist!" she repeated, musingly. "Well, are not all students artists?"
"Not those who study the exact sciences--not the student of law or divinity--nor he who, like myself, is a student of medicine. He is the slave of Fact, and Art is the Eden of his banishment. His imagination is for ever captive. His horizon is for ever bounded. He is fettered by routine, and paralyzed by tradition. His very ideas must put on the livery of his predecessors; for in a profession where originality of thought stands for the blackest shade of original sin, skill--mere skill--must be the end of his ambition."
She looked at me, and the moonlight showed me that sad smile which her lips so often wore.
"You do not love your profession," she said.
"I do not, indeed."
"And yet you labor zealously to acquire it--how is that?"
"How is it with hundreds of others? My profession was chosen for me. I am not my own master."
"But are you sure you would be happier in some other pursuit? Supposing, for instance, that you were free to begin again, what career do you think you would prefer?"
"I scarcely know, and I should scarcely care, so long as there was freedom of thought and speculation in it."
"Geology, perhaps--or astronomy," she suggested, laughingly.
"Merci! The bowels of the earth are too profound, and the heavens too lofty for me. I should choose some pursuit that would set the Ariel of the imagination free. That is to say, I could be very happy if my life were devoted to Science, but my soul echoes to the name of Art."
"'The artist creates--the man of science discovers," said Hortense. "Beware lest you fancy you would prefer the work of creation only because you lack patience to pursue the work of discovery. Pardon me, if I suggest that you may, perhaps, be fitted for neither. Your sphere, I fancy, is reflection--comparison--criticism. You are not made for action, or work. Your taste is higher than your ambition, and you love learning better than fame. Am I right?"
"So right that I regret I can be read so easily."
"And therefore, it may be that you would find yourself no happier with Art than with Science. You might even fall into deeper discouragement; for in Science every onward step is at least certain gain, but in Art every step is groping, and success is only another form of effort. Art, in so far as it is more divine, is more unattainable, more evanescent, more unsubstantial. It needs as much patience as Science, and the passionate devotion of an entire life is as nothing in comparison with the magnitude of the work. Self-sacrifice, self-distrust, infinite patience, infinite disappointment--such is the lot of the artist, such the law of aspiration."
"A melancholy creed."
"But a true one. The divine is doomed to suffering, and under the hays of the poet lurk ever the thorns of the self-immolator."
"But, amid all this record of his pains, do you render no account of his pleasures?" I asked. "You forget that he has moments of enjoyment lofty as his aims, and deep as his devotion.
"I do not forget it," she said. "I know it but too well. Alas! is not the catalogue of his pleasures the more melancholy record of the two? Hopes which sharpen disappointment; visions which cheat while they enrapture; dreams that embitter his waking hours--fellow-student, do you envy him these?"
"I do; believing that he would not forego them for a life of common-place annoyances and placid pleasures."
"Forego them! Never. Who that had once been the guest of the gods would forego the Divine for the Human? No--it is better to suffer than to stagnate. The artist and poet is overpaid in his brief snatches of joy. While they last, his soul sings 'at heaven's gate,' and his forehead strikes the stars."
She spoke with a rare and passionate enthusiasm; sometimes pacing to and fro; sometimes pausing with upturned face--
"A dauntless muse who eyes a dreadful fate!"
There was a long, long silence--she looking at the stars, I upon her face.
By-and-by she came over to where I stood, and leaned upon the railing that divided our separate territories.
"Friend," said she, gravely, "be content. Art is the Sphinx, and to question her is destruction. Enjoy books, pictures, music, statues--rifle the world of beauty to satiety, if satiety be possible--but there pause Drink the wine; seek not to crush the grape. Be happy, be useful, labor honestly upon the task that is thine, and be assured that the work will itself achieve its reward. Is it nothing to relieve pain--to prolong the days of the sickly--to restore health to the suffering--to soothe the last pangs of the dying? Is it nothing to be followed by the prayers and blessing of those whom you have restored to love, to fame, to the world's service? To my thinking, the physician's trade hath something god-like in it. Be content. Harvey's discovery was as sublime as Newton's, and it were hard to say which did God's work best--Shakespeare or Jenner."
"And you," I said, the passion that I could not conceal trembling in my voice; "and you--what are you, poet, or painter, or musician, that you know and reason of all these things?"
She laughed with a sudden change of mood, and shook her head.
"I am a woman," said she. "Simply a woman--no more. One of the inferior sex; and, as I told you long ago, only half civilized."
"You are unlike every other woman!"
"Possibly, because I am more useless. Strange as it may seem, do you know I love art better than sewing, or gossip, or dress; and hold my liberty to be a dower more precious than either beauty or riches? And yet--I am a woman!"
"The wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best!"
"By no means. You are comparing me with Eve; but I am
not in the least like Eve, I assure you. She was an excellent housewife, and, if we may believe Milton, knew how to prepare 'dulcet creams,' and all sorts of Paradisaical dainties for her husband's dinner. I, on the contrary, could not make a cream if Adam's life depended on it."
"Eh bien! of the theology of creams I know nothing. I only know that Eve was the first and fairest of her sex, and that you are as wise as you are beautiful."
"Nay, that is what Titania said to the ass," laughed Hortense. "Your compliments become equivocal, fellow-student. But hush! what hour is that?"
She stood with uplifted finger. The air was keen, and over the silence of the house-tops chimed the church-clocks--Two.
"It is late, and cold," said she, drawing her cloak more closely round her.
"Not later than you usually sit up," I replied. "Don't go yet. 'Tis now the very witching hour of night, when churchyards yawn--"
"I beg your pardon," she interrupted. "The churchyards have done yawning by this time, and, like other respectable citizens, are sound asleep. Let us follow their example. Good-night."
"Good-night," I replied, reluctantly; but almost before I had said it, she was gone.
After this, as the winter wore away, and spring drew on, Hortense's balcony became once more a garden, and she used to attend to her flowers every evening. She always found me on my balcony when she came out, and soon our open-air meetings became such an established fact that, instead of parting with "good-night," we said "au revoir--till to-morrow." At these times we talked of many things; sometimes of subjects abstract and mystical--of futurity, of death, of the spiritual life--but oftenest of Art in its manifold developments. And sometimes our speculations wandered on into the late hours of the night.
And yet, for all our talking and all our community of tastes, we became not one jot more intimate. I still loved in silence--she still lived in a world apart.