TWO DREAMS.
The Germans and French differ more from each other in the art and mystery of story-telling than either of them do from the English. It would be very easy to point out tales which are very popular in Paris, that would make no sensation at Vienna or Berlin; and, vice versa, we cannot imagine how the French can possibly enter into the spirit of many of the best known authors of Deutschland. In England, we are happy to say we can appreciate them all. History, philology, philosophy—in short, all the modes and subdivisions of heavy authorship—we leave out of the question, and address ourselves, on this occasion, to the distinctive characteristics of the two schools of light literature—schools which have a wider influence, and number more scholars, than all the learned academies put together.
In this country an outcry has been raised against the French authors in this department, and in favour of the Germans, on the ground of the frightful immorality of the first, and the sound principles of the other. French impiety is not a more common expression, applied to their writings, than German honesty. It will, perhaps, be right at starting to state, that, in regard to decency and propriety, the two nations are on a par; if there is any preponderance, one way or other, it certainly is not in favour of the Germans, whose derelictions in those respects are more solemn, and apparently sincere, than their flippant and superficial rivals. Many authors there are, of course, in both countries, whose works are unexceptionable in spirit and intention; but as to the assertion, that one literature is of a higher tone of morals than the other, it is a mistake. The great majority of the entertaining works in both are unfit pueris virginibusque.
Before the Revolution, Voltaire was as popular in England as in the rest of Europe; his powers as highly admired, and his short historiettes as much quoted: their wit being considered a sufficient counterbalance of their coarseness. But with the war between the two nations, arose a hatred between the two literatures; with Swift and Tristram Shandy in our hands, we turned up our eyes in holy indignation at Candide; we saw nothing to admire in any thing French; and as our condition in politics became more isolated, and we grew like our ancestors, toto divisos orbe Britannos— we could see no beauty in any thing foreign. The Orders in Council extended to criticism; and all continental languages were placed in blockade. The first nation who honestly and zealously took our part against the enemy was the German; and from that time we began to study achs and dochs. Leipsic, that made Napoleon little, made Goethe great; and to Waterloo we are indebted for peace and freedom, and also for a belief in the truth and talent of a host of German authors, whose principal merit consisted in the fact of their speaking the same language in which Blucher called for his tobacco. The opposite feelings took rise from our enmity to the French; and though by this time we have sense enough to be on good terms with the crapauds, and on visiting terms with Louis Philippe, we have not got over our antipathy to their tongue. During the contest, we had constantly refreshed our zeal by fervent declarations of contempt for the frog-eating, spindle shanked mounseers, and persuaded ourselves that their whole literature consisted in atheism and murder, and though we now know that frogs are by no means the common food of the peasantry—costing about a guinea a dish—and that it is possible for a Frenchman to be a strapping fellow of six feet high, the taint of our former persuasion remains with us still as to their books; and, in some remote districts, we have no doubt that Peter Pindar would be thought a more harmless volume in a young lady's hands than Pascal's Thoughts—in French.
It is not unlikely that the Customs' Union may lower our estimate of Weimar; a five years' war with Austria and Prussia, especially if we were assisted by the French, would make us rank Schiller himself—the greatest of German names—on the same humble level where we now place Victor Hugo. But there are thousands, of people in this good realm of England, who actually consider such beings a Spindler and Vandervelde superior to the noble genius who created Notre Dame de Paris. Poor as our own novel-writers, by profession, have shown themselves of late years, their efforts are infinitely superior to the very best of the German novelists; and yet we see advertisements every day in the newspapers, of new translations from fourth or fifth-rate scribblers for Leipsic fair, which would lead one to expect a far higher order of merit than any of our living authors can show. "A new work by the Walter Scott of Germany!" A new work by the Newton of Stoke Pogis! A new picture by the Apelles of the Isle of Man! The Walter Scott of Germany, according to somebody's saying about Milton, is a very German Walter Scott; and, if under this ridiculous pull is concealed some drivelling historical hash by Spindler or Tromlits, the force of impudence can no farther go.
But we must take care not to be carried too far in our depreciation of German light literature by our indignation at the over-estimate formed of some of its professors. Let us admit that there are admirable authors—a fact which it would be impossible to deny with such works before us as Tieck's, and Hoffman's, and a host of others—quos nunc perscribere longum est. Let us leave the small fry to the congenial admiration of the devourers of our circulating libraries, and form our judgment of the respective methods of conducting a story of the French and Germans, from a comparison of the heroes of each tongue. Let us judge of Greek and Roman war from the Phalanx and the Legion, and not from the suttlers of the two camps. A great excellence in a German novelist is the prodigious faith he seems to have in his own story; he relates incidents as if he knew them of his own knowledge; and the wilder and more incredible they are, the more firm and solemn becomes his belief. The Frenchman never descends from holding the wires of the puppets to be a puppet himself, or even to delude spectators with the idea that they are any thing but puppets; he never forfeits his superiority over the personages of the story, by allowing the reader to lose sight of the author; no, he piques himself on being the great showman, and would scarcely take it as a compliment if you entered into the interest of the tale, unless as an exhibition of the narrator's talent. But then he handles his wires so cleverly, and is really so immensely superior to the fictitious individuals whom he places before us, that it is no great wonder if we prefer Alexander Dumas or Jules Janin to their heroes. The Germans, relying on their own powers of belief, have taxed their readers' credulity to a pitch which sober Protestants find it very difficult to attain. Old Tieck or Hoffman introduces you to ghouls and ghosts, and they look on them, themselves, with such awestruck eyes, and treat them in every way with such demonstrations of perfect credence in their being really ghouls and ghosts, that it is not to be denied that strange feelings creep over one in reading their stories at the witching hour, when the fire is nearly out, and the candle-wicks are an inch and a half long. The Frenchman seldom introduces a ghost—never a ghoul; but he makes up for it by describing human beings with sentiments which would probably make the ghoul feel ashamed to associate with them. The utmost extent of human profligacy is depicted, but still the profligacy is human; it is only an amplification—very clever and very horrid—of a real character; but never borrows any additional horrors from the other world. A French author knows very well that the wickedness of this world is quite enough to set one's hair on end—for we suspect that the Life in Paris would supply any amount of iniquity—and professors of the shocking, like Frederick Soulie or Eugene Sue, can afford very well to dispense with vampires and gentlemen who have sold their shadows to the devil. The German, in fact, takes a short cut to the horrible and sublime, by bringing a live demon into his story, and clothing him with human attributes; the Frenchman takes the more difficult way, and succeeds in it, by introducing a real man, and endowing him with the sentiments of a fiend. The fault of the one is exaggeration; of the other, miscreation: redeemed in the first by extraordinary cleverness; in the other, by wonderful belief. What a contrast between La Motte Fouqué and Balzac! how national and characteristic both! No one can read a chapter of the Magic Ring without seeing that the Baron believes in all the wonders of his tale; a page of the other suffices to show that there are few things on the face of the earth in which he believes at all. Dim, mystic, childish, with open mouth and staring eyes, the German sees the whole phantasmagoria of the nether world pass before him: keen, biting, sarcastic—egotistic as a beauty, and cold-hearted as Mephistopheles—the Frenchman walks among his figures in a gilded drawing room; probes their spirits, breaks their hearts, ruins their reputation, and seems to have a profound contempt for any reader who is so carried away by his power as to waste a touch of sympathy on the unsubstantial pageants he has clothed for a brief period in flesh and blood. We confess the sober super-naturalism of the German has less attractions with us, than the grinning infra-naturalism of the Frenchman. There is more sameness in it, and, besides, it is to be hoped we have at all tines less sympathy for the very best of devils than for the very worst of men. Luckily for the Frenchman, he has no need to go to the lower regions to procure monsters to make us shudder. His own tremendous Revolution furnishes him with names before which Lucifer must hide his diminished head; and from this vast repertory of all that is horrid and grotesque—more horrid on account of its grotesqueness—the feuilletonists, or short story-tellers, are not indisposed to draw. We back Danton any day against Old Nick. And how infinitely better the effect of introducing a true villain in plain clothes, relying for his power only on the known and undeniable atrocity of his character, than all the pale-faced, hollow-eyed denizens of the lower pit, concealing their cloven feet in polished-leather Wellington boots, and their tails in a fashionable surtout. We shall translate a short story of Balzac, which will illustrate these remarks, only begging the reader to fancy to himself how different the denouément would have been in the hands of a German; how demons, instead of surgeons and attorneys, would have disclosed themselves at the end of the story, how blue the candles would have burned; and what an awful smell of brimstone would have been perceptible when they disappeared. It is called the Two Dreams, and, we think, is a sketch of great power.
Bodard de St James, treasurer of the navy in 1786, was the best known, and most talked of, of all the financiers in Paris. He had built his celebrated Folly at Neuilly, and his wife had bought an ornament of feathers for the canopy of her bed, the enormous price of which had put it beyond the power of the Queen. Bodard possessed the magnificent hotel in the Place Vendôme which the collector of taxes, Dangé, had been forced to leave. Madame de St James was ambitious, and would only have people of rank about her—a weakness almost universal in persons of her class. The humble members of the lower house had no charms for her. She wished to see in her saloons the nobles and dignitaries of the land who had, at least, the grand entrées at Versailles. To say that many cordons bleus visited the fair financier would be absurd; but it is certain she had managed to gain the notice of several of the Rohan family, as came out very clearly in the celebrated process of the necklace.
One evening, I think it was the 2d of August 1786, I was surprised to encounter in her drawing-room two individuals, whose appearance did not entitle them to the acquaintance of a person so exclusive as the Treasurer's wife. She came to me in an embrasure of the window where I had taken my seat.
"Tell me," I said, with a look towards one of the strangers, "who in the world is that? How does such a being find his way here?"
"He is a charming person, I assure you."
"Oh—you see him through the spectacles of love!" I said, and smiled.
"You are not mistaken," she replied, smiling also. "He is horribly ugly, no doubt, but he has rendered me the greatest service a man can do to woman."
I laughed, and I suppose looked maliciously, for she hastily added—"He has entirely cured me of those horrid eruptions in the face, that made my complexion like a peasant's."
I shrugged my shoulders. "Oh—he's a quack!" I said.
"No, no," she answered, "he is a surgeon of good reputation. He is very clever, I assure you; and, moreover, he is an author. He's an excellent doctor."
"Who? What other?"
"The little fellow with the starched, stiff face—looking as sour as if he had drunk verjuice."
"Oh! he is a man of good family. I don't know where he comes from. He is engaged in some business of the Cardinal's, and it was his Eminence himself who presented him to St James. Both parties have chosen St James for umpire; in that, you will say, the provincial has not shown much wisdom; but who can the people be who confide their interests to such a creature? He is quiet as a lamb, and timid as a girl; but his Eminence courts him—for the matter is of importance—three hundred thousand francs, I believe."
"He's an attorney, then?"
"Yes," she replied; and, after the humiliating confession, took her seat at the Faro table.
I went and threw myself in an easy chair at the fireplace; and if ever a man was astonished it was I, when I saw seated opposite me the Controller-General! M. de Calonne looked stupified and half-asleep. I nodded to Beaumarchais, and looked as if I wished an explanation; and the author of Figaro, or rather Figaro himself, made clear the mystery in a manner not very complimentary to Madame de St James s character, whatever it might be to her beauty. "Oho! the minister is caught," I thought; "no wonder the Collector lives in such style."
It was half-past twelve before the card-tables were removed, and we sat down to supper. We were a party of ten—Bodard and his wife, the Controller-General, Beaumarchais, the two strangers, two handsome women whose names I will not mention, and a collector of taxes, I think a M. Lavoisier. Of thirty who had been in the drawing-room when I entered, these were all who remained. The supper was stupid beyond belief. The two strangers and the Collector were intolerable bores. I made signs to Beaumarchais to make the surgeon tipsy, while I undertook the same kind office with the attorney, who sat on my left. As we had no other means of amusing ourselves, and the plan promised some fun, by bringing out the two interlopers and making them more ridiculous than we had found them already, M. de Calonne entered into the plot. In a moment the three ladies saw our design, and joined in it with all their power. The surgeon seemed very well inclined to yield; but when I had filled my neighbour's glass for the third time, he thanked me with cold politeness, and would drink no more. The conversation, I don't know from what cause, had turned on the magic suppers of the Count Cagliostro. I took little interest in it, for, from the moment of my neighbour's refusal to drink, I had done nothing but study his pale and small featured countenance. His nose was flat and sharp-pointed at the same time, and occasionally an expression came to his eyes that gave him the appearance of a weasel. All at once the blood rushed to his cheeks when he heard Madame St James say to M. de Calonne—
"But I assure you, sir, I have actually seen Queen Cleopatra."
"I believe it, madame," exclaimed my neighbour; "for I have spoken to Catharine de Medicis."
"Oh! oh!" laughed M. De Calonne.
The words uttered by the little provincial had an indefinable sonorousness. The sudden clearness of intonation, from a man who, up to this time, had scarcely spoken above his breath, startled us all.
"And how was her late Majesty?" said M. De Calonne.
"I can't positively declare that the person with whom I supped last night was Catharine de Medicis herself, for a miracle like that must be incredible to a Christian as well as to a philosopher," replied the attorney, resting the points of his fingers on the table, and setting himself up in his chair, as if he intended to speak for some time; "but I can swear that the person, whoever she was, resembled Catharine de Medicis as if they had been sisters. She wore a black velvet robe, exactly like the dress of that queen given in her portrait in the Royal Gallery; and the rapidity of her evocation was most surprising, as M. De Cagliostro had no idea of the person I should desire him to call up. I was confounded. The sight of a supper at which the illustrious women of past ages were present, took away my self-command. I listened without daring to ask a question. On getting away at midnight from the power of his enchantments, I almost doubted of my own existence. But what is the most wonderful thing about it is, that all those marvels appear to be quite natural and commonplace compared to the extraordinary hallucination I was subjected to afterwards. I don't know how to explain the state of my feelings to you in words; I will only say that, from henceforth, I an not surprised that there are spirits—strong enough or weak enough, I know not which—to believe in the mysteries of magic and the power of demons."
These words were pronounced with an incredible eloquence of tone. They were calculated to arrest our attention, and all eyes were fixed on the speaker. In that man, so cold and self-possessed, there burned a hidden fire which began to act upon us all.
"I know not," he continued, "whether the figure followed me in a state of invisibility; but the moment I got into bed, I saw the great shade of Catharine rise before me: all of a sudden she bent her head towards me—but I don't know whether I ought to go on," said the narrator, interrupting himself; "for though I must believe it was only a dream, what I have to tell is of the utmost weight."
"Is it about religion?" enquired Beaumarchais.
"Or, perhaps, something not fit for ladies' ears?" added M. de Calonne.
"It is about government," replied the stranger.
"Go on, then," said the Minister: "Voltaire, Diderot, and Company, have tutored our ears to good purpose."
"Whether it was that certain ideas rose involuntarily to my mind, or that I was acting under some irresistible impulse, I said to her—'Ah, madame, you committed an enormous crime.'
"'What crime?' she asked me in a solemn voice.
"'That of which the Palace clock gave the signal on the 24th of August.'
"She smiled disdainfully. 'You call that a crime?' she said: ''twas nothing but a misfortune. The enterprise failed, and has, therefore, not produced all the good we expected from it—to France, to Europe, to Christianity itself. The orders were ill executed, and posterity makes no allowance for the want of communication which hindered us from giving all the unity to our effort which is requisite in affairs of state;—that was the misfortune. If on the 26th of August there had not remained the shadow of a Huguenot in France, the latest posterity would have looked upon me with awe, as a Providence among men. How often have the clear intellects of Sextus the Fifth, of Richelieu, and Bossuet, secretly accused me of having failed in the design, after having had the courage to conceive it; and therefore how my death was regretted! Thirty years after the St Bartholomew, the malady existed still; and cost France ten times the quantity of noble blood that remained to be spilt on the 26th August 1572. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in honour of which medals were struck, cost more blood, more tears, and more treasure, and has been more injurious to France, than twenty St Bartholomews. If on the 25th August 1572, that enormous execution was necessary, on the 25th August 1685 it was useless. Under the second son of Henry de Valois heresy was almost barren; under the second son of Henry de Bourbon she had become a fruitful mother, and scattered her progeny over the globe. You accuse me of a crime, and yet you raise statues to the son of Anne of Austria!'
"At these words—slowly uttered—I felt a shudder creep over me. I seemed to inhale the smell of blood."
"He dreamt that to a certainty," whispered Beaumarchais; "he could not have invented it."
"'My reason is confounded,' I said to the queen. 'You plume yourself on an action which three generations have condemned and cursed, and'—
"'And,' she interrupted, 'that history has been more unjust to me than my contemporaries were. Nobody has taken up my defence. I am accused of ambition—I, rich and a queen—I am accused of cruelty; and the most impartial judges consider me a riddle. Do you think that I was actuated by feelings of hatred; that I breathed nothing but vengeance and fury?' She smiled. 'I was calm and cold as Reason herself. I condemned the Huguenots without pity, it is true, but without anger. If I had been Queen of England, I would have done the same to the Catholics if they had been seditious. Our country required at that time one God, one faith, one master. Luckily for me, I have described my policy in a word. When Birague announced to me the defeat at Dreux—well, I said, we must go to the Conventicle.—Hate the Huguenots, indeed! I honoured them greatly, and I did not know them. How could I hate those who had never been my friends?'
"'But, madame, instead of that horrible butchery, why did you not try to give the Calvinists the wise indulgences which made the reign of the Fourth Henry so peaceable and so glorious?'
"She smiled again, and the wrinkles in her face and brow gave an expression of the bitterest irony to her pale features.
"'Henry committed two faults,' she said. He ought neither to have abjured, nor to have left France Catholic after having become so himself. He alone was in a position to change the destinies of France. There should have been either no Crosier or no Conventicle. He should never have left in the government two hostile principles, with nothing to balance them. It is impossible that Sully can have looked without envy on the immense possessions of the church. But,' she paused, and seemed to consider for a moment—'is it the niece of a pope you are surprised to see a Catholic? After all,' she said, 'I could have been a Calvinist with all my heart. Does any one believe that religion had any thing to do with that movement, that revolution, the greatest the world has ever seen, which has been retarded by trifling causes, but which nothing can hinder from coming to pass, since I failed to crush it? A revolution,' she added, fixing her eye on me, 'which is even now in motion, and which you—yes, you—you who now listen to me—can finish.'
"I shuddered.
"'What! has no one perceived that the old interests and the new have taken Rome and Luther for their watchwords? What! Louis the Ninth, in order to avoid a struggle of the same kind, carried away with him five times the number of victims I condemned, and left their bones on the shores of Africa, and is considered a saint; while I—but the reason is soon given—I failed!'
"She bent her head, and was silent a moment. She was no longer a queen, but one of those awful druidesses who rejoiced in human sacrifices, and unrolled the pages of the Future by studying the records of the Past. At length she raised her noble and majestic head again. 'You are all inclined,' she said, 'to bestow more sympathy on a few worthless victims than on the tears and sufferings of a whole generation! And you forget that religious liberty, political freedom, a nation's tranquillity, science itself, are benefits which Destiny never vouchsafes to man without being paid for them in blood!'
"'Cannot nations, some day or other, obtain happiness on easier terms?' I asked, with tears in my eyes.
"'Truths never leave their well unless to be bathed in blood. Christianity itself—the essence of all truth, since it came from God—was not established without its martyrs. Blood flowed in torrents.'
"Blood! blood! the word sounded in my ear like a bell.
"'You think, then,' I said, 'that Protestantism would have a right to reason as you do.'
"But Catharine had disappeared, and I awoke, trembling and in tears, till reason resumed her sway, and told me that the doctrines of that proud Italian were detestable, and that neither king nor people had a right to act on the principles she had enounced, which I felt were only worthy of a nation of atheists."
When the unknown ceased to speak, the ladies made no remark. M. Bodard was asleep. The surgeon, who was half tipsy, Lavoisier Beaumarchais, and I, were the only ones who had listened. M. de Calonne was flirting with his neighbour. At that moment there was something solemn in the silence. The candles themselves seemed to me to burn with a magic dimness. A hidden power had riveted our attention, by some mysterious links, to the extraordinary narrator, who made me feel what might be the inexplicable influence of fanaticism. It was only the deep hollow voice of Beaumarchais' neighbour that awakened us from our surprise.
"I also had a dream," he said. I looked more attentively at the surgeon, and instinctively shuddered with horror. His earthy colour—his features, at once vulgar and imposing, presented the true expression of the canaille. He had dark pimples spread over his face like patches of dirt, and his eyes beamed with a repulsive light. His countenance was more horrid, perhaps, than it might otherwise have been, from his head being snow-white with powder.
"That fellow must have buried a host of patients," I said to my neighbour the attorney.
"I would not trust him with my dog," was the answer.
"I hate him—I can't help it," I said.
"I despise him."
"No—you're wrong there," I replied.
"And did you also dream of a queen?" enquired Beaumarchais.
"No! I dreamt of a people," he answered with an emphasis that made us laugh. "I had to cut off a patient's leg on the following day, and"—
"And you found the people in his leg?" asked M. de Calonne.
"Exactly," replied the surgeon.
"He's quite amusing," tittered the Countess de G——.
"I was rather astonished, I assure you," continued the man, without minding the sneers and interruptions he met with, "to find any thing to speak to in that leg. I had the extraordinary faculty of entering into my patient. When I found myself, for the first time, in his skin, I saw an immense quantity of little beings, which moved about, and thought, and reasoned. Some lived in the man's body, and some in his mind. His ideas were living things, which were born, grew up, and died. They were ill and well, lively, sorrowful; and in short had each their own characteristics. They quarrelled, or were friendly with each other. Some of these ideas forced their way out, and went to inhabit the intellectual world; for I saw at a glance that there were two worlds—the visible and the invisible, and that earth, like man, had a body and soul. Nature laid itself bare to me; and I perceived its immensity, by seeing the ocean of beings who were spread every where, making the whole one mass of animated matter, from the marbles up to God. It was a noble sight! In short, there was a universe in my patient. When I inserted the knife in his gangrened leg I annihilated millions of those beings. You laugh, ladies, to think you are possessed by animals."
"Don't be personal," sneered M. de Calonne—"speak for yourself and your patient."
"He, poor man, was so frightened by the cries of those animals, and suffered such torture, that he tried to interrupt the operation. But I persevered, and I told him that those noxious animals were actually gnawing his bones. He made a movement, and the knife hurt my own side."
"He is an ass," said Lavoisier.
"No—he is only drunk," replied Beaumarchais.
"But, gentlemen, my dream has a meaning in it," cried the surgeon.
"Oh! oh!" exclaimed Bodard, who awoke at the moment—"my leg's asleep."
"Your animals are dead, my dear," said his wife.
"That man has a destiny to fulfill," cried my neighbour the attorney, who had kept his eyes fixed on the narrator the whole time.
"It is to yours, sir," replied the frightful guest, who had overheard the remark, "what action is to thought—what the body is to the soul." But at this point his tongue became very confused from the quantity he had drunk, and his further words were unintelligible.
Luckily for us, the conversation soon took another turn, and in half an hour we forgot all about the surgeon, who was sound asleep in his chair. The rain fell in torrents when we rose from table.
"The attorney is no fool," said I to Beaumarchais.
"He is heavy and cold," he replied; "but you see there are still steady, good sort of people in the provinces, who are quite in earnest about political theories, and the history of France. It is a leaven that will work yet."
"Is your carriage here?" asked Madame de St James.
"No"—I replied coldly. "You wished me, perhaps, to take M. de Calonne home?"
She left me, slightly offended at the insinuation, and turned to the attorney.
"M. de Robespierre," she said, "will you have the kindness to set M. Marat down at his hotel? He is not able to take care of himself."