XII.
The hermit smiled—he stroked his chin—
Then quaintly answered he,
"There's something very singular
Connected with that tree!
Once on a time, when bark was dear,
The boughs I thought to peel,
But that same hurricane arose
And tossed me head o'er heel.
I think the oak will last my time—
But hark! I hear the bell!"
With his left hand he crossed himself,
Then slid into his cell.
But what the herd of porkers were,
He never told to me;
Nor who might be the mannikin
Was sawing at the TREE.
FESTUS.[5]
Those who are acquainted with the Faust of Goethe (and who is not?) cannot fail to have observed the influence which it has exercised over several of our contemporary poets. We do not infer that those poets have exhibited any signs of slavish imitation, or that any other than an honourable influence has been exerted over their minds. Before them also nature and thought lay open; they too have had their philosophy—their own mode of solving, or stating, the problems of human life; and of the great German himself, as perhaps of all men of genius, it can only be said that he felt more strongly, and reflected more vividly than others, the common spirit of his age—the spirit of bold inquiry, of discontent, of aspiration, and of doubt. We would merely infer that, in their writings, there is much, either in the tone and temper, or the structure of the composition, which irresistibly reminds us of the master-piece of Goethe.
In one respect, however, our poets have been far from imitating the great German. They share with him, more or less, in the daring spirit of philosophical speculation, and in those views of human life, which are expressed either in the poetic desperation of Faust, or the withering sarcasm of Mephistopheles. They have also adopted his admixture of various styles and metres, suited to a changeful theme discussed by various speakers. But in this apparent freedom and bold diversity of styles, whether ballad, or satiric couplet, or mournful blank verse, the German is always the consummate artist. His verse is, on each occasion, all that the verse should be—polished, refined, correct, according to its manner and its order. Native critics assure us, and a foreign ear feels the truth of the criticism, that the Faust is as remarkable for its mastery of language, and perfection of style, as for any other and higher qualities of poetry. But this merit some of our English bards seem to have despised, as utterly superfluous. They seem to contemn the labours of the artist. The control which the poet exercises over his own mind, in order that he may not allow the fervour of imagination to carry him wide beyond the pale of common-sense, or the frenzy of his passion to bear him far away from the sympathy of all other mortals; the survey and revisal in a calmer moment of what had been poured forth in the excited hour of original composition: the blotting out, the compressing together, the shading down, the removal of all stumbling-blocks to clear apprehension—all those labours, in short, by which language is made translucent and harmonious—made to serve its double purpose of use and luxury, of meaning and delight—they throw aside as an antiquated, absurd, unnecessary, and slavish toil. They will retain nothing, own nothing, but the "torrent rapture" of original composition. The consequence is evident and unavoidable. It is a very brief and imperfect rapture they afford their readers. Theirs is a very summer torrent, resembling what one often meets in a bright day, in the real landscape—very little stream, much stone, and a great scar in the earth left dry, glaring, and barren.
What are our "latter-day" poets dreaming of? Is the end of the world reckoned to be so near at hand that they think it folly to build for endurance?—idle to erect their "monument of brass," when it and the earth will so soon be swept away together? Or has the poet's old dream of an immortality of fame died out with the superstitions of a by-gone age, and no one in this philosophic era proposes to himself so visionary an object as a posthumous renown? We cannot think that poetic genius is wanting. Of all explanations, this is the last we should be disposed to admit. We could undertake to furnish from poems sinking rapidly into decay and oblivion, many a passage, and many a page, which would do honour to the highest names in the calendar of our muse-inspired men. We seem to have amongst us good poets still, but they have ceased to produce good poems. We have much genuine poetry diffused through our literature, and not a new work of art added to our possessions.
But if our men of genius are contented to be known in future times (if known at all) by some brilliant extracts only from crude, hasty, and forgotten works, could they not contrive to write extracts—now—for us—and leave the works alone? If they have but a few finished pictures to give us, if this is all their patience or their talent enables them to bring to perfection, must they really build, each one of them, a huge, rambling, misshapen edifice, that they may paint them here and there upon the walls? It is not absolutely necessary to build a new house for every new picture; although, in the infancy of the arts, such an idea was probably entertained. Those never-to-be-forgotten Chinese, immortalised by Charles Lamb, who, in the earliest stage of the culinary art, thought it requisite to burn down a house every time a sucking pig was to be roasted, very likely entertained this kindred idea. No doubt the artists of that period always built a wall before they painted a landscape. Happily all these matters have been simplified, and our poets should remember this. They should remember that, in none of the arts is it necessary to alarm the whole country by a conflagration, in order that some dainty morsels may be gathered out of the ruins.
Of all the poems which have lately come under our notice, there is none to which these remarks are more applicable than to Mr Bailey's Festus. It is the most extraordinary instance which our times, or we think any times have produced, of the union of genuine poetic power with utter recklessness of all the demands of art, or indeed of the requisitions of common-sense. It is "chaos come again," but chaos, withal, with such lightning flashes of real genius as compel us to look into it. Were it not for these abrupt and brief, but undoubted displays of genius, we certainly should not be induced to notice a work which so often degenerates into a mere poetic rant, a mere farrago of distracted metaphors, and crude metaphysics, and bewildering theology; where reasoning and imagination both run riot together; where the logic is as insane as the maniac fancy that is dancing with its flaring torch about it. Criticism, if it has any office, or duty, or voice left in the world, must protest against a species of literature which would set aside all the claims of good taste and good sense, in favour of a bold, original, reckless and unregulated imagination. Assuredly it ought not, in such a case, as it appears to have done, lavish unqualified encomiums.
Is the book worth reading?—is a summary question often put, and with some impatience, to the critic. Put here, we answer decidedly, Yes. Read it by all means, and with the pencil in your hand; for the probability is, that you will not work your way through it twice, and there are many things in it which you will not be content to have caught a glimpse of only once. Read it by all means. But this summary question, and its answer, do not decide the matter. If the author, by longer study and greater labour, could have made it worth preserving as well as reading, worth reading many times—if the state of opinion in the literary world is such that it encourages the publication of hasty and immature performances—there is something wrong here—something which ought, if possible, to be rectified.
In his poetic temperament, Mr Bailey will frequently remind the reader of Keats. He shares the same ardent imagination and uncontrollable fancy—the same, and perhaps stronger passion—the same breathless haste of composition which Keats manifested in his first production;—such haste, as if the writer feared to check himself a moment in his head-long career, lest the pause should be fatal to his inspiration. As Mr Bailey frequents a profounder region of thought than Keats had entered, he attains, in his happier moments, to a higher strain of poetry than his less reflective predecessor. On the other hand, his poetic sins are of a deeper dye, greater in number and in magnitude. That luxuriance of metaphor, that perpetual festival of the imagination, by which Keats is distinguished, are classic purity and abstinence itself, compared to the excesses of this kind in which the author of Festus indulges.
Mr Bailey has the true poetic fervour in him. This, no one capable of enjoying the literature of imagination will hesitate to acknowledge. Mr Bailey is a poet. But this poem of Festus? Criticism looks aghast at it—cannot possibly give it welcome—looks at it with dismay and perplexity. Genuine gold in it, you say. Good. But what if a whole hogshead of the precious mud of the Sacramento, fresh from its native bed, unwashed, unsifted, is rolled to your door! Confess that the present is somewhat embarrassing. A single handful of the bullion would have been so much better.
In dissecting the plot, and analysing the materials of this poem, a critic might find innumerable occasions for satire and for ridicule. We shall not avail ourselves of any such opportunities. Perhaps we have no calling for this part, and are resisting no temptation in refusing to be satirical. But, indeed, the critic is not properly the satirist. The satirist is already there—in the outer world; he exists in every man of keen sense in whom judgment preponderates over those feelings to which the poet applies himself. The critic steps in between this satirist and the poet—steps in to mediate. He tells the shrewd and intelligent man of the world, prompt to detect the ridiculous aspect of things, that if he really has no sympathy with a class of feelings based much upon imagination—if he has no admiration, approaching to enthusiasm, for the beautiful in the visible, and for the tender and heroic in the moral world—the page of the poet is not for him: instead of sneering and condemning, he has but to shut up the book and depart. On the other side, he tells the poet that he does not write for his own solitary heart, or for the ears of two or three of peculiar and kindred temperament, who will forgive everything, so that some favourite chord be touched. He tells him that he will mould his verse to little purpose, if he fail to secure the attention of judicious, as well as gentle and imaginative readers; and that it is unwise in him wantonly to incur the ridicule of men whom a little more sobriety of thought would have added to his listening and admiring audience. He tells him that imagination ought not to be divorced from sense, and that distracted metaphors ought not to be seen wandering about, with nothing to illustrate; that it is not well to write with wilful obscurity; nor to torture the ear with discord; nor perplex, and weary, and unfit for the enjoyment of what is really excellent, by a perpetual exaggeration which borders, if it is not quite within, the region of hyperbole.
One must be pardoned for repeating the very rudiments of criticism to some of the headstrong writers of our day. A lucid, correct, harmonious, style—they have forgotten what it means—what virtue there is in it. They speak, or think, of it as of some matter of antiquated prejudice—of stale, conventional observance. It is no matter of convention; it is the living source of a calm perpetual gratification. It is the music of the printed book. It is that which makes reading a delight, as well as a necessary task. It is that which makes another's thought, to the mind, what the visible object is to the eye—seen without effort, and seen clad with beauty, as well as distinguished by form and position. Whether the subject of the poet be of a calm and gentle, or of a grand and sublime description, this charm of beautiful composition ought always to accompany it. The theory is false which separates beauty from sublimity. The wing of the eagle is not less graceful than that of the smallest bird which flutters from bough to bough, or from flower to flower; nor is his flight less smooth, in his stormy altitudes, than the slow sailing of unruffled swans in their peaceful element. And as the pleasure attendant upon distinct and melodious language is of itself of the calm and graceful order, so also some degree of calmness and self-possession should pervade the mind of the poet who is to produce it for us. Not always must the thought flow torrent-like. Let it gush with what precipitation it will from the smitten rock, but let the waters subside and tranquillise a little before the prophet invites us to dip our thirsty lips into the stream. Let the hour of reflection follow at due interval. Not always is the poet to be in the full tempest of original composition;—as, however, Mr Bailey seems to think, both by his practice and the advice he gives in his drama to the Student—
"Once
Begun, work thou all things into thy work,
And set thyself about it as the sea
About the earth, lashing at it day and night."
Poets who give and follow such advice as this, grow to have a horror of distinctness of thought. They shrink from examining their own ideas, lest these should turn out to be no ideas at all; or perhaps very good and sensible ideas, but shockingly true and commonplace. They leave them, therefore, with the bloom of obscurity upon them, and lapse into the conviction that a certain degree of indistinctness is inseparable from subtlety and refinement of thought. A great mistake. Your subtle and refined thinking, if it be worth anything, if it be really thinking, must be distinct to those who have the ability to perceive what is subtle and refined. The thinnest gossamer that floats upon the air, if it is to be seen, must have an outline as well defined as if it were part of a ship's cable. But it is in vain to preach this doctrine to such writers—vain to argue that the imagination, in its most ethereal exercise, should still have an alliance with sense—we do not say with common sense, but with some intelligible thought: they have a direct interest in believing the contrary. What! sacrifice this image!—silence all this thunder!—throw away this new word we have just coined to express our else unutterable conceptions!—impossible!
If these remarks of ours appear to be of a very elementary character, the fault lies with those who render their repetition necessary. Mr Bailey, in his composition, has contrived to commit all the oldest sins in the newest kind of way. He has not only, by the aid of German metaphysics, become transcendently obscure, but he also emulates Messrs Sternhold and Hopkins, in the baldness and ruggedness of his verse.
"It is time that something should be done for the poor."
Who would imagine that this was a line of poetry? It is, however; and forms the commencement of a speech of Lucifer's. The whole speech follows in the same style of composition:—
"Lucifer.—It is time that something should be done for the poor.
The sole equality on earth is death;
Now, rich and poor are both dissatisfied.
I am for judgment: that will settle both.
Nothing is to be done without destruction.
Death is the universal salt of states;
Blood is the base of all things, law and war.
I could tame this lion age to follow me.
I should like to macadamize the world;
The road to Hell wants mending."
We give another specimen. It is a lyrical effusion delivered by the Angel of the Earth. We must give a lengthy and continuous sample, lest it should be said that it is we who, by omitting some portions, have made nonsense of the rest.
"Angel of Earth.—Stars, stars!
Stop your bright cars!
Stint your breath—
Repent ere worse—
Think of the death
Of the universe.
Fear doom, and fear
The fate of your kin-sphere.
As a corse in the tomb,
Earth! thou art laid in doom.
The worm is at thy heart.
I see all things part:—
The bright air thicken,
Thunder-stricken:
Birds from the sky
Shower like leaves:
Streamlets stop,
Like ice on eaves:
The sun go blind:
Swoon the wind
On the high hill-top—
Swoon and die:
Earth rear off her cities
As a horse his rider;
And still, with each death-strain,
Her heart-wound tear wider:
The lion roar and die,
With his eyeball on the sky:
The eagle scream,
And drop like a beam:
Men crowd and cry,
'Out on this deathful dream!'
A low dull sound—
'Tis the march of many bones
Under ground:
Up! and they fling,
Like a fly's wing,
Off them the gray grave-stones;
They sit in their biers—
Father and mother,
Man and wife,
Sister and brother,
As in life;
Lady and lover—
Love all over.
Their flesh re-appears—
Their hearts beat—
Their eyes have tears:
Woe—woe!
Do they speak?
Stir? No.
Tongues were too weak,
Save to repeat
'Woe!'
But they smile
In a while," &c.—(P. 84.)
In these days, when it is said that verse has hard matter to keep its ground, and is thought to be going altogether into disrepute, is it wise to give us such verse as this? Or was it well to conjure up angelical or supernatural persons to repeat it? Or, again, is it wise of one, who really has poetic power, to abuse it in such rant and hyperbole as the following? We quote from a part of the poem where the author is dealing with the most popular and favourable subject a reflective poet could select. Festus, under pretence of giving an account of another, describes his own early emotions at his first intercourse with nature and with life—those emotions which made a poet of him. Our extract leads off with a noble line, as happy as it is bold—"All things talked thoughts to him;" and we would wish to rescue from apparent censure the fine expression for the sky—"The blue eye of God." For the rest, it is what we have attempted to characterise as poetical rant—imagination grown raving and delirious.
"All things talked thoughts to him!—The sea went mad,
And the wind whined as 'twere in pain, to show
Each one his meaning; and the awful sun
Thundered his thoughts into him; and at night
The stars would whisper theirs, the moon sigh hers.
The spirit speaks all tongues and understands;
Both God's and angels', man's, and all dumb things,
Down to an insect's inarticulate hum,
And an inaudible organ. And it was
The spirit spake to him of everything;
And with the moony eyes, like those we see,
Thousands on thousands, crowding air in dreams,
Looked into him its mighty meanings, till
He felt the power fulfil him, as a cloud
In every fibre feels the forming wind.
He spake the world's one tongue: in earth and heaven
There is but one; it is the word of truth.
To him the eye let out its hidden meaning;
And young and old made their hearts over to him;
And thoughts were told to him as unto none,
Save one, who heareth, said and unsaid, all.
And his heart held these as a grate its gleeds,
Where others warm them.
Student. I would I had known him.
Festus.—All things were inspiration unto him:
Wood, wold, hill, field, sea, city, solitude,
And crowds and streets, and man where'er he was;
And the blue eye of God which is above us;
Brook-bounded pine spinnies, where spirits flit;
And haunted pits the rustic hurries by,
Where cold wet ghosts sit ringing jingling bells;
Old orchards' leaf-roofed aisles and red-cheeked load;
And the blood-coloured tears where yew-trees weep
O'er churchyard graves, like murderers remorseful."
The same most favourite subject—of the early feelings of a poet—he encounters in another scene of the drama, where he meets the very Muse herself. We prefer to select from these parts, because, though more extraordinary passages might be found elsewhere, yet on those occasions the extraordinary or unsuitable nature of his theme may be thought to have betrayed him into the violent style of writing we have to condemn. Festus meets the Muse in some one of the happy planets that he visits. She speaks in rhyme. We give a part of her address, and part of the answer of Festus. But first we must premise, that the Muse had that morning watched a particular ray of light, as it travelled from the sun to the earth—had "listened" to this ray, and reports what it said upon its unwilling journey downwards. She then sees this ray enter a cottage where a young poet is sitting, and in this original manner introduces her description:—
"Muse. A boyish bard
Sate suing night and stars for his reward.
The sunbeam swerved and grew, a breathing, dim,
For the first time, as it lit and looked on him:
His forehead faded—pale his lip, and dry—
Hollow his cheek—and fever-fed his eye.
Clouds lay about his brain, as on a hill,
Quick with the thunder thought and lightning will.
His clenched hand shook from its more than midnight clasp,
Till his pen fluttered like a wingèd asp;
Save that no deadly poison blacked its lips:
'Twas his to life-enlighten, not eclipse;
Nor would he shade one atom of another,
To have a sun his slave, a god his brother.
The young moon laid her down as one who dies,
Knowing that death can be no sacrifice,
For that the sun, her god, through nature's night,
Shall make her bosom to grow great with light.
Still he sat, though his lamp sunk; and he strained
His eyes, to work the nightness that remained.
Festus. Yes, there was a time
When tomes of ancient song held eye and heart—
Were the sole lore I reeked of: the great bards
Of Greece, of Rome, and mine own master land,
And they who in the Holy Book are deathless—
Men who have vulgarised sublimity,
And bought up truth for the nations—parted it
As soldiers lotted once the garb of God;
Men who have forged gods—uttered, made them pass;
In whose words, to be read with many a heaving
Of the heart, is a power, like wind in rain:
Sons of the sons of God, who, in olden days,
Did leave their passionless heaven for earth and woman,
Brought an immortal to a mortal breast;
And, like a rainbow clasping the sweet earth,
And melting in the covenant of love,
Left here a bright precipitate of soul,
Which lives for ever through the lines of men,
Flashing by fits, like fire from an enemy's front:
Whose thoughts, like bars of sunshine in shut rooms,
Mid gloom, all glory, win the world to light;
Who make their very follies like their souls;
And, like the young moon with a ragged edge,
Still in their imperfection beautiful;
Whose weaknesses are lovely as their strengths,
Like the white nebulous matter between stars,
Which, if not light, at least is likest light."
We do not attempt to analyse these passages, it would take up too much space; and the reader, if he thinks fit, can do it for himself. Neither have we, except on one or two occasions, resorted to the usual expedient of marking in italics all we would censure, for almost the whole of our extracts would then have been printed in italics. Of course there is something better than this in the poem, or we should not have given it such praise as we have; but there is also a great deal that is worse. The various specimens we have presented are no bad average of what constitutes a very large portion of the book. Yet this is the poem which, we are told, has been received with most applausive welcome, both by the public and the critics! In the edition we have before us—the third, and, we believe, the latest—there is appended at the conclusion a series of laudatory extracts from Reviews and Magazines, and also of opinions, most eulogistic, given by men of literary celebrity. In what shape these last were originally expressed, whether in print or in private letter, we are not informed. If extracts from private letters, though doubtless published with the writer's permission, their publication strikes us as a novelty, even in these advertising days. Mr Tennyson is set down as saying—"I can scarcely trust myself to say how much I admire it, for fear of falling into extravagance." Sir E. Bulwer Lytton speaks with more caution—"A most remarkable poem, of great beauty, and greater promise. My admiration of it is deep and sincere." Ebenezer Elliott exclaims—"It contains poetry enough to set up fifty poets." The ladies are still more enthusiastic. Mrs S. C. Hall outbids Mr Elliott. "There is matter enough in it to float a hundred volumes of the usual prosy poetry. It contains some of the most wonderful things I ever read." Eulogistic extracts from Reviews, and Magazines, and newspapers, follow in abundance; it is a universal clapping of hands and shout of triumph. The whole vocabulary of applause is exhausted. An American critic "classes it with the Iliad, and Macbeth, and Paradise Lost!"—a classification not quite so lucid as it is flattering. Our more sober and Dissenting brethren seem to have pardoned all its heresies, or not to have seen them, in the dazzling and unintermitting blaze of its genius. Its critics catch the tone of their applauded poem, and speak in hyperbolics, as the only language capable of expressing the intensity of their admiration. "Who," exclaims one, "that has ever read Festus, has forgotten that prodigious poem? You find in it all contradictions reconciled—all improbabilities accomplished—all opposites paired—all formulas swallowed—all darings of thought and language attempted"—a rapture of criticism, which took us with much surprise, when we saw the respectable authority attached to it.
Well, let the reader now turn back to the specimens we have given him—or look into the poem itself—he may take up whole handfuls of the same description. Has all sincerity, all truth and candour, died out of criticism? Or, because it stands on record that some judgments too severe were lately passed on the first efforts of youthful genius, has criticism become all at once exceeding timid, quite tame, humbled, and subdued? Are we so afraid of being thought blind to novel and original displays of genius, that we are all resolved to praise—to do nothing but praise—as the only safe course to pursue? Some have entertained angels, it seems, unawares, and entertained them but rudely; therefore, henceforth, let us do homage to every new comer—the more mysterious, the more homage. Such a stir, it appears, has been made about the obtuseness of reviewers to the more subtle or sublime beauties of poetry, that the poor critic dares not use his own eyes—nor tell what he sees with them—nor whisper what he does not see.
Hans Andersen, in one of his tales for children, tells an admirable story, how two rogues pretended to weave for the royal person a tissue of gold and silk, of a novel and most beautiful description. It had, however, this peculiar property—it was invisible to fools. Of course, it is needless to say that every one at court saw and was charmed with its surpassing beauty. The rogues had a pleasant time of it: pensions from the crown, applause from all the world. They threw an empty shuttle through an empty loom, and the connoisseurs and critics looked on with intense delight, and out-rivalled each other in extolling the growing splendours of this exquisite fabric. Wonderful! Prodigious! Poetry for fifty! Poetry for a hundred! Prodigious! Wonderful!
But we have not, all this time, given any account of the plot or purpose of Festus. It is a hard task, but it must be undertaken. In imitation of the Faust of Goethe—or say, adopting, like it, the proem to the Book of Job—the drama opens with a scene in heaven, wherein Lucifer appears, and asks permission to tempt Festus. The mortal whom the Spirit of Evil here selects for his especial temptation, has the thirst for knowledge, and the contempt for human life, which distinguish the whole family of the Fausts. But whereas the German poet adopted a philosophical indifferentism as his position, or standing-point, from which to survey the scene of human life and of human thought, Mr Bailey has a positive and very intricate creed to enunciate, and has made his poem a vehicle for teaching a dogmatical system of theology, which, if not altogether orthodox, certainly does not fail from the paucity, or the too great simplicity, of its doctrines. Instead of doubt, we have a heresy. A most extraordinary medley of Christian tenets and transcendental or Hegelian metaphysics, is taught, and chiefly by the devil himself! Lucifer, who assumes at first something of the mocking vein of Mephistopheles, proves to be a learned professor of Göttingen or Berlin, and the preacher of a very refined and spiritual, though somewhat heterodox, Christianity. When we add that—interweaving, as it were, some scenes from quite a different drama, on the loves of the angels—Mr Bailey has represented his great Spirit of Evil falling desperately in love with a mortal maid, Elissa—"sighing like furnace"—outheroding mere human lovers—yet jilted, and suffering (as it seems in a most genuine manner) the pangs of despised passion—our readers will be prepared to agree with us that never was so strange a Satan conceived or delineated, either in prose or verse.
The drama opens, as we have said, in heaven.
"God.—What wouldst thou, Lucifer?
Lucifer. There is a youth
Among the sons of men, I fain would have
Given up wholly to me.
God. He is thine,
To tempt.
Lucifer. I thank thee, Lord!
God. Upon his soul
Thou hast no power. All souls are mine for aye."
This ultimate salvation of all mankind, and of all peccant spirits, is a conspicuous doctrine of Mr Bailey's. The law of universal necessity is another. One might suppose that this announcement of the decreed salvation of Festus would nullify the permission given to Satan to tempt him, and induce that spirit to relinquish his hopeless scheme. But the second doctrine of philosophical necessity assists us in explaining the conduct of Lucifer. He, being a consistent and enlightened Necessarian, knows that he must fail in his attempt, but knows also that he must make it—knows that he must act according to his nature, and incessantly strive to ruin, vitiate, and destroy.
The next scene brings us down to earth, and introduces us to Festus. And here the reader naturally expects a series of temptations on the part of the Evil Spirit, of struggles, lapses, and repentances on the part of the mortal. But no such thing. The strangest relationship imaginable is established between the two. The Spirit of Evil reveals to Festus all manner of profound knowledge, metaphysical and theological; carries him up into heaven, where he learns that his own name is written in the Book of Life; conveys him through all space, into the sun, the planets, hell, Hades, and even invests him with the privilege of ubiquity; performs, in short, every service which so potent a spirit could render to an ambitious mortal. With respect to moral delinquency, the only blemish in the character of Festus is a certain inconstancy in love. His passion is of a tender, imaginative, and ennobling character; but he transfers it from one beauty to another with unpardonable levity. He is a sort of poetical or sentimental Don Juan: Angela, Clara, Helen, Elissa, by turns kindle his amorous devotion. But this faithless and too redundant worship of woman's beauty, is not brought about in any manner, by the instigation or the aid of Lucifer. This inconstant temper he had already manifested, and given the worst example of, before his acquaintance with the great tempter. The saddest fault he is chargeable with, his abandonment of Angela, has been already committed. Nay, this inconstancy in love is manifested on the last occasion much to the annoyance of Lucifer, who is driven, by the superior attractions of his pupil, from the affections of Elissa. We hear Festus very magnanimously pardoning the Evil One for having tempted him; but it appears to us that Lucifer had more reason to complain of his friend Festus, than Festus of Lucifer. At the very close of the drama, Festus is placed, we know not how, on the throne of all the world!—an elevation dangerous enough. But he holds it only for a single day. He has no opportunity for the abuse of power, and his aspirations for possessing it have been of the purest description. Just before his elevation, he has most devoutly exclaimed—
"Lord! Thou knowest that the power I seek
Is but for others' good, and Thine own glory,
And the desire for it inspired by Thee.
So use me as I use it."
The Spirit of Evil has asked permission to tempt Festus, but he occupies himself with teaching a system of divinity, an improved and transcendental Christianity. He does all in his power to elevate the thoughts of his pupil, and to enlarge the bounds of his knowledge—enables him to explore the whole universe, and solve the most profound mysteries. His talk is wild at times; he retains a diabolic taste for conflagrations, and the burning up of worlds, which, in this civilised epoch, he might have laid aside, with his horns and tail; but, upon the whole, he appears in the light of a most edifying companion, and a most serviceable spirit. Any young gentleman who, not satisfied with seeing the world, should be desirous of travelling through the universe as well, might reasonably congratulate himself on such a guide and companion. The title of some of the Scenes will alone show what glorious revelations await those favoured mortals whom the Devil thinks proper to tempt. We have Scene, the Surface; scene, the Centre; scene, Space; scene, Heaven; scene, Hell; scene, the Skies; scene, Elsewhere; scene, Everywhere! These localities, if such they are, could not possibly be described with a more sublime contempt for detail.
One of the earliest scenes, however, of the drama, takes place in the humbler precincts of a Country Town, and strange enough is the part which Lucifer and Festus enact before a number of people gathered together in the market-place. Lucifer delivers a sermon to them in the style of Maw-worm; and Festus performs his part in this divine service, by delivering a long, and apparently a serious prayer, which, for aught we see, might be adopted by any Dissenting minister desirous of varying his extempore effusions. If there is any heresy, there is, at all events, no poetry in it which he would find it necessary to omit. But both these speakers soon ascend to higher regions of speculation, and to higher regions of the universe. They ascend into heaven—Lucifer still being able, it seems, to act here as master of the ceremonies.
"Lucifer. All-being God! I come to Thee again,
Nor come alone. Mortality is here.
Thou bad'st me do my will, and I have dared
To do it. I have brought him up to heaven.
God. Thou canst not do what is not willed to be.
Suns are made up of atoms, heaven of souls;
And souls and suns are but the atoms of
The body, I, God, dwell in. What wilt thou
with him who is here with thee?
Lucifer. Show him God.
God. No being, upon part of whom the curse
Of death rests—were it only on his shadow,
Can look on God and live.
Lucifer. Look, Festus, look!
Festus. Eternal fountain of the Infinite,
On whose life-tide the stars seem strewn like bubbles,
Forgive me that an atomie of being
Hath sought to see its Maker face to face,
Forgive me, Lord!
God. Rise, mortal! Look on me.
Festus. Oh! I see nothing but like dazzling darkness.
Lucifer. I knew how it would be. I am away.
Festus. I am thy creature, God! Oh, slay me not,
But let some angel take me, or I die.
Genius. Come hither, Festus.
Festus. Who art thou?
Genius. I am
One who hath aye been by thee from thy birth,
Thy guardian angel, thy good genius.
Festus. I knew thee not till now.
Genius. I am never seen
In the earth's low thick light; but here in heaven,
And in the air which God breathes, I am clear.
I tell to God each night thy thoughts and deeds;
And watching o'er thee both on earth and here,
Pray unto Him for thee, and intercede.
Festus. And this is heaven. Lead on.
Will God forgive,
That I did long to see Him?
Genius. It is the strain
Of all high spirits towards Him....
Come, I will show thee Heaven and all angels.
Lo! the recording angel.
Festus. Him I see
High seated, and the pen within his hand
Plumed like a storm-portending cloud which curves
Half over heaven, and swift, in use divine,
As is a warrior's spear!
Genius. And there the Book of Life which holds the names,
Formed out in starry brilliants, of God's sons—
The spirit-names which angels learn by heart
Of worlds beforehand. Wilt thou see thine own?
Festus. My name is written in the Book of Life.
It is enough. That constellated word
Is more to me and clearer than all stars,
Henceforward and for aye.
Genius. Raise still thine eyes!
Thy gleaming throne!—hewn from that mount of light
Which was before created light or night,
Never created, heaven's eternal base,
Whereon God's throne is 'stablished.—Sit on it!
Festus. Nay, I will forestall nothing more than sight."
The various scenes of which the drama is composed follow in no intelligible order; it is rarely that one seems to lead to the other. Festus, after this extraordinary visit into heaven, is the same Festus that he was before. He descends to earth to make rapturous love to Helen, or he wanders through all the worlds of space, the same discontented and mystified mortal. At length, after having explored the whole universe, and apparently escaped from Space itself, he is suddenly elevated by Lucifer to the throne of this planet earth.
"Scene. A gathering of Kings and Peoples.
Festus (throned.) Princes and Peoples!
Powers, once, of earth!
It suits not that I point to ye the path
By which I reached this sole supreme domain—
This mountain of all mortal might. Enough,
That I am monarch of the world—the world.
Let all acknowledge loyally my laws,
And love me as I them love. It will be best.
No rise against me can stand. I rule of God;
And am God's sceptre here. Think not the world
Is greater than my might—less than my love—
Or that it stretcheth further than mine arm.
Kings! ye are kings no longer. Cast your crowns
Here—for my footstool."
In this wonderful position he does nothing, nor has time to do anything. He has no sooner assumed his throne than his subjects all die off. The world has come to an end.
"Festus. Hark! thou fiend! dost hear?
Lucifer. Ay! it is the death-groan of the sons of men,
Thy subjects—King!
Festus. Why hadst thou this so soon?
Lucifer. It is God who brings it all about—not I.
Festus. I am not ready—and—it shall not be!
Lucifer. I cannot help it, monarch! and—it is!
Hast not had time for good?
Festus. One day—perchance.
Lucifer. Then hold that day as an eternity.
Festus. All round me die. The earth is one great deathbed."
Then follows a millennium, and, after that, Judgment Day. All mankind are saved, and not man only—Lucifer and all his host are re-admitted into Heaven. To Satan, his former throne—which has been preserved vacant for him—is restored, together with all his pristine glory. The drama ends in universal and eternal felicity.
Having said thus much of the plot, we may look a little closer at the philosophy and poetry of this strange performance. We shall touch as lightly as possible upon that admixture of Hegelian metaphysics and evangelical divinity, which, as we have said, constitutes the speculative portion of the work. It occupies, however, no inconsiderable space in the poem. On one occasion Festus pours into the ear of his mistress, in an unbroken harangue of about nine hundred lines, the profound knowledge he has acquired from his supernatural resources. Love is proverbially patient, and Helen listens—at least does not interrupt. Here are some fragments that will show how severely he must have tasked her apprehension. A spirit is speaking in one of the innumerable visions which everywhere obscure the poem.
"She spake, I said, the spirit, and at her word
Behold the heavens were opened as a book.
I am the world-soul, nature's spirit I,
Ere universe or constellation was,
System, or sun, or orb, or element,
Darkness, or light, or atom, I first lived;
I and Necessity, though twain in life,
Yet one in Being. Time and life are one.
But insomuch as nature is destroyed
In God's assumption to Divine estate
Of an especial soul, necessity
Ends in extreme original nothingness."
It is very tantalising to be so near the source of wisdom, and utterly unable to avail ourselves of it. How it fared with Helen we do not know; but for ourselves, it is in vain we are told,—
"Again the world-soul voiced itself, and I
Drank in the fruitful glories of her words
As earth consumes the golden skiey clouds."
These "fruitful glories" are to us mere darkness. We can just gather where some of these "clouds," by no means "golden" to our vision, came from. As, for instance, when we hear that—
"The actual and ideal meet but once,
Where pure impossibilities are facts."
Or, further on, when this world-spirit thus enlightens us:—
"She stood and spake intuitive of Heaven,
The World-divining Spirit whilom named.
Now such as man is to himself is His
Divine idea; but the God which is,
Is not the God men worship, not alone
Ineffable, but inconceivable;
How shall an atom comprehend the Heaven?
Two points men occupy in space and time,
And half exist of matter and in form:
Thus, His existence is their opposite;
And all is either God or nothingness,
Being with nonbeing identical."
And so we are landed in the Absolute of Hegel; and in that insufferable jargon of his, by which, (confounding the laws of thought with the nature of things,) he proves, because we cannot think of existence without a reference to non-existence, nor think of non-existence without the contrasted idea of existence, that therefore existence itself includes non-existence, and non-existence includes existence, and they are identical—(sein = nicht sein.)
We cannot compliment Mr Bailey on the skill he has displayed in his combination of Hegelian philosophy with his theological doctrines. In the following extract Lucifer is the spokesman:—
"Lucifer.—All creature-minds, like man's, are fallible:
The seraph who in Heaven highest stands
May fall to ruin deepest. God is mind—
Pure, perfect, sinless. Man imperfect is—
Momently sinning. Evil thus results
From imperfection.
God hath no attributes, unless To Be
Be one: 'twould mix him with the things He hath made.
Festus. Can imperfection from perfection come?
Can God make aught defective?
Lucifer. How aught else?
There are but three proportions in all things—
The greater—equal—less. God could not make
A God above himself, nor equal with—
By nature and necessity the highest;
So if he make it must be lesser minds—
Little and less from angels down to men,
Whose natures are imperfect, as his own
Must be all-perfect."
Here we have it stated that evil results from, or is synonymous with, imperfection; and all creature-minds are necessarily imperfect, inasmuch as they are inferior to God. But in the lines printed in italics, God is represented as having "no attributes;" for that would mix or liken Him with what He creates. There is, therefore, no room for comparison between the creature and the Creator, there can as little be inferiority as equality. He first finds an argument, such as it is, in the inalienable perfection of God's attributes, and then—embracing the Absolute of Hegel, (to us a mere shadow)—denies that God has attributes.
The contradictory doctrines taught in this poem, by different speakers, or the same speaker at different times, are to be explained, we presume, by the dramatic exigencies of the piece. We throw out this supposition, as a possible ground of defence or explanation; but to us it seems that we are taught the most contradictory dogmas by speakers of equal authority. The generally received doctrine of future rewards and punishments is asserted at one time, and exploded, very positively, and with very little reverence, at another. The Scriptural tenet of redemption is generalised into a law of the universe, and the Son of God is always suffering to redeem guilty planets. Nay, as he bore suffering for man, we are told that he bears sin for the salvation of fiends:—
"Son of God. For men
I bore with death—for fiends I bear with sin;
And death and sin are each the pain I pay
For the love which brought me down from Heaven to save
Both men and devils."
Yet, if all creature-minds are necessarily imperfect, and therefore necessarily evil, it is difficult to understand in what the action of redemption can consist; or how any creature can be redeemed from evil, since evil belongs essentially to it, as a creature.
Though regretting what to us must seem the errors of Mr Bailey, we have no disposition to censure him very severely for any heterodox opinion he may have ventured to express. As times go, and as poets write, Mr Bailey is remarkable for the plenitude of his faith, and the piety of his verse. We would only, if it were possible, take from his hands certain edged tools which he is playing with too fantastically, and the due command of which he does not seem to have acquired. We would merely express our regret that views which have been dictated by, or are in accordance with, the highest sentiments and aspirations of the human mind, should not have been rendered more harmonious with themselves—more distinct, consistent, and intelligible.
We extricate ourselves as soon as possible from these thorny discussions, and turn from the philosophy, to some concluding remarks on the poetry, of Festus. And here we can now vary our task, and relieve our page, by selecting some of those brilliant fragments and admirable passages which, as we have said, abundantly prove the genius of Mr Bailey, and which make us regret that an imagination so bold and original has not been allied to a more disciplined intellect. Nor is it only in the more daring efforts of imagination that he displays his power; occasionally there are touches of true pathos; and from time to time a charming picture, the product of a playful and tender fancy, will flit past us in the dreary mist which too often hangs over the scene.
There is much beauty and passion scattered through the love passages of the drama. Clara says—
"I wish we had a little world to ourselves,
With none but we two in it.
Festus. And if God
Gave us a star, what could we do with it
But what we could without it? Wish it not!
Clara. I'll not wish then for stars: but I could love
Some peaceful spot, where we might dwell unknown,
Where home-born joys might nestle round our hearts
As swallows round our roofs, and blend their sweets
Like dewy tangled flowerets in one bed.
Festus. The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love;
The taint of earth, the odour of the skies
Is in it. Would that I were aught but man!
The death of brutes, the immortality
Of fiend or angel, better seems than all
The doubtful prospects of our painted dust.
And all Morality can teach is—Bear!
And all Religion can inspire is—Hope!"
Then changing his mood, with a very natural versatility, Festus says—
"Here have I lain all day in this green nook,
Shaded by larch and hornbeam, ash and yew;
A living well and runnel at my feet,
And wild-flowers dancing to some delicate air;
An urn-topped column and its ivy wreath
Skirting my sight, as thus I lie and look
Upon the blue, unchanging, sacred skies:
And thou, too, gentle Clara, by my side,
With lightsome brow and beaming eye, and bright
Long glorious locks, which drop upon thy cheek
Like gold-hued cloud-flakes on the rosy morn.
Oh! when the heart is full of sweets to o'er-flowing,
And ringing to the music of its love,
Who but an angel or a hypocrite
Could speak or think of happier states?"
The name of the fair one changes—it is Helen instead of Clara that he now idolises; but the passion is the same—the intense love of beauty. There is a festival; he crowns Helen queen of the festive scene, with these gay and joyous lines:—
"Festus. Here—wear this wreath! no ruder crown
Should deck that dazzling brow.
I crown thee, love; I crown thee, love;
I crown thee Queen of me:
And oh! but I am a happy land,
And a loyal land to thee.
I crown thee, love; I crown thee, love;
Thou art Queen in thine own right!
Feel! my heart is as full as a town of joy;
Look! I've crowded mine eyes with light.
I crown thee, love; I crown thee, love;
Thou art Queen by right divine!
And thy love shall set neither night nor day
O'er this subject heart of mine.
I crown thee, love; I crown thee, love;
Thou art Queen by the right of the strong!
And thou did'st but win where thou might'st have slain,
Or have bounden in thraldom long.
I crown thee, love; I crown thee, love;
Queen of the brave and free;
For I'm brave to all beauty but thine, my love;
And free to all beauty by thee."
As this displays the bounding gaiety of love, so the following extract reveals some of the delirium of the passion:—
"I, too, could look on thee until I wept.—
Blind me with kisses! Let me look no longer;
Or change the action of thy loveliness,
Lest long same-seemingness should send me mad!—
Blind me with kisses!"
There are many songs introduced in this, which may be described as the more terrestrial portion of the drama. They are not, in general, commendable. The substance of them is no better nor higher than love songs and drinking songs are very properly composed of, whilst the verse is destitute of that polish, grace, and harmony, which trifles of this description ought to possess. We select one stanza, as the happiest specimen which occurs to us of this kind of composition. Helen is singing:—
"Like an island in a river,
Art thou, my love, to me;
And I journey by thee ever
With a gentle ectasie.
I arise to fall before thee;
I come to kiss thy feet;
To adorn thee and adore thee,
Mine only one! my sweet!"
In his description of nature, and especially of night, the stars, the moon, the heavens, our poet often breaks upon us with a truly noble and poetic imagination:—
"How strangely fair,
Yon round still star, which looks half-suffering from,
And half-rejoicing in its own strong fire;
Making itself a lonelihood of light."
Of the moon he is a most permissible idolator:—
"See,
The moon is up, it is the dawn of night.
Stands by her side one bold, bright, steady star—
Star of her heart— ...
Mother of stars! the Heavens look up to thee:
They shine the brighter but to hide thy waning;
They wait and wane for thee to enlarge thy beauty;
They give thee all their glory night by night;
Their number makes not less thy loneliness
Nor loveliness."
This is of the full moon: what follows is addressed to her when she passes as the young moon, and brings her fresh bright crescent of light into the sky:—
"Young maiden moon! just looming into light—
I would that aspect never might be changed;
Nor that fine form, so spirit-like, be spoiled
With fuller light. Oh! keep that brilliant shape;
Keep the delicious honour of thy youth,
Sweet sister of the sun, more beauteous thou
Than he sublime. Shine on, nor dread decay.
It may take meaner things; but thy bright look,
Smiling away on immortality,
Assures it us——God will not part with thee,
Fair ark of light, and every blessedness!"
Here are some scattered fragments which pleased us very much, but which cannot be introduced under any formal classification. Describing his desertion of his first love, Angela, Festus says,—
"It was thus:
I said we were to part, but she said nothing.
There was no discord—it was music ceased—
Life's thrilling, bounding, bursting joy."
Of books, he says,—
"Worthy books
Are not companions—they are solitudes;
We lose ourselves in them, and all our cares."
Here is a charming picture,—
"Before us shone the sun.
The angel waved her hand ere she began,
As bidding earth be still. The birds ceased singing,
And the trees breathing, and the lake smoothed down
Each shining wrinklet, and the wind drew off.
Time leant him o'er his scythe, and, listening, wept."
Speaking of men of genius, he says,—
"Men whom we built our love round, like an arch
Of triumph, as they pass us on their way
To glory and to immortality."
The vague aspirations of one living in his ideas is thus expressed,—
"I cannot think but thought
On thought springs up, illimitably, round,
As a great forest sows itself; but here
There is nor ground nor light enough to live.
But the hour is hard at hand
When Time's gray wing shall winnow all away
The atoms of the earth, the stars of Heaven;
When the created and Creator mind
Shall know each other, worlds and bodies both
Put off for ever."
He says finely,—
"We never see the stars
Till we can see naught but them. So with truth."
Of a young poet,—
"He wrote amid the ruins of his heart,
They were his throne and theme; like some lone king
Who tells the story of the land he lost,
And how he lost it.
... It is no task for suns
To shine. He knew himself a bard ordained."
These two following quotations may be also put very well together, though taken from different parts of the poem,—
"It is fine
To stand upon some lofty mountain-thought,
And feel the spirit stretch into the view:
To joy in what might be, if will and power,
For good, would work together.
But while we wish, the world turns round
And peeps us in the face—the wanton world,
We feel it gently pressing down our arm—
The arm we had raised to do for truth such wonders;
We feel it softly bearing on our side—
We feel it touch and thrill us through the body—
And we are fools, and there's an end of us."
The following are some of the expressions of the mingled tide of passion, and of thought as it flows through the troubled bosom of his hero,—
"And if I love not now, while woman is
All bosom to the young, when shall I love?
Who ever paused on passion's fiery wheel?
Or trembling by the side of her he loved,
Whose lightest touch brings all but madness, ever
Stopped coldly short to reckon up his pulse?
The car comes—and we lie—and let it come;
It crushes—kills—what then! It is joy to die.
Woman! Old people may say what they please,
The heart of age is like an emptied wine-cup.
Oh for the young heart like a fountain playing!
Flinging its bright fresh feelings up to the skies
It loves and strives to reach—strives, loves in vain:
It is of earth and never meant for Heaven.
Let us love—and die.
And when we have said, and seen, and done, and had,
Enjoyed and suffered, all we have wished and feared—
From fame to ruin, and from love to loathing—
There can come but one more change—try it—death.
Oh! it is great to feel we care for nothing—
That hope, nor love, nor fear, nor aught of earth
Can check the royal lavishment of life;
But like a streamer strown upon the wind,
We fling our souls to fate and to the future.
And to die young is youth's divinest gift—
To pass from one world fresh into another
Ere change hath lost the charm of soft regret,
And feel the immortal impulse from within
Which makes the coming life cry alway—On!
There is a fire-fly in the southern clime
Which shineth only when upon the wing;
So is it with the mind: when once we rest
We darken."
We have not yet given any favourable specimen of those more hardy and adventurous flights of imagination—those shadowy grandeurs—which may be said to be peculiarly characteristic of Festus. Selection is not easy. As, in illustrating the exaggerations and deformities of the work, it is difficult to quote many lines together without encountering something really fine, and which would be felt as such, if it could be removed from its unfortunate neighbourhood; so also it is equally difficult to cite any moderately long passage, for the purpose of justifying admiration, without being suddenly arrested by something very grotesque and absurd. We shall, however, make two selections from these bolder portions of the drama: the first shall be his description of Hell; the second, one of those dreams or visions in which our poet so much delights:—
"Lucifer. Behold my world! Man's science counts it not
Upon the brightest sky. He never knows
How near it comes to him: but, swathed in clouds
As though in plumed and palled state, it steals
Hearse-like and thief-like round the universe,
For ever rolling and returning not—
Robbing all worlds of many an angel soul—
With its light hidden in its breast, which burns
With all concentrate and superfluent woe.
Nor sun nor moon illume it, and to those
Which dwell in it, not live, the starry skies
Have told no time since first they entered there.
Be sure
That this is Hell. The blood which hath imbrued
Earth's breast, since first men met in war, may hope
Yet to be formed again and reascend,
Each drop its individual vein; the foam bubble,
Sun-drawn out of the sea into the clouds,
To scale the cataract down which it fell;
But for the lost to rise to or regain
Heaven,—or to hope it,—is impossible."
The Dream is one which Elissa relates—relates to her lover, Lucifer. It must be acknowledged to be very like a dream in a certain vague horror which pervades it. The image of Decay is a grand conception:—
"Elissa. Methought that I was happy, because dead.
All hurried to and fro; and many cried
To each other—'Can I do thee any good?'
But no one heeded: nothing could avail:
The world was one great grave. I looked and saw
Time on his two great wings—one, night—one, day—
Fly moth-like, right into the flickering sun;
So that the sun went out, and they both perished.
And one gat up and spoke—a holy man—
Exhorting them; but each and all cried out—
'Go to!—it helps not—means not: we are dead.'
'Bring out your hearts before me. Give your limbs
To whom ye list or love. My son, Decay,
Will take them: give them him. I want your hearts,
That I may take them up to God.' There came
These words amongst us, but we knew not whence.
It was as if the air spake. And there rose
Out of the earth a giant thing, all earth;
His eye was earthy, and his arm was earthy:
He had no heart. He but said, 'I am Decay;'
And as he spake he crumbled into earth,
And there was nothing of him. But we all
Lifted our faces up at the word, God,
And spied a dark star high above in the midst
Of others, numberless as are the dead.
And all plucked out their hearts, and held them in
Their right hands. Many tried to pick out specks
And stains, but could not: each gave up his heart.
And something—all things—nothing—it was Death,
Said as before, from air—'Let us to God!'
And straight we rose, leaving behind the raw
Worms and dead gods; all of us—soared and soared
Right upwards, till the star I told thee of
Looked like a moon—the moon became a sun:
The sun—there came——"
But here we must break off. What follows is too wild to be excused even by the privileges of a dream. A hand comes and tears off—Yet we may as well, perhaps, continue the quotation; it will show as fairly as any other instance how ungovernable, and all but delirious, the excited imagination of our poet is apt to become:—
"The sun—there came a hand between the sun and us,
And its five fingers made five nights in air.
God tore the glory from the sun's broad brow,
And flung the flaming scalp off flat to Hell.
I saw Him do it; and it passed close by us."
We had something more to say of the many wild extravagancies which with Mr Bailey have become habitual, but we will not fatigue the reader by a recurrence to this topic. He has probably seen enough of the glaring faults of this poem—faults which, with us, he must have learnt to regret, from the examples we have given of the great genius which is here undoubtedly combined with them.
After what has been said and exemplified of the poetic licenses in which the author of Festus indulges, it seems a very little matter to add that he coins new words at discretion, as "bodies soulical," and the like; and sometimes uses old ones in a new sense, to the complete baffling of our apprehension, as when he speaks of a "dream of dress" and a "tongue of dress." He also revives obsolete words, without any apparent reason. Is there any peculiar pathos in the word "nesh?" Does it signify some exact degree of moisture which our familiar expressions cannot convey? Or does it add to the gratification of a reader to be sent to his dictionary?
In the use of metaphorical language, we are not disposed to lay down any strict canons of criticism. But there are certain general rules, which, even without stating them to himself, every man of taste adheres to. The great use of metaphorical language is to convey, or to aggravate the impression or sentiment which an object creates. If one has to praise the locks of a fair lady, one does not hunt all nature through for an exact match, settling at once their precise colour. Mr Bailey speaks of
"Locks which have
The golden embrownment of a lion's eye."
Just that shade of brown! Still less, in describing circumstances or feelings of a pathetic nature, does any one use a metaphor decidedly grotesque. Yet Mr Bailey, in alluding to the most pathetic of all topics, the hour when two lovers parted for ever, can describe it as—
"Making a black blank on one side of life,
Like a blind eye."
We hope we shall not be accused of putting fetters upon genius, by refusing to admire this use of metaphorical language. Neither can we approve of a very manifest incongruity of ideas, as when night "blushes" to hear her praises, or when "clouds" are endowed with "fibres." We protest, too, against that class of cases where the metaphor becomes a species of conundrum. We are told that one thing is like another, and have to puzzle ourselves, as in a riddle, why it is like: as when, in a passage already quoted, the words of men of genius are said to be "like wind in rain," and we ask ourselves why like wind in rain, any more than like rain in wind? In the same passage we are told that men of genius, disseminating truth, are like the soldiers who "lotted the garb of God." Here the simile seems to be as unlike as possible, for the lot could fall only upon one.
We require, also, that when the metaphor is extended into an allegory, that the meaning of the allegory be apparent; and this we more particularly insist upon, when the allegorical detail or circumstance, viewed by itself, without reference to the meaning it typifies, is monstrous and absurd. As, for example, when Mr Bailey marries the sun and the moon, and, for what hidden purpose we know not, conducts them through the wedding ceremony.
"In golden he,
In silver car came she, down the blue skies,
But on return they clomb the clouds in one."
And we are told—
"It was the world's All-sire gave the bride."
We have already alluded to the strange caprice and incongruity of representing Lucifer at one time as the grand Personification of the Principle of Evil, and, at another, confining him down, a very slave to the passions of an amorous swain. Here, too, there may be some profound meaning symbolised. But we see it not. To the reader it seems as if Mr Bailey had here brought upon the scene all the powers and prerogatives of Satan, merely to emblazon the triumph of love; just as Dryden, and the French tragedians whom he imitated, delighted to represent an amorous monarch, because they could throw him, with his crown and kingdom, at the feet of beauty. Those who have not read the poem will scarce credit our account of this portion of it, without seeing some extracts. They are the last we shall give to show the extreme wildness and extravagance which deface the drama of Festus.
We first see Lucifer as the happy lover, speaking to his Elissa just as other happy lovers:—
"Lucifer. To me there is but one place in the world,
And that where thou art; for where'er I be,
Thy love doth seek its way into my heart,
As will a bird into her secret nest."
There is a great deal of this delighted rapture. He departs, however, leaving Elissa in charge of his friend Festus. When he returns, he finds that Festus has supplanted him. His agony is quite piteous; if we could believe there was any sincerity in this love-afflicted devil, it would be impossible not to compassionate him. He calls up all his grandeur, and reveals all his power, only to add weight and dignity to his reproach. He even hints at the reformation that would have taken place in his character, had Elissa been but true. Elissa faithful, and Lucifer would have become the very saviour of mankind.
"Lucifer. Hear me now!
Thou knowest well what once I was to thee:
One who, for love of one I loved—for thee,
Would have done or borne the sins of all the world:
Who did thy bidding at thy lightest look;
And had it been to have snatched an angel's crown
Off her bright brow as she sat singing, throned,
I would have cut these heartstrings that tie down,
And let my soul have sailed to heaven, and done it—
Spite of the thunder and the sacrilege,
And laid it at thy feet. I loved thee, lady!"
And again, in another scene, he says, reproaching her for her inconstancy—
"I am the morning and the evening star,
The star thou lovest and thy lover too;
I am that star! as once before I told thee,
Though thou wouldst not believe me, but I am
A spirit and a star—a power—an ill
Which doth outbalance being. Look at me!
Am I not more than mortal in my form?
Millions of years have circled round my brow
Like worlds upon their centres;—still I live;—
And age but presses with a halo's weight.
This single arm hath dashed the light of Heaven;
This one hand dragged the angels from their thrones;
Am I not worthy to have loved thee, lady?"
Certainly a most noble Paladin. But here we quit Mr Bailey—repeating again our sincere admiration of his poetic genius, and our regret, equally sincere, that it has not been united with better judgment and with better taste; and that he had not waited till his own opinions, theological and philosophical, had settled into something approaching to consistency and harmony, (in a poem we ought perhaps to require no more,) before he had planned this elaborate drama, in order to promulgate them. Those who seek for the beauties, and those who are in search of the monstrosities of literature, may both apply themselves with success to Festus: we wish we could say that the former would be likely to reap the more abundant harvest.
CASH AND PEDIGREE.[6]
It will hardly be disputed that if the French are more subject than any other nation to fits of political lunacy, upon the other hand no people in the world are prompter to recognise and deride their own temporary folly; although, unfortunately, neither recognition nor derision have hitherto sufficed to prevent recurrence of the paroxysms. The echoes of February's fusillade and of Provisional revelries still filled the air, when satire and caricature began their work, assailing the new order of things with those shafts of ridicule which in France, if skilfully directed, rarely fail to be fatal. It was no fleeting shower of squibs by which the follies of 1848 were assailed, but a steady, well-sustained discharge of missiles much more formidable. M. Louis Reybaud is a pyrotechnist of no ordinary power, and his paper projectiles had the destructive effect of a flight of congreve rockets. We believe that the home-truths, pungent wit, and fearless sarcasm of Jérome Paturot had no small share in convincing the new republicans how monstrous was the folly they had so hastily perpetrated, and which they since have had such abundant reason and leisure to repent. Bloodier pages there have been in the history of France, but scarcely one more pitiable than that on which the events of the last two years are inscribed, and posterity will gaze in amazement, almost with incredulity, on the record of vanity and mischief. The French have not waited till now to discover how completely they have stultified themselves, and to regret the head-long precipitation that bid a ruinous price for a questionable reform, a reform far more effectually obtainable by less violent means. In short, the February Revolution has long been held as legitimate game for ridicule in France as in any other European country. Numerous as are the jests of which it has been the object, the satirists have not yet exhausted themselves, and the year 1850 finds them still improving the text.
M. Jules Sandeau is not usually a favourite of ours. Those of his works that have come under our notice are for the most part tame and insipid. It was, therefore, with agreeable surprise that we read the very smart and lively opening of his last novel, in which he has abandoned sentiment for satire, and risen above his usual monotonous level. We cannot say that the book is altogether an agreeable one, as most persons understand the word. Similar, in this respect, to a recent well-known satirical novel of English society, it contains no characters with which the reader can heartily sympathise. The motives of all the characters are more or less sordid and selfish, at least till quite the close of the tale, when two of them exhibit more generous impulses. The book has a double aim: to satirise French society generally, and to ridicule the February Revolution. As far as we can discover, M. Sandeau's leanings are Orleanish; but he does not intrude his friends upon us, contenting himself with ridiculing their enemies. A certain epigrammatic vivacity of style and expression, occasionally amounting to wit, and an ingenious plot, fully sustain the reader's attention. The types presented of certain important classes of Frenchmen are certainly not flattered, but neither must they be looked upon as mere caricatures. Legitimacy finds little favour with M. Sandeau, or at least he presses hard upon its partisans, those denizens of the noble faubourg who to the last held aloof from the monarchy of July. The republicans, whether of the eve or of the morrow, are painted in not very attractive colours. The pivot of the tale is the misplaced ambition of a wealthy Parisian burgess, whose heavy purse and huge vanity render him the target of a host of intriguers, and especially of a dowager marchioness, more proud of her pedigree than scrupulous in her manœuvres. The first four pages of the book are perhaps as good a specimen as it affords of the author's piquant and animated style. They introduce and describe four of the principal actors in the comedy; a purse-proud citizen and his daughter, a democratic notary and an impoverished nobleman, a compound of the fortune-hunter and the chevalier d'industrie. The chapter is too long to extract unabridged, but we will endeavour so to condense it as to give a faithful idea of its style, premising that we aim at rendering the spirit rather than the letter of the original.
Monsieur Levrault was an honest citizen who had grown rich by selling cloth near the Market of the Innocents. When he retired from trade, the vapours of pride and ambition rose suddenly to his brain. Wealth, like wine, has intoxicating fumes. On beholding himself the possessor of three millions of francs, honestly and laboriously amassed in the shop handed down to him by his father, the worthy man, seized with a vertigo, discovered that money, which he had long looked upon as the goal of his desires, was in fact but the starting-post; he experienced a vehement longing to cast his slough, quit the obscure regions in which he had hitherto dwelt, and soar, like a butterfly escaped from its chrysalis, toward the brilliant spheres for which he felt himself born. Vague at first, timid and unavowed even to himself, these ideas slid furtively into his mind; and once there, quickly assumed formidable proportions. We were then at a considerable distance from the democratic cravings of July, and although the aristocracy of finance generally showed itself rather disdainful towards its elder sister, there yet were a tolerable number of persons for whom titles of nobility still had a charm. M. Levrault aspired, moreover, to the dignity of statesmanship. Elevations of all kinds had peculiar attractions for him. To encourage himself, he complacently reverted to recent citizen records. Provoking phantoms everywhere pursued him, even in his sleep—ministers, peers of France, newly-made nobles, some of whom he recognised as having discounted his bills, and others as having sold him the Kerseymeres of Elbeuf and Louvièrs. By dint of using such expressions as these:—"We great manufacturers, we great capitalists," he came at last to forget that he had made his fortune, penny by penny, in a retail trade. He loved to call to mind the lists formed for the recruiting of the peerage. One night he dreamed that his porter brought him a large letter with this address:—"M. le Baron Levrault." With trembling hand he broke the seal, and found in the envelope his nomination as peer. The next morning, still quite excited, he gave a five-franc piece to the porter, who never knew to what to attribute this munificent act. At a time when money might aspire to everything, the millionaire's dreams had nothing very exorbitant. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that his wife would have taken him severely to task with all the frank unceremoniousness of Madame Jourdain. "Levrault, you are but a fool," would she have said, without mincing the matter. "Do me the favour to keep quiet. We have nothing to do with honours and dignities. Wealth is no bad prize in the lottery of life; let us enjoy it modestly. Money is not everything, whatever people may say; and we have found means to earn three millions without adding an iota to our personal value. Let us keep in our own trade, and remember what we were. Let us continue to live amongst people who esteem us, and not thrust ourselves into society that would laugh at us. The more I look at you, the more certain am I that you would impose upon nobody. For my part, the more I examine myself, the less do I discover materials for a woman of quality. On the other hand, as retired shopkeepers, we pass muster very well, and may present ourselves with advantage in all the drawing-rooms in the neighbourhood. Put aside those follies. Buy a good estate, and look after it. Since you are ambitious, get yourself chosen mayor and churchwarden. Go a-fishing: it was formerly your ruling passion. You like dahlias: grow them. Give dinners to your friends and alms to the poor. And finally, marry your daughter to some honest fellow who will not be ashamed of his wife's children, or blush to say some day to his family: 'Your grandfather was a worthy man who sold cloth in the Rue des Bourdonnais; if you are comfortably off in the world, it is to him especially that you owe it.'" Such is the language Madame Levrault would not have failed to use to her husband, and perhaps she might have succeeded in putting him in the right path; unfortunately she had been ten years in her grave, and had taken with her all the good sense of the family. M. Levrault knew very well that honours and dignities would not seek him in his entresol of the Rue des Bourdonnais. He had already turned his back on all his friends; he only waited to begin a new existence, till his daughter should have left school. Not knowing on what side to seek entrance into the great world, the object of his ardent desires, he reckoned on the inspirations of Miss Laura Levrault, who worthily replied to his expectations.
Miss Laura Levrault had been educated at one of the most aristocratic of Parisian schools. She might have proved a charming person, had she been brought up conformably to her condition in life. Transplanted into a flower-bed of seedling countesses and budding marchionesses, she had early lost her natural grace and perfume: like a sparrow in an aviary of goldfinches, she had learned, before all things, to smart for her origin. The jests and sly allusions of her young companions were a constant source of irritation. Young girls are merciless to each other; in that respect they are already women. Instead of exercising reprisals on the arrogant and silly creatures who made it their sport to humiliate her, she conceived a sullen and profound hatred for the shop where she was born, and for the entire Rue des Bourdonnais. The very name of Levrault exasperated her. When this odious name (almost always affectedly pronounced) resounded in the school-room or play-ground, she shuddered painfully, and felt overwhelmed with shame. One day she had put on a cloth gown. Little de B—— said to her, "That gown only costs you the making." Every one laughed except Laura, who swallowed her tears. Another time they asked her if one of her ancestors was not at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. On another occasion, Miss de R—— and Miss de C——, already versed in heraldry, took a fancy to compose her coat-of-arms. These were canting heraldry—a field sinople, with a gold metre in a bend, supported by two silver leverets courant. Laura took to her bed. Thus was it, that at every opportunity, and even without pretext, they enlarged and envenomed her wounds. Needless to say what mysterious sympathies and secret intelligence such an education bade fair to establish between M. Levrault and his daughter. At the age of eighteen, Miss Levrault was what is usually called a pretty girl—red and white, abundant brown hair, eyes well opened, smooth, clear forehead, and an elegant figure. In the tout-ensemble, however, there was an indescribable something rather common—the original shop mark—which would hardly have been noticed but for the affectation employed to conceal it. Her character was positive, and her imagination sedate: her heart was sure of itself, and had never rambled in the region of dreams and chimeras. In her the cold breath of vanity had withered all the flowers which bloom in the spring-time of life. Had her mother lived, doubtless she would have succeeded in developing the precious germs that pride had stifled. Left too early to herself, Laura had neglected, as useless plants, all her good qualities, and had cultivated only her defects. It were unjust not to add that she had more accomplishments than most young girls of her age. Constantly depreciated by her companions, she had neglected nothing that might raise her above them. She was a good musician, and painted landscapes with as much skill as can he expected from an artist who has never studied nature. She had taken lessons of Frederick Chopin and Paul Huet. All through vanity. When once she had left school, and was fully aware of her fortune, Laura took in with an eager gaze the dazzling perspective that opened before her. She had wit enough to know that, with a dowry of a million, and two millions more in anticipation, she must not expect to be married for her own sake. Love by no means engrossed her thoughts. Her ideas on the subject of marriage were very positive and distinct. Well convinced that the man who should ask her hand would do so with an eye to her wealth, she decided, for her part, to be guided in her choice by her ambition, and resolutely declared to her father that she would marry none but a man of title. M. Levrault pressed her to his heart: he recognised his blood. Besides, for him it was the surest and most rapid means of access to that society into which he ardently longed to penetrate, but from which he well knew that he was separated by an abyss. He resolved to cross the chasm upon the shoulders of his son-in-law.
All that remained to be done was to seek this son-in-law, who assuredly was not to be found in the neighbourhood of the market of the Innocents. M. Levrault had heard say that of all the provinces of France, Brittany was the richest in old and noble families, and that castles were there as plentiful as cottages. He would willingly have believed that in Brittany loop-holed towers shot up like mushrooms. It was in Brittany, then, that he would establish himself; there he would lead an opulent existence, and spread the golden nets destined to capture the phœnix of sons-in-law. This plan decided upon, M. Levrault wrote to a notary at Nantes, whom he had known as head clerk in a Paris office.
"My dear Mr Jolibois,—The time has at last arrived for me to repose myself amongst a class of persons whose tone and habits agree with my tastes. Amidst the cares of business I have often dreamed, for my ripening years, of an asylum hallowed by the great names of our history. Brittany has always attracted me by its heroic associations. Laura, to whom I have given, as was my duty, the most brilliant education, an education worthy of her rank, has more than once spoken to me of that chivalrous land. You will learn, then, without astonishment, that it is my intention to acquire a rich domain in Brittany. Only, to use an expression borrowed from the vocabulary of the lower classes, I would not buy a pig in a pock. Before deciding, I must visit all parts of that beautiful country; become acquainted with its sites, and study its manners. Well, my dear Mr Jolibois, I address myself to you with perfect confidence. Hire in my name, for one year, in the environs of Nantes, a chateau whose position may permit me to become familiar with the nobility of the district. When I have explored the neighbourhood for a year, it will be easy for me to make a choice. It is unnecessary for me to add that I intend to live in great style, and to keep my house on a lordly footing. You will be good enough to organise everything, accordingly,—from the ante-chamber to the kennel, from the cellar to the stable, from the poultry-yard to the drawing-room. Excepting my daughter's maid, I shall take no servants from Paris. It would be agreeable to me, I confess, to see around me some of those old domestics, models of devotion and fidelity, who live and die where they were born: try to recruit four or five such. Let everything be ready to receive us: spare no expense; I have three millions. The new life that I intend to lead will be a life of festivity and princely hospitality. Let the country know beforehand who I am. Tell of my labours, of my wealth—in a word, let me be expected. Although I am quite decided to mix only with people of the first quality, you will, nevertheless be welcome, my dear M. Jolibois, and from time to time you shall come and hunt a stag with me. I rejoice beforehand at the idea of ending my days in the county of Clisson and Duguesclin. Laura has so often spoken to me of those gentlemen, and of their great feats of arms, that I shall be happy to know their descendants, and to receive them at my table. Above all, forget not that I wish to be in the immediate neighbourhood of the flower of the aristocracy, and to behold from my windows a dozen loop-holed castles, with tower, ditch, and drawbridge.
"Adieu, my dear M. Jolibois. I reckon on your punctuality, as you may reckon on my patronage.
Levrault."
It so happened that Jolibois the notary was a shrewd fellow, with a turn for humour. Head clerk at Paris, and on the point of purchasing a provincial practice, he had prowled round M. Levrault's millions, and had one day ventured to ask the hand of Laura. He said to himself, that, after all, if the Duke of Lauzun had been on the point of wedding with Henry IV.'s granddaughter, Stephen Jolibois might very well marry the daughter of M. Levrault. M. Levrault, with superb disdain, proved to him he was mistaken. Stephen Jolibois retreated, with a discomfited countenance, and little expecting one day to find an opportunity of showing his gratitude. Master Jolibois, who, notwithstanding his present official character, had not yet forgotten the tricks of his clerkly days, rubbed his hands as he read the letter of the father-in-law he had coveted. Its impertinence and folly might well have provoked the raillery of the most inoffensive. Young, gay, and fond of a joke, Master Jolibois seized with avidity the opportunity offered him of avenging a slight, and putting money into his pocket. A week later, he wrote the following answer to M. Levrault:—
"I hasten to inform you, Sir, that I have hired for you a dwelling adapted, as I hope, to all the requirements of your rank, and all the delicacy of your tastes. It is a pretty chateau of modern architecture, standing on the banks of the Sevres, between Tiffauge and Clisson, eight leagues from Nantes. I am proud, I confess, to have so soon and so happily justified the confidence you are pleased to accord me. Without loss of a moment, I have busied myself in arranging your establishment on a footing consistent with your position. I have neglected nothing, and am glad to think you will be satisfied. In a fortnight all will be ready for your reception. I comprehend all the elevation of your thoughts: you desire to live with your equals. With that quick and unerring glance which marks you as one of the eagles of the manufacturing world, you have fixed upon the very province which alone is worthy of possessing you. You will find at your door the chosen society you desire. The castles of Tiffauge, of Mortagne, and of Clisson, open their arms to you. Agreeably with your desire, I have spoken of your coming. The nobles of the neighbourhood know who you are, and will dispute the honour of welcoming and entertaining you. They are well aware that industry is now the queen of the world, and already they feel a respectful sympathy with you. Think not that your immense fortune has anything to do with their prepossession in your favour. Your merit alone is the cause of their impatience. Since I announced your approaching arrival, you are the subject of universal conversation; whithersoever I go, I am overwhelmed with questions as to the day and hour of your coming. Miss Levrault's beauty will revive the most amiable traditions of chivalry. I lack time to name to you to-day all the great families whose castles are grouped round yours. The least illustrious date from the second crusade. Miss Laura, whose memory is so richly stored, will hardly meet without pleasure and emotion, at a few paces' distance from your park, a descendant of Godfrey of Bouillon, a noble old man, whose conversation is a treasure of reminiscences. Farther on, you will find the last survivor of a family allied with the Baudouins and the Lusignans: Viscount Gaspard do Montflanquin, young, handsome, chivalrous, perhaps too disinterested, he has but to express his willingness to receive: the new dynasty, proud of his adhesion, ask but to reward it. Viscount de Montflanquin will serve you as a guide in your excursions, and in the choice of your friends. Hasten, then, to the shades of La Trélade, (it is the name of your chateau,) there to forget the noble toils that have occupied your career. Be assured of my moderation in availing myself of the welcome you so graciously promise me. I well know the distance that separates us; but I reckon on the pleasure of hunting a stag with you. A year hence, if you decide to settle in Brittany, I hope to number you amongst my clients: your name will be the glory of my office.
"Accept, sir, the assurance of my highest consideration,
Jolibois."
The same post that carried this epistle, conveyed another, equally flattering and sincere, to a dissipated viscount of ancient name and broken fortunes, who was then eking out a precarious and disreputable existence amongst the bouillotte and lansquenet tables of Paris. Respectful sympathy, a disinterested desire to see Gaspard de Montflanquin regild his shield, redeem his lands, and rebuild the tumble-down Breton tower, in which, Jolibois declared, the needy viscount reminded him of the Master of Ravenswood, alone induced the benevolent notary to inform him of the expected arrival of the heiress of three millions, and her tuft-hunting father, and to advise him of the best means of propitiating the one, and appropriating the other. After the wedding, a postscript intimated, there might be some question of the reimbursement of 80,000 francs, and ten years' compound interest thereon, due from the viscount to the estate of the deceased Jolibois Père; but this was a minor consideration to the unselfish notary, who dwelt much more urgently on the necessity of keeping the Levraults from becoming acquainted with the Marchioness of La Rochelandir, who, with her son, a handsome young man of five-and-twenty, resided at no great distance from the clothier's mansion of La Trélade.
A fortnight later, four smoking posters whirled M. Levrault and his daughter along the road to Clisson. After passing Nantes, the worthy Parisian was somewhat surprised not to see a greater abundance of turrets and loopholes, and to find that, even in Brittany, castles were not found, like hedge alehouses, by the road-side. An hour after sunset, a loud flourish of the post-horn was replied to by all the dogs and echoes in the neighbourhood, a park gate flew open as by enchantment, an avenue was suddenly illumined with coloured lamps, and the horses dashed up to the front of the chateau of La Trélade, whose steps Jolibois, in full dress, was seen gravely to descend, by the light of torches held by a double row of footmen. The notary himself opened the carriage-door, and put down the steps.
"'Tis well, Jolibois—'tis well," was the negligent remark of M. Levrault, whose skin could hardly hold him, but who would fain have given himself the airs of a great man, accustomed to such receptions; and leaning on his daughter's arm, he slowly ascended the stairs. "Good day to you, my friends—good day to you," said he, in a patronising tone, to the lacqueys, who bowed to the very ground, whilst two or three of them exclaimed, "Long live M. Levrault!" Preceded by Jolibois, whose gravity was imperturbable, he entered a richly decorated dining-room, where a splendid supper was laid out on a table laden with glass, wax-lights, and flowers. Seated between the notary and his daughter, M. Levrault mastered his emotion with difficulty; in spite of himself, he admired the decoration of the apartment, and the order of the feast. The most exquisite dishes, the raciest wines, rapidly succeeded each other. Three attendants, in white gloves, yellow plush breeches, blue liveries, and green lace, glided like shadows around the table. Laura herself felt agitated. As to Jolibois, he ate and drank like a man who did not expect such another chance for the next ten years. The repast at an end, they walked out into the park, where Jolibois had prepared a fresh surprise. Whilst strolling on a vast lawn, a rocket rose suddenly into the sky, and at fifty paces in his front, M. Levrault beheld a wall of fire. A dozen wheels whirled round, vomiting torrents of sparks, whilst Bengal lights illuminated the darkest recesses of the avenues, and Roman candles shot out of the shrubberies like luminous serpents, and fell again in showers of stars. This was too much for M. Levrault; he grasped Jolibois' hand, and in a voice of undisguised emotion, "Jolibois," he said, "it is the happiest day of my life."
Laura, although secretly flattered, yet could not help smiling at the reflection that it was her father who paid for the powder, and that in reality the entertainment was given to M. Jolibois.
As the party returned to the house, they beheld, by the final gleams of the fireworks, a little groom, about the height of a top-boot, advancing to meet them.
"What is it? who wants me?" said M. Levrault, with the air of a minister-of-state, whom some one interrupts, and who has not a moment to himself.
"It is Galaor," said Jolibois.
"Galaor!" cried M. Levrault, opening his eyes very wide.
"M. Levrault?" inquired Galaor, approaching the group with consummate assurance.
"What is your pleasure, my man? I am M. Levrault."
Galaor took a letter from his pocket and presented it to M. Levrault, whose gaze was instantly arrested by the armorial bearings on the seal. It was the first of the kind he had ever received. After examining the arms as if to recognise them, he broke the wax and read as follows in a loud voice, whilst the young slave presented an enormous nosegay of roses and jessamine to Laura, who blushed with pleasure.
"Viscount Gaspard de Montflanquin is impatient to learn how M. Levrault and his daughter have got through their journey. He solicits permission to present himself to-morrow, at two o'clock precisely, at the chateau of La Trélade, and takes the liberty to place a few roses from his garden at the feet of Miss Levrault."
"You see, sir," said Jolibois, "you have but just arrived, and already the greatest names in the country throng around you."
"I am touched by the attention, I do not deny it. Galaor, present our thanks to your master, the Viscount Gaspard de Montflanquin. Tell him we got through the journey in a carriage-and-four, and that to-morrow, at whatever hour he likes, we shall be happy to receive him."
Galaor bowed respectfully; his cloth gaiters, laced hat, and coroneted buttons, presently disappeared round the curve of the avenue.
To pave the Viscount's way to the good graces of father and daughter, both already well disposed in his favour, the generous Jolibois began to chant his praises, and to explain how it was that, from the most disinterested motives, the influential representative of the house of Montflanquin had recognised, a few years previously, the monarchy of Louis Philippe. His first appearance at the court of the Citizen-King, so the notary assured M. Levrault, was an incident that would be read of in history.
"The presentation," continued Jolibois, "took place in the throne-saloon, in presence of the queen, the princes, the princesses, and all the great dignitaries of state. 'Sire,' said the Viscount, without arrogance and without humility, 'I adhere frankly to your dynasty. Let your majesty deign to permit me, however, to stipulate one condition.' At these last words the king frowned, and the faces of all present assumed in an instant a stupified expression. 'Viscount Gaspard de Montflanquin,' said the king in his turn, 'we impose conditions, but accept them not. Nevertheless, speak! to set so bright a gem in our crown, there is nothing we would not do.' 'Sire,' replied the Viscount, 'I adhere to your dynasty on condition that your majesty will do nothing for me, and that I may be permitted to remain poor as heretofore.'"
"How noble!" cried Laura.
"Too noble!" added M. Levrault. "What said the king?"
"The king opened his arms to the Viscount de Montflanquin, and held him long to his heart. I need not add that his eyes were suffused with tears. 'We will do nothing for you,' he at last kindly said; 'since you desire it, you shall be nothing, not even peer of France. But bear in mind that, whatever you ask, whether for your relations or your friends, you shall obtain it, noble young man, from our royal gratitude.'"
Great was the admiration of M. Levrault, when Jolibois proceeded to inform him that more than one high-placed personage owed his position to a word of the influential Viscount, by whom he, Jolibois, had himself been offered a prefecture, which his republican principles prevented his accepting. And when, in addition to this interesting information, the ex-clothier learned that Montflanquin was unmarried, he made up his mind that this was the son-in-law who should help him to a peerage. Nor was he shaken in this resolution by a romantic story told by the astute man of parchments, from which it appeared that the Viscount had made a vow of celibacy over the corpse of his first and only love, Miss Fernanda Edmy de Chanteplure, drowned some years previously, on the eve of her wedding-day, before her bridegroom's eyes, and in spite of his heroic efforts to save her.
We must pass rapidly over this earlier portion of the book, which is not altogether essential to the principal plot, but is in some degree complete in itself, and has a dénouement so far as the viscount is concerned. That worthy duly makes his appearance at La Trélade, and, as duly, starts, trembles, and is violently agitated on beholding and hearing Miss Levrault, between whom and his lost love, the very noble and eternally regretted Mademoiselle de Chanteplure, a most extraordinary resemblance exists. He succeeds in ingratiating himself with both father and daughter; undertakes to do the honours of the province, and to introduce them to its most illustrious inhabitants. Notwithstanding this assurance, after three months' residence the visitors at La Trélade are limited to a gouty old count, a creditor of Montflanquin's—on whose marriage he, like Jolibois, reckons for reimbursement, and who, in the meantime, condescends to take the air in M. Levrault's carriage—and to a greedy chevalier and self-styled descendant from Godfrey of Bouillon, who would give his entire genealogical tree for a good dinner, and whose gratitude for the succulent repasts to which the viscount is the means of his admission, precludes his own speaking of that adventurous individual, otherwise than in terms of the very highest eulogium. As to Gaspard himself, he lives at La Trélade, leaving it only at night for his ruinous chateau, where the faithful Galaor keeps watch—that youthful and depraved Balderstone being compelled, owing to the extreme penury of his noble master's exchequer, to subsist himself on the plunder of the neighbouring hen-roosts and rabbit-warrens. All things progress favourably for the Viscount's schemes. The ex-clothier, convinced of his unbounded influence at court, is impatient at his not proposing, and ready to throw his daughter into his arms. Laura herself, although but moderately fascinated by the very ordinary frontispiece of the last Montflanquin, and somewhat surprised that Brittany can produce no better specimen of its hereditary nobility, yet, seeing no choice, and burning with impatience to abdicate her plebeian patronymic, has made up her mind to accept the viscount, when one morning, in the course of a long and solitary ride, she stumbles upon the castle of La Rochelandier, from which Gaspard has hitherto carefully kept her by the interposition of imaginary morasses, and other dangers equally unreal. Her suspicions already roused by finding that an easy canter along a pleasant valley leads her to the dilapidated but still stately edifice which had been depicted to her as of such perilous approach, a single interview with the adroit dowager opens her eyes to the viscount's manœuvres, and when she again reaches home, escorted by the handsome Marquis de la Rochelandier, it is with the full determination to discard the aspirant, whom a few hours previously she had been resolute to accept. Discarded the unlucky Montflanquin accordingly is, the downfall of his hopes being accelerated by the treacherous Jolibois, who, finding his debtor's chance gone, gives him the last kick by arresting him, and the viscount is trotted off to Nantes in a taxed cart, in charge of a leash of bailiffs, whilst the devoted and disconsolate Galaor remains on the threshold of the ruined tower, wringing his hands and mourning for his wages.
From the incarceration of Gaspard de Montflanquin dates a new epoch in the chronicle of the Levrault family. The gouty count and the gourmand chevalier having shared his disgrace, La Trélade is for a while desolate, and the man of millions moodily paces its solitary halls. Jolibois, whilst declaring himself the dupe of the Viscount, whom he now loudly proclaims an adventurer, has thought proper, for purposes of his own, to speak disparagingly of the Rochelandiers. He has a notion that by persuading M. Levrault that France is on the eve of a republic, he may still obtain the hand of Laura. In this he is totally mistaken. He certainly succeeds in making the man of cloth miserably uneasy and undecided, but not in persuading him of the approaching downfall of that privileged order of which he so ardently desired to become a member. Nevertheless, M. Levrault's recent experience has considerably lessened his admiration of the Breton nobility. On all hands he beholds traps for his millions, baited with coronets by pauper aristocrats. Furious at the intriguing viscount, he yet deplores the downfall of the edifice of which that individual was the keystone.
"In M. Levrault's eyes, Brittany was now no better than a vast den of thieves. He especially mistrusted the castle of La Rochelandier, which he persisted in considering as the haunt of chouans, a focus of conspiracy—of Legitimist intrigues and stratagems. It will be remembered that, when Gaspard, dismissed and discomfited, was crossing the court-yard of La Trélade, Levrault called out in a voice of thunder to get the carriage ready—that he was going to the castle of La Rochelandier. This was merely an ingenious mode of giving the death-blow to Gaspard. Right or wrong, he could not tell why, M. Levrault detested the Rochelandiers. It is hard to say by what peculiar process of reasoning this clever citizen had come to look upon them as the cause of all his misfortunes. All his deceptions dated from the hour that his daughter had crossed their threshold; the departure of peace and happiness from La Trélade coincided with the first visit of the young Marquis. M. Levrault almost brought himself to believe that, without the Rochelandiers, the Viscount would have really been all he wished to appear—a model and mirror of chivalry. If Gaspard was a scamp, it was the fault of La Rochelandier."
Miss Levrault, however, was of a very different way of thinking from her father. The Marchioness, too, had her designs on the plebeian's millions; and, by a sort of instinct, without concerted plan, the two women played into each other's hands. No wonder, then, that in less than six weeks from the Viscount's disgrace, the La Rochelandiers were welcome and frequent guests at La Trélade, and that the skilful attentions of the Marchioness had again put M. Levrault on the best possible terms with himself.
"Nevertheless, the great manufacturer was not happy. Something was wanting to his felicity: it was a son-in-law in perspective. Gaston did not replace Gaspard. M. Levrault well knew that an alliance with a Legitimist could lead to nothing for himself. In vain did Laura tell him of the approaching return of Henry V.—of the honour of being received, in the meanwhile, by the Duchesses of the faubourg St Germain: M. Levrault was deaf in that ear. He cared nothing for the drawing-rooms of the noble faubourg, and felt that his only chance of expanding into blossom was by favour of the vivifying rays of the sun of the bourgeoisie. Besides that, the attitude of the young Marquis was not encouraging. If Gaston coveted the manufacturer's millions, he still seemed little disposed to stoop to pick them up. Too proud himself to mount to the assault, he left the conduct of the siege to his mother, quite determined, however, to enter the fortress so soon as the gates were opened. At heart loyal and honourable, he was not one of those poetical and purely intellectual beings who are utterly careless of the good things of this world. Still young, he had already tasted of the realities of life. The whole of his youth had not passed under his ancestor's roof. Without making any great display, he had lived at Paris in an elegant, frivolous, and dissipated, but honourable circle, where his name, wit, and good looks had been made much of. After a few years, perceiving that the remnant of his patrimony was insufficient to enable him to maintain his rank in those golden regions, condemned to idleness by the traditions of his family, and too honest to accept the existence of a Montflanquin, he heroically retired to his ruined castle, where he and his mother were literally dying of ennui, when the Levraults arrived at La Trélade, and the whole province resounded with reports of the father's wealth and folly. For some time past Madame de la Rochelandier—whose pride, weary of wrestling with poverty, had consented to bow its head, well resolved to rear it again at a future period—had meditated for her son a lucrative mis-alliance, which might mend the fortune of their house, and enable them to await, with tolerable patience, the return of their legitimate sovereign. Miss Levrault appeared to her like the dove announcing the end of the deluge. What followed may easily be guessed. When his mother proposed to him to marry the heiress, Gaston, shocked at first, hesitated afterwards, and finally consented. His visits to La Trélade sharpened his appetite for riches. He was not in love with Laura; but he easily persuaded himself that love was not an essential condition of marriage with a young and pretty person afflicted with a dowry of a million. He did not deceive himself as to Miss Levrault's sentiments, and said to himself, that as she sought only his title, he, on his part, was fully justified in seeking only her wealth."
We do not often meet with a novel to which it is less easy to do justice within the limits of an article, than to the clever and amusing one now under examination. Without a complete analysis of the plot—rendered difficult by its complication, and by the numerous minor incidents and scenes, of which some mention is essential to its clear intelligence—it is difficult to select extracts that shall have interest when detached, and at the same time give a fair idea of the really very considerable merit of the book, which abounds in sly touches of satire, often defying both extraction and translation. In the early portion of the work, where Montflanquin is a prominent character, the pencilling is sometimes so broad as to border on caricature; but when the bailiffs remove him from the scene, Jolibois at the same time falling temporarily into the background, and the Marchioness, attaching herself to their intended victim, in her turn spreads her web for the millions, M. Sandeau comes out in his very best style, depicting, with great skill, the cautious and tortuous approaches by which the attenuated dowager-spider proceeds to the appropriation of the bulky, well-conditioned fly. For a time, her machinations are fruitless. In vain does she coax, caress, and insidiously flatter; the millions hold out. But she knows how to turn the delay to profit, by using it to acquire a thorough knowledge of the weak points of the fortress. With her astuteness, she is not long in penetrating the inmost recesses of the cloth-merchant's little soul. This done, she distributes her snares accordingly. And soon a day comes when, at the close of a long and interesting tête-à-tête, in the cool shrubberies of La Trélade, the spider and the fly go upon their several ways rejoicing. M. Levrault has agreed to give his daughter to the Marquis, whose mother undertakes that after the marriage his father-in-law shall have the satisfaction of seeing him pay his homage, for the first time, at the footstool of the Citizen-King. The rich plebeian cannot, for an instant, doubt of the high reward reserved for the man who is thus the means of rallying to the dynasty of July the head of an ancient and illustrious house.
An hour after this interview, the Marchioness was on the road back to her manor; and M. Levrault, beaming with triumph, entered his daughter's apartment.
"'Madame la Marquise!' he exclaimed, 'embrace your father!'
"'My son!' said the Marchioness, on reaching home, 'embrace your mother; you are master of millions!'"
The wedding over, a move is made to Paris. The clever dowager, who has not married her son to an heiress with the intention of herself vegetating in Brittany, has the address to make M. Levrault solicit her company. In his mind's eye, the absurd old citizen already beholds himself occupying a prominent place in the Chamber of Peers: he has heard say that all eminent statesmen have their Egeria, and in that capacity he desires to retain the invaluable services of Madame de la Rochelandier, who, after a due show of reluctance, makes one of the party to Paris. Poor Levrault soon has reason to repent his invitation. Before departing, the Marchioness insists upon making him a present of her feudal residence of La Rochelandier. Accordingly, its name is changed to Castle Levrault; and to it are transferred the handsome furniture, sumptuous hangings, dogs, horses, and equipages that had rendered La Trélade so luxurious a habitation. But, on reaching Paris, the Marchioness shows herself determined to recompense her own generosity. A magnificent hotel is taken in the Faubourg St Germain, where she reigns paramount, ingeniously making it appear that her life is a succession of sacrifices, and that she has regretfully quitted her rural seclusion, to assist her dear friend Levrault in climbing to the pinnacle to which his talents cannot fail to raise him.
"To embellish the abode of so eminent a man, whose destiny was so lofty, she found nothing sufficiently sumptuous and magnificent. She was resolved the cage should be worthy of the bird, the frame suitable to the portrait, and constantly regretted she had not at her disposal a fairy's wand or Aladdin's lamp. At each of these fine speeches, the great manufacturer opened his beak wide, and let fall something better than a bit of cheese. The Marchioness herself had superintended the decoration of the famous saloon in which was to be consummated the union of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. The servants of La Trélade, with their pistachio-coloured lace and yellow plush breeches, had been replaced by dignified domestics in black, to whom M. Levrault was continually on the point of taking off his hat. His coachman wore powder and a cocked hat; his chasseur was six feet high. By one of those delicate attentions which the Marchioness was never weary of lavishing on her amiable friend, all the plate was engraved with the La Rochelandier arms, which were to be found even upon the knives and china. M. Levrault's own chariot bore a marquis's coronet. He could not but be touched by all these marks of consideration. The Marchioness received him at all hours of the day, drove out with him to the Bois do Boulogne, and, still more frequently, to make purchases. She had renewed old intimacies, sent out invitations which had been eagerly accepted; already the saloons of the Hotel Levrault were peopled with aristocratic physiognomies. The work of conciliation was proceeding; the winter set in under favourable auspices. A few months more, and it was not only the marquis his son-in-law, but the entire Fauxbourg St Germain, that the ex-clothier would rally at one blow around the dynasty of 1830; yet a few months and legitimacy would not retain a single partisan on the left bank of the Seine. Who would then be the dupe? Truly M. de Chambord in his German castle."
The real dupe was the unlucky Levrault, who soon found himself a mere cypher in his own house. The Marchioness, having firmly established her despotic sway over the entire establishment, changed her tactics, and gradually pushed him more and more into the background. Servants, horses, carriages, were hers, not his; it was she who invited guests, received and returned visits. At first M. Levrault rejoiced to see fifteen or twenty persons daily assemble round his dinner table; but soon he discovered that the host is not always that person in whose house one dines. He himself was but a guest the more, the entertainer was the Marchioness. At night she was enthroned in the drawing-room, whilst M. Levrault, whom no one heeded, wandered mournfully through the crowd, and had sometimes the satisfaction of hearing praises of the luxury and elegance of the Hotel La Rochelandier, a name which the Marchioness at last had the assurance to inscribe in gilt letters above the entrance to his house. Meanwhile there was no talk of going to court. Month after month elapsed, and the event on which were based all Levrault's ambitious dreams was still deferred, or, it should rather be said, was never referred to either by the Marchioness or her son. At last, losing patience, M. Levrault spoke to his son-in-law on the subject. Gaston repudiated with indignation the idea of recognising the usurping dynasty by presenting himself at the Tuileries, declared he should incur his mother's malediction by so doing, and was disposed to look upon his father-in-law as insane, when that worthy gentleman alleged the Marchioness's promise. A visitor interrupted the conversation at this point, and M. Levrault, furious, hurried to the Marchioness to seek an explanation. This leads to one of the best situations in the book. After a sharp verbal duel, M. Levrault rises from his chair, pale with anger.
"Madame la Marquise, you have made a fool of me. To-day, this very morning, I have seen your son and put the question to him plainly. He has never entertained the intention you attribute to him. He has neither said nor done anything to mislead you. You well know his views upon the subject, and I know now what your fine promises are worth. You were perishing of ennui in your ruined castle. To restore the fortunes of your family, to be able to reappear in society, you condescended to court and flatter the plebeian you now disdain. I hate your party; I never disguised that fact. I have always detested your political sect; there is no sympathy possible between the Levraults and M. de Chambord. If you had not assured me—if I had not believed, that your son would give in his adhesion to the present dynasty, I would never have given him my daughter and a third of my fortune. I relied on your good faith, and you have shamefully deceived me."
Whilst M. Levrault pronounced these last sentences, Gaston, who had come in from his ride, was standing at the open door of the drawing-room, pale, motionless, and silent. The Marchioness was about to reply, but, on beholding her son, the words died away on her lips.
"Mother," said Gaston coldly, advancing towards her, "I understand everything: you have trafficked with my name. Better, a hundred times, had it been to submit to our poverty, or to permit and teach me to work to reconstruct our fortune. You have passed a contract which I did not subscribe, but which I nevertheless will fulfil."
Then, turning to M. Levrault:
"Make yourself easy, sir: we will go to court."
And without another word Gaston quitted the room, leaving the Marchioness overwhelmed with consternation, and M. Levrault intoxicated with joy.
In spite of the Dowager's threatened malediction, Gaston persists in his resolution. The court-dresses are ready; M. Levrault, in whose roseate dreams a count's coronet nightly recurs, and who has more than once alarmed the house by rehearsing in his sleep the maiden speech that is to electrify the Chamber of Peers—has passed two entire days majoring before his mirror in white cassimere smalls, embroidered coat, and steel-hilted rapier. It seems as if nothing short of an earthquake could prevent the consummation of his long-cherished hopes. Yes, one other thing can, and cruel fate decrees that thing shall come to pass. Fortune, long favourable to the plodding shopkeeper, frowns upon the aspirant to court honours. Engrossed by anticipation of his expected happiness, M. Levrault is inattentive to the signs of the times, and persists in turning a deaf ear to the alarming reports that circulate abroad. Thus it happens that when, on the eve of the day appointed for his presentation, he strolls towards the Tuileries, repeating, for at least the thirtieth time, a carefully rounded phrase intended for the ear of royalty, he is not only shocked, but perfectly astounded, on beholding a number of ill-looking persons throwing the furniture out of the palace windows. We must try to make room for a final extract.
"The purlieus of the Tuileries were the scene of indescribable tumult and confusion. Armed bands traversed the bridge and the quay. Shots fired in the air increased the intoxication of the victors. From the windows of the palace there issued, like the roar of the waves upon the beach, the hoarse voices of the mob. Cuirassiers' chargers, mounted by children, were galloping through the crowd. The people all had weapons; the soldiers only were unarmed. Groups of persons with curious, anxious, alarmed countenances, told each other the news; the royal family had fled, and of all the courtiers, all the councillors, all the men of war who surrounded them, not one had been found to draw a sword or flash a cartridge. M. Levrault was looking and listening with a stupified air, when a hand was laid upon his shoulder: turning quickly about, he found himself face to face with Jolibois. The Radical notary was armed to the teeth. In his girdle were two pair of holster pistols, a dragoon sabre dragged at his heels, a double-barrelled fowling-piece was on his shoulders. His face, begrimed with powder, might have belonged to a soldier who has done nothing all day but load and fire. But his innocent weapons were blood-guiltless; like a prudent warrior, he had waited till all was over before making his appearance on the scene of action. He was now marching upon the Chamber of Deputies, at the head of a score of men equipped like himself. On recognising him, M. Levrault was struck with consternation. "Well!" cried Jolibois, "what did I tell you? Who was right? You would not believe me; do you believe me now? I have a good nose; I smelt to-day's banquet long ago. The people triumph, the monarchy is down, the infamous bourgeoisie is dead. I and my men are off to the Chamber to proclaim the Republic."
"The Republic!" stammered M. Levrault in a stifled voice.
"Yes, my boy, the Republic! In an hour you shall have it." And taking him aside, as if fearful of being overheard by his followers: "Here you are in a nice mess, my good friend," he continued. "I would not be in your skin. A notary would not do for your son-in-law; you must needs have a marquis. Your millions were not enough to make you a mark for the anger, the justice of the people. Your hotel is a nest of Legitimists; to-night perhaps it will be a heap of ashes. Take warning, and get out of the scrape as you can."
Thereupon Jolibois broke away from M. Levrault, who clung to his garments, and hurried of to the Chamber. It were idle to attempt to depict M. Levrault's consternation and terror. The mere word "Republic" suffices to bewilder his brain and freeze his blood. In his dictionary, Republic signified fire, murder, and pillage. To these causes of alarm were to be added his wealth, his son-in-law, his connexion with the Legitimist party. Distracted, despairing like a drowning man, he fancied he heard his name murmured around him, and read threats and vengeance on every face. It seemed to him that the sum-total of his fortune and his son-in-law's title was inscribed on his hat. He dared not go home, for fear of being followed, but wandered to and fro, pale, trembling, and with haggard eyes, seeking a means of protecting his hotel from popular fury, when he saw a workman carried by upon a stretcher. A bright idea flashed across him. By a gesture he stopped the stretcher.
"Whither do you bear this brave fellow?" he asked in a loud voice.
"To the hospital."
"To the hospital? a child of the people, a hero who has shed his blood for liberty, for the Republic! To the hospital! It were a disgrace to us, my friends. Let him come home with me; my house belongs to him. I too am a workman. Let him come to William Levrault's. Follow me, comrades; rely upon it he shall want for nothing."
"Long live William Levrault," cried the mob, clapping their hands.
"My friends, cry Long live the Republic!"
And putting himself at the head of the procession, amidst uproarious cries of "Long live William Levrault! Long live the Republic!" he bravely took the road to his hotel.
The noise without had at last made itself heard in the apartment of the Hotel Levrault. The Marchioness and Laura were together in the drawing-room. Laura, uneasy, agitated, watched at the window for the arrival of her father or husband. The Marchioness was triumphant. In her eyes the events of the day could have but one signification, the return of the Count de Chambord. The bourgeoisie was put back to its place, the nobility resumed possession of their privileges. There was something providential in the catastrophe: Heaven would not suffer a Rochelandier to perjure himself. In her intoxication, the Marchioness pardoned Laura, and even M. Levrault; she forgot her resentment, and thought only of her approaching good fortune. She was about to resume at the Tuileries the position she occupied under the Restoration.
"Calm yourself, my dear daughter," said she, affectionately. "What do you fear? What do you lose? You wished to go to the Tuileries, we will go together; I will present you myself. What a difference between the court to which I will conduct you and that to which you would have gone! In the palace of our young king you will not be exposed to meet intruders, people sprung none know whence. Do those who now depart merit a regret? What was that court? a mob. Only yesterday, the Tuileries was but an inn. A fine honour, truly, to frequent saloons through which everybody passes! To-morrow, Henry V. will clear the house and choose his own guests. Console yourself, my dear child; the young king has nothing to refuse to the La Rochelandiers."
Gaston entered the room. "Well! my son, we triumph!" proudly exclaimed the Marchioness.
"What do you hope then, madame?" Gaston gravely asked.
"We shall behold the child of our hopes; our dear Henry will ascend the throne of the Béarnais."
"But, mother, you know not then what is passing?"
"France utters a cry of deliverance, and extends its arms to its legitimate sovereign," continued the Marchioness with enthusiasm. "Why do you delay, my son? Is it not your duty to go and meet him? Depart; oh! that I could give you wings!"
"You are strangely mistaken," replied Gaston, shaking his head. "This is not the resurrection of the monarchy of St Louis, but the installation of the republic."
"The republic!" cried the Marchioness. "What an insane dream! It is impossible!"
"The republic!" exclaimed Laura: "then there will be no court?"
"Impossible!" repeated the Marchioness. "Reassure yourself, my daughter. You are mad, Gaston. The republic! How can you think of such a thing? France has tried it already, and knows too well what it is worth."
As she spoke the word, the door opened, and M. Levrault appeared, sustaining with his arm the faltering steps of the wounded workman, and followed by a dozen armed men who had escorted him to his hotel. Gaston, Laura, and the Marchioness beheld this strange scene with the utmost astonishment. The wounded man was about thirty years of age. Hurt in the shoulder with a musket-ball, his face, encircled with brown hair and a reddish beard, was still animated, in spite of pain, with all the ardour of the combat. It was one of those countenances characterised by a savage energy, which seem to rise out of the earth on the occasion of any popular movement.
"Bow your heads!" cried M. Levrault on entering—"salute with respect this hero who has given his blood to protect us from tyranny." Then, addressing himself to the wounded man; "My friend, you are at home, and your brave comrades shall not leave you. My friends, this house is yours. All that you here see I have earned with the sweat of my brow. I am too happy to share with you my little fortune, the modest fruit of my humble labours. Here is my son-in-law, a workman in the fields of thought, a republican like me, like yourselves.
"Say the Marquis de la Rochelandier," sternly interrupted Gaston. "Yesterday I held my title cheap; to-day that it is proscribed, I insist upon my right to it."
In vain did M. Levrault make signs to Gaston to hold his tongue; in a firm voice Gaston finished what he had to say, and left the room with haughty step, casting a look of pity on his father-in-law. The Marchioness, indignant, followed her son, and Laura was about to follow her when she was detained by a supplicatory gesture of her father's.
"A marquis!" said the wounded man, with a mistrustful glance round the room. "Comrades, I cannot stop here—take me to the hospital."
"My friends, you are in the house of William Levrault, formerly a weaver at Elbeuf. Do you know Jolibois? he is my dearest friend. I was on my way to the Chamber with him, when I met you. Here is my daughter, one of the people, a heart of gold. Here everything belongs to you. You have fought like lions; we must drink together."
Just then, the wounded man was seized with sudden faintness, and repeated, in a feeble voice—"Take me to the hospital!"
M. Levrault pulled the bell, a servant appeared, and soon afterwards a hamper of wine. M. Levrault filled glasses round to his new friends, gave a full one to the wounded man, and exclaimed, in an agitated voice:
"Let us drink, my friends, to the strength and grandeur of our young republic. No more kings, no more nobility, no more middle classes! Let us drink to the levelling of all classes, that we may form but one family, a family of workmen. Each for all, and all for each!" And the glasses clashed together to cries of "Long live William Levrault!"
"Long live the people of Paris!" cried William Levrault, raising his glass.
"Friends," said the wounded man in a gloomy voice, after licking his mustaches, "beware! This is rich man's wine."
Notwithstanding this sinister warning, the democrats again filled their glasses, emptied them at a draught, and looked at each other with an air of incredulity. The wounded man fainted away. M. Levrault had him carried into a comfortable room, warmed his bed, and put him into it himself, sent for a surgeon to dress his wound, and put a wing of the hotel at the disposal of his new brothers, who needed little entreaty to install themselves there. On returning to the drawing-room, he found Laura pale and terrified.
"Wretched girl!" he cried, "see what your silly vanity has done! I wanted to marry you to Jolibois. You would be a Marchioness. And now God only knows what will become of us!"
Having said this, he crept stealthily down stairs, ran to the coach-house, painted over with his own hand the arms upon the carriages, stole up stairs again, took the plate boxes from the sideboard, hurried to the cellar, concealed his treasure in a cask, and went out to buy a few dozen forks and spoons of the best electro-plate.
We must hurry to a conclusion. Solon Marche-toujours (the name of the wounded man) is recognised, during his convalescence, as a son of M. Levrault, lost in his infancy, and to whom occasional reference has been made in the course of the novel. On discovering a rich father, he abjures communism, turns his comrades out of doors, and demands three hundred thousand francs to found a newspaper; but before he can extract them from the paternal purse, M. Levrault's entire fortune and Laura's dowry are swallowed up in one of the failures consequent on the revolution. Whereupon Solon reverts to his old principles, and finally emigrates to Icaria. The incident of the loss of the fortune, which, under ordinary circumstances, might seem forced, is rendered natural enough by the revolution, of which M. Sandeau has so ably availed himself. The moral of the tale is evident and good. All parties are punished where they have sinned. The political convulsion that abolishes the titles for which Levrault bartered his daughter, and Laura sold herself, sweeps away the money which the Marchioness lied and flattered, and Gaston misallied himself, to obtain. These four persons return to Brittany, the intriguing dowager being fain to accept M. Levrault's hospitality in what was once her own castle, but which she transferred to him in full expectation of appropriating in exchange his Parisian mansion. The cloth-merchant's tribulations are not yet at an end. He is arrested by Jolibois, who has been appointed commissioner of the Republic in Brittany. The Radical ex-notary, who has more mischief than malignity in his composition, relents and releases him, abandoning him on a desolate road in the middle of a stormy night, and at several miles distance from Chateau Levrault. There are some humorous scenes towards the end of the book; and hard knocks, richly deserved, are administered to the democrats. The most pleasing feature at the close of the narrative is the change that takes place in Gaston and his young wife, whose better qualities, dormant in their more prosperous days, are brought about by adversity, and who find compensation in mutual affection for loss of rank and wealth. The novel closes with their departure for Paris, where Gaston is resolved to work out, by toil and the exercise of his talents, the means of an honourable and independent existence. M. Levrault and the Marchioness remain in Brittany, where they beguile their weariness by keeping up their old feud. Jolibois, after sitting in the Constituent Assembly, subsides into private life, having in the meantime lost all his clients. Gaspard de Montflanquin, released from durance vile by the abolition of imprisonment for debt, and appointed consul to the Republic in Polynesia, passes his time teaching lansquenet to the savages.
Sacs et Parchemins is one of the best French novels that has appeared since the February revolution. Its tone and tendency are alike unobjectionable; and whatever its reception in France, we are quite sure that with English readers it will be a general favourite. It is fully time that the better class of French writers should exert themselves, and not suffer their novel reading countrymen to be reduced, for an idle hour's amusement, to the perusal of the contemptible and unwholesome trash of which the light literature of France has for the last two years principally consisted. It would be most agreeable and refreshing to behold the names of Foudras, Féval, Dumas junior, Montégrin, and all vain pretenders of the same sort, replaced in the catalogues by those of de Bernard, Reybaud, Mérimée, Karr, and others of whom we have occasionally made honourable mention. In the ranks of the latter and worthier body, M. Jules Sandeau's last novel fairly entitles him to a place.