CHAPTER XII.
LA MERE PATRIE.
"Et pour la France un chant sacré s'éleve;
Qu'il brille pur, le ciel de nos aieux!"
—F.X. GARNEAU.
"Chamilly! Chamilly! This is the soil of our forefathers!" Quinet and I stood at last on the shores of France. We trod it with veneration, and looked around with joy. It was the sea-port of Dieppe, whose picturesque mediæval Gothic houses ranged their tall gables before us. Hence my ancestor had sailed to the wild new Canada two centuries before.—O enchanted land!
"Behold the Middle Ages!"—cried Quinet again, looking at the Gothic houses—"of which we have heard and read."
"Is it not strange!"—I exclaimed—"Yes, this is the old Patrie.—Is it possible to believe ourselves here?—Stamp and see if the ground is real!"
"There is a blouse!—a paysan, as in the pictures—he wears the cap! he has the wooden shoes!"
"It is our brother—the Frenchman!"
There was more nevertheless. Celestial angels,—I too have been in heaven. I have been a French Canadian in Paris!
Dieppe was the first note of the music, the noble and quaint Cathedral of Rouen and our railway glimpses of rural Normandy were the prelude. At last our pilgrim feet were in the Beautiful City. O much we wandered in its Avenues, with throbbing delight and love towards every face, that first memorable day. This river is the Seine! that Palace so proud and rich, the world-renowned Louvre. What is yon great carved front with twin towers—that pile with the light of morning melting its spires and roofs and flying buttresses as they rise into it—that world of clustered mediæval saints in stone, beautiful, pointed-arched portals and unapproached and unapproachable dignity—from which the edifices of the City seem to stand afar off and leave it alone, and which wears not the air of to-day or yesterday?—Nôtre Dame de Paris, O vast monument of French art, recorder of chivalric ages, all the generations have had recourse to thine aisles and the heart of Paris beats within thee as the hearts of Quinet and this d'Argentenaye beat under the ribs of their human breasts.
Paris knew and loved us. The fountains and great trees of the Tuilleries Gardens were palatial for us; the Champs Elysees laughed to us as we moved through their groves; the Arch de l'Etoile had a voice to us grandly of the victories of our race; the Bois de Boulogne was gay with happy groups and glistening equipages.
How well they do everything in Paris! When shall the streets of Montreal be so smooth, the houses so artistically built, when shall living be reduced to such system of neatness and saving?
Quinet betook himself much to the obscure cheese shops and cafés in the quarters of the people, and ate and chatted with such villains that I called him "The Communard." He, on the other hand, called me "Le Grand Marquis," because I made use of some relatives who were among the nobility.
Between us we missed little. On the one hand the heart of the masses affected us. Once we bought bread of a struggling baker hard by the famous abbey of St. Denis. We asked for a cup of water to drink with it,—"But Messieurs will not drink water!" he cried, and rushed in his generosity for his poor bottle of wine.—My French-Canadian countrymen, that was a trait of yours!
I remember too,—when my shoe hurt me and I limped badly one evening along the Avenue of the Bois,—the numbers of men and women who said to one another: "O, le pauvre jeune homme." Ye world-wide Pharisees, erring Paris cannot be so deeply wicked while its heart flows so much goodness!
But the enthusiasms will run away with my story. Resolutely, revenons.
While Quinet, the positive pole of our expedition, was ever edging our march towards his Bastille Column and his cut-throat Quartier Montmartre, I, the negative; drew it a little into more polished circles where wit and talent sparkled. The Vicomte D'Haberville, a French d'Argentenaye, took us to a reception—not too proud of us I daresay, for the gloss of his shoes and the magnificence of his cravat outshone us as the sleek skin of a race-horse does a country filly. Especially did he eye Quinet a little coldly, so that I could scarcely persuade the proud fellow to come.
To the astonishment of the Vicomte, however, Quinet was the attraction of the evening. Taine and Thiers were there, and fired by a remark from one of these his famous men, the young Radical had ventured a clever saying.
Thiers looked at him a sharp glance as he heard the accent:
"Vous êtes des Provinces, monsieur?"
"No, sir—from New France."
"We had once,—in America—a colony of the name," replied the statesman, reflecting.
"France has it still. It is a colony of hearts!"
Quinet awakened interest; was inquired into and drawn out, and we were invited to a dozen of the most interesting salons of the capital.
O but those Parisians are clever! Why is it they are so much more brilliant than we? Perhaps because there intellect is honored.
Quickly, through these surroundings, our knowledges and tastes advanced—Quinet's verging to the path of social science—mine to an artistic sense which suddenly unfolded into life and became my chief delight. The enthusiasm for Paris gradually led me to another offer by Life of a Highest Thing. To say it shortly—the salons led to a pleasure in the artistic, the society of artists to a growing appreciation of fine works of skill, and these, to Italy and Rome.
Do you desire to rest eyes upon the noblest products of the hand of man? Go into the Land of Romance as we did, and wander among its castled hill-tops, its ruins of Empire, its cathedrals in the skill of whose exhaustless grandeurs Divinity breathes through genius. Meditate in reverence before the famous masterpieces of antiquity—the Venus of Milo—the silent agony of the Laocoon, the Hyperion Belvedere. Learn from Canova's pure marble, and Raphael's Chambers, and from Titian, and Tintoret, and the astonishing galaxies of intellect that shine in their constellations in the sky of the true Renaissance.
Then you may say as I did, "At length, I am finding something great and best. The beautiful is the whole that mankind can directly apprehend, and as for other things hoped for, symbolism is the true outlet for his soul. Art is the union of this beauty and symbolism. No aspiration exists but can be expressed in pleasing forms."
Does man desire God, he paints—O how raptly!—a saint; does he feel after immortality, he sculptures an ever-young Apollo. Looking to them, he has faith, as of an oracle, in their emblematic truth, and through them instructs the world.
Art seemed to me then the Highest Thing.