And M. Arnault passed.
In the interval that had elapsed between Marius and the 3rd of September, the date at which we have arrived, M. Arnault had produced his tragedy of Lucrèce. The play falling flat, the author laid its want of success at Mademoiselle Raucourt's door.... It is known that this famous actress's aversion to men was not entirely imputed to virtuous causes. However that may be, later, we shall have to speak of Mademoiselle Raucourt in connection with her pupil, Mademoiselle Georges.
M. Arnault had followed Bonaparte to Egypt. He has related in a very amusing manner, in his memoirs entitled Souvenirs d'un sexagénaire, the part he took in that expedition. On his return, he wrote an Ossianic tragedy, called Oscar, which was very successful, and which he dedicated to Bonaparte; then les Vénitiens, the catastrophe of which was regarded as so outrageously bold that scrupulous people would not support it, and the author was obliged to please these good people by changing the action, thanks to which, after the style of Ducis's Othello, his piece now finished off by a death or a marriage, according to the choice of the spectators. Les Vénitiens was a tremendous success.
While M. Arnault was a chief clerk in the University during the Empire, under M. de Fontanes, who was the principal, he took Béranger into his offices as copying-clerk at twelve hundred francs a year. And it was there that Béranger wrote his first chanson, the Roi d'Yvetot. Upon the second return of the Bourbons, M. Arnault was proscribed, and retired to Brussels. We have already told how he became acquainted with M. de Leuven, in exile, over a slap in the face the latter gave a foreign officer. It was during his exile that M. Arnault composed nearly all his fables, a charming collection but little known, as very few people read fables nowadays. For this very reason I am going to make my readers acquainted with three of them. Be reassured! these three fables are really by M. Arnault, and not by M. Viennet. Besides, I am answerable for them, and my word can be depended upon in the case of all three. Let us further hasten to add that the fables we are about to read are fables only in title: they are really epigrams.
LE COLIMAÇON
"Sans amis comme sans famille,
Ici-bas, vivre en étranger;
Se retirer dans sa coquille,
Au signal du moindre danger;
S'aimer d'une amitié sans bornes,
De soi seul emplir sa maison;
En sortir, selon la saison,
Pour faire à son prochain les cornes
Signaler ses pas destructeurs
Par les traces les plus impures;
Outrager les plus belles fleurs
Par ses baisers ou ses morsures;
Enfin, chez soi, comme en prison,
Vieillir, de jour en jour plus triste;
C'est l'histoire de l'égoiste
Ou celle du colimaçon."
LE DROIT DE CHACUN
"Un jour, le roi des animaux
Défendit, par une ordonnance,
A ses sujets, à ses vassaux,
De courir sans une licence
Sur quelque bête que ce soit;
Promettant, il est vrai, de conserver le droit
A quiconque en usait pour motif honnête.
Tigres, loups et renards, de présenter requête
A Sa Majesté: loups, pour courir le mouton,
Renards, pour courir le chapon,
Tigres, pour courir toute bête.
Parmi les députés, qui criaient à tue-tête,
Un chien s'égosillait à force d'aboyer.
'Plaise à Sa Majesté, disait-il, m'octroyer
Droit de donner la chasse, en toute circonstance,
A tous les animaux vivant de ma substance.
—Gentilshommes, à vous permis de giboyer,
Dit, s'adressant au tigre, au loup, au renard même
Des forêts le maître suprême
Aux chasseurs tels que vous permis de déployer,
Même chez leurs voisins, leurs efforts, leurs astuces;
Mais néant au placet du chien!'
Que réclamait, pourtant, ce roturier-ta?—Rien,
Que le droit de tuer ses puces."
LES DEUX BAMBOUS
"L'an passé—c'était l'an quarante,—
L'an passé, le Grand Turc disait au grand vizir:
'Quand, pour régner sous moi, je daignai te choisir,
Roustan, je te croyais d'humeur bien différente.
Roustan met son plus grand plaisir.
A me contrarier; quelque ordre que je donne,
Au lieu d'obéir, il raisonne;
Toujours des si, toujours des mais;
Il défend ce que je permets:
Ce que je défends, il l'ordonne.
A rien ne tient qu'ici je ne te fasse voir
A quel point je suis las de ces façons de faire!
Va-t'en! Qu'on fasse entrer mon grand eunuque noir
C'est celui-là qui connaît son affaire,
C'est lui qui, toujours complaisant,
Sans jamais m'étourdir de droit ni de justice,
N'ayant de loi que mon caprice,
Sait me servir en m'amusant.
Jamais ce ton grondeur, jamais cet air sinistre!
Ainsi que tout désir, m'épargnant tout travail,
Il conduirait l'empire aussi bien qu'un sérail.
J'en veux faire un premier ministre.
—En fait de politique et de gouvernement,
Sultan, dit le vizir, chacun a son système:
Te plaire est le meilleur; le mien, conséquemment,
Est mauvais.... Toutefois, ne pourrais-je humblement,
Te soumettre un petit problème?
—Parle.—Ce n'est pas d'aujourd'hui.
Que péniblement je me traîne,
Vieux et cassé, sultan, dans ma marche incertaine,
Ma faiblesse a besoin d'appui.
Or, j'ai deux roseaux de la Chine:
Plus ferme qu'un bâton, l'un ne sait pas plier,
L'autre, élégant, léger, droit comme un peuplier,
Est plus souple qu'une badine.
Lequel choisir?—Lequel?... Roustan, je ne crois pas
Qu'un flexible bambou puisse assurer nos pas.
—Tu le crois! lorsque tu m'arraches
Ton sceptre affermi par mes mains,
Pour le livrer à des faquins
Sans caractere et sans moustaches.'
Rois, vos ministres sont, pour vous,
Ce qu'est, pour nous, le jonc dont l'appui nous assiste,
Je le dis des vizirs ainsi que des bambous,
On ne peut s'appuyer que sur ce qui résiste."
If you read, one after the other, M. Arnault's one hundred and fifty fables, you will find throughout, the same ease, the same touch, the same carping spirit. When you have read them, you will certainly not say of the author, "He is a delightful person," but you will assuredly say, "He is an honest man."
In 1815 M. Arnault was exiled. Why? For so slight a reason that no one bothered even to think of it; his name was on the list, and that was all! But who signed that list? Louis XVIII., formerly Monsieur—that is to say, the very same Comte de Provence under whose protection the poet had begun his career, and to whom he had dedicated his Marius.
Now, although there was no reason for M. Arnault's exile, party spirit invented one and said that he was proscribed as a regicide. There were, however, two sufficient reasons why this could not be: first, because M. Arnault did not belong to the Convention; secondly, because in 1792 and 1793 he was abroad. Nevertheless, the rumour was tacitly accepted, and soon nobody doubted that M. Arnault was exiled on that ground.
M. Arnault sent Germanicus from Brussels: it was played on the 22nd of March 1817, and forbidden the following day. During the representation the tragedy shifted from the stage to the pit, where a terrible fight took place, in which several people were hurt and one even killed. The battle was waged between the Life Guards and the partisans of the late Government. The weapon that was generally made use of in this skirmish was that kind of bamboo upon which Roustan, the Grand Turk's first vizir, whose grievances we have just heard, was wont to lean. One can understand that the thicker and less pliable they were, the better they served for defence and for attack. From the date of that fray these canes were dubbed "Germanicus" Angry feelings waxed strong at this period. The day but one after the representation, Martainville published a scurrilous article attacking M. Arnault's private honour. This article, which was the result of a blow given the critic by Telleville, led to a duel in which, as we said above, the journalist had his thigh bruised by a bullet.
Germanicus was revived later. We were present at the revival; but, divorced from the passions of the moment, the play was not a success. His unlooked-for and outrageously unjust proscription added a bitterness to M. Arnault's nature—a bitterness which cropped out on the least excuse, and which was not expelled from his blood by the legacy Napoleon bequeathed him in his will of a hundred thousand francs. The legacy was useful in aiding him to build a beautiful house in the rue de la Bruyère: as is usually the case, however, the builder sank twice the amount he had intended to spend thereon, so M. Arnault found himself a hundred thousand francs poorer after his legacy than before he had inherited that sum.