[CHAPTER II]
Return of Adolphe de Leuven—He shows me a corner of the artistic and literary world—The death of Holbein and the death of Orcagna—Entrance into the green-rooms—Bürger's Lénore—First thoughts of my vocation
In the meantime, de Leuven returned to Villers-Cotterets, after five or six months' absence. His return was to open out new fields for my ambitions—ambitions, however, which I believed were capable of being fulfilled. If you throw a stone into a lake, however large the lake may be, the first circle it will make round it, after its fall, will go on growing and multiplying itself, even as do our days and our desires, until the last one touches the bank—that is to say, eternity.
Adolphe returned and brought Lafarge back with him. Poor Lafarge! Do you remember the brilliant head clerk, who returned to his native place in an elegant carriage, drawn by a mettlesome steed? Well, he had bought a practice, but there the progress of his rising fortune had stopped. By some inconceivable fatality, although he was young, good-looking, clever, perhaps even because he possessed all these gifts, which are perfectly useless to a lawyer, he had not found a wife to pay for the practice, so he had been obliged to sell it again, and, disgusted with the law, he had taken to literature. De Leuven, who had taken notice of him in Villers-Cotterets, found him out in Paris and returned with him. Some of his ancient splendour still stuck to the poor fellow, but you might seek in vain for any real stability at the base of his fresh plans for the future; those fleeting clouds hardly got beyond the stage of hopes. During his stay in Paris a great change had come over Adolphe's character—a change which was to react on me.
At M. Arnault's house, in which he had been a guest, Adolphe had had a closer view of the literary world than he had previously caught glimpses of in the house of Talma. He had there made the acquaintance of Scribe, who was already at the zenith of his fame. He met Mademoiselle Duchesnois there, who at that time was Telleville's mistress, and who recited Marie Stuart. There he became acquainted with M. de Jouy, who had finished his Sylla; Lucien Arnault, who had begun his Régulus; Pichat, who, while composing his Brennus and thinking out his Léonidas and William Tell, was facing a future in which, his first wreath on his head and his first palm in his hand, Death lurked, waiting for him. He had then dropped from these lofty heights in the regions of art to inferior places, where he became acquainted with Soulié, who was publishing poems in the Mercure; with Rousseau, that Pylades of Romieu whom Orestes had left one day at the turning of the road which led to his sub-prefecture; with Ferdinand Langlé, the fickle lover of poor little Fleuriet, upon whom, it is said, a notorious poisoner tried the deadly powder with which he was later to kill his friend; with Théaulon, that delightful person and indefatigable worker, who worked only in the hope that some day he would be able to be idle, but who never had time to be idle, who was cradled for a brief time in the arms of Love, but who was never really to rest until he lay on the bosom of Death. This poor Epicurean, who by dint of imagination saw his life in rosy garb, although for him it was clothed in black, wrote these four lines on the door of his study: they express at once his easy carelessness and his gentle philosophy—
Loin du sot, du fat et du traître,
Ici ma constance attendra:
Et l'amour qui viendra peut-être,
Et la mort qui du moins viendra!
Death came, poor Théaulon! Came all too soon, for thee as for Pichat, for Soulié, for Balzac; for there are two Deaths charged by Providence with the task of hurling men into eternity: the one inexorable, icy, impassive, obeying the sad laws of destruction; the Death of Holbein, the Death in the cemetery of Bâle, the Death which is ever intermingled with life, hiding its skeleton face under the most capricious of masks, veiling its bony body beneath the king's mantle, in the gilded dress of the courtesan, under the filthy rags of the beggar, walking side by side with us; an invisible but ever present spectre; a lugubrious guest, a sepulchral comrade, the supreme friend who receives us in its arms when we fall over the edge of life, and who gently lays us to rest for ever under the cold damp stones of the tomb;—the other, sister of the above, daughter too of Erebus and of Night, unexpected, spiteful, lies in ambush at a turning-point of happiness or prosperity, ready like a vulture or a panther to pounce or spring out upon its prey; this is the Death of Orcagna, the Death of the Campo-Santo in Pisa; Death in life, envious, with cadaverous hue, hair flying wildly in the wind, eyes flashing like those of a lynx, the Death which took Petrarch in the midst of his triumph, Raphael in the midst of his love affairs; before whom all joy and glory and riches pale; that power which, passing rapidly, heedlessly and inexorably over the unfortunate victims who appeal to it, strikes down in the midst of their flowers, their wine and their perfumes, the handsome youth crowned with myrtle, the lovely maiden rose-crowned, the laurel-wreathed poet, and drags them brutally to the grave, their eyes open, their hearts yet beating, their arms stretched out towards the light, the day and the sunshine! Orcagna! Orcagna, great sculptor, great painter and, above all, great poet! how many times have I trembled as I touched the hand of a beloved child, or kissed the face of a mistress who had made me happy! for I had an inward vision of that Death of the Campo-Santo at Pisa, passing in the distance, dark, threatening like a sailing cloud; then, the next day, I heard the words, "He is dead!" or "She is dead!" and it was almost always a young genius whose light had gone out, a young soul that had gone to its Maker.