This then, was the world de Leuven had seen during his stay in Paris, and he brought a reflection of its unknown brilliance to me, the poor provincial lad, buried in the depths of a little town. De Leuven had done more than look into it: he had entered the tabernacle, he had touched the ark! He had been permitted the honour of having some of his work read before M. Poirson, the high priest of the Gymnase, and before his sacristan, M. Dormeuil. Of course the work was declined after it had been read; but—like the pebble which lies near the rose and shares the scent of the queen of flowers—there remained to de Leuven, from his declined work, an entry into the green-rooms. Oh! that entree to the green-rooms, what a weariness it is to those who have attained it, whilst by those who have not attained it, it is regarded as the most coveted thing on earth! Adolphe, however, had been in it for such a short time that ennui had not yet had time to spring up, and so the dazzling glow of the honour still remained with him. It was the spirit of this enchantment which he transferred to me. At that time, Perlet was at his best, Fleuriet in the heyday of her beauty, Léontine Fay at the height of her popularity. The latter, poor child, at the age of eight or nine, had been forced to learn a craft in which a grown-up woman might have succumbed; but what did that matter? They had consoled themselves in advance for everything, even for her death; for they had already made so much money out of her, that, in the event of her death, they could afford to go to her burial in fine style.
Adolphe's return, then, was a great event to me; like Don Cléophas, I hung on the cloak of my fine diable boiteux, and he, telling me what he had seen in the theatres, made me see also. What long walks we took together! How many times did I stop him, as he passed from one artiste to another, saying, after he had exhausted all the celebrities of the Gymnase, "And Talma? And Mademoiselle Mars and Mademoiselle Duchesnois?" And he good-naturedly held forth upon the genius and talent and good-fellowship of those eminent artistes, playing upon the unknown notes of the keyboard of my imagination, causing ambitious and sonorous chords to vibrate within me that had hitherto lain dormant, the possession of which astonished me greatly when I began to realise their existence. Then poor Adolphe little by little conceived a singular idea, which was to make me share, on my own behalf, the hopes he had indulged in for himself; to rouse in me the ambition to become, if not a Scribe, an Alexandre Duval, an Ancelot, a Jouy, an Arnault or a Casimir Delavigne, at least a Fulgence, a Mazère or a Vulpian. And it must be admitted the notion was ambitious indeed; for, I repeat, I had never received any proper education, I knew nothing, and it was not until very much later, in 1833 or 1834, on the publication of the first edition of my Impressions de Voyage, that people began to perceive I had genius. In 1820 I must confess I had not a shadow of it.
A week before Adolphe's return had brought to me the first vivifying gleam of light from the outside world 3 the hemmed-in and restricted life of a provincial town had seemed to me the limit of my ambition, a salary of say fifteen or eighteen hundred francs 3 for I never dreamt of becoming a solicitor: first because I had no vocation for it; for although I had spent three years in copying deeds of sale, bonds and marriage contracts, at Maître Mennesson's, I was no more learned in the law than I was in music, after three years of solfeggio with old Hiraux. It was evident, therefore, that the law was no more my vocation than music, and that I should never expound the Code any better than I played on the violin. This distressed my mother dreadfully, and all her kind friends said to her—
"My dear, just listen to what I say: your son is a born idler, who will never do anything."
And my mother would heave a sigh, and say, as she kissed me, "Is it true, my dear boy, what they tell me?"
And I would answer naïvely, "I don't know, mother!"
What else could I reply? I could see nothing beyond the last houses in my natal town, and even though I might find something that responded to my heart inside the city boundary, I searched in vain therein for anything that could satisfy my mind and imagination.
De Leuven made a gap in the wall which closed me in, and through that gap I began to perceive something to aim at as yet undefined on the infinite horizon beyond.
De la Ponce also influenced me at this period. As before related, I had translated with him the beautiful Italian romance—or rather diatribe—of Ugo Foscolo, that imitation of Goethe's Werther which the author of the poem called Sépulcres contrived, by dint of patriotic feeling and talent, to develop into a national epic. Moreover, de la Ponce, who wished to make me regret that I had abandoned the study of the German language, translated for my benefit Bürger's beautiful ballad Lénore. The reading of this work, which belonged to a type of literature of which I was completely ignorant, produced a deep impression on my mind; it was like one of those landscapes one sees in dreams, in which one dares not enter, so different is it from everyday surroundings. The terrible refrain which the sinister horseman repeats over and over again to the trembling betrothed whom he carries off on his spectre-steed,
"Hourra!—fantôme, les morts vont vite!"