"P.S.—This work roused much criticism against us, and it must be admitted, few people have made allowances for two poor young fellows, the oldest of whom is scarcely twenty, in the attempt which they made to create an interesting situation with five characters, rejecting all the accessories of melodrama. But I have no intention of seeking to defend ourselves. I simply wish to proclaim the gratitude that I owe to Victor Escousse, who, in order to open the way for my entry into theatrical circles, admitted me to collaboration with himself; I also wish to defend him, as far as it is in my power, against the calumnious statements which are openly made against his character as a man; imputing a ridiculous vanity to him which I have never noticed in him. I say it publicly, I have nothing but praise to give him in respect of his behaviour towards me, not only as collaborator, but still more as a friend. May these few words, thus frankly written, soften the darts which hatred has been pleased to hurl against a young man whose talent, I hope, will some day stifle the words of those who attack him without knowing him!
"AUGUSTE LEBRAS"
Yet Escousse had so thoroughly understood the fact that with success would come struggle, and with the amelioration of material position would come a recrudescence in moral suffering, that, after the success in Farruck le Maure, when he left his little workman's room to take rather more comfortable quarters as an honoured author, he addressed to that room, the witness of his first emotions as poet and lover, the lines here given—
À MA CHAMBRE
"De mon indépendance,
Adieu, premier séjour,
Où mon adolescence
A duré moins d'un jour!
Bien que peu je regrette
Un passé déchirant,
Pourtant, pauvre chambrette,
Je vous quitte en pleurant!
Du sort, avec courage,
J'ai subi tous les coups;
Et, du moins, mon partage
N'a pu faire un jaloux.
La faim, dans ma retraite,
M'accueillait en rentrant ...
Pourtant, pauvre chambrette,
Je vous quitte en pleurant!
Au sein de la détresse,
Quand je suçais mon lait,
Une tendre maîtresse
Point ne me consolait,
Solitaire couchette
M'endormait soupirant ...
Pourtant, pauvre chambrette,
Je vous quitte en pleurant!
De ma muse, si tendre,
Un Dieu capricieux
Ne venait point entendre
Le sons ambitieux.
Briller pour l'indiscrète,
Est besoin dévorant ...
Pourtant, pauvre chambrette,
Je vous quitte en pleurant!
Adieu! le sort m'appelle
Vers un monde nouveau;
Dans couchette plus belle,
J'oublîrai mon berceau.
Peut-être, humble poète
Lion de vous sera grand ...
Pourtant, pauvre chambrette,
Je vous quitte en pleurant!"
In fact, that set of apartments which Escousse had taken in place of his room, and where, it will be seen, he had not installed himself without pain, saw him enter on 18 February, with his friend Auguste Lebras, followed by the daughter of the porter, who was carrying a bushel of charcoal. He had just bought this charcoal from the neighbouring greengrocer. While the woman was measuring it out, he said to Lebras—
"Do you think a bushel is enough?"
"Oh, yes!" replied the latter.
They paid, and asked that the charcoal might be sent at once. The porter's daughter left the bushel of charcoal in the anteroom at their request, and went away, little supposing she had just shut in Death with the two poor lads. Three days before, Escousse had taken the second key of his room from the portress on purpose to prevent any hindrance to this pre-arranged plan. The two friends separated. The same night Escousse wrote to Lebras—
"I expect you at half-past eleven; the curtain will be raised. Come, so that we may hurry on the dénoûment!"
Lebras came at the appointed hour; he had no thought of failing to keep the appointment: the fatal thought of suicide had been germinating for a long while in his brain. The charcoal was already lit. They stuffed up the doors and windows with newspapers. Then Escousse went to a table and wrote the following note:—
"Escousse has killed himself because he does not feel he has any place in this life; because his strength fails him at every step he takes forwards or backwards; because fame does not satisfy his soul, if soul there be!
"I desire that the motto of my book may be—
"'Adieu, trop inféconde terre,
Fléaux humains, soleil glacé!
Comme un fantôme solitaire,
Inaperçu j'aurai passé.
Adieu, les palmes immortelles,
Vrai songe d'une âme de feu!
L'air manquait: J'ai fermé mes ailes, Adieu!'"