"Alas! O my mother, thou couldst not make me invulnerable when thou didst bear me, by dipping me in the icy waters of the Styx! Carried away by a fiery imagination and imperious desires, I wasted the treasures and incense of my youth upon the altars of criminal voluptuousness; pleasure, which should be the parent of and not the destroyer of human beings, devoured the first springs of my youth. When I look at myself, I shudder! Is that image really myself? What hand has seared my face with those hideous signs?... What has become of that forehead which displayed the candour of my once pure spirit? of those bleared eyes, which terrify, which once expressed the desires of a heart that was full of hope and without a single regret, and whose voluptuous yet serious thoughts were still free from shameful trammels? A kindly tolerant smile ever lighted them up when they fell on one of my fellows; but, now, my bold and sadly savage looks say to all: 'I have lived and suffered; I have known your ways and long for death!' What has become of those almost charming features which once graced my face with their harmonious lines? That expression of happy good nature, which once gave pleasure and won me love and kindly hearts, is now no longer visible! All has perished in degradation! God and nature are avenged! When, hereafter, I shall experience an affectionate impulse, the expression of my features will betray my soul; and when I go near beauty and innocence, they will fly from me! What inexpressible tortures! What frightful punishment! Henceforth, I must find all my virtues in the remorse that consumes my life; I must purify myself in the unquenchable fires of never-dying sorrow; and ascend to the dignity of my being by means of profound and poignant regret for having sullied my soul. When I shall have earned rest by my sufferings, my youth will have gone.... But there is another life and, when I cross its threshold, I shall be re-clothed in the robe of immortal youth!"
Take notice, reader, that, before that unfortunate journey to Spain, Alphonse Rabbe was never spoken of otherwise than as the Antinous of Aix. An incurable melancholy took possession of him from this period.
"I have outlived myself!" he said, shaking his head sadly. Only his beautiful hair remained of his former self. Accursed be the invention of looking-glasses! By thirty, he had already stopped short of two attempts at suicide. But his hands were not steady enough and the dagger missed his heart. We have all seen that dagger to which Rabbe offered a kind of worship, as the last friend to whom he looked for the supreme service. He has immortalised this dagger. Read this and tell me if ever a more virile style sprung from a human pen—
THE OLD DAGGER
"Thou earnest out of the tomb of a warrior, whose fate is unknown to us; thou wast alone, and without companion of thy kind, hung on the walls of the wretched haunt of a dealer in pictures, when thy shape and appearance struck my attention. I felt the formidable temper of thy blade; I guessed the fierceness of thy point through the sheath of thick rust which covered thee completely. I hastened to bargain so as to have thee in my power; the low-born dealer, who only saw in thee a worthless bit of iron, will give thee up, almost for nothing, to my jealous eagerness. I will carry thee off secretly, pressed against my heart; an extraordinary emotion, mingled with joy, rage and confidence, shook my whole being. I feel the same shuddering every time I seize hold of thee.... Ancient dagger! We will never leave one another more!
"I have rid thee of that injurious rust, which, even after that long interval of time, has not altered thy form. Here, thou art restored to the glories of the light; thou flashest as thou comest forth from that deep darkness. I did not imprudently entrust thee to a mercenary workman to repair the injustice of those years: I myself, for two days, carefully worked to repolish thee; it is I who preserved thee from the injurious danger of being at the first moment confused with worthless old iron, from the disgrace, perhaps, of going to an obscure forge, to be transformed into a nail to shoe the mule of an iniquitous Jesuit.
"What is the reason that thy aspect quickens the flow of my blood, in spite of myself?... Shall I not succeed in understanding thy story? To what century dost thou belong? What is the name of the warrior whom thou followedst to his last resting-place? What is the terrible blow which bent thee slightly?...
"I have left thee that mark of thy good services: to efface that imperceptible curve which made thy edge uneven, thou wouldst have had to be submitted to the action of fire; but who knows but that thou mightst have lost thy virtue? Who, then, would have given me back the secret of that blade, strong and obedient to that which the breastplate did not always withstand, when the blow was dealt with a valiant arm?
"Was it in the blood of a newly killed bull that thy point was buried on first coming out of the fire? Was it in the cold air of a narrow gorge of mountains? Was it in the syrup prepared from certain herbs or, perhaps, in holy oil? None of our best craftsmen, not Bromstein himself, could tell.
"Tell me whom thou hast comforted and whom punished? Hast thou avenged the outlaw for the judicial murder of his father? Hast thou, during the night, engraved on some granite columns the sentence of those who passed sentence? Thou canst only have obeyed powerful and just passions; the intrepid man who wanted to carry thee away with him to his last resting-place had baptized thee in the blood of a feudal oppressor.
"Thou art pure steel; thy shape is bold, but without studied grace; thou wast not, indeed, frivolously wrought to adorn the girdle of a foppish carpet-knight of the court of Francis I., or of Charles-Quint; thou art not of sufficient beauty to have been thus commonplace; the filigree-work which ornaments thy hilt is only of red copper, that brilliant shade of red which colours the summit of the Mont de la Victoire on long May evenings.
"What does this broad furrow mean which, a quarter of the length down thy blade to the hilt, is pierced with a score of tiny holes like so many loop-holes? Doubtless they were made so that the blood could drip through, which shoots and gushes along the blade in smoking bubbles when the blow has gone home. Oh! if I shed some evil blood I too should wish it to drain off and not to soil my hands.... If it were the blood of a powerful enemy to one's country, little would it matter if it was left all blood smeared; I should have settled my accounts with this wretched world beforehand, and then thou wouldst not fail me at need; thou wouldst do me the same service as thou renderest formerly to him whose bones the tomb received along with thee.
"In storms of public misfortunes, or in crises of personal adversity, the tomb is often the only refuge for noble hearts; it, at any rate, is impregnable and quiet: there one can brave accusers and the instruments of despotism, who are as vile as the accusers themselves!
"Open the gates of eternity to me, I implore thee! Since it needs must be, we will go together, my old dagger, thou and I, as with a new friend. Do not fail me when my soul shall ask transit of thee; afford to my hand that virile self-reliance which a strong man has in himself; snatch me from the outrages of petty persecutors and from the slow torture of the unknown!"
Although this dagger was treasured by the unhappy Rabbe, as we have mentioned, it was not by its means that the accursed one, as he called himself, was to put an end to his miseries. Rabbe was only thirty and had strength enough in him yet to go on living.
So, in despair, he dragged out his posthumous existence and flung himself into the political arena, as a gladiator takes comfort to himself by showing himself off between two tigers.
1821 began; the death of the Duc de Berry served as an excuse for many reactionary laws; Alphonse Rabbe now found his golden hour; he came to Marseilles and started Le Phocéen, in a countryside that was a very volcano of Royalism. Would you hear how he addresses those in power? Then listen. Hear how he addressed men of influence—
"Oligarchies are fighting for the rays of liberty across the dead body of an unfortunate prince.... O Liberty! mark with thy powerful inspirations those hours of the night which William Tell and his friends used to spend in striking blows to redress wrongs!..."
When liberty is invoked in such terms she rarely answers to the call. One morning, someone knocked at Rabbe's door; he went to open it, and two policemen stood there who asked him to accompany them to the prison. When Rabbe was arrested, all Marseilles rose up in a violent Royalist explosion against him. An author who had written a couple of volumes of fables took upon himself to support the Bourbon cause in one of the papers. Rabbe read the article and replied—
"Monsieur, in one of your apologues you compare yourself to a sheep; well and good. Then, monsieur le mouton, go on, cropping your tender grass and stop biting other things!"