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My days were filled with one single thought, which I treasured up in my heart, and would not even allow my countenance to reveal, as a precious perfume of which one would fear to let a particle evaporate by exposing the vase that contains it to the outward air. I used to rise with the first rays of light, which always penetrated tardily into the dark alcove of the little ante-room where my friend gave me shelter like a mendicant of love. I always began the day by a long letter to Julie, which was but a calmer continuation of the conversation of the day before; in it I poured forth all the thoughts that had suggested themselves since I had left her. Love feels delightful remorse at its tender omissions; accuses, reproaches itself, and feels no rest till they have been repaired. They are gems fallen from the heart or the lips of the loved one, which cause the lover's thoughts to travel back over the past, to gather them up, and to increase the treasure of his feelings. Julie, when she awoke, received my letter, which made it appear to her as though the conversation of the preceding evening had not been interrupted, but had been kept up in whispered tones during her sleep. I always received her answer before noon.
My heart being thus appeased, after the agitation of the night, my next thought was to calm the impatience for the evening's interview, which began to take possession of me. I strove not to divert my heart from its one thought, but to interest my eyes and mind, and had laid down as a law to myself to spend several hours in reading and study, to occupy the interval between the time when I left Julie till we met again. I wished to improve myself not for others, but for her,—in order that he whom she loved should not disgrace her preference; and that those superior men who composed her society, and who sometimes saw me in her drawing-room standing at a corner of the fireplace, like a statue of contemplation, should discover in me, if by chance they spoke to me, a soul, an intelligence, a hope, or a promise, beneath my timid and silent appearance. Then I had vague dreams of shining exploits, of a stirring destiny, which Julie would watch from afar, and rejoice to see me struggling with men, rising in strength, in greatness, and in power; I thought she might one day glory secretly in having appreciated me before the crowd, and in having loved me before posterity.
LXIII.
All this, and still more, my forced leisure, the obsession of one besetting thought, my contempt for all besides, the want of money to procure other amusement, and the almost claustral seclusion in which I lived, disposed me to a life of more intense and eager study than I had yet led. I passed my whole day seated at a little writing-table, which was placed beneath the small round window opening on the yard of the Hôtel Richelieu. The room was heated by a Dutch stove; a screen enclosed my table and chair, and hid me from the observation of the young men of fashion who often came to see my friend. In the spacious yard below there were sounds of carriages, then silence, and now and then bright rays of winter sun struggling against the grovelling fog of the streets of Paris, which reminded me a little of the play of light, the sounds of the wind, and the transparent mists of our mountains. Sometimes I would see a sweet little boy six or eight years old playing there; he was the son of the concierge. There was something in his face which seemed that of a suffering angel; in his fair hair curled on his forehead, and in his intelligent and ingenuous countenance, that reminded me of the innocent faces of the children of my own province. Indeed, I discovered that his family had come originally from a village near that in which my father resided, had fallen into want, and had been transplanted to Paris. This child had conceived a fondness for me, from seeing me always at the window above the rooms his mother inhabited, and had of his own accord and gratuitously devoted himself to my service. He executed all my messages; brought me my bread, some cheese, or the fruit for my breakfast; and went every morning to purchase my little provisions at the grocer's. I used to take my frugal repast on my writing-table, in the midst of my open books or interrupted pages. The child had a black dog, which had been forgotten at the house by some visitor; this dog had ended like the child by attaching itself to me, and they could not be made to go down the little wooden stairs when once they had ascended them. During the greater part of the day, they lay and played together on the mat at my feet beneath my table. At a later period I took away the dog with me from Paris, and kept it many years, as a loving and faithful memento of those days of solitude. I lost him in 1820, not without tears, in traversing the forests of the Pontine Marshes between Rome and Terracina. The poor child is become a man, and has learned the art of engraving, which he practices ably at Lyons. My name having resounded since, even in his shop, he came to see me, and wept with joy at beholding me, and with grief at hearing of the loss of the dog. Poor heart of man! that ever requires what it has once loved, and that sheds tears of the same water, for the loss of an empire, or for the loss of an animal.
LXIV.
During the thousands of hours in which I was thus confined between the stove, the screen, the window, the child, and the dog, I read over all that antiquity has written and bequeathed to us, except the poets, with whom we had been surfeited at school, and in whose verses our wearied eyes saw but the caæsura, and the long or short syllables. Sad effect of premature satiety, which withers in the mind of a child the most brightly tinted and perfumed flowers of human thought. But I read over every philosopher, orator, and historian, in his own language. I loved especially those who united the three great faculties of intelligence,—narration, eloquence, and reflection; the fact, the discourse, and the moral. Thucydides and Tacitus above all others; then Machiavelli, the sublime practitioner of the diseases of empires; then Cicero, the sonorous vessel which contains all, from the individual tears of the man, the husband, the father, and the friend, up to the catastrophes of Rome and of the world, even to his gloomy forebodings of his own fate. There is in Cicero a stratum of divine philosophy and serenity, through which all waters seem to be filtrated and clarified, and through which his great mind flows in torrents of eloquence, wisdom, piety, and harmony. I had, till then, thought him a great but empty speaker, with little sense contained in his long periods; I was mistaken. Next to Plato, he is the word of antiquity made man; his style is the grandest of any language. We suppose him meagre, because his drapery is so magnificent; but strip him of his purple and you will still find a vast mind, which has felt, understood, and said, all that there was to comprehend, to feel, or to say, in his day in Rome.
LXV.
As to Tacitus, I did not even attempt to combat my partiality for him. I preferred him even to Thucydides, the Demosthenes of history. Thucydides relates, but does not give life and being. Tacitus is not the historian, but a compendium of mankind. His narration is the counter-blow of the fact in the heart of a free, virtuous, and feeling man. The shudder that one feels as one reads not only passes over the flesh, but is a shudder of the heart. His sensibility is more than emotion,—it is pity; his judgments are more than vengeance,—they are justice; his indignation is more than anger,—it is virtue. Our hearts mingle with that of Tacitus, and we feel proud of our kindred with him. Would you make crime impossible to your sons? Would you inspire them with the love of virtue? Rear them in the love of Tacitus. If they do not become heroes at such a school, Nature must have created them base or vile. A people who adopted Tacitus as their political gospel would rise above the common stature of nations; such a people would enact before God the tragical drama of mankind in all its grandeur and in all its majesty. As to me, I owe to his writings more than the fibres of the flesh, I owe all the metallic fibres of my being. Should our vulgar and commonplace days ever rise to the tragic grandeur of his time, and I become the worthy victim of a worthy cause, I might exclaim in dying, "Give the honor of my life and of my death to the master, and not to the disciple, for it is Tacitus that lived, and dies in me."