Had time been given me for reflection, I believe I should have abhorred myself for the life I now led. It was one course of daily trick and deception. In society I was a spy; in secret, a traitor. Trusted by all, and false to all, I hurried along in a headlong career of the wildest excitement. To enable me to write, I had recourse to various stimulants; and from one excess to another I became a confirmed opium-eater. I had by habit acquired a degree of nervous irritability that almost defied sleep. For days and days frequently I took no other rest than an occasional half-hour's repose when overcome, and then back to the desk again,—if not refreshed, at least rallied. The turmoil and confusion of my thoughts at any chance interval of quiet was terrific. So long as I was in action, all went well; when my brain was overworked, and my faculties stretched to their extreme tension, the excitement sustained me, and I could develop whatever there was in me of intellectual power. The effort over, and my task accomplished, I became almost bereft of life; a trance-like lethargy seized me; my voice failed, my sight and hearing grew dulled, and I would lie thus, sometimes for hours, scarcely breathing, indifferent to everything.
When I rallied from these seizures, I hurried off to Margot, either to her home or to the theatre. To see her, to speak to her, even to hear her, was enough to call me back once more to life and the love, of life. There was that in her own career, with all its changes and vicissitudes, that seemed to fashion her mind into moods similar to my own. On one day she would be to me like a sister,—kind and warmly affectionate; on another, she would be as though I were her accepted lover, and show me all the tender interest of one whose fate was bound up with my own; and perhaps the very next meeting she would receive me coldly and distrustfully, and darkly hint that my secret life was known to her.
These were to me moments of intense agony. To see through them was worse than any death, and the very dread of them made existence a perfect torture. Till I had seen her I never knew, each day, in what mood she might feel towards me; and if I revelled in the heaven of her smiles, felt her deep glances descending into my very heart, and thrilled with ecstasy at each word she uttered, suddenly there would come the thought that this was but a dream, and that to-morrow would be the dreadful awaking!
Her conduct was inexplicable, for it changed sometimes within the compass of a few hours, and from warmest confidence would become the most chilling reserve. She would pour out her whole heart before me; tell me how barren were all the triumphs she had achieved; how remote from happiness was this eternal struggle for fame; how her nature yearned for one true, unchanging devotion; how this mockery of passion made shipwreck of all real feeling, and left the nature worn out, wearied, and exhausted. She would, perhaps at our next meeting, efface all thought of this confidence by some passionate burst of enthusiasm for the stage, and some bold apostrophe to the glory of a great success,—scornfully contrasting such a moment with the whole happiness of a life spent m obscurity. I own that in these outbursts of her wildest imagination her beauty of expression attained its highest excellence. Her dark eyes flashed with the fire of an inspired nature, and her whole figure seemed imbued with a more than mortal loveliness; while in her softer moods there was a sad and plaintive tenderness about her that subdued the spirit, and made her seem even more worthy of love than she had been of admiration. These fitful changes, which at first were only displayed in private, became after a while palpable to the public eye. On one night she would thrill an audience with horror, and in the power of her delineations make the very sternest natures yield to terror. At another, she would shock the public by some indifference to the exigencies of the scene, walk through her part in listless apathy, and receive with calm unconcern the ill-disguised disapproval of the spectators. At such times praise or blame were alike to her; she seemed like one laboring under some pressure of thought too engrossing to admit of any attention to passing objects; and in this dreary pre-occupation she moved like one spell-bound and entranced.
To allude to these passing states of mind after they had occurred was sure to give her deep offence; and although for a while I dared to do this, yet I saw reason to abandon the attempt, and maintain silence like the rest. The press, with less delicacy, expressed severe censure on what they characterized as an insulting appreciation of the public, and boldly declared that the voices which had made could still unmake a reputation, and that the lesson of contempt might soon pass from behind the footlights to the space before them.
It was both my province to keep these criticisms from her eye, and to answer them in print; and for a while I succeeded. I wrote, I argued, I declaimed,—now casuisti-cally expressing praise of what in my heart I condemned; now seeming to discover a hidden meaning where none existed. I even condescended to appeal to the indulgence of the public in favor of those whose efforts were not always under their own control, and whose passing frames of sorrow or sickness must incapacitate them at seasons from embodying their own great conceptions. So sensitive had she become on the subject of remark that the slightest allusion to her health was now resented as an offence, and even Mademoiselle Mars dared not to say that she looked paler or thinner, or in better or worse spirits,—so certain would any allusion of the kind be to displease her.
This irritability gradually widened and extended itself to everything. The slightest sign of inattention of the audience—any movement in the house while she was acting—a want of ability in those en scène with her—an accidental error in even their costume—gave umbrage; and she would stop in her part, and only by an effort seem able to recover herself and continue. These evidences of indifference to public opinion—for so were they construed—gradually arrayed against her nearly the entire force of the press.
They who had been her most devoted admirers, now displayed all their zeal in the discovery of her faults. The very excellences they had once extolled, they now censured as stage trickery and deceit. One by one, they despoiled her of every qualification for art, save her beauty; and even that, they said, already proclaimed its perishable nature. My heart sickens as I think over the refined cruelty of these daily attacks,—the minute and careful anatomy of humanity studied to inflict misery! To stem this torrent of opinion, I devoted myself alone. Giving up all other writing, I thought only of Margot and her cause. I assailed her critics with the foulest abuse. I aspersed their motives, and not unfrequently their lives. I eagerly sought out circumstances of their private habits and actions, and proclaimed them to the world as the men who dared to teach the expressions by which virtues should be rendered, and of whose very existence they were ignorant. I contrasted their means of judgment with their daily lives. I exhibited them as mere hirelings, the cowardly bravos of a degenerate age; and, of course,—for Paris was always the same in this respect,—various duels were fastened on me for my insolence.
My skill at the sword exercise carried me safely through many of these encounters. My recklessness of life may perhaps have served to preserve it, for I was utterly reckless of it! My neglect of politics, and all interest about them, procured my dismissal from the Government journal. The “Vendee” soon followed the example; and although the violence of my articles in the “Avant Scène” had for a time amused the town, the editors told me that my defence of Mademoiselle Margot had now been carried far enough, and that I should look elsewhere for a new topic.
Not a few of Margot's warmest admirers condemned the ill-advised zeal of my advocacy. Some even affirmed that much of her unpopularity had its origin in my indiscreet defence. I was coldly told I had “written too much.” One said I had “fought too often.” The fastidious public—which acknowledged no sincerity, nor would recognize such a thing as truth—condemned, as bad taste, the excesses into which my heartfelt indignation had hurried me. Mademoiselle Mars was a half convert to this opinion; I shuddered one day as I suspected that even Margot seemed to entertain it. I had been pressing her to do something—a mere trifle—to which she dissented. I grew eager, and at last insisted; when, looking at me steadily for some seconds, she said,—