"Byron! Ah, do not speak to me of that man!" exclaimed the marquise, with a look of dislike that almost amounted to hatred.
"Ah, take care, monsieur," said Lord Falmouth, smiling. "With no ill intention, you have called up a diabolical spirit, that madame la marquise will have to exorcise, for she detests him."
I was quite astonished, for I was far from expecting to find Madame de Pënâfiel an anti-Byronian. On the contrary, everything that I had heard of her fantastic and bold character was quite in harmony with that disdainful and paradoxical genius. I therefore listened very attentively to the rest of her conversation. She continued, with a scornful smile:
"Byron! Byron! so cruel and so desperate! What a hard and wicked heart! When we think how, by some inexplicable fatality, every youthful mind, with its wealth of imagination, wastes itself in admiration of this scornful and insatiable demon, it is enough to convince us of the law of contraries."
"There is nothing truer than the attraction of contraries," said Lord Falmouth. "Does the charming little butterfly, for example, intelligent little aerial creature that he is, does he ever fail, so soon as he perceives a beautiful, bright, hot flame, to hasten with all the speed of a son of Zephyr and Aurora, and roast himself in an ecstasy of delight?"
"I cannot bear to think," said Madame de Pënâfiel, in a state of exaltation, that made her more beautiful than ever, "I cannot bear to think of so many noble and trusting souls being made for ever desperate by the malevolent genius of Byron! Oh, how well he has depicted himself in Manfred! Manfred's Castle, so dark and desolate, well represents Byron's poetry. It is his terrible spirit. You enter this castle full of confidence, its wildness and grandeur captivate your imagination, but when you are once within its walls, under the spell of its pitiless host, all regret is in vain; he despoils you mercilessly of your purest and fondest beliefs. And then, when the last spark of faith is extinct, and your last hope is torn from you, the great lord chases you away with an insulting smile; and should you ask him what he is to give you in return for all these riches of your soul, that he has thus profaned and destroyed—"
"Madame," said I, allowing myself to interrupt her, "Lord Manfred answers, 'I have given you doubt,—doubt,—the wisdom of the wisest.' But," I added, being curious to see if Madame de Pënâfiel shared in my admirations as well as my antipathies, "if you have such a strong dislike to Byron, does not his noble country offer you an antidote to his dangerous poison, in Walter Scott?"
"Oh," said she, as she clasped her hands with almost infantile grace, "how charming it is, monsieur, to hear you speak thus! Is it not true that the great, the good, the adorable Scott is the counterpoise of Byron? Ah, when wounded to the heart you fly in despair from the terrible Castle of Manfred, with what grateful relief do you find yourself in the smiling and peaceful abode of Scott, that kind old man, so grave and so serene! How tenderly he receives you, how touching is his pity for you, how he comforts and consoles you! In what a pure and radiant light he shows you the world, exalting all that is noble, good, and generous in the human heart! He raises your self-respect as much as Byron has degraded it. If he can never restore your lost illusions, which, alas! is an impossibility, he can, at least, tranquillise and soothe your incurable grief by his beneficent stories. Is it not, monsieur, true glory to be as great as Walter Scott? Which man is more truly grand and powerful, he who afflicts or he who consoles? For, alas! monsieur, it is so easy to get people to believe in evil," added the marquise, with a grieved expression.
Though all this was very true and very well stated, it would have seemed too prearranged for a conversation, had there not been something else that surprised me more.
No doubt every one has felt the same inexplicable sensation. It is this: you feel, for the space of one or two seconds, that you have positively seen or heard already the things you are seeing or hearing, although you have the absolute certainty that the place you see or the person who speaks has never been seen or heard by you before.