Such is the basis, the underlying idea, of a whole series of the cleverest masculine characters drawn by De Musset, that remarkable creation Lorenzaccio among the number. In his youth it produced Rolla, the most famous of his typical characters.
In none of De Musset's works does the unstable, vacillating, feminine quality in his philosophy display itself more markedly than in Rolla.
The introduction opens with the well-known wail of longing for the Greece of old with its freshness and beauty, and for the Christendom of old, with its pure aspiration and fervent faith, for the days when the cathedrals of Cologne and Strasburg, of Notre-Dame and St. Peter, knelt devoutly in their mantles of stone and the great organ of the nations pealed forth the hosanna of the centuries.
Upon this follows the still more famous passage:
"O Christ! je ne suis pas de ceux que la prière
Dans tes temples muets amène à pas tremblants;
Je ne suis pas de ceux qui vont à ton Calvaire,
En se frappant le cœur, baiser tes pieds sanglants;
Et je reste debout sous tes sacrés portiques,
Quand ton peuple fidèle, autour des noirs arceaux,
Se courbe en murmurant sous le vent des cantiques,
Comme au souffle du nord un peuple de roseaux.
Je ne crois pas, ô Christ! à ta parole sainte:
Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux.
D'un siècle sans espoir naît un siècle sans crainte.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Les clous du Golgotha te soutiennent à peine;
Sous ton divin tombeau le sol s'est dérobé:
Ta gloire est morte, ô Christ! et sur nos croix d'ébène
Ton cadavre céleste en poussière est tombée!
Eh bien! qu'il soit permis d'en baiser la poussière
Au moins crédule enfant de ce siècle sans foi,
Et de pleurer, ô Christ! sur cette froide terre
Qui vivait de ta mort, et qui mourra sans toi!'
Then comes the story.—Jacques Rolla is the most dissipated youth in the dissipated city of Paris. He sneers at everything and every one. "No son of Adam ever had a more supreme contempt for people and for king." His means are small, but his love of luxury and voluptuousness is great. Custom, which constitutes half the life of other men, is utterly obnoxious to him. Therefore he divides the small fortune left him by his father into three parts, three purses of money, each to last a year. He spends them in the company of bad women upon all manner of foolishness, making no secret of his intention to shoot himself at the end of the third year.
And De Musset, aged 22, calls Rolla great, intrepid, honourable, and proud. His love of liberty—and by liberty is understood freedom from every kind of activity, from every calling, every duty—ennobles him in the poet's eyes.
We have the description of the night of Rolla's suicide in the house of ill-fame, of the preparations for the orgy, of the girl of sixteen who is brought by her own mother; and then the poet begins his affecting lament over the terrible depravity of society—the mother who sells her child, the poverty which drives her to the trade of procuress, the cheap chastity and hypocritical virtue of fortunately situated women.
And now comes the most famous passage of the poem, the apostrophe to Voltaire:
"Dors-tu content, Voltaire, et ton hideux sourire
Voltige-t-il encore sur tes os décharnés?
Ton siècle était, dit-on, trop jeune pour te lire;
Le nôtre doit te plaire, et tes hommes sont nés.
Il est tombé sur nous, cet édifice immense
Que de tes larges mains tu sapais nuit et jour.
La Mort devait t'attendre avec impatience.
Pendant quatre-vingts ans que tu lui fis ta cour.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Vois-tu, vieil Arouet? cet homme plein de vie
Qui de baisers ardents couvre ce sein si beau,
Sera couché demain dans un étroit tombeau.
Jetterais-tu sur lui quelques regards d'envie?
Sois tranquille, il fa lu. Rien ne peut lui donner
Ni consolation, ni lueur d'espérance."