"Unless mine eyes deceive me," said the Baron, "there is the Frau von Ilmenau, with her pale daughter Emma, and that eternal Polish Count. He is always hovering about them, playing the unhappy exile, merely to excite that poor girl's sympathies; and as wretched as genius and wantonness can make him."
"Why, he is already married, you know," replied Flemming. "And his wife is young and beautiful."
"That does not prevent him from being in love with some one else. That question was decided in the Courts of Love in the Middle Ages. Accordingly he has sent his fair wife to Warsaw. But how pale the poor child looks."
"She has just recovered from severe illness. In the winter, you know, it was thought she would not live from hour to hour."
"And she has hardly recovered from that disease, before she seems threatened with a worse one; namely, a hopeless passion. However, people do not die of love now-a-days."
"Seldom, perhaps," said Flemming. "And yet it is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar. There are faces I can never look upon without emotion. There are names I can never hear spoken without almost starting!"
"But whom have we here?"
"That is the French poet Quinet, with his sweet German wife; one of the most interesting women I ever knew. He is the author of a very wild Mystery, or dramatic prose-poem, in which the Ocean, Mont-Blanc, and the Cathedral of Strassburg have parts to play; and the saints on the stained windows of the minster speak, and the statues and dead kings enact the Dance of Death. It is entitled Ahasuerus, or the Wandering Jew."
"Or, as the Danes would translate it, the Shoemaker of Jerusalem. That would be a still more fantastic title for his fantastic book. You know I am no great admirer of the modern French school of writers. The tales of Paul de Kock, who is, I believe, the most popular of all, seem to me like obscene stories told at dinner-tables, after the ladies have retired. It has been well said of him, that he is not only populaire but populacier; and equally well said of George Sand and Victor Hugo, that their works stand like fortifications, well built and well supplied with warlike munitions; but ineffectual against the Grand Army of God, which marches onward, as if nothing had happened. In surveying a national literature, the point you must start from, is national character. That lets you into many a secret; as, for example, Paul de Kock's popularity. The most prominent trait in the French character, is love of amusement, and excitement; and--"
"I should say, rather, the fear of ennui," interrupted Flemming. "One of their own writers has said with a great deal of truth, that the gentry of France rush into Paris to escape from ennui, as, in the noble days of chivalry, the defenceless inhabitants of the champaign fled into the castles, at theapproach of some plundering knight, or lawless Baron; forsaking the inspired twilight of their native groves, for the luxurious shades of the royal gardens. What do you think of that?"