Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Volume I

by Margaret Fuller

'At the military school, "the drum stifled the voices of our masters, and the mysterious voices of books seemed to us cold and pedantic. Tropes and logarithms seemed to us only steps to mount to the star of the Legion of Honor,—the fairest star of heaven to us children."

'"No meditation could keep long in chains heads made constantly giddy by the noise of cannon and bells for the Te Deum. When one of our former comrades returned to pay us a visit in uniform, and his arm in a scarf, we blushed at our books, and threw them at the heads of our teachers. Our teachers were always reading us bulletins from the grande armée, and our cries of Vive l'Empereur interrupted Tacitus and Plato. Our preceptors resembled heralds of arms, our study halls barracks, and our examinations reviews."

'Thus was he led into the army; and, he says, "It was only very late, that I perceived that my services were one long mistake, and that I had imported into a life altogether active, a nature altogether contemplative."

'He entered the army at the time of Napoleon's fall, and, like others, wasted life in waiting for war. For these young persons could not believe that peace and calm were possible to France; could not believe that she could lead any life but one of conquest.

'As De Vigny was gradually undeceived, he says: "Loaded with an ennui which I did not dream of in a life I had so ardently desired, it became a necessity to me to detach myself by night from the vain and tiresome tumult of military days. From these nights, in which I enlarged in silence the knowledge I had acquired from our public and tumultuous studies, proceeded my poems and books. From these days, there remain to me these recollections, whose chief traits I here assemble around one idea. For, not reckoning for the glory of arms, either on the present or future, I sought it in the souvenirs of my comrades. My own little adventures will not serve, except as frame to those pictures of the military life, and of the manners of our armies, all whose traits are by no means known."

'And thus springs up, in the most natural manner, this little book on the army.

'It has the truth, the delicacy, and the healthiness of a production native to the soil; the merit of love-letters, journals, lyric poems, &c., written without any formal intention of turning life into a book, but because the writer could not help it. What, more than anything else, engaged the attention of De Vigny, was the false position of two beings towards a factitious society: the soldier, now that standing armies are the mode, and the poet, now that Olympic games or pastimes are not the mode. He has treated the first best, because with profounder connoissance du fait. For De Vigny is not a poet; he has only an eye to perceive the existence of these birds of heaven. But in few ways, except their own broken harp-tone's thrill, have their peculiar sorrows and difficulties been so well illustrated. The character of the soldier, with its virtues and faults, is portrayed with such delicacy, that to condense would ruin. The peculiar reserve, the habit of duty, the beauty of a character which cannot look forward, and need not look back, are given with distinguished finesse.

'Of the three stories which adorn this part of the book, Le Cachet Rouge is the loveliest, La Canne au Jonc the noblest. Never was anything more sweetly naïve than parts of Le Cachet Rouge. La pauvre petite femme, she was just such a person as my ——. And then the farewell injunctions,—du pauvre petite maré,—the nobleness and the coarseness of the poor captain. It is as original as beautiful, c'est dire beaucoup. In La Canne au Jonc, Collingwood, who embodies the high feeling of duty, is taken too raw out of a book,—his letters to his daughters. But the effect on the character of le Capitaine Renaud, and the unfolding of his interior life, are done with the spiritual beauty of Manzoni.

'Cinq-Mars is a romance in the style of Walter Scott. It is well brought out, figures in good relief, lights well distributed, sentiment high, but nowhere exaggerated, knowledge exact, and the good and bad of human nature painted with that impartiality which becomes a man, and a man of the world. All right, no failure anywhere; also, no wonderful success, no genius, no magic. It is one of those works which I should consider only excusable as the amusement of leisure hours; and, though few could write it, chiefly valuable to the writer.

'Here he has arranged, as in a bouquet, what he knew,—and a great deal it is,—of the time of Louis XIII., as he has of the Regency in "La Marechale d'Ancre,"—a much finer work, indeed one of the best-arranged and finished modern dramas. The Leonora Galigai is better than anything I have seen in Victor Hugo, and as good as Schiller. Stello is a bolder attempt. It is the history of three poets,—Gilbert, André Chenier, Chatterton. He has also written a drama called Chatterton, inferior to the story here. The "marvellous boy" seems to have captivated his imagination marvellously. In thought, these productions are worthless; for taste, beauty of sentiment, and power of description, remarkable. His advocacy of the poets' cause is about as effective and well-planned as Don Quixote's tourney with the wind-mill. How would you provide for the poet bon homme De Vigny?—from a joint-stock company Poet's Fund, or how?