The betrayal of the lady, the transaction of which she becomes the subject, and her consequent suicide, are taken from an episode in English high life, which occurred in the present century.
"THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC" is an extract from the history of two writers of verse, whose respective works obtained from circumstances a brilliant but short-lived renown. It forms part of a reminiscence, supposed to be conjured up by a wood fire near which the narrator, with his wife, is sitting. The fire, as he describes it, is made of ship-wood: for it burns in all the beautiful colours which denote the presence of metallic substances and salts; and as his fancy reconstructs the ship, it also raises the vision of a distant coast well known to his companion and to himself. He sees Le Croisic—the little town it is—the poor village it was[[81]]—with its storm-tossed sea—its sandy strip of land, good only for the production of salt—its solitary Menhir, which recalls, and in some degree perpetuates, the wild life and the barbarous Druid worship of old Breton times.[[82]] And in the bright-hued flames, which leap up and vanish before his bodily eyes, he sees also the two ephemeral reputations which flashed forth and expired there.
René Gentilhomme, born 1610, was a rhymer, as his father had been before him. He became page to the Prince of Condé, and occupied his spare time by writing complimentary verse. One day, as he was hammering at an ode, a violent storm broke out; and the lightning shattered a ducal crown in marble which stood on a pedestal in the room in which he sat. Condé was regarded as future King of France: for Louis XIII. was childless, and his brother Gaston believed to be so; in consideration of this fact, men called him "Duke." René took the incident as an omen, and turned his ode into a prophecy which he delivered to his master as the utterance of God. "The Prince's hopes were at an end: a Dauphin would be born in the ensuing year." A Dauphin was born; and René, who had at first been terrified at his own boldness, received the title of Royal Poet, and the honours due to a seer. But he wrote little or no more; and he and the tiny volume which composed his works soon disappeared from sight.
The narrator, however, judges that this oblivion may not have been unsought, since one who had believed himself the object of a direct message from God, would have little taste for intercourse with his fellow men; and he suspends his story for a moment to ask himself how such a one would bear the weight of his experience; and how far the knowledge conveyed by it might be true. He decides (as we should expect) that a direct Revelation is forbidden by the laws of life; but that life is full of indirect messages from the unseen world; that all our "simulated thunder-claps," all our "counterfeited truths," all those glimpses of beauty which startle while they elude the soul, are messages of this kind: darts shot from the spirit world, which rebound as they touch, yet sting us to the consciousness of its existence. And so René Gentilhomme had had a true revelation, in what reminded him that there are things higher than rhyming and its rewards.
Paul Desforges Maillard was born nearly a century later, and wrote society verses till the age of thirty, when the desire for wider fame took possession of him. He competed for a prize which the Academy had offered to the poet who should best commemorate the progress made by the art of navigation during the last reign. His poem was returned. It was offered, through the agency of a friend, to a paper called "The Mercury." The editor, La Roque, praised the work in florid terms, but said he dared not offend the Academy; he, too, returned the MS. Paul, mistaking the polite fiction for truth, wrote back an angry tirade against the editor's cowardice; and the latter, retorting in as frank a fashion, told the writer that his poem was execrable, and that it was only consideration for his feelings which had hitherto prevented his hearing so.
At this juncture Paul's sister interposed. He was wrong, she declared, to proceed in such a point-blank manner. In cases like these, it was only wile which conquered. He must resume his incognito, and try, this time, the effect of a feminine disguise. She picked out and copied the feeblest of his songs or sonnets, and sent it to La Roque, as from a girl-novice who humbly sued for his literary protection. She was known by another name than her brother's (Mr. Browning explains why); the travesty was therefore complete. The poem was accepted; then another and another. The lady's fame grew. La Roque made her, by letter, a declaration of love. Voltaire also placed himself at her feet.
Paul now refused to efface himself any longer. The clever sister urged in vain that it was her petticoats which had conquered, and not his verse. He went to Paris to claim his honours, and introduce himself as the admired poetess to La Roque and Voltaire. Voltaire bitterly resented the joke; La Roque affected to enjoy it; but nevertheless advised its perpetrator to get out of Paris as fast as possible. The trick had answered for once. It would not be wise to repeat it. Again Paul disregarded his sister's advice, and reprinted the poems in his own name. "They had been praised and more than praised. The world could not eat its own printed words!"
He discovered, however, that the world could eat its words; or, at least, forget them. The only fame—the speaker adds—which a great man cannot destroy, is that which he has had no hand in making. Paul's light, with his sister's, went out as did that of his predecessor.
Mr. Browning gives, in conclusion, a test by which the relative merit of any two real poets may be gauged. The greater is he who leads the happier life. To be a poet is to see and feel. To see and feel is to suffer. His is the truest poetic existence who enslaves his sufferings, and makes their strength his own. He who yokes them to his chariot shall win the race.[[83]]
"CENCIAJA" signifies matter relating to the "Cenci;"[[84]] and the poem describes an incident extraneous to the "Cenci" tragedy, but which strongly influenced its course. This incident was the murder of the widowed Marchesa dell' Oriolo, by her younger son, Paolo Santa Croce, who thus avenged her refusal to invest him with his elder brother's rights. He escaped the hands of justice, though only to perish in some other disastrous way. But the matricide had been committed on the very day which closed the trial of the Cenci family for the assassination of its Head; and it sealed Beatrice's fate. Her sentence seemed about to be remitted. The Pope now declared that she must die.