Whilst this council of war is held, Jean and the old Turk are in confabulation, and a bargain is at last concluded, by which the commander's soul is redeemed, and Jean is to have five years of earthly prosperity, at the end of which time, if he has failed to find a substitute, his spiritual part becomes the demon's property. Two years later we find Jean upon the road to Montpellier, well mounted and equipped, and his purse well lined. Although but in his eighteenth year, he is already a gay gallant, with some knowledge of the world, and eager for adventures. These he meets with in abundance. A mark, imprinted upon his arm by his attendant demon, causes him to be recognised as the son of the Chevalier de Cerdagne. Thus ennobled, he feels that he may aspire to all things, and soon we find him pushing his fortune in Italy, attached to the person of the French Marshal de Marchin, discovering the Baron d'Isola's conspiracy against the life of Philip V. of Spain, and gaining laurels in the campaigns of the War of Succession. There is much variety and interest in some of his adventures, and the supernatural agency is sufficiently lost sight of not to be wearisome. Time glides away, and the fatal term of five years is within a few days of its completion. But Jean le Trouvé, now le Trouveur, is in no want of substitutes. Two volunteers present themselves; one his supposed sister, Mademoiselle de Cerdagne, whom he has warmly befriended in certain love difficulties; the other a convent gardener, whom he has made his private secretary, and whose name is Giulio Alberoni. The demon, who still affects the form of an old Turkish sailor, receives Alberoni in lieu of Jean, to whom, however,—foreseeing that the young man's good fortune may be the means of bringing him many other victims—he offers a new contract on very advantageous terms. But Jean de Cerdagne, who is now Spanish ambassador at Venice, with the title of prince, and in the enjoyment of immense wealth, refuses the offer, anxious to save his soul. He soon discovers that his good fortune is at an end. The real son of the Chevalier de Cerdagne turns up, Jean is disgraced, stripped of his honours and dignities, and his vast property is confiscated by the Inquisition. The ex-ambassador exchanges for a squalid disguise his rich costume of satin and velvet, and we next find him a member of a secret society in the thieves' quarter of Venice. The worshipful fraternity of Chiodo—so called from their sign of recognition, which is a rusty nail—live by the exercise of various small trades and occupations, which, although not strictly beggary or theft, are but a degree removed from these culpable resources. Jean, whose conscience has become squeamish, will accept none but honest employment. But the malice of the demon pursues him, and he succeeds in nothing. He stations himself at a ferry to catch gondolas with a boat-hook, and bring them gently alongside the quay; he stands at a bridge stairs, to afford support to passengers over the stones, slippery with the slime of the lagoons; he takes post in front of the Doge's palace, with a vessel of fresh water and a well-polished goblet, to supply passers-by. Many accept his stout arm, and drink his cool beverage, but none think of rewarding him. Not all his efforts and attention are sufficient to coax a sou from the pockets of his careless customers. At last, upon the third day, he receives a piece of copper, and trusts that the charm is broken. The coin proves a bad one. His seizure by the authorities, and transportation to Zara, relieve him of care for his subsistence. At last, pushed by misery, and in imminent danger of punishment for having struck a Venetian officer, Jean succumbs to temptation, and renews his infernal compact. A Venetian senator adopts him, and he discovers, but too late, that had he delayed for a few minutes his recourse to diabolical aid, he would have stood in no need of it. He proceeds to Spain, where he has many adventures and quarrels with his former secretary, Alberoni, now a powerful minister. His contract again at an end, he would gladly abstain from renewing it, but is hunted by the Inquisition into the arms of the fiend. After a lapse of years, he is again shown to us in Paris, and, finally, in Brittany, where he meets his death, but, at the eleventh hour, disappoints the expectant demon, (who in a manner outwits himself,) and re-enters the bosom of the church, his bad bargain being taken off his hands by an ambitious village priest. The book, which has an agreeable vivacity, closes with an attempt to explain a portion of its supernatural incidents by a reference to popular tradition and peasant credulity. Near the ramparts of the Breton town of Guérande, an antiquary shows M. de Musset a moss-grown stone, with a Latin epitaph, which antiquary and novelist explain each after his own fashion.
"Let us see if you understand that, M. le Parisien," said the antiquary. "Up to the two last words we shall agree; but what think you of the Ars. Inf.?"
"It appears to me," I replied, "that the popular chronicle perfectly explains the whole epitaph—Ars. Inf. means ars inferna; that is to say,—'Here reposes Jean Capello, citizen of Venice, whose body was sent to the grave, and his soul to heaven, by infernal artifices.'"
"A translation worthy of a romance writer," said the antiquary. "You believe then in the devil, in compact with evil spirits, in absurd legends invented by ignorance and superstition amidst the evening gossip of our peasants? You believe that, in 1718, a parish priest of Guérande flew away into the air, after having redeemed the soul of this Jean Capello. You are very credulous, M. le Parisien. This Venetian, who came here but to die, was simply poisoned by the priest, who took to flight; the town doctor, having opened the body, found traces of the poison. That is why they engraved upon the tomb these syllables: Ars. Inf., which signify arsenici infusio, an infusion of arsenic. I will offer you another interpretation—Jean Capello was perhaps a salt-maker, killed by some accident in our salt-works, and as in 1718 labourers of that class were very miserable, they engraved upon this stone, to express the humility of his station, Ars. Inf., that is to say, inferior craft."
"Upon my word!" I exclaimed, "that explanation is perfectly absurd. I keep to the popular version: Jean le Trouveur was sent to heaven by the stratagems of the demon himself. Let sceptics laugh at my superstition, I shall not quarrel with them for their incredulity."
We see little else worthy of extract or comment in the mass of books before us. M. Méry, whose extraordinary notions of English men and things we exhibited in a former article, has given forth a rhapsodical history, entitled Le Transporté, beginning with the Infernal Machine, and ending with Surcouf the Pirate, full of conspiracies, dungeons, desperate sea-fights, and tropical scenery, where English line-of-battle ships are braved by French corvettes, and where the transitions are so numerous, and the variety so great, that we may almost say everything is to be found in its pages, except probability. Mr Dumas the younger, who follows at respectful distance in his father's footsteps, and publishes a volume or two per month, has not yet, so far as we have been able to discover, produced anything that attains mediocrity. M. Sue has dished up, since last we have adverted to him, two or three more capital sins, his illustrations of which are chiefly remarkable for an appearance of great effort, suggestive of the pitiable plight of an author who, having pledged himself to public and publishers for the production of a series of novels on given subjects, is compelled to work out his task, however unwilling his mood. This is certainly the most fatal species of book-making—a selling by the cubic foot of a man's soul and imagination. Evil as it is, the system is largely acted upon in France at the present day. Home politics having lost much of the absorbing interest they possessed twelve months ago, the Paris newspapers are resorting to their old stratagems to maintain and increase their circulation. Prominent amongst these is the holding out of great attractions in the way of literary feuilletons. Accordingly, they contract with popular writers for a name and a date, which are forthwith printed in large capitals at the head of their leading columns. Thus, one journal promises its readers six volumes by M. Dumas, to be published in its feuilleton, to commence on a day named, and to be entitled Les Femmes. The odds are heavy, that Alexander himself has not the least idea what the said six volumes are to be about; but he relies on his fertility, and then so vague and comprehensive a title gives large latitude. Moreover, he has time before him, although he has promised in the interval to supply the same newspaper with a single volume, to be called Un Homme Fort, and to conclude the long procession of Fantômes, a thousand and one in number, which now for some time past has been gliding before the astonished eyes of the readers of the Constitutionnel. Other journals follow the same plan with other authors, and in France no writer now thinks of publishing a work of fiction elsewhere than at the foot of a newspaper. To this feuilleton system, pushed to an extreme, and entailing the necessity of introducing into each day's fragment an amount of incident mystery or pungent matter, sufficient to carry the reader over twenty-four hours, and make him anxious for the morrow's return, is chiefly to be attributed the very great change for the worse that of late has been observable in the class of French literature at present under consideration. Its actual condition is certainly anything but vigorous and flourishing, and until a manifest improvement takes place, we are hardly likely again to pass it in review.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] A large gold coin, then worth nearly a hundred French livres.