"True, in other countries," said Elnathan, with a glance round, as if a huissier was at his elbow; "but here the affair is different—or rather, the course of nature is the scaffold. That beautiful woman has lately had the narrowest escape from the Revolutionary committee; and I can tell you that it is utterly impossible to know what to-morrow may bring even to her. She is too lovely not to be an object of rivalry; and a word may be death."
Such was my first sight of Josephine de Beauharnais.
This charming performance proceeded with infinite interest. But it differed from the course which I have since seen it take. The scene next showed Virginie in France. She was in the midst of all the animation of Parisian life—no longer the simple and exquisite child of nature, but the conscious beauty; still in all the bloom of girlhood, but exhibiting the graces of the woman of fashion. Surrounded by the admiration and adulation of the glittering world, she had given herself up to its influence, until her early feelings were beginning to fade away. The scene opened with a ball. Virginie, dressed in the perfection of Parisian taste, was floating down the dance, radiant with jewels and joy, the very image of delight, when her eye dropped upon the figure of a stranger, standing in a recess of the superb apartment, with arms folded, a moody brow, and a burning gaze fixed upon her. A pang shot through her heart. In her exquisite acting, a single gesture, a single glance, showed that all the recollections of her native isle had returned. She was the child of nature and of sensibility once more. She tottered from the dance, tremblingly approached the stranger, and fell at his feet. That stranger was Paul; and Talma, in his finest tragedy, never displayed more profound emotion, nor produced more enthusiastic applause, than when he raised her up, and with one look, and one word, "Virginie,"—forgot all and forgave all.
But we were spared the catastrophe, which would certainly have been an ill return for the profusion of sighs and tears which the fair spectators gave to the performance. The ruling genius of the night, the minister's wife, officially inspired to do honour to the triumphs of the State, had employed the talents of her decorateurs actively during our stay at the supper-table; and when the curtain rose for the third act, instead of "a stormy sea and the horrors of shipwreck," according to the stage directions, we saw a stage Olympus, in which the whole élite of the Celestials escorted a formidable Bellona-like figure, the cuirassed and helmed Republic, in triumphal procession, to an altar covered with laurels and flaming with incense, inscribed "à la Liberté." Some stanzas, more remarkable for their patriotism than their poetry, were chanted by Minerva, Juno, and the rest of the Olympians, in honour of the "jour magnifique de victoire, Jemappes." A train of figurantes, the monarchies of Europe, came forward, dancing and depositing their crowns and sceptres at the foot of the altar, (a sign, at least, tolerably significant;) the whole concluding with an exhibition of the bust of Dumourier, on which Madame laid a chaplet of laurel, accompanied with a speech in the highest republican style—bust, speech, and Madame, being all alike received with true Gallic rapture.
On that night, to have doubted the "irresistible, universal, and perpetual" triumph of the Republic, would have been high-treason to taste, to hospitality, and the ladies; and for that night our belief was unbounded. All had made up their minds that a new era of human felicity had arrived; that "all the world was a stage," in the most dancing and delightful sense of the words; and that feasting and fêtes were to form the staple of life for every future age. We were to live in a rosebud world. I heard around me in a thousand whispers, from some of the softest politicians that ever wore a smile, the assurance, that France was to become a political Arcadia, or rather an original paradise, in which toil and sorrow had no permission to be seen. In short, the world, from that time forth, was to be changed; despotism was extinguished; man was regenerated; balls and suppers were to be the only rivalry of nations; Paris was, of course, to lead France; France, of course, to lead the globe;—all was to be beauty, bonhommie, and bonbons! And, under the shade of the triumphant tricolor, all nations were to waltz, make epigrams, and embrace for ever!
FOOTNOTES:
Madrigal.
"Silence is the true love-token;
Passion only speaks in sighs;
Would you keep its charm unbroken,
Trust the eloquence of eyes.
Ah no!
Not so.