We grieve to hear the bad accounts of Mademoiselle Rachel's private propensities and public prospects given by Janin, or, at least, by Mr Gutzkow, who in another place enters into further details of the fair tragedian's irregularities. It is difficult to imagine Chimène smoking a cigar, Phèdre sitting over a punch-bowl, the Maid of Orleans intriguing with a journalist, even though it be admitted that the lords of the feuilleton are also tyrants of the stage, and toss about their foulards with a tolerable certainty of their being gratefully and submissively picked up. We will hope, however, either that Janin was pleased to mystify Gutzkow, thinking it perhaps very allowable to pass a joke on the curious German who had ferreted him out in his quatrième, or that Gutzkow has fathered upon Janin the floating reports and calumnious inuendos of the theatrical coffee-houses.
Mr Gutzkow went to see George Sand. This was his great ambition, his burning desire. He is an enthusiastic admirer of her works and of her genius. It is to be inferred from what he tells us, that he did not find it easy to obtain an introduction. Madame Dudevant lives retired, and likes not to be trotted out for the entertainment of the curious. She is particularly distrustful of tourists. They have sketched her in grotesque outline, respecting neither her mysteries nor her confidence. But Mr Gutzkow was resolved to see the outside of her house, pending the time that he might obtain access to its interior. So away he went to the Rue Pigale, No. 16, chattered with the portress, peeped into the garden, gazed at the windows which George Sand, "when exhausted with mental labour, is wont to open to cool her bosom in the fresh air." Considering that this was in the month of March, some time had probably elapsed since the lady had done any thing so imprudent. From a chapter of Lelia or Mauprat to an equinoctial breeze! There is a catarrh in the mere notion of the transition. However, Mr Gutzkow viewed the matter with a poet's eye—the window, we mean to say—and after gazing his fill, departed, musing as he went. A fortnight later he was admitted to see the jewel whose casket he had contemplated with so much veneration. "I have been to see George Sand. She wrote to me: 'You will find me at home any evening. If, however, I am engaged with a lawyer or compelled to go out, you must not impute it to want of courtesy. I am entangled in a lawsuit in which you will see a trait of our French usages, for which my patriotism must needs blush. I plead against my publisher, who wants to constrain me to write a romance according to his pleasure—that is to say, advocating his principles. Life passes away in the saddest necessities, and is only preserved by anxieties and sacrifices. You will find a woman of forty years old, who has employed her whole life not in pleasing by her amiability, but in offending by her candour. If I displease your eyes, I shall, at any rate, preserve in your heart the place that you have conceded me. I owe it to the love of truth, a passion whose existence you have distinguished and felt in my literary attempts.'
"I went to see her in the evening. In a small room, scarce ten feet square, she sat sewing by the fire, her daughter opposite to her. The little apartment was sparingly lighted by a lamp with a dark shade. There was no more light than sufficed to illumine the work with which mother and daughter were busied. On a divan in one corner, and in dark shadow, sat two men, who, according to French custom, were not introduced to me. They kept silence, which increased the solemn, anxious tension of the moment. A gentle breathing, an oppressive heat, a great tightness about the heart. The flame of the lamp flickered dimly, in the chimney the charcoal glowed away into white shimmering ashes, a ghostlike ticking was the only sound heard. The ticking was in my waistcoat pocket. It was my watch, not my heart." How intensely German is all this overwrought emotion about nothing! Fortunately a chair was at hand, into which the impressionable dramatist dropped himself. His first speech was a blunder, for it sounded like a preparation.
"'Pardon my imperfect French. I have read your works too often, and Scribe's comedies too seldom. From you one learns the mute language of poetry, from Scribe the language of conversation.'"
To which compliment Aurora Dudevant merely replied: "'How do you like Paris?'
"'I find it as I had expected.—A lawsuit like yours is a novelty. How does it proceed?'
"A bitter smile for sole reply.
"'What is understood in France by contrainte par corps?'
"'Imprisonment.'
"'Surely they will not throw a woman into prison to compel her to write a romance. What does your publisher mean by his principles?'