"Six years had elapsed since the marriage of Julie de Chaverny, and five years and six months, or thereabouts, since she had discovered that it was impossible for her to love her husband, and very difficult to esteem him. He was not a bad man, neither could he be called stupid, nor even silly; she had once thought him agreeable; now she found him intolerably wearisome. To her every thing about him was repulsive and unpleasant. His most trifling actions, his way of eating, of taking coffee, of talking, gave her umbrage and irritated her nerves. Except at table, the pair scarcely saw or spoke to each other; but they dined together several times a-week, and that sufficed to keep up the sort of hatred Julie entertained towards her husband.
"As to Chaverny, he was rather a handsome man, a little too corpulent for his time of life, with a fresh complexion, full-blooded, and by no means subject to those vague uneasinesses which sometimes torment persons of more intellectual organisation. Piously convinced that his wife's sentiments towards him were those of tender friendship, the conviction caused him neither pleasure nor pain. Had he known Julie's feelings to be of an opposite nature, it would have made little difference to his happiness. He had served several years in a cavalry regiment, when he inherited a considerable fortune, became disgusted with garrison life, resigned his commission, and took a wife. It seems difficult to explain the marriage of two persons who had not an idea in common. On the one hand, a number of those officious friends and relations, who, as Phrosine says, would marry the republic of Venice to the Grand Turk, had taken much pains to arrange it: on the other, Chaverny was of good family; before his marriage he was not too fat; he was gay and cheerful, and what is called a good fellow. Julie was glad to see him at her mother's house, because he made her laugh with anecdotes of his regiment, droll enough, if not always in the best taste. She found him amiable, because he danced with her at every ball, and was always ready with excellent reasons to persuade her mother to remain late at theatre or party, or at the Bois de Boulogne. Finally, she thought him a hero, because he had fought two or three creditable duels. But what completed his triumph, was the description of a certain carriage, to be built after a plan of his own, and in which he was to drive Julie, as soon as she consented to become Madame de Chaverny.
"A few months of married life, and Chaverny's good qualities had lost much of their merit. He no longer danced with his wife—that of course. His funny stories had long been thrice told. He complained that balls lasted too late; at the theatre he yawned; the custom of dressing for the evening he found an insufferable bore. Laziness was his bane; had he endeavoured to please, perhaps he would have succeeded, but the least exertion or restraint was torture to him, as to most fat persons. He found it irksome to go into society, because there the manner of one's reception depends on the efforts one makes to please. A rude joviality suited him better than refined amusements; to distinguish himself amongst persons of a similar taste to his own, he had only to talk and laugh louder than his companions—and that he did without trouble, for his lungs were remarkably vigorous. He also prided himself on drinking more champagne than most men could support, and on leaping his horse over a four-foot wall in true sporting style. To these various accomplishments he was indebted for the friendship and esteem of the indefinable class of beings known as 'young men,' who swarm upon our boulevards towards eight in the evening. Shooting parties, country excursions, races, bachelors' dinners and suppers, were his favourite pastimes. Twenty times a-day he declared himself the happiest of mortals; and when Julie heard the declaration, she cast her eyes to heaven, and her little mouth assumed an expression of indescribable contempt."
We turn to another of M. Mérimée's books, in our opinion his best, an historical romance, entitled 1572, a "Chronicle of the Reign of Charles the Ninth." "In history," says the author in his preface, "I care only for the anecdotes, and prefer those in which I fancy I discover a true picture of the manners and characters of a particular period. This is not a very elevated taste; but I own, to my shame, that I would willingly give the whole of Thucydides for an authentic memoir of Aspasia, or of one of Pericles' slaves. Memoirs, the familiar gossip of an author with his reader, alone supply those individual portraits that amuse and interest me. It is not from Mezerai, but from Montlue, Brantôme, D'Aubigné, Tavannes, La Noue, &c., that one forms a just idea of the French of the sixteenth century. From the style of those contemporary authors, we learn as much as from the substance of their narratives. In L'Estoile, for instance, I read the following concise note. 'The demoiselle de Chateau-neuf, one of the king's mignonnes, before he went to Poland, having espoused, par amourettes, the Florentine Antinotti, officer of the galleys at Marseilles, and detecting him in an intrigue, slew him stoutly with her own hand.' By the help of this anecdote, and of similar ones, which abound in Brantôme, I make up a character in my head, and resuscitate a lady of Henry the Third's court." The "Chronicle" is the result of much reading and combination of the kind here referred to; and M. Mérimée has even been accused of adhering too closely to reality, to the detriment of the poetical character of his romance. He does not make his heroes and heroines sufficiently perfect, or his villains sufficiently atrocious, to suit the palate of some critics, but depicts them as he finds evidence of their having existed—their virtues obscured by the coarse manners and loose morality, their crimes palliated by the religious antipathies and stormy political passions of a semi-civilised age. He declines judging the men of the sixteenth century according to the ideas of the nineteenth. And, with regard to minor matters, he does not, like some of his contemporaries, place in the mouth of a Huguenot leader, or a Guisarde countess, the tame and dainty phrase appropriate enough in that of an equerry, or lady of the bed-chamber at the court of the Citizen King. Eschewing conventionality, and following his own judgment, and the guidance of the old chroniclers, in whose quaint records he delights, he has written one of the best existing French historical romances.
It would have been easy for a less able writer than M. Mérimée to have extended the "Chronique" to thrice its present length. It is not a complete romance, but a desultory sketch of the events and manners of the time, with a few imaginary personages introduced. Novel readers who require a regular denoûment will be disappointed at its conclusion. There is not even a hint of a wedding from the first page to the last; and the only lady who plays a prominent part in the story, a certain countess Diane de Turgis, is little better than she should be. And yet, if we follow M. Mérimée's rule, and judge her according to the ideas and morals of the age she flourished in, she was rather an amiable and proper sort of person. True, she sets her lovers by the ears, and feels gratified when they cut each other's throats: she even challenges a court dame, who has taken the precedence of her, to an encounter with sword and dagger, en chemise, according to the prevailing mode amongst the raffinés, or professed duellists of the time; and she writes seductive billets-doux in Spanish, and gives wicked little suppers to the handsome cavalier on whom her affections are set. But, on the other hand, she goes to mass, and confesses, and does her best to save her Huguenot lover's body and soul, and obtain the remission of her own sins by converting him from his heresy. So that, as times went in the year 1572, she was to be reckoned amongst the righteous. The handsome heretic, in whose present safety and future salvation she takes so strong an interest, is one Bernard de Mergy, who has come to Paris to take service with the great chief of his co-religionists, Admiral Coligny. His brother, George de Mergy, has deserted the creed of Calvin, and is consequently in high favour at the Louvre, but under the ban of his father, a stern old Huguenot officer, who will not hear the name of his renegade son. Bernard, whilst regretting his brother's apostasy, does not deem it necessary to shun his society. On the road he has been cajoled or robbed of his ready cash by a pretty gipsy girl, and his good horse has been stolen by one of the hordes of German lanzknechts, whom the recent civil war had brought to France. He reaches Paris with an empty purse, and is not sorry to meet his brother, who welcomes him kindly, and supplies his wants, but refuses to recant, and attempts to justify his backsliding. In the course of his defence he gives an insight into the prevalent corruption of the time, and shows how the private vices of great political leaders often marred the fortunes of their party.
"'You were still at school,' said De Mergy, 'learning Latin and Greek, when I first donned the cuirass, girded the Huguenot's white scarf, and took share in our civil wars. Your little Prince of Condé, who has led his party into so many errors, looked after your affairs when his intrigues left him time. A lady loved me; the prince asked me to resign her to him; I refused, and he became my mortal enemy. From that hour he lost no opportunity of mortifying me.
Ce petit prince si joli
Qui toujours baise sa mignonne,
held me up to the fanatics of the party as a monster of libertinism and irreligion. I had only one mistress; and as to the irreligion,—I let others do as they like, why attack me?'
"'I thought the prince incapable of such baseness,' said Bernard.
"'He is dead,' replied his brother, 'and you have deified him. 'Tis the way of the world. He had great qualities; he died like a brave man, and I have forgiven him. But then he was powerful, and on the part of a poor gentleman like myself, it was guilt to resist him. All the preachers and hypocrites of the army set upon me, but I cared as little for their abuse as for their sermons. At last one of the prince's gentlemen, to curry favour with his master, called me libertine, before all our captains. I struck him: we fought—and he was killed. At that time there were a dozen duels a day in the army, and no notice taken. In my favour an exception was made; I was fixed upon by the prince to serve as an example. The entreaties of the other leaders, including the Admiral, procured my pardon. But the prince's rancour was not yet appeased. At the fight of Jazeneuil, I commanded a company: I had been foremost in the skirmish; my cuirass battered and broken by bullets, my left arm pierced by a lance, showed that I had not spared myself. I had only twenty men left, and a battalion of the king's Swiss guards advanced against us. The Prince of Condé ordered me to charge them; I asked for two companies of reitres, and—he called me coward.'