There is a great deal of this delighted rapture. He departs, however, leaving Elissa in charge of his friend Festus. When he returns, he finds that Festus has supplanted him. His agony is quite piteous; if we could believe there was any sincerity in this love-afflicted devil, it would be impossible not to compassionate him. He calls up all his grandeur, and reveals all his power, only to add weight and dignity to his reproach. He even hints at the reformation that would have taken place in his character, had Elissa been but true. Elissa faithful, and Lucifer would have become the very saviour of mankind.
"Lucifer. Hear me now!
Thou knowest well what once I was to thee:
One who, for love of one I loved—for thee,
Would have done or borne the sins of all the world:
Who did thy bidding at thy lightest look;
And had it been to have snatched an angel's crown
Off her bright brow as she sat singing, throned,
I would have cut these heartstrings that tie down,
And let my soul have sailed to heaven, and done it—
Spite of the thunder and the sacrilege,
And laid it at thy feet. I loved thee, lady!"
And again, in another scene, he says, reproaching her for her inconstancy—
"I am the morning and the evening star,
The star thou lovest and thy lover too;
I am that star! as once before I told thee,
Though thou wouldst not believe me, but I am
A spirit and a star—a power—an ill
Which doth outbalance being. Look at me!
Am I not more than mortal in my form?
Millions of years have circled round my brow
Like worlds upon their centres;—still I live;—
And age but presses with a halo's weight.
This single arm hath dashed the light of Heaven;
This one hand dragged the angels from their thrones;
Am I not worthy to have loved thee, lady?"
Certainly a most noble Paladin. But here we quit Mr Bailey—repeating again our sincere admiration of his poetic genius, and our regret, equally sincere, that it has not been united with better judgment and with better taste; and that he had not waited till his own opinions, theological and philosophical, had settled into something approaching to consistency and harmony, (in a poem we ought perhaps to require no more,) before he had planned this elaborate drama, in order to promulgate them. Those who seek for the beauties, and those who are in search of the monstrosities of literature, may both apply themselves with success to Festus: we wish we could say that the former would be likely to reap the more abundant harvest.
CASH AND PEDIGREE.[6]
It will hardly be disputed that if the French are more subject than any other nation to fits of political lunacy, upon the other hand no people in the world are prompter to recognise and deride their own temporary folly; although, unfortunately, neither recognition nor derision have hitherto sufficed to prevent recurrence of the paroxysms. The echoes of February's fusillade and of Provisional revelries still filled the air, when satire and caricature began their work, assailing the new order of things with those shafts of ridicule which in France, if skilfully directed, rarely fail to be fatal. It was no fleeting shower of squibs by which the follies of 1848 were assailed, but a steady, well-sustained discharge of missiles much more formidable. M. Louis Reybaud is a pyrotechnist of no ordinary power, and his paper projectiles had the destructive effect of a flight of congreve rockets. We believe that the home-truths, pungent wit, and fearless sarcasm of Jérome Paturot had no small share in convincing the new republicans how monstrous was the folly they had so hastily perpetrated, and which they since have had such abundant reason and leisure to repent. Bloodier pages there have been in the history of France, but scarcely one more pitiable than that on which the events of the last two years are inscribed, and posterity will gaze in amazement, almost with incredulity, on the record of vanity and mischief. The French have not waited till now to discover how completely they have stultified themselves, and to regret the head-long precipitation that bid a ruinous price for a questionable reform, a reform far more effectually obtainable by less violent means. In short, the February Revolution has long been held as legitimate game for ridicule in France as in any other European country. Numerous as are the jests of which it has been the object, the satirists have not yet exhausted themselves, and the year 1850 finds them still improving the text.
M. Jules Sandeau is not usually a favourite of ours. Those of his works that have come under our notice are for the most part tame and insipid. It was, therefore, with agreeable surprise that we read the very smart and lively opening of his last novel, in which he has abandoned sentiment for satire, and risen above his usual monotonous level. We cannot say that the book is altogether an agreeable one, as most persons understand the word. Similar, in this respect, to a recent well-known satirical novel of English society, it contains no characters with which the reader can heartily sympathise. The motives of all the characters are more or less sordid and selfish, at least till quite the close of the tale, when two of them exhibit more generous impulses. The book has a double aim: to satirise French society generally, and to ridicule the February Revolution. As far as we can discover, M. Sandeau's leanings are Orleanish; but he does not intrude his friends upon us, contenting himself with ridiculing their enemies. A certain epigrammatic vivacity of style and expression, occasionally amounting to wit, and an ingenious plot, fully sustain the reader's attention. The types presented of certain important classes of Frenchmen are certainly not flattered, but neither must they be looked upon as mere caricatures. Legitimacy finds little favour with M. Sandeau, or at least he presses hard upon its partisans, those denizens of the noble faubourg who to the last held aloof from the monarchy of July. The republicans, whether of the eve or of the morrow, are painted in not very attractive colours. The pivot of the tale is the misplaced ambition of a wealthy Parisian burgess, whose heavy purse and huge vanity render him the target of a host of intriguers, and especially of a dowager marchioness, more proud of her pedigree than scrupulous in her manœuvres. The first four pages of the book are perhaps as good a specimen as it affords of the author's piquant and animated style. They introduce and describe four of the principal actors in the comedy; a purse-proud citizen and his daughter, a democratic notary and an impoverished nobleman, a compound of the fortune-hunter and the chevalier d'industrie. The chapter is too long to extract unabridged, but we will endeavour so to condense it as to give a faithful idea of its style, premising that we aim at rendering the spirit rather than the letter of the original.
Monsieur Levrault was an honest citizen who had grown rich by selling cloth near the Market of the Innocents. When he retired from trade, the vapours of pride and ambition rose suddenly to his brain. Wealth, like wine, has intoxicating fumes. On beholding himself the possessor of three millions of francs, honestly and laboriously amassed in the shop handed down to him by his father, the worthy man, seized with a vertigo, discovered that money, which he had long looked upon as the goal of his desires, was in fact but the starting-post; he experienced a vehement longing to cast his slough, quit the obscure regions in which he had hitherto dwelt, and soar, like a butterfly escaped from its chrysalis, toward the brilliant spheres for which he felt himself born. Vague at first, timid and unavowed even to himself, these ideas slid furtively into his mind; and once there, quickly assumed formidable proportions. We were then at a considerable distance from the democratic cravings of July, and although the aristocracy of finance generally showed itself rather disdainful towards its elder sister, there yet were a tolerable number of persons for whom titles of nobility still had a charm. M. Levrault aspired, moreover, to the dignity of statesmanship. Elevations of all kinds had peculiar attractions for him. To encourage himself, he complacently reverted to recent citizen records. Provoking phantoms everywhere pursued him, even in his sleep—ministers, peers of France, newly-made nobles, some of whom he recognised as having discounted his bills, and others as having sold him the Kerseymeres of Elbeuf and Louvièrs. By dint of using such expressions as these:—"We great manufacturers, we great capitalists," he came at last to forget that he had made his fortune, penny by penny, in a retail trade. He loved to call to mind the lists formed for the recruiting of the peerage. One night he dreamed that his porter brought him a large letter with this address:—"M. le Baron Levrault." With trembling hand he broke the seal, and found in the envelope his nomination as peer. The next morning, still quite excited, he gave a five-franc piece to the porter, who never knew to what to attribute this munificent act. At a time when money might aspire to everything, the millionaire's dreams had nothing very exorbitant. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that his wife would have taken him severely to task with all the frank unceremoniousness of Madame Jourdain. "Levrault, you are but a fool," would she have said, without mincing the matter. "Do me the favour to keep quiet. We have nothing to do with honours and dignities. Wealth is no bad prize in the lottery of life; let us enjoy it modestly. Money is not everything, whatever people may say; and we have found means to earn three millions without adding an iota to our personal value. Let us keep in our own trade, and remember what we were. Let us continue to live amongst people who esteem us, and not thrust ourselves into society that would laugh at us. The more I look at you, the more certain am I that you would impose upon nobody. For my part, the more I examine myself, the less do I discover materials for a woman of quality. On the other hand, as retired shopkeepers, we pass muster very well, and may present ourselves with advantage in all the drawing-rooms in the neighbourhood. Put aside those follies. Buy a good estate, and look after it. Since you are ambitious, get yourself chosen mayor and churchwarden. Go a-fishing: it was formerly your ruling passion. You like dahlias: grow them. Give dinners to your friends and alms to the poor. And finally, marry your daughter to some honest fellow who will not be ashamed of his wife's children, or blush to say some day to his family: 'Your grandfather was a worthy man who sold cloth in the Rue des Bourdonnais; if you are comfortably off in the world, it is to him especially that you owe it.'" Such is the language Madame Levrault would not have failed to use to her husband, and perhaps she might have succeeded in putting him in the right path; unfortunately she had been ten years in her grave, and had taken with her all the good sense of the family. M. Levrault knew very well that honours and dignities would not seek him in his entresol of the Rue des Bourdonnais. He had already turned his back on all his friends; he only waited to begin a new existence, till his daughter should have left school. Not knowing on what side to seek entrance into the great world, the object of his ardent desires, he reckoned on the inspirations of Miss Laura Levrault, who worthily replied to his expectations.