Clémence de Bourges[334], surnamed the Oriental Pearl, who was buried with her face uncovered and her head crowned with flowers because of her beauty; the two Margarets[335] and Mary Stuart[336], all three Queens, expressed ingenuous frailties in ingenuous language.
I had an aunt at about that period of our Parnassus: Madame Claude de Chateaubriand; but I am more embarrassed with Madame Claude than with Mademoiselle de Boistelleul. Madame Claude, disguising herself under the name of the Lover, addresses her seventy sonnets to her mistress. Reader, forgive my Aunt Claude's two-and-twenty years: parcendum teneris. If my Aunt de Boistelleul was more discreet, she reckoned fifteen lustres and a half when she was singing, and the traitor Trémigon no longer appeared before her old Warbler's thought save as a Sparrow-hawk[337].
When the language was settled, liberty of sentiment and thought contracted. One remembers hardly any one, under Louis XIV., expect Madame Deshoulières[338], by turns too much extolled and too much depreciated. Elegy extended, through woman's sorrow, under the reign of Louis XV. to the reign of Louis XVI., when the great elegies of the people commence; the old school came to die with Madame de Bourdic[339], who is but little known to-day, although she left a remarkable Ode on Silence.
The new school has thrown its thoughts into another mould: Madame Tastu walks in the midst of the modern choir of poetesses in prose or verse, the Allarts[340], the Waldors[341], the Valmores[342], the Ségalas[343], the Révoils[344], the Mercœurs[345], and so on, and so on: Castalidum turba. Must we regret that, following the example of the Aonides, she has not celebrated the passion which, according to antiquity, smooths the brow of Cocytus and makes it smile at Orpheus' sighing? At Madame Tastu's concerts, love recites only hymns borrowed from foreign voices. This reminds me of what is related of Madame Malibran[346]: when she wanted to tell of a bird whose name she had forgotten, she used to imitate its song.
Gorge Sand.
George Sand[347], otherwise Madame Dudevant, having spoken of René in the Revue des Deux-Mondes[348], I thanked her; she did not reply. Some time after, she sent me Lélia: I did not reply. Soon a short explanation took place between us:
"I venture to hope that you will forgive me for not having answered the flattering letter which you were good enough to send me when I spoke of René in writing on Obermann. I did not know how to thank you for all the kind expressions which you have used towards my books.
"I have sent you Lélia, and I anxiously desire that it may obtain the same protection from you. The fairest privilege of an universally accepted glory like your own is to welcome and encourage at their start those inexperienced writers for whom there can be no lasting success without your patronage.
"Accept the assurance of my high admiration and believe me, monsieur,
"One of your most faithful believers,
"George Sand."
At the end of October[349], Madame Sand gave me her new novel, Jacques: I accepted the present.
"30 October 1834.
"I hasten, madame, to offer you my sincere thanks. I am going to read Jacques in Fontainebleau Forest or at the sea-side. Were I younger, I should be less brave; but my years will defend me against solitude, without taking anything from the passionate admiration which I profess for your talent and which I hide from nobody. You have attached a new enchantment, madame, to that city of dreams whence I set out, in former days, for Greece with a whole world of illusions: returning to his starting-point, René lately aired his memories and his regrets on the Lido, between Childe-Harold, who had vanished, and Lelia about to appear.
"Chateaubriand."
Madame Sand possesses a talent of the first order; her descriptions have the truth of those of Rousseau in his Rêveries[350] and of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre in his Études.[351] Her frank style is tainted with none of the faults of the day. Lélia, though painful to read and offering none of the delicious scenes of Indiana and Valentine, is nevertheless a master-piece of its kind: of the nature of an orgy, it is without passion, but perturbing like passion; it lacks soul, and yet it weighs upon the heart; the depravity of its maxims, its insults thrown at rectitude of life could go no further than they do; but over that abyss the author sends down her talent In the Valley of Gomorrah, the dew falls at night upon the Dead Sea.