TALES OF A HUNDRED YEARS SINCE ["CONTES DU CENTENAIRE." PAR AUGUSTIN FILON. PARIS: HACHETTE ET CIE. ]
[137] IT was a happy thought of M. Filon to put into the mouth of an imaginary centenarian a series of delightfully picturesque studies which aim at the minute presentment of life in France under the old régime, and end for the most part with the Revolution. A genial centenarian, whose years have told happily on him, he appreciates not only those humanities of feeling and habit which were peculiar to the last century and passed away with it, but also that permanent humanity which has but undergone a change of surface in the new world of our own, wholly different though it may look. With a sympathetic sense of life as it is always, [138] M. Filon has transplanted the creations of his fancy into an age certainly at a greater distance from ourselves than can be estimated by mere lapse of time, and where a fully detailed antiquarian knowledge, used with admirable tact and economy, is indeed serviceable in giving reality of effect to scene and character. In truth, M. Filon's very lively antiquarianism carries with it a genuine air of personal memory. With him, as happens so rarely, an intimate knowledge of historic detail is the secret of life, of the impression of life; puts his own imagination on the wing; secures the imaginative cooperation of the reader. A stately age—to us, perhaps, in the company of the historic muse, seeming even more stately than it actually was—it is pleasant to find it, as we do now and again on these pages, in graceful déshabille. With perfect lightness of touch, M. Filon seems to have a complete command of all the physiognomic details of old France, of old Paris and its people—how they made a holiday; how they got at the news; the fashions. Did the English reader ever hear before of the beautifully dressed doll which came once a month [139] from Paris to Soho to teach an expectant world of fashion how to dress itself? Old Paris! For young lovers at their windows; for every one fortunate enough to have seen it: "Qu'il est joli ce paysage du Paris nocturne d'il y a cent ans!" We think we shall best do justice to an unusually pretty book by taking one of M. Filon's stories (not because we are quite sure it is the cleverest of them) with a view to the more definite illustration of his method, therein.
Christopher Marteau was a warden of the corporation of Luthiers. He dealt in musical instruments, as his father and grandfather had done before him, at the sign of Saint Cecilia. With his wife, his only child Phlipote, and Claude his apprentice, who was to marry Phlipote, he occupied a good house of his own. Of course the disposition of the young people, bred together from their childhood, does not at first entirely concur with the parental arrangements. But the story tells, reassuringly, how—to some extent how sadly—they came heartily to do so. M. Marteau was no ordinary shopkeeper. The various distinguished people who had fingered his clavecins, and turned over the [140] folios of music, for half a century past, had left their memories behind them; M. de Voltaire, for instance, who had caressed the head of Phlipote with an aged, skeleton hand, leaving, apparently, no very agreeable impression on the child, though her father delighted to recall the incident, being himself a demi-philosophe. He went to church, that is to say, only twice a year, on the Feast of St. Cecilia and on the Sunday when the Luthiers offered the pain bénit. It was his opinion that everything in the State needed reform except the Corporations. The relations of the husband to his affectionate, satiric, pleasure-seeking wife, who knew so well all the eighteen theatres which then existed in Paris, are treated with much quiet humour. On Sundays the four set forth together for a country holiday. At such times Phlipote would walk half-a-dozen paces in advance of her father and mother, side by side with her intended. But they never talked to each other: the hands, the eyes, never met. Of what was Phlipote dreaming? and what was in the thoughts of Claude?
It happened one day that, like sister and brother, the lovers exchanged confidences. "It [141] is not always," observes Phlipote, whom every one excepting Claude on those occasions sought with admiring eyes—
"'It is not always one loves those one is told to love.'
"'What, have you, too, a secret, my little Phlipote?'
"'I too, Claude! Then what may be yours?'
"'Listen, Phlipote!' he answered. 'We don't wish to be husband and wife, but we can be friends—good and faithful friends, helping each other to change the decision of our parents.'
"'Were I but sure you would not betray me—'
"'Would you like me to confess first? The woman I love—Ah! but you will laugh at my folly!'