“She was my good angel; she sustained me in my duty and charity; her face encouraged me in the pulpit; her lips soothed me under ingratitude. She intertwined herself with all that was good in my life; and after leaning on her so long, I could not go on alone. And, dear Jerome, believe me, I am no rebel against heaven. It is God’s will to release me. When they threw the earth upon her poor coffin, something snapped within my bosom here that mended may not be. I heard it and I felt it.... He in whose hands are the issues of life and death gave me that minute the great summons; ’twas some cord of life snapped in me. He is very pitiful. I should have lived unhappy; but He said, ‘No; enough is done, enough is suffered; poor, feeble, loving servant, thy shortcomings are forgiven, thy sorrows touch their end; come thou to thy rest!’”
The child that survived them was known as the great scholar of mediæval times, Erasmus; for the foundation of the story is laid in historic fact. The author, to use his own simile, has turned the epitome into a narrative, and the skeleton into a human figure.
There are many passages in the book that are vivid and beautiful. For instance, a fine description is given of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy:
“He could fight as well as any king going; and he could lie as well as any, except the King of France. He was a mighty hunter, and could read and write. His tastes were wide and ardent. He loved jewels like a woman, and gorgeous apparel. He dearly loved maids of honor, and indeed paintings generally, in proof of which he ennobled Jan Van Eyck. He had also a rage for giants, dwarfs, and Turks. These last stood ever planted about him, turbaned, and blazing with jewels. His agents inveigled them from Istamboul with fair promises; but, the moment he had got them, he baptized them by brute force in a large tub, and, this done, let them squat with their faces towards Mecca, and invoke Mahound as much as they pleased, laughing in his sleeve at their simplicity in fancying they were still infidels. He had lions in cages, and fleet leopards trained by Orientals to run down hares and deer. In short, he relished all rarities, except the humdrum virtues. For anything singularly pretty, or diabolically ugly, this was your customer. The best of him was, he was open-handed to the poor; and the next best was, he fostered the arts in earnest, whereof he now gave a signal proof.”
Listen to the following description of a Mystery:
“In this representation divine personages, too sacred for me to name here, came clumsily down from heaven to talk sophistry with the cardinal Virtues, the nine Muses, and the seven deadly Sins, all present in human shape, and not unlike one another. To enliven which weary stuff, in rattled the Prince of the Powers of the Air, and an imp that kept molesting him and buffeting him with a bladder, at each thwack of which the crowd were in ecstasies. When the Vices had uttered good store of obscenity and the Virtues twaddle, the celestials, including the nine Muses, went gingerly back to heaven one by one; for there was but one cloud; and two artisans worked it up with its supernatural freight, and worked it down with a winch, in full sight of the audience. These disposed of, the bottomless pit opened and flamed in the centre of the stage; the carpenters and Virtues shoved the Vices in, and the Virtues and Beelzebub and his tormentor danced merrily round the place of eternal torture to the fife and tabor.”
One of the stories told in this novel seems too good to have been wholly an invention of the novelist. It is the story of the poor curé who was summoned before his bishop for demanding the burial fees in advance whenever he baptized a child. His excuse to the bishop was:
“I have been curé of that parish seven years, and fifty children have I baptized, and buried not five. At first I used to say, ‘Heaven be praised, the air of this village is main healthy,’ but on searching the register book I found ’twas always so, and on probing the matter it came out that of those born at Domfont, all but here and there one did go and get hanged at Aix. But this was to defraud not their curé only, but the entire church of their dues; since pendards pay no funeral fees, being buried in air.”
LES MISÉRABLES
VICTOR HUGO
I find it hard to understand much that I find in the modern French novel. The conduct of the characters described in “Don Quixote” or “The Betrothed” is perfectly intelligible to me. I can thread my way through mists of German psychology and the extravagances of Russian fiction, but the Frenchman of my own time is quite beyond me. And whether he appears in a novel or actual life, his conduct often seems to me as remote from the possibilities of human character as if he were an inhabitant of Mars. The older French fiction is not so incomprehensible; the absurdities of Rabelais and the follies of Gil Bias and Manon Lescaut are not unnatural, but I confess myself utterly unable to follow the motives which actuate Javert, Jean Valjean, and some of the revolutionists in “Les Misérables.”