Modeste Mignon Part 5

Many of these men, misled by vanity, think themselves quite as capable as their patron. Pure devotion, such as Modeste conceived it, without money and without price, and more especially without hope, is rare.

Nevertheless there are Mennevals to be found, more perhaps in Paris than elsewhere, men who value a life in the background with its peaceful toil; these are the wandering Benedictines of our social world, which offers them no other monastery. These brave, meek hearts live, by their actions and in their hidden lives, the poetry that poets utter. They are poets themselves in soul, in tenderness, in their lonely vigils and meditations,--as truly poets as others of the name on paper, who fatten in the fields of literature at so much a verse; like Lord Byron, like all who live, alas, by ink, the Hippocrene water of to-day, for want of a better.

Attracted by the fame of Ca.n.a.lis, also by the prospect of political interest, and advised thereto by Madame d'Espard, who acted in the matter for the d.u.c.h.esse de Chaulieu, a young lawyer of the court of Claims became secretary and confidential friend of the poet, who welcomed and petted him very much as a broker caresses his first dabbler in the funds. The beginning of this companionship bore a very fair resemblance to friendship. The young man had already held the same relation to a minister, who went out of office in 1827, taking care before he did so to appoint his young secretary to a place in the foreign office. Ernest de La Briere, then about twenty-seven years of age, was decorated with the Legion of honor but was without other means than his salary; he was accustomed to the management of business and had learned a good deal of life during his four years in a minister's cabinet. Kindly, amiable, and over-modest, with a heart full of pure and sound feelings, he was averse to putting himself in the foreground. He loved his country, and wished to serve her, but notoriety abashed him.

To him the place of secretary to a Napoleon was far more desirable than that of the minister himself. As soon as he became the friend and secretary of Ca.n.a.lis he did a great amount of labor for him, but by the end of eighteen months he had learned to understand the barrenness of a nature that was poetic through literary expression only. The truth of the old proverb, "The cowl doesn't make the monk," is eminently shown in literature. It is extremely rare to find among literary men a nature and a talent that are in perfect accord. The faculties are not the man himself. This disconnection, whose phenomena are amazing, proceeds from an unexplored, possibly an unexplorable mystery. The brain and its products of all kinds (for in art the hand of man is a continuation of his brain) are a world apart, which flourishes beneath the cranium in absolute independence of sentiments, feelings, and all that is called virtue, the virtue of citizens, fathers, and private life. This, however true, is not absolutely so; nothing is absolutely true of man. It is certain that a debauched man will dissipate his talent, that a drunkard will waste it in libations; while, on the other hand, no man can give himself talent by wholesome living: nevertheless, it is all but proved that Virgil, the painter of love, never loved a Dido, and that Rousseau, the model citizen, had enough pride to had furnished forth an aristocracy. On the other hand Raphael and Michael Angelo do present the glorious conjunction of genius with the lines of character. Talent in men is therefore, in all moral points, very much what beauty is in women,--simply a promise. Let us, therefore, doubly admire the man in whom both heart and character equal the perfection of his genius.

When Ernest discovered within his poet an ambitious egoist, the worst species of egoist (for there are some amiable forms of the vice), he felt a delicacy in leaving him. Honest natures cannot easily break the ties that bind them, especially if they have tied them voluntarily. The secretary was therefore still living in domestic relations with the poet when Modeste's letter arrived,--in such relations, be it said, as involved a perpetual sacrifice of his feelings. La Briere admitted the frankness with which Ca.n.a.lis had laid himself bare before him. Moreover, the defects of the man, who will always be considered a great poet during his lifetime and flattered as Martmontel was flattered, were only the wrong side of his brilliant qualities. Without his vanity and his magniloquence it is possible that he might never have acquired the sonorous elocution which is so useful and even necessary an instrument in political life. His cold-bloodedness touched at certain points on rect.i.tude and loyalty; his ostentation had a lining of generosity.

Results, we must remember, are to the profit of society; motives concern G.o.d.

But after the arrival of Modeste's letter Ernest deceived himself no longer as to Ca.n.a.lis. The pair had just finished breakfast and were talking together in the poet's study, which was on the ground-floor of a house standing back in a court-yard, and looked into a garden.

"There!" exclaimed Ca.n.a.lis, "I was telling Madame de Chaulieu the other day that I ought to bring out another poem; I knew admiration was running short, for I have had no anonymous letters for a long time."

"Is it from an unknown woman?"

"Unknown? yes!--a D'Este, in Havre; evidently a feigned name."

Ca.n.a.lis pa.s.sed the letter to La Briere. The little poem, with all its hidden enthusiasms, in short, poor Modeste's heart, was disdainfully handed over, with the gesture of a spoiled dandy.

"It is a fine thing," said the lawyer, "to have the power to attract such feelings; to force a poor woman to step out of the habits which nature, education, and the world dictate to her, to break through conventions. What privileges genius wins! A letter such as this, written by a young girl--a genuine young girl--without hidden meanings, with real enthusiasm--"

"Well, what?" said Ca.n.a.lis.

"Why, a man might suffer as much as Ta.s.so and yet feel recompensed,"

cried La Briere.

"So he might, my dear fellow, by a first letter of that kind, and even a second; but how about the thirtieth? And suppose you find out that these young enthusiasts are little jades? Or imagine a poet rushing along the brilliant path in search of her, and finding at the end of it an old Englishwoman sitting on a mile-stone and offering you her hand! Or suppose this post-office angel should really be a rather ugly girl in quest of a husband? Ah, my boy! the effervescence then goes down."

"I begin to perceive," said La Briere, smiling, "that there is something poisonous in glory, as there is in certain dazzling flowers."

"And then," resumed Ca.n.a.lis, "all these women, even when they are simple-minded, have ideals, and you can't satisfy them. They never say to themselves that a poet is a vain man, as I am accused of being; they can't conceive what it is for an author to be at the mercy of a feverish excitement, which makes him disagreeable and capricious; they want him always grand, n.o.ble; it never occurs to them that genius is a disease, or that Nathan lives with Florine; that D'Arthez is too fat, and Joseph Bridau is too thin; that Beranger limps, and that their own particular deity may have the snuffles! A Lucien de Rubempre, poet and cupid, is a phoenix. And why should I go in search of compliments only to pull the string of a shower-bath of horrid looks from some disillusioned female?"

"Then the true poet," said La Briere, "ought to remain hidden, like G.o.d, in the centre of his worlds, and be only seen in his own creations."

"Glory would cost too dear in that case," answered Ca.n.a.lis. "There is some good in life. As for that letter," he added, taking a cup of tea, "I a.s.sure you that when a n.o.ble and beautiful woman loves a poet she does not hide in the corner boxes, like a d.u.c.h.ess in love with an actor; she feels that her beauty, her fortune, her name are protection enough, and she dares to say openly, like an epic poem: 'I am the nymph Calypso, enamored of Telemachus.' Mystery and feigned names are the resources of little minds. For my part I no longer answer masks--"

"I should love a woman who came to seek me," cried La Briere. "To all you say I reply, my dear Ca.n.a.lis, that it cannot be an ordinary girl who aspires to a distinguished man; such a girl has too little trust, too much vanity; she is too faint-hearted. Only a star, a--"

"--princess!" cried Ca.n.a.lis, bursting into a shout of laughter; "only a princess can descend to him. My dear fellow, that doesn't happen once in a hundred years. Such a love is like that flower that blossoms every century. Princesses, let me tell you, if they are young, rich, and beautiful, have something else to think of; they are surrounded like rare plants by a hedge of fools, well-bred idiots as hollow as elder-bushes! My dream, alas! the crystal of my dream, garlanded from hence to the Correze with roses--ah! I cannot speak of it--it is in fragments at my feet, and has long been so. No, no, all anonymous letters are begging letters; and what sort of begging? Write yourself to that young woman, if you suppose her young and pretty, and you'll find out. There is nothing like experience. As for me, I can't reasonably be expected to love every woman; Apollo, at any rate he of Belvedere, is a delicate consumptive who must take care of his health."

"But when a woman writes to you in this way her excuse must certainly be in her consciousness that she is able to eclipse in tenderness and beauty every other woman," said Ernest, "and I should think you might feel some curiosity--"

"Ah," said Ca.n.a.lis, "permit me, my juvenile friend, to abide by the beautiful d.u.c.h.ess who is all my joy."

"You are right, you are right!" cried Ernest. However, the young secretary read and re-read Modeste's letter, striving to guess the mind of its hidden writer.

"There is not the least fine-writing here," he said, "she does not even talk of your genius; she speaks to your heart. In your place I should feel tempted by this fragrance of modesty,--this proposed agreement--"

"Then, sign it!" cried Ca.n.a.lis, laughing; "answer the letter and go to the end of the adventure yourself. You shall tell me the results three months hence--if the affair lasts so long."

Four days later Modeste received the following letter, written on extremely fine paper, protected by two envelopes, and sealed with the arms of Ca.n.a.lis.

Mademoiselle,--The admiration for fine works (allowing that my books are such) implies something so lofty and sincere as to protect you from all light jesting, and to justify before the sternest judge the step you have taken in writing to me.

But first I must thank you for the pleasure which such proofs of sympathy afford, even though we may not merit them,--for the maker of verses and the true poet are equally certain of the intrinsic worth of their writings,--so readily does self-esteem lend itself to praise. The best proof of friendship that I can give to an unknown lady in exchange for a faith which allays the sting of criticism, is to share with her the harvest of my own experience, even at the risk of dispelling her most vivid illusions.

Mademoiselle, the n.o.blest adornment of a young girl is the flower of a pure and saintly and irreproachable life. Are you alone in the world? If you are, there is no need to say more. But if you have a family, a father or a mother, think of all the sorrow that might come to them from such a letter as yours addressed to a poet of whom you know nothing personally. All writers are not angels; they have many defects. Some are frivolous, heedless, foppish, ambitious, dissipated; and, believe me, no matter how imposing innocence may be, how chivalrous a poet is, you will meet with many a degenerate troubadour in Paris ready to cultivate your affection only to betray it. By such a man your letter would be interpreted otherwise than it is by me. He would see a thought that is not in it, which you, in your innocence, have not suspected. There are as many natures as there are writers. I am deeply flattered that you have judged me capable of understanding you; but had you, perchance, fallen upon a hypocrite, a scoffer, one whose books may be melancholy but whose life is a perpetual carnival, you would have found as the result of your generous imprudence an evil-minded man, the frequenter of green-rooms, perhaps a hero of some gay resort. In the bower of clematis where you dream of poets, can you smell the odor of the cigar which drives all poetry from the ma.n.u.script?

But let us look still further. How could the dreamy, solitary life you lead, doubtless by the sea-sh.o.r.e, interest a poet, whose mission it is to imagine all, and to paint all? What reality can equal imagination? The young girls of the poets are so ideal that no living daughter of Eve can compete with them. And now tell me, what will you gain,--you, a young girl, brought up to be the virtuous mother of a family,--if you learn to comprehend the terrible agitations of a poet's life in this dreadful capital, which may be defined by one sentence,--the h.e.l.l in which men love.

If the desire to brighten the monotonous existence of a young girl thirsting for knowledge has led you to take your pen in hand and write to me, has not the step itself the appearance of degradation? What meaning am I to give to your letter? Are you one of a rejected caste, and do you seek a friend far away from you?

Or, are you afflicted with personal ugliness, yet feeling within you a n.o.ble soul which can give and receive a confidence? Alas, alas, the conclusion to be drawn is grievous. You have said too much, or too little; you have gone too far, or not far enough.

Either let us drop this correspondence, or, if you continue it, tell me more than in the letter you have now written me.

But, mademoiselle, if you are young, if you are beautiful, if you have a home, a family, if in your heart you have the precious ointment, the spikenard, to pour out, as did Magdalene on the feet of Jesus, let yourself be won by a man worthy of you; become what every pure young girl should be,--a good woman, the virtuous mother of a family. A poet is the saddest conquest that a girl can make; he is full of vanity, full of angles that will sharply wound a woman's proper pride, and kill a tenderness which has no experience of life. The wife of a poet should love him long before she marries him; she must train herself to the charity of angels, to their forbearance, to all the virtues of motherhood. Such qualities, mademoiselle, are but germs in a young girl.

Hear the whole truth,--do I not owe it to you in return for your intoxicating flattery? If it is a glorious thing to marry a great renown, remember also that you must soon discover a superior man to be, in all that makes a man, like other men. He therefore poorly realizes the hopes that attach to him as a phoenix. He becomes like a woman whose beauty is over-praised, and of whom we say: "I thought her far more lovely." She has not warranted the portrait painted by the fairy to whom I owe your letter,--the fairy whose name is Imagination.

Believe me, the qualities of the mind live and thrive only in a sphere invisible, not in daily life; the wife of a poet bears the burden; she sees the jewels manufactured, but she never wears them. If the glory of the position fascinates you, hear me now when I tell you that its pleasures are soon at an end. You will suffer when you find so many asperities in a nature which, from a distance, you thought equable, and such coldness at the shining summit. Moreover, as women never set their feet within the world of real difficulties, they cease to appreciate what they once admired as soon as they think they see the inner mechanism of it.

I close with a last thought, in which there is no disguised entreaty; it is the counsel of a friend. The exchange of souls can take place only between persons who are resolved to hide nothing from each other. Would you show yourself for such as you are to an unknown man? I dare not follow out the consequences of that idea.

Deign to accept, mademoiselle, the homage which we owe to all women, even those who are disguised and masked.

So this was the letter she had worn between her flesh and her corset above her palpitating heart throughout one whole day! For this she had postponed the reading until the midnight hour when the household slept, waiting for the solemn silence with the eager anxiety of an imagination on fire! For this she had blessed the poet by antic.i.p.ation, reading a thousand letters ere she opened one,--fancying all things, except this drop of cold water falling upon the vaporous forms of her illusion, and dissolving them as prussic acid dissolves life. What could she do but hide herself in her bed, blow out her candle, bury her face in the sheets and weep?

All this happened during the first days of July. But Modeste presently got up, walked across the room and opened the window. She wanted air.

The fragrance of the flowers came to her with the peculiar freshness of the odors of the night. The sea, lighted by the moon, sparkled like a mirror. A nightingale was singing in a tree. "Ah, there is the poet!"

thought Modeste, whose anger subsided at once. Bitter reflections chased each other through her mind. She was cut to the quick; she wished to re-read the letter, and lit a candle; she studied the sentences so carefully studied when written; and ended by hearing the wheezing voice of the outer world.

"He is right, and I am wrong," she said to herself. "But who could ever believe that under the starry mantle of a poet I should find nothing but one of Moliere's old men?"

When a woman or young girl is taken in the act, "flagrante delicto," she conceives a deadly hatred to the witness, the author, or the object of her fault. And so the true, the single-minded, the untamed and untamable Modeste conceived within her soul an unquenchable desire to get the better of that righteous spirit, to drive him into some fatal inconsistency, and so return him blow for blow. This girl, this child, as we may call her, so pure, whose head alone had been misguided,--partly by her reading, partly by her sister's sorrows, and more perhaps by the dangerous meditations of her solitary life,--was suddenly caught by a ray of sunshine flickering across her face. She had been standing for three hours on the sh.o.r.es of the vast sea of Doubt.

Nights like these are never forgotten. Modeste walked straight to her little Chinese table, a gift from her father, and wrote a letter dictated by the infernal spirit of vengeance which palpitates in the hearts of young girls.

CHAPTER VIII. BLADE TO BLADE

To Monsieur de Ca.n.a.lis:

Monsieur,--You are certainly a great poet, and you are something more,--an honest man. After showing such loyal frankness to a young girl who was stepping to the verge of an abyss, have you enough left to answer without hypocrisy or evasion the following question?

Would you have written the letter I now hold in answer to mine, --would your ideas, your language have been the same,--had some one whispered in your ear (what may prove true), Mademoiselle O.

d'Este M. has six millions and does intend to have a dunce for a master?

Admit the supposition for a moment. Be with me what you are with yourself; fear nothing. I am wiser than my twenty years; nothing that is frank can hurt you in my mind. When I have read your confidence, if you deign to make it, you shall receive from me an answer to your first letter.