The Parisians Part 36

"Oh, yes; how can I help it after such encouragement?" She held out her hand to Savarin, who kissed it gallantly; then her eyes intuitively sought Graham's. By that time he had recovered his self-possession. He met her look tranquilly, and with a smile; but the smile chilled her, she knew not why.

The conversation then pa.s.sed upon books and authors of the day, and was chiefly supported by the satirical pleasantries of Savarin, who was in high good-spirits.

Graham, who, as we know, had come with the hope of seeing Isaura alone, and with the intention of uttering words which, however guarded, might yet in absence serve as links of union, now no longer coveted that interview, no longer meditated those words. He soon rose to depart.

"Will you dine with me to-morrow?" asked Savarin. "Perhaps I may induce the Signorina and Rameau to offer you the temptation of meeting them."

"By to-morrow I shall be leagues away."

Isaura's heart sank. This time the ma.n.u.script was fairly forgotten.

"You never said you were going so soon," cried Savarin. "When do you come back, vile deserter?"

"I cannot even guess. Monsieur Rameau, count me among your subscribers.

Mademoiselle, my best regards to Signora Venosta. When I see you again, no doubt you will have become famous."

Isaura here could not control herself. She rose impulsively, and approached him, holding out her hand, and attempting a smile.

"But not famous in the way that you warned me from," she said in whispered tones. "You are friends with me still?" It was like the piteous wail of a child seeking to make it up with one who wants to quarrel, the child knows not why. Graham was moved, but what could he say? Could he have the right to warn her from this profession also; forbid all desires, all roads of fame to this brilliant aspirant? Even a declared and accepted lover might well have deemed that that would be to ask too much. He replied, "Yes, always a friend, if you could ever need one." Her hand slid from his, and she turned away wounded to the quick.

"Have you your coupe at the door?" asked Savarin.

"Simply a fiacre."

"And are going back at once to Paris?"

"Yes."

"Will you kindly drop me in the Rue de Rivoli?"

"Charmed to be of use."

CHAPTER XI.

As the fiacre bore to Paris Savarin and Graham, the former said, "I cannot conceive what rich simpleton could entertain so high an opinion of Gustave Rameau as to select a man so young, and of reputation though promising so undecided, for an enterprise which requires such a degree of tact and judgment as the conduct of a new journal,--and a journal, too, which is to address itself to the beau monde. However, it is not for me to criticise a selection which brings a G.o.d-send to myself."

"To yourself? You jest; you have a journal of your own. It can only be through an excess of good-nature that you lend your name and pen to the service of M. Gustave Rameau."

"My good-nature does not go to that extent. It is Rameau who confers a service upon me. Peste! mon cher, we French authors have not the rents of you rich English milords. And though I am the most economical of our tribe, yet that journal of mine has failed me of late; and this morning I did not exactly see how I was to repay a sum I had been obliged to borrow of a money-lender,--for I am too proud to borrow of friends, and too sagacious to borrow of publishers,--when in walks ce cher pet.i.t Gustave with an offer, for a few trifles towards starting this new-born journal, which makes a new man of me. Now I am in the undertaking, my amour propre and my reputation are concerned in its success; and I shall take care that collaborateurs of whose company I am not ashamed are in the same boat. But that charming girl, Isaura! What an enigma the gift of the pen is! No one can ever guess who has it until tried."

"The young lady's ma.n.u.script, then, really merits the praise you bestowed on it?"

"Much more praise, though a great deal of blame, which I did not bestow,--for in a first work faults insure success as much as beauties.

Anything better than tame correctness. Yes, her first work, to judge by what is written, must make a hit,--a great hit. And that will decide her career. A singer, an actress, may retire,--often does when she marries an author; but once an author always an author."

"Ah! is it so? If you had a beloved daughter, Savarin, would you encourage her to be an author?"

"Frankly, no: princ.i.p.ally because in that case the chances are that she would marry an author; and French authors, at least in the imaginative school, make very uncomfortable husbands."

"Ah! you think the Signorina will marry one of those uncomfortable husbands,--M. Rameau, perhaps?"

"Rameau! Hein! nothing more likely. That beautiful face of his has its fascination. And to tell you the truth, my wife, who is a striking ill.u.s.tration of the truth that what woman wills heaven wills, is bent upon that improvement in Gustave's moral life which she thinks a union with Mademoiselle Cicogna would achieve. At all events, the fair Italian would have in Rameau a husband who would not suffer her to bury her talents under a bushel. If she succeeds as a writer (by succeeding I mean making money), he will see that her ink-bottle is never empty; and if she don't succeed as a writer, he will take care that the world shall gain an actress or a singer. For Gustave Rameau has a great taste for luxury and show; and whatever his wife can make, I will venture to say that he will manage to spend."

"I thought you had an esteem and regard for Mademoiselle Cicogna. It is Madame your wife, I suppose, who has a grudge against her?"

"On the contrary, my wife idolizes her."

"Savages sacrifice to their idols the things they deem of value; civilized Parisians sacrifice their idols themselves, and to a thing that is worthless."

"Rameau is not worthless; he has beauty and youth and talent. My wife thinks more highly of him than I do; but I must respect a man who has found admirers so sincere as to set him up in a journal, and give him carte blanche for terms to contributors. I know of no man in Paris more valuable to me. His worth to me this morning is thirty thousand francs.

I own I do not think him likely to be a very safe husband; but then French female authors and artists seldom take any husbands except upon short leases. There are no vulgar connubial prejudices in the pure atmosphere of art. Women of genius, like Madame de Grantmesnil, and perhaps like our charming young friend, resemble canary-birds,--to sing their best you must separate them from their mates."

The Englishman suppressed a groan, and turned the conversation.

When he had set down his lively companion, Vane dismissed his fiacre, and walked to his lodgings musingly.

"No," he said inly; "I must wrench myself from the very memory of that haunting face,--the friend and pupil of Madame de Grantmesnil, the a.s.sociate of Gustave Rameau, the rival of Julie Caumartin, the aspirant to that pure atmosphere of art in which there are no vulgar connubial prejudices! Could I--whether I be rich or poor--see in her the ideal of an English wife? As it is--as it is--with this mystery which oppresses me, which, till solved, leaves my own career insoluble,--as it is, how fortunate that I did not find her alone; did not utter the words that would fain have leaped from my heart; did not say, 'I may not be the rich man I seem, but in that case I shall be yet more ambitious, because struggle and labour are the sinews of ambition! Should I be rich, will you adorn my station? Should I be poor, will you enrich poverty with your smile? And can you, in either case, forego--really, painlessly forego, as you led me to hope--the pride in your own art?' My ambition were killed did I marry an actress, a singer. Better that than the hungerer after excitements which are never allayed, the struggler in a career which admits of no retirement,--the woman to whom marriage is no goal, who remains to the last the property of the public, and glories to dwell in a house of gla.s.s into which every bystander has a right to peer. Is this the ideal of an Englishman's wife and home? No, no!--woe is me, no!"

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.

A few weeks after the date of the preceding chapter, a gay party of men were a.s.sembled at supper in one of the private salons of the Maison Doree. The supper was given by Frederic Lemercier, and the guests were, though in various ways, more or less distinguished. Rank and fashion were not unworthily represented by Alain de Rochebriant and Enguerrand de Vandemar, by whose supremacy as "lion" Frederic still felt rather humbled, though Alain had contrived to bring them familiarly together.

Art, Literature, and the Bourse had also their representatives in Henri Bernard, a rising young portrait-painter, whom the Emperor honoured with his patronage, the Vicomte de Braze, and M. Savarin. Science was not altogether forgotten, but contributed its agreeable delegate in the person of the eminent physician to whom we have been before introduced,--Dr. Bacourt. Doctors in Paris are not so serious as they mostly are in London; and Bacourt, a pleasant philosopher of the school of Aristippus, was no unfrequent nor ungenial guest at any banquet in which the Graces relaxed their zones. Martial glory was also represented at that social gathering by a warrior, bronzed and decorated, lately arrived from Algiers, on which arid soil he had achieved many laurels and the rank of Colonel. Finance contributed Duplessis. Well it might; for Duplessis had just a.s.sisted the host to a splendid coup at the Bourse.

"Ah, cher Monsieur Savarin," says Enguerrand de Vandemar, whose patrician blood is so pure from revolutionary taint that he is always instinctively polite, "what a masterpiece in its way is that little paper of yours in the 'Sens Commun,' upon the connection between the national character and the national diet! so genuinely witty!--for wit is but truth made amusing."

"You flatter me," replied Savarin, modestly; "but I own I do think there is a smattering of philosophy in that trifle. Perhaps, however, the character of a people depends more on its drinks than its food. The wines of Italy, heady, irritable, ruinous to the digestion, contribute to the character which belongs to active brains and disordered livers.

The Italians conceive great plans, but they cannot digest them. The English common-people drink beer, and the beerish character is stolid, rude, but stubborn and enduring. The English middle-cla.s.s imbibe port and sherry; and with these strong potations their ideas become obfuscated. Their character has no liveliness; amus.e.m.e.nt is not one of their wants; they sit at home after dinner and doze away the fumes of their beverage in the dulness of domesticity. If the English aristocracy are more vivacious and cosmopolitan, it is thanks to the wines of France, which it is the mode with them to prefer; but still, like all plagiarists, they are imitators, not inventors; they borrow our wines and copy our manners. The Germans--"

"Insolent barbarians!" growled the French Colonel, twirling his mustache; "if the Emperor were not in his dotage, their Sadowa would ere this have cost them their Rhine."

"The Germans," resumed Savarin, unheeding the interruption, "drink acrid wines, varied with beer, to which last their commonalty owes a quasi resemblance in stupidity and endurance to the English ma.s.ses. Acrid wines rot the teeth Germans are afflicted with toothache from infancy.

All people subject to toothache are sentimental. Goethe was a martyr to toothache. 'Werther' was written in one of those paroxysms which predispose genius to suicide. But the German character is not all toothache; beer and tobacco step in to the relief of Rhenish acridities, blend philosophy with sentiment, and give that patience in detail which distinguishes their professors and their generals. Besides, the German wines in themselves have other qualities than that of acridity. Taken with sourkrout and stewed prunes, they produce fumes of self-conceit.

A German has little of French vanity; he has German self-esteem. He extends the esteem of self to those around him; his home, his village, his city, his country,--all belong to him. It is a duty he owes to himself to defend them. Give him his pipe and his sabre, and, Monsieur le Colonel, believe me, you will never take the Rhine from him."

"P-r-r," cried the Colonel; "but we have had the Rhine."