Chapter 42

It cost Clélia an effort to write the last sentence but one of the above note. It was in everybody's mouth in court circles that Mme. Sanseverina was manifesting a great deal of friendly interest in Count Baldi, that extremely handsome man and quondam friend of the Marquise Raversi. The one thing certain was that he and the Marquise had separated, and he was alleged to have behaved most shamefully toward the lady who for six years had been to him a mother and given him his standing in society.

The next morning, long before the sun was up, Grillo entered Fabrice's cell, laid down what seemed to be a pretty heavy package, and vanished without saying a word. The package contained a good-sized loaf of bread, plentifully ornamented with, little crosses made with a pen. Fabrice covered them with kisses. Why? Because he was in love. Beside the loaf lay a rouleau incased in many thicknesses of paper; it contained six thousand francs in sequins. Finally, Fabrice discovered a handsome brand-new prayer-book: these words, in a writing he was beginning to be acquainted with, were written on the fly-leaf:--

"_Poison!_ Beware the water, the wine, everything; confine yourself to chocolate. Give the untasted dinner to the dog; it will not do to show distrust; the enemy would have recourse to other methods. For God's sake, be cautious! no rashness!"

Fabrice made haste to remove the telltale writing which might have compromised Clélia, and to tear out a number of leaves from the prayer-book, with which he made several alphabets; each letter was neatly formed with powdered charcoal moistened with wine. The alphabets were quite dry when at a quarter to twelve Clélia appeared at the window of the aviary. "The main thing now is to persuade her to use them," said Fabrice to himself. But as it happened, fortunately, she had much to say to the young prisoner in regard to the plan to poison him (a dog belonging to one of the kitchen-maids had died after eating a dish cooked for Fabrice), so that Clélia not only made no objection to the use of the alphabets, but had herself prepared one in the highest style of art with ink. Under this method, which did not work altogether smoothly at the beginning, the conversation lasted an hour and a half, which was as long as Clélia dared remain in the aviary. Two or three times, when Fabrice trespassed on forbidden ground and alluded to matters that were taboo, she made no answer and walked away to feed her birds.

Fabrice requested that when she sent him his supply of water at evening she would accompany it with one of her alphabets, which, being traced in ink, were legible at a greater distance. He did not fail to write her a good long letter, and was careful to put in it no soft nonsense--at least, of a nature to offend.

The next day, in their alphabetical conversation, Clélia had no reproach to make him. She informed him that there was less to be apprehended from the poisoners. Barbone had been waylaid and nearly murdered by the lovers of the Governor's scullery-maids; he would scarcely venture to show his face in the kitchens again. She owned up to stealing a counter-poison from her father; she sent it to him with directions how to use it, but the main thing was to reject at once all food that seemed to have an unnatural taste.

Clélia had subjected Don Cesare to a rigorous examination, without succeeding in discovering whence came the six thousand francs received by Fabrice. In any case, it was a good sign: it showed that the severity of his confinement was relaxing.

The poison episode had a very favorable effect on our hero's amatory enterprise: still, he could never extort anything at all resembling a confession of love; but he had the felicity of living on terms of intimacy with Clélia. Every morning, and often at evening also, there was a long conversation with the alphabets; every evening at nine o'clock Clélia received a lengthy letter, and sometimes accorded it a few brief words of answer; she sent him the daily paper and an occasional new book; finally, the rugged Grillo had been so far tamed as to keep Fabrice supplied with bread and wine, which were handed him daily by Clélia's maid. This led honest Grillo to conclude that the Governor was not of the same mind as those who had engaged Barbone to poison the young Monsignor; at which he rejoiced exceedingly, as did his comrades, for there was a saying current in the prison--"You have only to look Monsignor del Dongo in the face; he is certain to give you money."

Fabrice was very pale; lack of exercise was injuring his health: but for all that he had never been so happy. The tone of the conversation between Clélia and him was familiar and often gay. The only moments of the girl's life not beset with dark forebodings and remorse were those spent in conversing with him. She was so thoughtless as to remark one day:--

"I admire your delicacy: because I am the Governor's daughter you have nothing to say to me of the pleasures of freedom!"

"That's because I am not so absurd as to have aspirations in that direction," replied Fabrice. "How often could I hope to see you if I were living in Parma, a free man again? And life would not be worth living if I could not tell you all my thoughts--no, not that exactly: you take precious good care I don't tell you _all_ my thoughts! But in spite of your cruel tyranny, to live without seeing you daily would be a far worse punishment than captivity; in all my life I was never so happy! Isn't it strange to think happiness was awaiting me in a prison?"

"There is a good deal to be said on that point," rejoined Clélia, with an air that all at once became very serious, almost threatening.

"What!" exclaimed Fabrice, in alarm, "am I in danger of losing the small place I have won in your heart, my sole joy in this world?"

"Yes," she replied. "Although your reputation in society is that of a gentleman and gallant man, I have reason to believe you are not acting ingenuously toward me. But I don't wish to discuss this matter to-day."

This strange exordium cast an element of embarrassment into the conversation, and tears were often in the eyes of both.

Copyrighted by George H. Richmond and Company.

WILLEM BILDERDIJK

(1756-1831)

Willem Bilderdijk's personality, even more than his genius, exerted so powerful an influence over his time that it has been said that to think of a Dutchman of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was to think of Bilderdijk. He stands as the representative of the great literary and intellectual awakening which took place in Holland immediately after that country became part of the French empire. The history of literature has many examples of how, under political disturbances, the agitated mind has sought refuge in literary and scientific pursuits, and it seemed at that time as if Dutch literature was entering a new Golden Age. The country had never known better poets; but it was the poetry of the eighteenth century, to quote Ten Brink, "ceremonious and stagy."

In 'Herinnering van mijne Kindheit' (Reminiscences of My Childhood), a book which is not altogether to be relied upon, Bilderdijk gives a charming picture of his father, a physician in Amsterdam, but speaks of his mother in less flattering terms. He was born in Amsterdam in 1756. At an early age he suffered an injury to his foot, a peasant boy having carelessly stepped on it; attempts were made to cure him by continued bleedings, and the result was that he was confined to his bed for twelve years. These years laid the foundation of a character lacking in power to love and to call forth love, and developing into an almost fierce hypochondria, full of complaints and fears of death. In these years, however, he acquired the information and the wonderful power of language which appear in his sinewy verse.

One of his poems, dated 1770, has been preserved, but is principally interesting as a first attempt. Others, written in his twentieth year, were prize poems, and are sufficiently characterized by their titles:--'Kunst wordt door Arbeid verkregen' (Art came through Toil), and 'Inloed der Dichthunst op het Staets bestuur' (Influence of Poetry on Statesmanship). When he went to Leyden in 1780 to study law, he was already famous. His examinations passed, he settled at the Hague to practice, and in 1785 married Katharina Rebekka Woesthoven. The following year he published his romance, 'Elius,' in seven songs. The romance ultimately became his favorite form of verse; but this was not the form now called romance. It was the rhymed narrative of the eighteenth century, written with endless care and reflection, and in his case with so superior a treatment of language that no Dutch poet since Huygens had approached it.

The year 1795 was the turning-point in Bilderdijk's life. He had been brought up in unswerving faith in the cause of the house of Orange, was a fanatic monarchist and Calvinist, "anti-revolutionary, anti-Barneveldtian, anti-Loevesteinisch, anti-liberal" (thus Da Costa), a warm supporter of William the Fifth, and at the entrance of the French in 1795 he refused to give his oath of allegiance to the cause of the citizens and the sovereignty of the people. He was exiled, left the Hague, and went to London, and later to Brunswick. This was not altogether a misfortune for him, nor an unrelieved sorrow. He had been more successful as poet than as husband or financier, and by his compulsory banishment escaped his financial difficulties and what he considered the chains of his married life. In London Bilderdijk met his countryman the painter Schweikhardt; and with this meeting begins a period of his life over which his admirers would fain draw a veil. With Schweikhardt were his two daughters, of whom the younger, Katherina Wilhelmina, became Bilderdijk's first pupil, and, excepting his "intellectual son," Isaak da Costa, probably his only one. Besides her great poetic gifts she possessed beauty and charm. She fell in love with her teacher and followed him to Brunswick, where she lived in his house under the name of Frau van Heusden. In spite of this arrangement, the poet seems to have considered himself a most faithful husband; and he did his best to persuade his wife to join him with their children, but naturally without success. In 1802 the marriage was legally annulled, and Frau van Heusden took his name. She did her best to atone for the blot on her repute by a self-sacrificing lovableness, and was in close sympathy with Bilderdijk on the intellectual side. Like him she was familiar with all the resources of the art of poetry. Most famous of her poems are the long one 'Rodrigo de Goth,' and her touching, graceful 'Gedichten voor Kinderen' (Poems for Children). Bilderdijk's verses show what she was to him:--

In the shadow of my verdure, firmly on my trunk depending, Grew the tender branch of cedar, never longing once to leave me; Faithfully through rain and tempest, modest at my side it rested, Bearing to my honor solely the first twig it might its own call; Fair the wreath thy flowers made me for my knotted trunk fast withering, And my soul with pride was swelling at the crown of thy young blossoms; Straight and strong and firmly rooted, tall and green thy head arises, Bright the glory of its freshness; never yet by aught bedimmed. Lo! my crown to thine now bending, only thine the radiant freshness, And my soul finds rest and comfort in thy sheltering foliage.

Meanwhile he was no better off materially. The Duke of Brunswick, who had known him previously, received the famous Dutch exile with open arms, and granted him a pension; but it never sufficed. Many efforts were made to have his decree of exile annulled; but they failed through his own peevish insolence and his boundless ingratitude. King Louis (Bonaparte) of Holland extended his protection to the dissatisfied old poet; and all these royal gentlemen were most generous. When the house of Orange returned to Holland, William I. continued the favor already shown him, obtained a high pension for him, and when it proved insufficient, supplemented it with gifts. In this way Bilderdijk's income in the year 1816 amounted to twenty thousand gold pieces. That this should be sufficient to keep the wolf from the door in a city like Amsterdam, Bilderdijk thought too much to expect, and consequently left in great indignation and went to Leyden in 1817.

But these personal troubles in no way interfered with his talent. On the contrary, the history of literature has seldom known so great an activity and productiveness; all in all, his works amounted to almost a hundred volumes. What he accomplished during his stay in Germany was almost incredible. He gave lessons to exiled Dutch in a great variety of branches, he saw volume upon volume through print; he wrote his famous 'Het Buitenleven' (Country Life) after Delille, he translated Fingal after Ossian, he wrote 'Vaderlandsche Orangezucht' (Patriotic Love for Orange). After his return to Holland he wrote 'De Ziekte der Geleerden' (The Disease of Genius: 1817), 'Leyden's Kamp' (Leyden's Battle: 1808), and the first five songs of 'De Ondergang der eerste Wereld' (Destruction of the First World: 1809), probably his masterpiece; moreover, the dramas 'Floris V.,' 'Willem van Holland,' and 'Kounak.' The volumes published between 1815 and 1819 bore the double signature Willem and Wilhelmina Katherina Bilderdijk.

But it was as though time had left him behind. The younger Holland shook its head over the old gentleman of the past century, with his antagonism for the poetry of the day and his rage against Shakespeare and the latter's "puerile" 'King Lear.' For to Bilderdijk even more than to Voltaire, Shakespeare was an abomination. Then in 1830 he received the severest blow of his life: Katherina Wilhelmina died. This happened in Haarlem, whither he had gone in 1827. With this calamity his strength was broken and his life at an end. He followed her in 1831.

He was in every way a son of the eighteenth century; he began as a didactic and patriotic poet, and might at first be considered a follower of Jakob Cats. He became principally a lyric poet, but his lyric knew no deep sentiment, no suppressed feeling; its greatness lay in its rhetorical power. His ode to Napoleon may therefore be one of the best to characterize his genius. When he returned to his native country after eleven years' exile, with heart and mind full of Holland, it was old Holland he sought and did not find. He did not understand young Holland. In spite of this, his fame and powerful personality had an attraction for the young; but it was the attraction of a past time, the fascination of the glorious ruin. Young Holland wanted freedom, individual independence, and this Bilderdijk considered a misfortune. "One should not let children, women, and nations know that they possess other rights than those naturally theirs. This matter must be a secret between the prince and his heart and reason,--to the masses it ought always to be kept as hidden as possible." The new age which had made its entry with the cry of Liberty would not tolerate such sentiments, and he stood alone, a powerful, demonic, but incomprehensible spirit.

Aside from his fame as a poet, he deserves to be mentioned as Jacob Grimm's correspondent, as philologist, philosopher, and theologian.

ODE TO BEAUTY

Child of the Unborn! dost thou bend From Him we in the day-beams see, Whose music with the breeze doth blend?-- To feel thy presence is to be. Thou, our soul's brightest effluence--thou Who in heaven's light to earth dost bow, A Spirit 'midst unspiritual clods-- Beauty! who bear'st the stamp profound Of Him with all perfection crowned, Thine image--thine alone--is God's....

How shall I catch a single ray Thy glowing hand from nature wakes-- Steal from the ether-waves of day One of the notes thy world-harp shakes-- Escape that miserable joy, Which dust and self with darkness cloy, Fleeting and false--and, like a bird, Cleave the air-path, and follow thee Through thine own vast infinity, Where rolls the Almighty's thunder-word?

Perfect thy brightness in heaven's sphere, Where thou dost vibrate in the bliss Of anthems ever echoing there! That, that is life--not this--not this: There in the holy, holy row-- And not on earth, so deep below-- Thy music unrepressed may speak; Stay, shrouded, in that holy place;-- Enough that we have seen thy face, And kissed the smiles upon thy cheek.

We stretch our eager hands to thee, And for thine influence pray in vain; The burden of mortality Hath bent us 'neath its heavy chain;-- And there are fetters forged by art, And science cold hath chilled the heart, And wrapped thy god-like crown in night; On waxen wings they soar on high, And when most distant deem, thee nigh-- They quench thy torch, and dream of light.

Child of the Unborn! joy! for thou Shinest in every heavenly flame, Breathest in all the winds that blow, While self-conviction speaks thy name: Oh, let one glance of thine illume The longing soul that bids thee come, And make me feel of heaven, like thee! Shake from thy torch one blazing drop, And to my soul all heaven shall ope, And I--dissolve in melody!

Translated in Westminster Review.

FROM THE 'ODE TO NAPOLEON'

Poesy, nay! Too long art silent! Seize now the lute! Why dost thou tarry? Let sword the Universe inherit, Noblest as prize of war be glory. Let thousand mouths sing hero-actions: E'en so, the glory is not uttered. Earth-gods--an endless life, ambrosial, Find they alone in song enchanting.

Watch thou with care thy heedless fingers Striking upon the lyre so godlike; Hold thou in check thy lightning-flashes, That where they chance to fall are blighting. He who on eagle's wing soars skyward Must at the sun's bright barrier tremble. Frederic, though great in royal throning, Well may amaze the earth, and heaven, When clothed by thunder and the levin Swerves he before the hero's fanfare.

* * * * *

Pause then, Imagination! Portals Hiding the Future, ope your doorways! Earth, the blood-drenched, yields palms and olives. Sword that hath cleft on bone and muscle, Spear that hath drunk the hero's lifeblood, Furrow the soil, as spade and ploughshare. Blasts that alarm from blaring trumpets Laws of fair Peace anon shall herald: Heaven's shame, at last, its end attaining.

Earth, see, O see your sceptres bowing. Gone is the eagle once majestic; On us a cycle new is dawning; Look, from the skies it hath descended. O potent princes, ye the throne-born! See what Almighty will hath destined. Quit ye your seats, in low adoring, Set all the earth, with you, a-kneeling; Or--as the free-born men should perish-- Sink in grave with crown and kingdom.

Glorious in lucent rays, already Brighter than gold a sceptre shineth; No warring realm shall dim its lustre, No earth-storm veil its blaze to dimness. Can it be true that, centuries ended, God's endless realm, the Hebrew, quickens Lifting its horns--though not for always? Shines in the East the sun, like noonday? Shall Hagar's wandering sons be heartened After the Moslem's haughty baiting?

Speed toward us, speed, O days so joyous! Even if blood your cost be reckoned; Speed as in Heaven's gracious favor, Bringing again Heaven's earthly kingdom. Yea, though through waters deep we struggle, Joining in fight with seas of troubles. Suffer we, bear we--hope--be silent! On us shall dawn a coming daybreak-- With it, the world of men be happy!

Translated in the metre of the original, by E. Irenæus Stevenson, for the (World's Best Literature)

SLIGHTED LOVE

AN ORIENTAL ROMANCE

Splendid rose the star of evening, and the gray dusk was a-fading. O'er it with a hand of mildness, now the Night her veil was drawing: Abensaïd, valiant soldier, from Medina's ancient gateway, To the meadows, rich with blossoms, walked in darkest mood of musing-- Where the Guadalete's wild waves foaming wander through the flat lands, Where, within the harbor's safety, loves to wait the weary seaman. Neither hero's mood nor birth-pride eased his spirit of its suffering For his youth's betrothed, Zobeïde; she it was who caused him anguish. Faithless had she him forsaken, she sometime his best-beloved, Left him, though already parted by strange fate, from realm and heirship. Oh, that destiny he girds not--strength it gave him, hero-courage, Added to his lofty spirit, touches of nobler feeling-- 'Tis that she, ill-starred one, leaves him! takes the hand so wrinkled Of that old man, Seville's conqueror! Into the night, along the river, Abensaïd now forth rushes: Loudly to the rocky limits, Echo bears his lamentations. "Faithless maid, more faithless art thou than the sullen water! Harder thou than even the hardened bosom of yon rigid rockwall! Ah, bethinkest thou, Zobeïde, still upon our solemn love-oath? How thy heart, this hour so faithless, once belonged to me, me only? Canst thou yield thy heart, thy beauty, to that old man, dead to love-thoughts? Wilt thou try to love the tyrant lacking love despite his treasure? Dost thou deem the sands of desert higher than are virtue-- honor? Allah grant, then, that he hate thee! That thou lovest yet another! That thou soon thyself surrender to the scorned one's bitter feeling. Rest may night itself deny thee, and may day to thee be terror! Be thy face before thy husband as a thing of nameless loathing! May his eye avoid thee ever, flee the splendor of thy beauty! May he ne'er, in gladsome gathering, stretch his hand to thee for partner! Never gird himself with girdle which for him thy hand embroidered! Let his heart, thy love forsaking, in another love be fettered; The love-tokens of another may his scutcheon flame in battle, While behind thy grated windows year by year, away thou mournest! To thy rival may he offer prisoners that his hand has taken! May the trophies of his victory on his knees to _her_ be proffered! May he hate thee! and thy heart's faith to him be but thing accursed! These things, aye and more still! be thy cure for all my sting and sorrow!" Silent now goes Abensaïd, unto Xeres, in the midnight; Dazzling shone the palace, lighted, festal for the loathsome marriage, Richly-robed Moors were standing 'neath the shimmer of the tapers, On the jubilant procession of the marriage-part proceeded. In the path stands Abensaïd, frowning, as the bridegroom nears him; Strikes the lance into his bosom, with the rage of sharpest vengeance. 'Gainst the heaven rings a loud cry, those at hand their swords are baring-- But he rushes through the weapons, and in safety gains his own hearth.

Translation through the German, in the metre of the original, by E. Irenæus Stevenson.

THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER[17]

From "Country Life"