CHAPTER II

Return of Adolphe de Leuven--He shows me a corner of the artistic and literary world--The death of Holbein and the death of Orcagna--Entrance into the green-rooms--Bürger's _Lénore_--First thoughts of my vocation

In the meantime, de Leuven returned to Villers-Cotterets, after five or six months' absence. His return was to open out new fields for my ambitions--ambitions, however, which I believed were capable of being fulfilled. If you throw a stone into a lake, however large the lake may be, the first circle it will make round it, after its fall, will go on growing and multiplying itself, even as do our days and our desires, until the last one touches the bank--that is to say, eternity.

Adolphe returned and brought Lafarge back with him. Poor Lafarge! Do you remember the brilliant head clerk, who returned to his native place in an elegant carriage, drawn by a mettlesome steed? Well, he had bought a practice, but there the progress of his rising fortune had stopped. By some inconceivable fatality, although he was young, good-looking, clever, perhaps even because he possessed all these gifts, which are perfectly useless to a lawyer, he had not found a wife to pay for the practice, so he had been obliged to sell it again, and, disgusted with the law, he had taken to literature. De Leuven, who had taken notice of him in Villers-Cotterets, found him out in Paris and returned with him. Some of his ancient splendour still stuck to the poor fellow, but you might seek in vain for any real stability at the base of his fresh plans for the future; those fleeting clouds hardly got beyond the stage of hopes. During his stay in Paris a great change had come over Adolphe's character--a change which was to react on me.

At M. Arnault's house, in which he had been a guest, Adolphe had had a closer view of the literary world than he had previously caught glimpses of in the house of Talma. He had there made the acquaintance of Scribe, who was already at the zenith of his fame. He met Mademoiselle Duchesnois there, who at that time was Telleville's mistress, and who recited _Marie Stuart._ There he became acquainted with M. de Jouy, who had finished his _Sylla;_ Lucien Arnault, who had begun his _Régulus_; Pichat, who, while composing his _Brennus_ and thinking out his _Léonidas_ and _William Tell_, was facing a future in which, his first wreath on his head and his first palm in his hand, Death lurked, waiting for him. He had then dropped from these lofty heights in the regions of art to inferior places, where he became acquainted with Soulié, who was publishing poems in the _Mercure_; with Rousseau, that Pylades of Romieu whom Orestes had left one day at the turning of the road which led to his sub-prefecture; with Ferdinand Langlé, the fickle lover of poor little Fleuriet, upon whom, it is said, a notorious poisoner tried the deadly powder with which he was later to kill his friend; with Théaulon, that delightful person and indefatigable worker, who worked only in the hope that some day he would be able to be idle, but who never had time to be idle, who was cradled for a brief time in the arms of Love, but who was never really to rest until he lay on the bosom of Death. This poor Epicurean, who by dint of imagination saw his life in rosy garb, although for him it was clothed in black, wrote these four lines on the door of his study: they express at once his easy carelessness and his gentle philosophy--

Loin du sot, du fat et du traître, Ici ma constance attendra: Et l'amour qui viendra peut-être, Et la mort qui du moins viendra!

Death came, poor Théaulon! Came all too soon, for thee as for Pichat, for Soulié, for Balzac; for there are two Deaths charged by Providence with the task of hurling men into eternity: the one inexorable, icy, impassive, obeying the sad laws of destruction; the Death of Holbein, the Death in the cemetery of Bâle, the Death which is ever intermingled with life, hiding its skeleton face under the most capricious of masks, veiling its bony body beneath the king's mantle, in the gilded dress of the courtesan, under the filthy rags of the beggar, walking side by side with us; an invisible but ever present spectre; a lugubrious guest, a sepulchral comrade, the supreme friend who receives us in its arms when we fall over the edge of life, and who gently lays us to rest for ever under the cold damp stones of the tomb;--the other, sister of the above, daughter too of Erebus and of Night, unexpected, spiteful, lies in ambush at a turning-point of happiness or prosperity, ready like a vulture or a panther to pounce or spring out upon its prey; this is the Death of Orcagna, the Death of the Campo-Santo in Pisa; Death in life, envious, with cadaverous hue, hair flying wildly in the wind, eyes flashing like those of a lynx, the Death which took Petrarch in the midst of his triumph, Raphael in the midst of his love affairs; before whom all joy and glory and riches pale; that power which, passing rapidly, heedlessly and inexorably over the unfortunate victims who appeal to it, strikes down in the midst of their flowers, their wine and their perfumes, the handsome youth crowned with myrtle, the lovely maiden rose-crowned, the laurel-wreathed poet, and drags them brutally to the grave, their eyes open, their hearts yet beating, their arms stretched out towards the light, the day and the sunshine! Orcagna! Orcagna, great sculptor, great painter and, above all, great poet! how many times have I trembled as I touched the hand of a beloved child, or kissed the face of a mistress who had made me happy! for I had an inward vision of that Death of the Campo-Santo at Pisa, passing in the distance, dark, threatening like a sailing cloud; then, the next day, I heard the words, "He is dead!" or "She is dead!" and it was almost always a young genius whose light had gone out, a young soul that had gone to its Maker.

This then, was the world de Leuven had seen during his stay in Paris, and he brought a reflection of its unknown brilliance to me, the poor provincial lad, buried in the depths of a little town. De Leuven had done more than look into it: he had entered the tabernacle, he had touched the ark! He had been permitted the honour of having some of his work read before M. Poirson, the high priest of the Gymnase, and before his sacristan, M. Dormeuil. Of course the work was declined after it had been read; but--like the pebble which lies near the rose and shares the scent of the queen of flowers--there remained to de Leuven, from his declined work, an entry into the green-rooms. Oh! that entree to the green-rooms, what a weariness it is to those who have attained it, whilst by those who have not attained it, it is regarded as the most coveted thing on earth! Adolphe, however, had been in it for such a short time that _ennui_ had not yet had time to spring up, and so the dazzling glow of the honour still remained with him. It was the spirit of this enchantment which he transferred to me. At that time, Perlet was at his best, Fleuriet in the heyday of her beauty, Léontine Fay at the height of her popularity. The latter, poor child, at the age of eight or nine, had been forced to learn a craft in which a grown-up woman might have succumbed; but what did that matter? They had consoled themselves in advance for everything, even for her death; for they had already made so much money out of her, that, in the event of her death, they could afford to go to her burial in fine style.

Adolphe's return, then, was a great event to me; like Don Cléophas, I hung on the cloak of my fine _diable boiteux_, and he, telling me what he had seen in the theatres, made me see also. What long walks we took together! How many times did I stop him, as he passed from one artiste to another, saying, after he had exhausted all the celebrities of the Gymnase, "And Talma? And Mademoiselle Mars and Mademoiselle Duchesnois?" And he good-naturedly held forth upon the genius and talent and good-fellowship of those eminent artistes, playing upon the unknown notes of the keyboard of my imagination, causing ambitious and sonorous chords to vibrate within me that had hitherto lain dormant, the possession of which astonished me greatly when I began to realise their existence. Then poor Adolphe little by little conceived a singular idea, which was to make me share, on my own behalf, the hopes he had indulged in for himself; to rouse in me the ambition to become, if not a Scribe, an Alexandre Duval, an Ancelot, a Jouy, an Arnault or a Casimir Delavigne, at least a Fulgence, a Mazère or a Vulpian. And it must be admitted the notion was ambitious indeed; for, I repeat, I had never received any proper education, I knew nothing, and it was not until very much later, in 1833 or 1834, on the publication of the first edition of my _Impressions de Voyage_, that people began to perceive I had genius. In 1820 I must confess I had not a shadow of it.

A week before Adolphe's return had brought to me the first vivifying gleam of light from the outside world 3 the hemmed-in and restricted life of a provincial town had seemed to me the limit of my ambition, a salary of say fifteen or eighteen hundred francs 3 for I never dreamt of becoming a solicitor: first because I had no vocation for it; for although I had spent three years in copying deeds of sale, bonds and marriage contracts, at Maître Mennesson's, I was no more learned in the law than I was in music, after three years of solfeggio with old Hiraux. It was evident, therefore, that the law was no more my vocation than music, and that I should never expound the Code any better than I played on the violin. This distressed my mother dreadfully, and all her kind friends said to her--

"My dear, just listen to what I say: your son is a born idler, who will never do anything."

And my mother would heave a sigh, and say, as she kissed me, "Is it true, my dear boy, what they tell me?"

And I would answer naïvely, "I don't know, mother!"

What else could I reply? I could see nothing beyond the last houses in my natal town, and even though I might find something that responded to my heart inside the city boundary, I searched in vain therein for anything that could satisfy my mind and imagination.

De Leuven made a gap in the wall which closed me in, and through that gap I began to perceive something to aim at as yet undefined on the infinite horizon beyond.

De la Ponce also influenced me at this period. As before related, I had translated with him the beautiful Italian romance--or rather diatribe--of _Ugo Foscolo_, that imitation of Goethe's _Werther_ which the author of the poem called _Sépulcres_ contrived, by dint of patriotic feeling and talent, to develop into a national epic. Moreover, de la Ponce, who wished to make me regret that I had abandoned the study of the German language, translated for my benefit Bürger's beautiful ballad _Lénore._ The reading of this work, which belonged to a type of literature of which I was completely ignorant, produced a deep impression on my mind; it was like one of those landscapes one sees in dreams, in which one dares not enter, so different is it from everyday surroundings. The terrible refrain which the sinister horseman repeats over and over again to the trembling betrothed whom he carries off on his spectre-steed,

"Hourra!--fantôme, les morts vont vite!"

bears so little resemblance to the conceits of Demoustier, to Parny's amorous rhymes or to the elegies of the Chevalier Bertin, that the reading of the tragic German ballad made a complete revolution in my soul. That very night, I tried to put it into verse; but, as may well be understood, the task was beyond my powers. I broke the wings of my poor fledgeling Muse, and I began my literary career as I had begun my first love-making, by a defeat none the less terrible because it was a secret one, but quite as incontestable in my own estimation.

What mattered it? These were indubitably my first steps towards the future God had destined, untried totterings like the steps of a child just learning to walk, who stumbles and falls as soon as he tears himself away from his nurse's leading-strings, but who picks himself up again and, aching after every fall, continues to advance, urged forward by hope, which whispers in his ear, "Walk, child, walk! it is by means of suffering that you become a man, by perseverance that you become great!"