CHAPTER III

Adolphe reads a play at the Gymnase--M. Dormeuil--_Kenilworth Castle_--M. Warez and Soulié--Mademoiselle Lévesque--The Arnault family--The _Feuille--Marius à Minturnes_--Danton's epigram--The reversed passport--Three fables--_Germanicus_--Inscriptions and epigrams--Ramponneau--The young man and the tilbury-_Extra ecclesiam nulla est salus_--Madame Arnault

It was well I could copy without taking in what I was doing; for Lassagne's conversation, as may be imagined, gave me much to think about. Every day showed me my deplorable ignorance more and more, and, like a traveller lost in a marshy, unstable bog, I did not know whereon to place my feet in order to find that solid ground which would lead me to the end I was trying to reach.

How was it Adolphe had never spoken to me of all these matters? So far reaching were the vistas that opened before me every moment, that I was bewildered. Did Adolphe think all this of little use in connection with the art and practice of literature? Or was it that the kind of literature he wanted me to produce could dispense with all such knowledge? I had often noticed his father shrug his shoulders at our theatrical schemes; was it not perchance that his father, who knew so many things, laughed in his sleeve at me for being so ignorant? And M. Deviolaine, who instinctively (for, except as a valuer and in questions of forestry, he hardly knew more than I did) called my attempts filth and my efforts at poetry mere rubbish, could he by chance be right?

Of course, one could read, work and study, but how was it possible to keep all the things I had heard about since the previous evening in my mind without revealing them? I resolved to have an open talk about it all with Adolphe.

At half-past five I reached M. de Leuven's house, but Adolphe had not yet returned: he was reading at the Gymnase a play he had written in collaboration with Frédéric Soulié. He put in an appearance at a quarter to six, looking more melancholy and more thoughtful than Hippolytus on the road to Mycenæ.

"Well, my poor friend," said I, "refused again?"

"No," he replied; "but only accepted subject to correction."

"Then all hope is not lost?"

"True. Dormeuil made us go into his office, after the reading, and as he thought there were tedious passages in the piece, he said to us,'My dear fellows, my dear fellows, it must be cut down to the quick.' At these words Soulié snatched the play out of his hands, crying, 'Monsieur Dormeuil, not a hand must be laid on it.' So, you will understand, Dormeuil is furious."

"Who is Dormeuil?"

"One of the managers of the Gymnase."

"And that means...."

"And that means that Soulié has vowed the piece shall be played as it is or not at all."

"The deuce! Then Soulié doesn't mind if his things get played or not?"

"You do not know that fellow's obstinacy; there is no way of turning him. Did you hear what he said to Warez?"

"Who is Warez?"

"Warez is manager to Madame Oudinot, proprietor of the Ambigu."

"Well, what did he say to Warez?"

"We took him a melodrama to read, called _Kenilworth Castle;_ Warez read it. He was not very much struck with the work. When we went, yesterday, for his answer, 'Gentlemen,' he said to us, 'will you allow me to read your play to M. Picard?' 'Ah!' replies Soulié, 'in order that he can steal the idea from us. 'What! Monsieur Soulié,' exclaims Warez, 'steal your play from you--an Academician!' 'Well,' says Soulié, 'three-fourths of the Academicians certainly steal their places, why should they stick at stealing other people's work?' I need not tell you, my dear friend, that that meant another closed door! I had some sort of an idea of going to Mademoiselle Lévesque, who is all powerful at the theatre, to offer her the part of Marie Stuart, which is magnificent...."

"Well?"

"You know what happened to Casimir Delavigne, at the reading of the _Vêpres siciliennes_, at the Théâtre-Français?"

"Yes, the piece was refused."

"Not merely was the piece refused, but, as every voter is obliged to give a reason for his refusal, one of the ladies refused 'because the work was badly _written_.'"

"And Mademoiselle Lévesque refused yours for the same reason?"

"No; but she said that, at the _present_ moment, she had so many new parts, she could not possibly undertake _ours."_

"The devil take it! It would seem that actresses do not need to study so hard as authors.... Ah! my dear friend, why did you not tell me of my ignorance and that I have everything to learn?"

"Don't put yourself out about that, dear fellow; you will soon learn all you need.... Stay, my mother is beckoning to us to come. Let us go in to dinner."

We went in, and I was introduced to Madame Arnault,--I was already acquainted with Lucien, Telleville and Louis.

I had seen M. Arnault at the famous shooting expedition in Tillet Wood, but I had not had the honour of speaking to him. He had asked to be given a good position in the wood; and he had been put where, as M. Deviolaine had said, the deer could not fail to pass by. M. Arnault, who could not see two gun-lengths off, had wiped the glasses of his spectacles, sat down, produced a memorandum-book and a pencil, and began to write a fable that had been running in his head since the previous day. In a quarter of an hour, he heard a noise in the underwood: he laid down his pocket-book and pencil, took up his gun and pointed it ready for action as soon as the animal should pass by.

"Oh, monsieur," a woman cried out, "don't shoot! You will kill my cow!"

"Are you quite sure it is your cow, and not a roebuck?" M. Arnault then asked her.

"Oh, monsieur, you will see...."

And the woman, running up to the cow, hung on the animal's tail, which she pulled so hard that the poor beast began to moo.

"You are right," said M. Arnault; "I think I am mistaken." And he sat down again, laid his gun on the ground, took up his pencil and note-book and resumed his fable, which he composedly finished.

M. Arnault's family consisted of Lucien and Telleville, his two sons by a first marriage; of Louis and Gabrielle, his two children by a second marriage. M. Arnault's second wife was a young lady from Bonneuil. Let me say a few words about this excellent family. We will begin, like the Gospels, with the meek and mild members.

Gabrielle was a pretty child of fourteen or fifteen, with a dazzlingly white complexion; she was of no more account in the household as yet than a bud in a bouquet. Louis was about my own age, namely, twenty or twenty-one. He was a good-looking lad, fair, fresh-coloured, rosy-cheeked, a trifle spruce, ever laughing, on the most friendly terms with his sister, full of respect for his mother and admiration for his father. Telleville was a handsome captain; very brave, very loyal, very daring, a Bonapartist like the rest of the family, thrown into the midst of the artistic world, without ever having written a verse of poetry, but possessing a delightful wit, and being full of spirit and originality. Lucien, the author of _Régulus_, and, later, of _Pierre de Portugal_ and of _Tibère,_ had too cold and calculating a mind to be really poetical; yet there was a certain boldness of style in his lines and a certain melancholy about his ideas, that appealed both to the imagination and to the heart. There is one of the truest and most charming lines I know, in _Pierre de Portugal_, a line such as Racine wrote in his best days, universally known because it belongs to that school:--

"Les chagrins du départ sont pour celui qui reste."

The year before my arrival in Paris, _Régulus_ had achieved enormous popularity. I will quote a few lines of it, to give some idea of the author, who appears to have given up literary work.

Regulus is about to leave Rome, to which he was devotedly attached, and he says to Licinius:--

"Je meurs pour la sauver, c'est mourir digne d'elle! Mais, toi, Licinius, parjure à l'amitié, Disciple de ma gloire, as-tu donc oublié Ces jours où j'opposais, dans les champs du carnage, Ma vieille expérience à ton jeune courage? Aimant un vrai soldat dans un vrai citoyen, Ne le souvient-il plus que, par un doux lien, Ma tendresse voulait vous unir l'un à l'autre? Le hasard a trahi mon espoir et le vôtre; Mais, des bords du tombeau, je puis enfin bénir Les nœuds qui pour jamais doivent vous réunir. Si tu l'aimes, viens, jure au dieu de la victoire De servir, aujourd'hui, la patrie et la gloire; D'éclairer les Romains par toi seul égarés; De rétablir la paix dans ces remparts sacrés; Jure! dis-je. A l'instant, je te donne ma fille, Je te lègue mon nom, mon honneur, ma famille; Et les dieux ne m'auront opprimé qu'à demi, Si, dans un vrai Romain, je retrouve un ami!"

Lucien was about thirty or thirty-two at this period. Until the downfall of Napoleon his career had been administrative: he had been made auditor to the State Council and a prefect at twenty-five. In spite of much physical suffering which saddened his life, he was indeed one of the best-hearted and most benevolent persons I ever knew. For five years I saw Lucien two or three times a week; I do not think that, during the long period of intimacy, I ever heard him jibe at his _confrères_, or complain or whine; he was one of those gentle, melancholy and tranquil spirits one sees in dreams. I do not know what became of him; after 1829 I lost sight of him completely. Twenty-two years of absence and of separation will certainly have driven me from his remembrance; those twenty-two years have engraved him the more deeply on mine.

M. Arnault was quite different. I never knew a more subtle, mordant, satirical nature than this brilliant person owned. In military parlance he would have been described as a damned good shot. Neither Bertrand nor Lozes ever returned a straight thrust more rapidly and more surely than did M. Arnault, on every occasion, by a word or an epigram or a flash of wit. He was but an indifferent dramatic author, but he excelled in fables and satire. Once, in a fit of despondency, he let fall what was probably the only tear he shed, like that of Aramis upon the death of Porthos: he dipped his pen in the salt drops, and wrote the following lines--a gem that André Chénier, or Millevoye, Lamartine or Victor Hugo might have wished to write:--

LA FEUILLE

"De ta tige détachée, Pauvre feuille desséchée, Où vas-tu?--Je n'en sais rien. L'orage a brisé le chêne Qui seul était mon soutien; De son inconstante haleine Le zéphir ou l'aquilon, Depuis ce jour me promène De la forêt à la plaine, De la montagne au vallon. Je vais où le vent me mène Sans me plaindre ou m'effrayer; Je vais où va toute chose, Où vont la feuille de rose Et la feuille de laurier!"

I do not know what the famous poets of my day would have given to have written those fifteen lines; I know I would have given any of my plays the fates might have chosen. M. Arnault's great ambition was, unluckily, to write for the stage. He had begun by _Marius à Minturnes_, at the time when he was with Monsieur. The tragedy was produced in 1790, and in spite of the prediction of the Comte de Provence, who had asserted that a tragedy without a woman must be a failure, it was a great success. Saint-Phal played young Marius, Vanhove Marius, and Saint-Prix le Cimbre. That was the happy period when men of the talent of Saint-Prix accepted parts in which they came on only in one scene, and in that single scene uttered a few lines, _e.g._:--

"Quelle voix, quel regard, et quel aspect terrible! Quel bras oppose au mien un obstacle invincible?... L'effroi s'est emparè de mes sens éperdus ... Je ne pourrais jamais égorger Marius!"

The play was dedicated to Monsieur. I have heard M. Arnault relate, in his extremely fascinating way, that success made him very vain, very peremptory and very scornful. One day, in 1792, he was in the balcony of the Théâtre-Français, talking loudly, in his customary fashion, making a great noise with his cane and hindering people from hearing; this went on from the raising of the curtain till the end of the first act, when a gentleman, who was behind M. Arnault and only separated from him by one row, bent forward, and touching his shoulder with the tips of his gloved hand, said, "Monsieur Arnault, pray allow us to listen, even though they are playing _Marius à Minturnes_."

This polite and, I might even add, witty gentleman was Danton. A month later, this same polite and witty gentleman had instituted the September massacres. M. Arnault was so alarmed by these massacres that he fled on foot. On reaching the barricade, he found it guarded by a sans-culotte in name and in reality; this sans-culotte was engaged in preventing a poor woman from passing, under the pretext that her passport for Bercy had not been _vised_ at the section des Enfants-Trouvés. Now, while he noted the persistence of this honourable sentinel, an idea occurred to M. Arnault--that this terrible Cerberus could not read. Joking is a bad disease, of which one is rarely cured. M. Arnault, who suffered much from this malady, boldly walked up to the sans-culotte and presented his passport upside down to the man, saying--

"_Viséd_ at the Enfants-Trouvés: there is the stamp."

M. Arnault guessed rightly.

"Pass," said the sans-culotte.

And M. Arnault passed.

In the interval that had elapsed between _Marius_ and the 3rd of September, the date at which we have arrived, M. Arnault had produced his tragedy of _Lucrèce._ The play falling flat, the author laid its want of success at Mademoiselle Raucourt's door.... It is known that this famous actress's aversion to men was not entirely imputed to virtuous causes. However that may be, later, we shall have to speak of Mademoiselle Raucourt in connection with her pupil, Mademoiselle Georges.

M. Arnault had followed Bonaparte to Egypt. He has related in a very amusing manner, in his memoirs entitled _Souvenirs d'un sexagénaire_, the part he took in that expedition. On his return, he wrote an Ossianic tragedy, called _Oscar_, which was very successful, and which he dedicated to Bonaparte; then _les Vénitiens,_ the catastrophe of which was regarded as so outrageously bold that scrupulous people would not support it, and the author was obliged to please these good people by changing the action, thanks to which, after the style of Ducis's _Othello_, his piece now finished off by a death or a marriage, according to the choice of the spectators. _Les Vénitiens_ was a tremendous success.

While M. Arnault was a chief clerk in the University during the Empire, under M. de Fontanes, who was the principal, he took Béranger into his offices as copying-clerk at twelve hundred francs a year. And it was there that Béranger wrote his first chanson, the _Roi d'Yvetot._ Upon the second return of the Bourbons, M. Arnault was proscribed, and retired to Brussels. We have already told how he became acquainted with M. de Leuven, in exile, over a slap in the face the latter gave a foreign officer. It was during his exile that M. Arnault composed nearly all his fables, a charming collection but little known, as very few people read fables nowadays. For this very reason I am going to make my readers acquainted with three of them. Be reassured! these three fables are really by M. Arnault, and not by M. Viennet. Besides, I am answerable for them, and my word can be depended upon in the case of all three. Let us further hasten to add that the fables we are about to read are fables only in title: they are really epigrams.

LE COLIMAÇON

"Sans amis comme sans famille, Ici-bas, vivre en étranger; Se retirer dans sa coquille, Au signal du moindre danger; S'aimer d'une amitié sans bornes, De soi seul emplir sa maison; En sortir, selon la saison, Pour faire à son prochain les cornes Signaler ses pas destructeurs Par les traces les plus impures; Outrager les plus belles fleurs Par ses baisers ou ses morsures; Enfin, chez soi, comme en prison, Vieillir, de jour en jour plus triste; C'est l'histoire de l'égoiste Ou celle du colimaçon."

LE DROIT DE CHACUN

"Un jour, le roi des animaux Défendit, par une ordonnance, A ses sujets, à ses vassaux, De courir sans une licence Sur quelque bête que ce soit; Promettant, il est vrai, de conserver le droit A quiconque en usait pour motif honnête. Tigres, loups et renards, de présenter requête A Sa Majesté: loups, pour courir le mouton, Renards, pour courir le chapon, Tigres, pour courir toute bête. Parmi les députés, qui criaient à tue-tête, Un chien s'égosillait à force d'aboyer. 'Plaise à Sa Majesté, disait-il, m'octroyer Droit de donner la chasse, en toute circonstance, A tous les animaux vivant de ma substance. --Gentilshommes, à vous permis de giboyer, Dit, s'adressant au tigre, au loup, au renard même Des forêts le maître suprême Aux chasseurs tels que vous permis de déployer, Même chez leurs voisins, leurs efforts, leurs astuces; Mais néant au placet du chien!' Que réclamait, pourtant, ce roturier-ta?--Rien, Que le droit de tuer ses puces."

LES DEUX BAMBOUS

"L'an passé--c'était l'an quarante,-- L'an passé, le Grand Turc disait au grand vizir: 'Quand, pour régner sous moi, je daignai te choisir, Roustan, je te croyais d'humeur bien différente. Roustan met son plus grand plaisir. A me contrarier; quelque ordre que je donne, Au lieu d'obéir, il raisonne; Toujours des _si,_ toujours des _mais_; Il défend ce que je permets: Ce que je défends, il l'ordonne. A rien ne tient qu'ici je ne te fasse voir A quel point je suis las de ces façons de faire! Va-t'en! Qu'on fasse entrer mon grand eunuque noir C'est celui-là qui connaît son affaire, C'est lui qui, toujours complaisant, Sans jamais m'étourdir de droit ni de justice, N'ayant de loi que mon caprice, Sait me servir en m'amusant. Jamais ce ton grondeur, jamais cet air sinistre! Ainsi que tout désir, m'épargnant tout travail, Il conduirait l'empire aussi bien qu'un sérail. J'en veux faire un premier ministre. --En fait de politique et de gouvernement, Sultan, dit le vizir, chacun a son système: Te plaire est le meilleur; le mien, conséquemment, Est mauvais.... Toutefois, ne pourrais-je humblement, Te soumettre un petit problème? --Parle.--Ce n'est pas d'aujourd'hui. Que péniblement je me traîne, Vieux et cassé, sultan, dans ma marche incertaine, Ma faiblesse a besoin d'appui. Or, j'ai deux roseaux de la Chine: Plus ferme qu'un bâton, l'un ne sait pas plier, L'autre, élégant, léger, droit comme un peuplier, Est plus souple qu'une badine. Lequel choisir?--Lequel?... Roustan, je ne crois pas Qu'un flexible bambou puisse assurer nos pas. --Tu le crois! lorsque tu m'arraches Ton sceptre affermi par mes mains, Pour le livrer à des faquins Sans caractere et sans moustaches.'

Rois, vos ministres sont, pour vous, Ce qu'est, pour nous, le jonc dont l'appui nous assiste, Je le dis des vizirs ainsi que des bambous, On ne peut s'appuyer que sur ce qui résiste."

If you read, one after the other, M. Arnault's one hundred and fifty fables, you will find throughout, the same ease, the same touch, the same carping spirit. When you have read them, you will certainly not say of the author, "He is a delightful person," but you will assuredly say, "He is an honest man."

In 1815 M. Arnault was exiled. Why? For so slight a reason that no one bothered even to think of it; his name was on the list, and that was all! But who signed that list? Louis XVIII., formerly Monsieur--that is to say, the very same Comte de Provence under whose protection the poet had begun his career, and to whom he had dedicated his _Marius._

Now, although there was no reason for M. Arnault's exile, party spirit invented one and said that he was proscribed as a regicide. There were, however, two sufficient reasons why this could not be: first, because M. Arnault did not belong to the Convention; secondly, because in 1792 and 1793 he was abroad. Nevertheless, the rumour was tacitly accepted, and soon nobody doubted that M. Arnault was exiled on that ground.

M. Arnault sent _Germanicus_ from Brussels: it was played on the 22nd of March 1817, and forbidden the following day. During the representation the tragedy shifted from the stage to the pit, where a terrible fight took place, in which several people were hurt and one even killed. The battle was waged between the Life Guards and the partisans of the late Government. The weapon that was generally made use of in this skirmish was that kind of bamboo upon which Roustan, the Grand Turk's first vizir, whose grievances we have just heard, was wont to lean. One can understand that the thicker and less pliable they were, the better they served for defence and for attack. From the date of that fray these canes were dubbed "_Germanicus"_ Angry feelings waxed strong at this period. The day but one after the representation, Martainville published a scurrilous article attacking M. Arnault's private honour. This article, which was the result of a blow given the critic by Telleville, led to a duel in which, as we said above, the journalist had his thigh bruised by a bullet.

_Germanicus_ was revived later. We were present at the revival; but, divorced from the passions of the moment, the play was not a success. His unlooked-for and outrageously unjust proscription added a bitterness to M. Arnault's nature--a bitterness which cropped out on the least excuse, and which was not expelled from his blood by the legacy Napoleon bequeathed him in his will of a hundred thousand francs. The legacy was useful in aiding him to build a beautiful house in the rue de la Bruyère: as is usually the case, however, the builder sank twice the amount he had intended to spend thereon, so M. Arnault found himself a hundred thousand francs poorer after his legacy than before he had inherited that sum.

M. Arnault loved poetry for its own sake: he made lines on every occasion. He wrote them on his portrait, on his garden door, on the Abbé Geoffroy, on his dog's tricks, on a poet in uniform whose portrait had been exhibited in the last Salon.

Here are the lines above referred to, which show not only the author's wit, but also his very nature:--

VERS SUR LE PORTRAIT DE L'AUTEUR

"Sur plus d'un ton je sais régler ma voix; Ami des champs, des arts, des combats et des fêtes, En vers dignes d'eux, quelquefois, J'ai fait parler les dieux, les héros et les bêtes."

POUR LA PORTE DE MON JARDIN

"Bons amis dont ce siècle abonde, Je suis votre humble serviteur; Mais passez: ma porte et mon cœur Ne s'ouvrent plus à tout le monde."

SUR UN BON HOMME QUI N'A PAS LE VIN BON[1]

"Il est altéré de vin; Il est altéré de gloire; Il ne prend jamais en vain Sa pinte ou son écritoire. Des flots qu'il en fait couler, Abreuvant plus d'un délire. Il écrit pour se soûler, Il se soûle pour écrire."

POUR LA NICHE DE MON CHIEN

"Je n'attaque jamais en traître, Je caresse sans intérêt, Je mords parfois, mais à regret: Bon chien se forme sur son maître."

POUR LE PORTRAIT D'UN POÈTE EN UNIFORME

"Au Parnasse ou sur le terrain, En triompher est peu possible: L'épée en main il est terrible, Terrible il est la plume en main; Et pour se battre et pour écrire, Nul ne saurait lui ressembler; Car, s'il ne se bat pas pour rire, Il écrit à faire trembler."

No matter what were his troubles, M. Arnault had always worshipped dogs. Out of fifty of his fables, more than twenty have these interesting quadrupeds for their heroes. When I was honoured by an introduction into the private life of his family, the gate was guarded by a horrible beast, half pug, half poodle, called Ramponneau. M. Arnault never stirred without this dog: he had him in his study while he worked, in his garden when he took his walks there. Only the king's highway was denied him by M. Arnault, for fear of poisoned meat. M. Arnault himself superintended his dog's education, and on one point he was inexorable. Ramponneau would persist in committing ill manners in his study. Directly the sight and the odour revealed the crime committed, Ramponneau was seized by his flanks and the skin of his neck, conducted to the spot where the indiscretion had been committed and soundly thrashed. After this, Ramponneau's nose was rubbed in the subject-matter of his crime, according to an old custom, the origin of which is lost in the deeps of time--an operation to which he submitted with visible repugnance. These daily faults and the ensuing chastenings went on for nearly two months, and M. Arnault began to fear that Ramponneau was uneducatible on this point, although he learnt a crowd of pleasing tricks, such as feigning death, standing to attention, smoking a pipe, leaping to honour the Emperor. I ask pardon for the word "uneducatible." I could not find the word I wanted, so I made one up. M. Arnault, I repeat, began to fear that Ramponneau was uneducatible on this one point, when, one day, Ramponneau, who had just committed his usual crime, seeing his master was far too much absorbed in his tragedy of _Guillaume de Nassau_ to perceive what had just happened, went and pulled at the hem of his dressing-gown. M. Arnault turned round: Ramponneau jumped up two or three times to attract his attention; then, when he was quite sure he had arrested it, he went straight to the spot which we have termed the subject-matter of his crime, and rubbed his nose in, purely of his own accord, without any compulsion, certainly with evident repugnance, but with touching resignation. The poor beast was deceived. He had thought that the whippings and punishment which followed the crime had had no other end than to teach him to rub his nose in the object in question of his own accord. Ramponneau's education was completely at fault, and he kept this defect all his life, the muzzle he was provided with making very little difference to his habit.

I have already referred to M. Arnault's remarkable gift of swift and witty repartee. I will give two instances of it now, and others in their due place and season later, as we come across them.

One day I was walking down the rue de la Tour-des-Dames with him. A young swell who was driving a tilbury, and who had lost control of his horse going down that steep decline, just missed running over M. Arnault, who was not a patient man.

"You blackguard!" he said; "can't you look where you are going?"

"What did you say,--blackguard?" exclaimed the young man.

"Yes, blackguard!" repeated M. Arnault.

"Monsieur, you shall render an account for that insult!... Here is my address!"

"Your address?" replied M. Arnault. "Keep it to drive your horse to."

Another day, on the Champs-Élysées, he passed by a priest without saluting him. We have said that M. Arnault was very short-sighted; besides, he was not very fond of black men, as they were called at that time. The priest, whom he had almost jostled against, turned round.

"There goes a Jacobin," he said, "he jostles against me and does not salute me."[2]

"Monsieur," replied M. Arnault, "do not be more exacting than the Gospel: _Extra ecclesiam nulla est salus."_[3]

I see I have forgotten among all these matters to speak of Madame Arnault. She was about forty when I was first introduced to her and she was still a charming little woman at that age, dark, pretty, plump, full of airs and graces. Madame Arnault was cordially good to me for five years, then things changed. Perhaps it was my own fault: the reader shall judge when the time comes.

[1] The Abbé Geoffrey.

[2] Et qui ne me salue pas.

[3] Hors de l'Église, pas de salut!