CHAPTER X

Rabbe's friends_--La Sœur grise_--The historical résumés--M. Brézé's advice--An imaginative man--Berruyer's style--Rabbe with his hairdresser, his concierge and confectioner--_La Sœur grise_ stolen_--Le Centaure._

Alphonse Rabbe's most assiduous disciples were Thiers and Mignet;[1] they came to see him most days and treated him with the respect of pupils towards their master. But Rabbe was independent to the verge of intractability; and always ready to rear even under the hand that caressed him. Now, Rabbe discerned that these two writers were already on the way to become historians, had no desire to make a third in a trio with them and resolved to be more true to life than the historians and to write a novel. Walter Scott was then all the rage in London and Paris.

Rabbe seized paper and pen and wrote the title of his novel on the first leaf, _La Sœur grise._ Then he stopped, and I dare go so far even as to say that this first page was never turned over. True, what Rabbe did in imagination was much more real to him than what he actually did.

Félix Bodin had just begun to inaugurate the era of _Résumés historiques_; the publishers, Lecointe and Roret, went about asking for summaries from anyone at all approaching an author; résumés showered in like hail; the very humblest scholar felt himself bound to send in his résumé.

There was a regular scourge of them; even the most harmless of persons were attacked with the disease. Rabbe eclipses all those obscure writers at abound; he published, successively, résumés of the history of Spain, of Portugal and of Russia; all extending to several editions. These three volumes showed admirable talent for the writing of history, and their only defect was the commonplace title under which they were published.

"What are you working at?" Thiers often asked Alphonse Rabbe, as they saw the reams of paper he was using up.

"I am at work on my _Sœur grise_," he replied.

In the summer of 1824, Mignet made a journey to Marseilles where, before all his friends, he spread the praises of Rabbe's forthcoming novel, _La Sœur grise_, which Mignet believed to be nearly completed. Besides these fine books of history, Alphonse Rabbe wrote excellent articles in the _Courrier-Français_ on the Fine Arts. On this subject, he was not only a great master but, in addition, a great critic. He was possibly slightly unfair to Vaudeville drama and a little severe on its exponents; he carried this injustice almost to the point of hatred. A droll adventure arose out of his dislike. A compatriot of Rabbe, a Marseillais named M. Brézé (you see we sometimes put _Monsieur_) was possessed by an ardent desire for giving Rabbe advice. (Let us here insert, parenthetically, the observation that the Marseillais are born advisers, specially when their advice is unsolicited.)

Well, M. Brézé had given endless advice to Rabbe while he was still at Marseilles, advice which we can easily guess he took good care not to follow. M. Brézé came to Paris and met Barthélemy, the poet, at the Palais-Royal. The two compatriots entered into conversation with one another--

"What is Rabbe doing?" asked M. Brézé.

"Résumés."

"Ah! so Rabbe is doing résumés?" repeated M. Brézé. "Hang it all!"

"Quite so."

"What are these résumés?"

"The quintessence of history compressed into small volumes instead of being spun out into large ones."

"How many such résumés does he do in the year?"

"Perhaps one and a half or two at the most."

"And how much does a résumé bring in?"

"I believe twelve hundred francs."

"So, if Rabbe works all the year and has only done one résumé and a half, he has earned eighteen hundred francs?"

"Eighteen hundred francs, yes! by Jove!"

"Hum!"

And M. Brézé began to reflect. Then, suddenly, he asked--"Do you think Rabbe is as clever as M. Scribe?"

The question was so unlooked for and, above all, so inappropriate, that Barthélemy began to laugh.

"Why, yes," he said; "only it is cleverness of a different order." "Oh! that does not matter!"

"Why does it not matter?"

"If he has as much talent as M. Scribe it is all that is necessary."

Again he fell into reflection; then, after a pause he said to Barthélemy--

"Is it true that M. Scribe earns a hundred thousand francs a year?"

"People say so," replied Barthélemy.

"Well, then," said M. Brézé, "in that case I must offer Rabbe some advice."

"You?"

"Yes, I."

"You are quite capable of doing so--what will it be?"

"I must tell him to leave off writing his résumés and take to writing vaudevilles."

The advice struck Barthélemy as a magnificent joke.

"Say that again," he said to M. Brézé.

"I must advise Rabbe to leave off writing his résumés and take to writing vaudevilles."

"My goodness!" exclaimed Barthélemy, "do offer him that advice, Monsieur Brézé."

"I will."

"When?"

"The first time I see him."

"You promise me you will?"

"On my word of honour."

"Whatever you do don't forget!"

"Make your mind quite easy."

Barthélemy and M. Brézé shook hands and separated. M. Brézé very much delighted with himself for having conceived such a splendid idea; Barthélemy with only one regret, that he could not be at hand when he put his idea into execution.

As a matter of fact, M. Brézé met Rabbe one day, upon the Pont des Arts. Rabbe was then deep in Russian history: he was as pre-occupied as Tacitus.

"Oh! I am pleased to see you, my dear Rabbe!" said M. Brézé, as he came up to him.

"And I to see you," said Rabbe.

"I have been looking for you for the past week."

"Indeed."

"Upon my word, I have!"

"What for?"

"My dear Rabbe, you know how attached I am to you?"

"Why, yes!"

"Well, then, in your own interest ... you understand? In your interest ..."

"Certainly, I understand."

"Well, I have a piece of advice to offer you."

"To offer me?"

"Yes, you."

"Give it me, then," said Rabbe, looking at Brézé over his spectacles, as he was in the habit of doing, when he felt great surprise or people began to bore him.

"Believe me, I speak as a friend."

"I do not doubt it; but what is the advice?"

"Rabbe, my friend, instead of making résumés, write vaudevilles!"

A deep growl sounded from the historian's breast. He seized the offerer of advice by the arm, and in an awful voice he said to him--

"Monsieur, one of my enemies must have sent you to insult me."

"One of your enemies?"

"It was Latouche!"

"Why, no ..."

"Then it was Santo-Domingo!"

"No."

"Or Loëve-Weymars!"

"I swear to you it was none of them."

"Tell me the name of the insulting fellow."

"Rabbe! my dear Rabbe!"

"Give me his name, monsieur, or I will take you by the heels and pitch you into the Seine, as Hercules threw Pirithous into the sea."

Then, perceiving that he had got mixed in his quotation--

"Pirithous or some other, it is all the same!"

"But I take my oath ..."

"Then it is you yourself?" exclaimed Rabbe, before Brézé had time to finish his sentence. "Well, monsieur, you shall account to me for this insult!"

At this proposition, Brézé gave such a jump that he tore himself from the pincer-like grip that held him and ran to put himself under the protection of the pensioner who took the toll at the bridge.

Rabbe took himself off after first making a gesture significant of future vengeance. Next day he had forgotten all about it. Brézé, however, remembered it ten years afterwards!

Two explanations must follow this anecdote which ought really to have preceded it. From much study of the _Confessions_ of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rabbe had imbibed something of the character of the susceptible Genevese; he thought there was a general conspiracy organised against him: that his Catiline and Manlius and Spartacus were Latouche, Santo-Domingo and Loëve-Weymars; he even went so far as to suspect his two Pylades, Thiers and Mignet.

"They are my d'Alembert and Diderot!" he said.

It was quite evident he believed Brézé's suggestion was the result of a conspiracy that was just breaking out.

Rabbe's life was a species of perpetual hallucination, an existence made up of dreams; and sleep, itself, the only reality. One day, he button-holed Méry; his manner was gloomy, his hand on his breast convulsively crumpled his shirt-front.

"Well," he exclaimed, shaking his head up and down, "I told you so!"

"What?"

"That he was an enemy of mine."

"Who?"

"Mignet."

"But, my dear Rabbe, he is nothing of the kind.... Mignet loves and admires you."

"Ah! _he_ love me!"

"Yes."

"_He_ admire me!"

"No doubt of it."

"Well, do you know what the man who professes to love and admire me said of me?"

"What did he say?"

"Why, he said that I was a man of IMAGINATION, yes, he did."

Méry assumed an air of consternation to oblige Rabbe. Rabbe, to revenge himself for Mignet's insult, wrote in the preface of a second edition of his résumés these crushing words--

"The pen of the historian ought not to be like a leaden pipe through which a stream of tepid water flows on to the paper."

From this moment, his wrath against historians,--modern historians, that is, of course: he worshipped Tacitus,--knew no bounds; and, when there were friends present at his house and all historians were absent, he would declaim in thunderous tones--

"Would you believe it, gentlemen, there are in France, at the present moment and of our generation and rank, historians who take it into their heads to copy the style of the veterans, Berruyer, Catrou and Rouille? Yes, in each line of their modern battles they will tell you that thirty thousand men were _cut in pieces_, or that they _bit the dust_, or that they _were left lying strewn upon the scene._ How behind the times these youngsters are! The other day, one of them, in describing the battle of Austerlitz, wrote this sentence: 'Twenty-five thousand Russians were drawn up in battle upon a vast frozen lake; Napoléon gave orders that firing should be directed against this lake. Bullets broke through the ice and the twenty-five thousand Russians BIT THE DUST!'"

It is curious to note that such a sentence was actually written in one of the résumés of that date. The second remark that we ought to have made will explain the comparison that Rabbe had hazarded when he spoke of himself as Hercules and of Brézé as Pirithous. He had so effectually contracted the habit of using grand oratorical metaphor and stilted language, that he could never descend to a more familiar style of speech in his relations with more ordinary people. Thus, he once addressed his hairdresser solemnly in the following terms:--

"Do not disarrange the economy of my hair too much; let the strokes of your comb fall lightly on my head, and take care, as Boileau says, that 'L'ivoire trop hâté ne se brise en vos mains!'"

He said to his porter--

"If some friend comes and knocks at my hospitable portal, deal kindly with him.... I shall soon return: I go to breathe the evening air upon the Pont des Arts."

He said to his pastry-cook, Grandjean, who lived close by him in the rue des Petits-Augustins--

"Monsieur Grandjean, the vol-au-vent that you did me the honour to send yesterday had a crust of Roman cement, obstinate to the teeth; give a more unctuous turn to your culinary art and people will be grateful to you."

While all these things were happening, Rabbe fully imagined that he was writing his novel, _La Sœur grise._

One day, Thiers came in to see him, as was his custom.

"Well, Rabbe," he said, "what are you at work upon now?"

"Parbleu!" replied Rabbe, "the same as usual, you know! My _Sœur grise._"

"It ought to be nearly finished by now."

"It is finished."

"Oh, indeed!"

"Do you doubt me?"

"No."

"But you do doubt it?"

"Of course not."

"Stay," he said, picking up an exercise-book full of sheets of paper, "here it is."

Thiers took it from him.

"But what is this? You have given me blank sheets of paper, my dear fellow!"

Rabbe sprang like a tiger upon Thiers, and might, perhaps, in 1825, have demolished the Minister of the First of March, had not Thiers opened the book and showed him the pages as white as the dress worn by M. Planard's shepherdess. Rabbe tore his hair with both hands.

"Do you know what has happened to me?" he shouted.

"No."

"Someone has stolen the MS. of my _Sœur grise!_"

"Oh! my God!" exclaimed Thiers, who did not want to vex him; "do you know who is the thief?"

"No ... stay, yes, indeed, I think I do ... it is Loëve-Weymars! He shall perish by my own hand; I will send him my two seconds!"

Loëve-Weymars was not in Paris. For upwards of a fortnight Rabbe laboured under the delusion that he had written _La Sœur grise_ from cover to cover, and that Loëve-Weymars was jealous of him and had robbed him of his manuscript.

When such petulant insults fell upon friends like Loëve-Weymars, Thiers, Mignet, Armaud Carrel and Méry, it did not matter; but, when they were directed at strangers less acquainted with Rabbe's follies, affairs sometimes assumed a more tragic aspect. Thus, about this period, he had two duels; one with Alexis Dumesnil, the other with Coste; he received a sword-cut from both of these gentlemen; but these wounds did not cure him of his passion for quarrelling. He used to say that, in his youth, he had been very clever at handling the javelin; unluckily, however, his adversaries always declined that weapon, which refusal Rabbe, with his enthusiasm for antiquity, never could understand.

But if Rabbe admired antiquity madly, it was because he felt it strongly; his piece, _Le Centaure_, is André Chénier in prose. Let us give the proof of what we have been stating--

THE CENTAUR

"Swift as the west wind, amorous, superb, a young centaur comes to carry off the beauteous Cymothoë from her old husband. The impotent cries of the old man are heard afar.... Proud of his prey, impotent with desire, the ravisher stops beneath the deep shade of the banks of the river. His flanks still palpitate from the swiftness of his course; his breath comes hard and fast. He stops; his strong legs bend under him; he stretches one forth and kneels with agility on the other. He lovingly raises his beautiful prey whom he holds trembling across his powerful thighs; he takes her and presses her against his manly breast, sighs a thousand sighs and covers her tear-dewed eyelids with kisses.

"'Fear not,' he says to her, 'O Cymothoë! Be not terrified of a lover who offers to thy charms the united quality of both man and war-horse. Believe me! my heart is worth more than that of a vile mortal who dwells in your towns. Tame my wild independence; I will bear thee to the freshest rivers, beneath the loveliest of shade; I will carry thee over the green prairies, which are bathed by the Pene or patriarchal Achelous. Seated on my broad back, with thy arms intertwined in the rings of my black hair, thou canst entrust thy charms to the gambols of the waves, without fear that a jealous god will venture to seize thee to take thee to the depths of his crystal grotto.... I love thee, O young Cymothoë! Drive away thy tears; thou canst try thy power: thou hast me in subjection!'

"'Splendid monster!' replies the weeping Cymothoë, 'I am struck with amazement. Thy accents are full of gentleness, and thou speakest words of love! Why, thou talkest like a man! Thy fearful caresses do not slay me! Tell me why! But dost thou not hear the cries of Dryas, my old husband? Centaur, fear for thy life! His kisses are like ice, but his vengeance is cruel; his hounds are flying in thy tracks; his slaves follow them; haste thee to fly and leave me!'

"'I leave thee!' replies the Centaur. And he stifles a plaintive murmur on the lips of his captive. 'I leave thee! Where is the Pirithous, the Alcides who dare come to dispute my conquest with me? Have I not my javelins? Have I not my heavy club? Have I not my swift speed? Has not Neptune given to the Centaur the impetuous strength of the storm?'

"Then suddenly he bounded away full of courage, confidence and happiness. Cymothoë balanced as if she was hung in a moving net under these green vaults, or like as though borne in a chariot of clouds by Zephyrus, henceforth rids herself of her useless terrors and abandons herself to the raptures of this strange lover.

"Again he stops and she admires the way nature has delighted to mate in him the lovely form of a horse with the majestic features of a man. Intelligent thought animates his glance, so proud and yet so gentle; beneath that broad breast dwells a heart touched by her charms.... What a splendid slave to Cymothoë and to love!

"She soon stops looking; a burning blush covers her cheeks and her eyelids droop; then, as her lover redoubles his caresses, and unfastens her girdle--

"'Stay!' she says to him, 'stay, beauteous Centaur! Dost thou not hear the fiery pack of hounds? Do not the arrows whistle in thy ears.... I do not indeed hate thee; but leave me! Leave me!'

"But neither Dryas nor his hounds nor slaves come that way, and those were not the reason of Cymothoë's fears. He, smiling--

"'Calm thy fright; come, let us cross the river, and do not dread the sacrifice we are about to offer to the-powerful Venus on the other side!... Soon, alas! the forests will see no more such nuptials. Our fathers have succumbed, betrayed by the wedding of Thetis and Peleus; we are now few in number, solitary, fugitive, not from man, weaker and less noble than we, but before Death who pursues us. The laws of a mysterious nature have thus decreed it; the reign of our race is nearly over!

"'This globe, deprived of the love of the gods who made it, must grow old and the weak replace the strong; debased mortals will have nothing but vain memories of the early joys of the world. Thou art perhaps the last daughter of men destined to be allied with our race; but thou wilt at least have been the most beautiful and the happiest! Come!'

"Thus speaks the man-horse, and replacing his delightsome burden on his bare back, he runs to the river and rushes into the midst of the waves, which sparkle round him in diamond sheaves burning with the setting fire of a summer sun. His eyes fixed on those of the beauty which intoxicates him, he swims across the stream and is lost to sight in the green depths which stretch from the other side to the foot of the high mountains...."

Is this not a genuine bit of antiquity without a modern touch in it, like a bas-relief taken from the temple of Hercules at Thebes or of Theseus at Athens?

[1] Do not let it be thought for one moment that it is in order to make out any intimacy whatsoever with the two famous historians, whom I have several times mentioned, that I say Thiers and Mignet; theirs are names which have won the privilege of being presented to the public without the banal title of _monsieur._