CHAPTER VI.

THE SILKWORM.

"The ideal of the human arts of spinning and weaving,"--said to me one day a Southerner (a manufacturer, but a man of imagination),--"the ideal which we always follow is a woman's beautiful hair! Oh, how far are the softest wools or finest cotton from approaching it! At what an enormous distance does all, and ever will all, our progress leave us! We drag ourselves onward, a long, long way in the rear, and enviously regard that supreme perfection which Nature daily realizes as a mere matter of pastime.

"That delicate, yet strong and tenacious hair, vibrating with an exquisite sonority which goes from the ear to the heart, and yet withal so soft, warm, luminous, and electrical--is the flower of the human flower.

"Men fruitlessly dispute respecting the merits of colour. What does it matter? The brilliant black contains and promises the flame; the blonde displays it with the splendours of the Golden Fleece. The sunny brown appropriates the very sun, makes use of it, blends it with its mirages, floats, and undulates, and incessantly varies in its streaming reflexes, now smiles with light, now deepens into gloom, always deceives, and, whatever we may say, deceives us most delightfully.

"The principal, the infinite effort of human industry, has combined all possible means for the improvement of cotton. Between the Vosges and the Rhine, the rare agreement of capital, machinery, the arts of design, and the chemical sciences, has produced those splendid Indian products of Alsace, to which England herself does honour by purchasing them. Alas! all this cannot disguise the original poverty of the ungrateful tissue which men have so richly embellished. If the woman who in her vanity clothes her form in these materials, and thinks her beauty heightened by them, would loosen her tresses about her, and unroll their waves over the indigent richness of our most sheeny cottons, what would occur? How they would be humiliated!

"Sir, we must own the truth; there is only one thing worthy of being placed side by side with woman's hair. Only one manufacturer can contend against it. That manufacturer is an insect,--the modest silkworm."

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A peculiar charm attends the labours of the silkworm; it ennobles everything which surrounds it. In traversing our rudest provinces, the valleys of the Ardèche, where all is rocky,--where the mulberry and the chestnut seem to dispense with earth, to live upon air and pebbles,--where low stone houses sadden the eyes by their gray tints,--everywhere I saw at the door, under a kind of arcade, two or three charming brunettes, with ivory teeth, who smiled on the wayfarer, and continued spinning their silken gold. The wayfarer said to them in a low voice, as the carriage bore him away:--"What a pity, innocent fairies, that the gold may not be for you! That instead of being disguised with a useless colour, and disfigured by art, it does not retain its natural hue, and shine on the person of its beautiful spinners! How much better the royal tissue would become you than the _grandes dames_!"

A mere glance at the silkworm convinces you that it is no more a native of Europe than any other sweet thing. All that is soft and exquisite springs from the East. Our West, that hardy soldier, blacksmith, and miner, is good only to dig. It is good mother Asia, disdained by her rude son, who has bestowed upon him the treasures which seem to concentrate the essence of the globe. With the Arab horse and the nightingale, she has given him coffee, and sugar, and silk,--the revivifiers of existence and the true ornament of love.

When silk first arrived at Rome, the empresses felt that previously they had been no better than plebeians. They compared it, as far as its soft lustre was concerned, to the pearls of the Orient, paying for it, without haggling, the price of pearls and gold.

China esteemed it of such high value, that, to preserve the monopoly, she inflicted the penalty of death on any persons who dared to export the silkworm. It was only at the utmost peril, and by concealing it in a hollow cane, that men succeeded in carrying it to Byzantium, whence it passed to the West.

In the Middle Age, the age of indigence and barren disputes, when wool was the luxury of the rich, and the poor wore serge in winter, no attention was paid to silk, and its manufacture was exclusively confined to Italy.

It is the gold of the silkworms of Verona which, in Giorgione, at the mighty outcome of the Venetian art, and in the strong Titian, the master of masters, enriches with a ruddy radiance their beautiful blondes and brunettes, the sovereign beauties of the world.

On the other hand, in an age of decadence, when Spain and Flanders had waned, the melancholy artist who preferred to paint the beauty which years had marked,--the fading flower,--the fruit too early pierced and unnaturally ripened,--Van Dyck, clothed with white silk, like a consoling beam of moonlight, his languishing and drooping signoras. Under the soft folds of their satins they still trouble hearts with vain dreams and regrets.

The woman who possessed the secret of preserving her charms to the last decline of old age, whose cypher everywhere inscribed teaches us that Love can conquer Time, Diana de Poitiers, in her profound art, did exactly the opposite of what our imprudent ladies do, who, incessantly changing, as if to amuse the passer-by, leave no trace upon the soul, and produce no permanent impression. She permitted the Irises to delectate themselves with their fugitive rainbow; but, like the celestial Dian, always wore the same costume, black or white, and invariably of silk.

It was to please her that Henry II. wore the first pair of silk stockings, and the fine silken close-fitting vest, which indicated all the gracefulness of a muscular yet slender figure. We know how ardent an enthusiasm Henry IV., at a later period, showed in promoting the growth of the silk-manufacture, planting mulberry-trees everywhere,--along the highways, in the market-places, in the courts of his palaces, and even in the gardens of the Tuileries. Coloured silks, for decoration and furniture, and silks with flowered designs, were soon afterwards manufactured at Lyons, which provided all Europe with them.

Shall I say it, however? These coloured and ornamented silks do not by any means produce a great and profound effect. Silk in its natural state, and not even tinted, is in much more intimate sympathy with woman and beauty. Amber and pearls, the latter slightly yellow, with rich falls of lace, the latter not too yellow, are the only suitable accompaniments of silk.

For silk is a noble and in nowise pretentious attire, which lends a subdued charm to the exuberant liveliness of youth, and clothes declining beauty with its most tender and touching radiance.

A genuine mystery attends it which is not without attraction. Colour or gloss? Cotton has its peculiar gloss, and, when fitly prepared, often acquires an agreeable freshness. Silk is not properly glossy, but luminous,--with a soft electrical light, which harmonizes naturally with the electricity of the woman. A living tissue, it embraces willingly the living person.

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Oriental ladies, before they foolishly adopted our Western customs, wore but two kinds of stuff: underneath, the real cashmere (of so fine a texture that a large shawl might be passed through a ring); and above, a beautiful tunic of silk of a pale blonde, or rather straw colour, with a gleam or flash of magnetic amber.

These two articles were less garments than friends,--gentle slaves,--supple and charming flatterers: the cashmere warm, caressing, and pliant, enfolding the bather lovingly when she emerged from her bath; the silk tunic, on the contrary, light and aërial, only not too diaphanous. Its blonde whiteness agreed most admirably with the colour of her skin; one might indeed have very justly said that it had imbibed that colour through its constant intimacy and accustomed tenderness. Inferior to the skin, undoubtedly, yet it seemed related to it; or rather it became in the end a part of the body, and, as it were, melted into it, like a dream which informs our whole existence, and cannot be separated from it.