"And the one you have there, monsieur,—which treats of French confectionery and the sixty ways of cooking eggs,—is it the angel with the book and the scythe? Is it the vine cluster? Is it the Minerva and the olive tree? Is it the buffalo head? Is it the siren? Is it the head of Medusa? Is it the garland of hollyhocks? Or is it the crown and two swords?"
"This one, monsieur, is the rarest of all. I found it, this evening, as I was coming here. Just think how I have argued with that idiot of a Bérard over this Elzevir, for three years; he thinks himself a great savant, and is not even half instructed."
"And, without seeming too inquisitive, monsieur, may I ask what was the object of the discussion?"
"He would have it thatle Pastissier françoiswas printed in 1654, and contained only four preliminary leaves; whilst I maintained, and with reason, as you see, that it was printed in 1655 and that it had five preliminary leaves and a frontispiece. Now here is the very date, 1655; here are the five preliminary leaves; here is the very frontispiece."
"Upon my word, so it is."
"Ah! ah! how sheepish, how utterly foolish my friend Bérard will look now!"
"But, monsieur," I suggested timidly, "did you not tell me that you had argued over this little volume for the past three years?"
"Yes, indeed, for more than three years."
"Well, it seems to me that if the discussion no longer amused you, you had a very simple remedy at hand to stop it."
"What?"
"Does not one of the ancient philosophers prove the incontestability of movement to another philosopher who denies movement, by walking before him?"
"Well?"
"Well, then, you must prove to M. Bérard the superiority of your knowledge over his, by showing him the Elzevir you have there, and unless he is more incredulous than St. Thomas...."
"But, to show it, monsieur, it was necessary to possess it, and I had it not."
"This little volume is, then, very rare?"
"It is the rarest of the lot! There are probably only ten examples of it left in Europe."
"And why is this particular volume rarer than the others? Were there fewer copies printed?"
"On the contrary, Techener declares that there were five thousand five hundred copies issued, and I maintain that there were more than ten thousand printed."
"The deuce! was the edition burnt, then, with the library of Alexandria?"
"No; but it was lost, spoilt, torn up in kitchens. You can quite understand that chefs and cookmaids are indifferent bibliomaniacs: they served thePastissier françoisas they servedCarêmeor theCuisinier royal; hence the rarity of the book."
"So rare that, as you say, you have not found one before to-night?"
"Oh, I knew of it six weeks ago. I told Frank to keep it for me, as I was not well enough off to buy it."
"What! You were not rich enough to buy it, not rich enough to buy that little old book?"
The bibliomaniac smiled disdainfully.
"Do you know, monsieur," he said to me, "what a copy of thePastissier françoisis worth?"
"Why, I should judge it worth about a crown."
"A copy of thePastissier françois,monsieur, is worth from two hundred to four hundred francs."
"From two to four hundred francs ...?"
"Yes, indeed.... Only a week ago, old Brunet, the author ofManuel des libraires, an enthusiastic Elzeviriomaniac, inserted a notice in the papers that he was willing to pay three hundred francs for a copy such as this. Luckily, Frank did not see the notice."
"Pardon me, monsieur! but I warned you what an ignoramus lam ... you said a book like that was worth from two hundred to four hundred francs."
"Yes, from two hundred to four hundred francs."
"Why is there such a difference in the price?"
"Because of the margins."
"Ah! the margins?"
"All the value of an Elzevir consists in the width of its margins; the wider they are, the dearer the Elzevir. An Elzevir without a margin is worth next to nothing; they measure the margins with compasses, and, according as they have twelve, fifteen or eighteen lines, the Elzevir is worth two hundred, three hundred, four hundred and even six hundred francs."
"Six hundred francs!... I am of Madame Méchin's way of thinking."
"And what was Madame Méchin's way of thinking?"
"Madame Méchin is a very witty woman."
"Yes, I am aware of that."
"Her husband was prefect of the department of Aisne."
"I know that too."
"Well, one day when she was visiting Soissons with her husband, the governor of the place, to do her honour, showed her the guns upon the ramparts, one after the other. When she had seen all the kinds, of every date and every shape, and had exhausted her repertory ofOhs!andReallys!andIs it possibles!Madame Méchin, who did not know what to say next to the governor, asked him, 'How much does a pair of cannon cost, M. le gouverneur?' 'A twelve, twenty-four or thirty-six pounder, madame la comtesse?' 'Oh, let us say thirty-six?' 'A pair of thirty-six cannon, madame,' replied the governor,—'a pair of thirty-six cannon might cost from eight to ten thousand francs. 'Well, then,' replied Madame Méchin, 'I am not going to put my money on them.'"
My neighbour looked at me, doubtful whether I had told the story innocently or jokingly. He was possibly going to question me on that head, when we heard the call bell; the overture began, and there were cries for silence. Upon this, I prepared myself to listen, whilst my neighbour plunged more deeply than ever into the reading of his precious Elzevir.
The curtain rose.
Prologue of theVampire—The style offends my neighbour's ear—First act—Idealogy—The rotifer—What the animal is—Its conformation, its life, its death and its resurrection
Prologue of theVampire—The style offends my neighbour's ear—First act—Idealogy—The rotifer—What the animal is—Its conformation, its life, its death and its resurrection
The overture was intended to represent a storm. The scene opened in the cave of Staffa. Malvina slept on a tomb. Oscar sat on another. A third enclosed Lord Ruthven, who was to come out of it at a given moment. The part of Malvina was taken by Madame Dorval; Oscar, or the angel of marriage, by Moessard; Lord Ruthven, or the Vampire, by Philippe.
Alas! who could have known at that moment, when I was looking eagerly beyond the curtain, taking in the whole scene, decorations and characters combined, that I should be present at Philippe's funeral, watch by Madame Dorval's death-bed, and see Moessard crowned?
In the prologue, there was another angel, called Ithuriel, the angel of the moon, talking with the angel of marriage. This was Mademoiselle Denotte. I do not know whether she is now living or dead.... The narrative was carried on between the angel of marriage and the angel of the moon, two angels who, as they wore the same armour, might have been taken to belong to the same family.
Malvina had lost herself in hunting; the storm terrifying her, she had taken shelter in the cave of Staffa. There, unable to keep awake, she had fallen asleep on a tomb. The angel of marriage was watching over her. The angel of the moon, who had slid down on a ray of the pale goddess, through the cracks of the basaltic roof, asked why the angel of marriage sat there, and,above all, how it came about that there was a young girl in the grotto of Staffa.
The angel of marriage replied that, as Malvina, sister of Lord Aubrey, was to espouse Lord Marsden next day, he had been summoned by the importance of the occasion, and that his looks, when Ithuriel interrupted him in the act of silently gazing upon the beautiful betrothed girl, and the sadness depicted upon his face, sprang from knowledge of the misfortunes in store for the young maiden, who was about to fall from the arms of Love into those of Death. Then Ithuriel began to understand.
"Explain thyself," said Ithuriel, "is it true that horrible phantomscome (viennent)sometimes ...?"
My neighbour trembled, as though an asp had bitten him in his sleep.
"Vinssent!" he cried,—"vinssent!3"
Cries of "Silence!" burst forth all over the theatre, and I too clamoured loudly for silence, for I was enthralled by this opening.
The angel of the moon, interrupted in the middle of her sentence, threw an angry look across the orchestra, and went on:
"Is it true that horrible phantoms come(viennent)under the cloak of the rights of marriage, to suck blood from the throat of a timid maiden?"
"Vinssent! vinssent! vinssent!" murmured my neighbour.
Fresh cries of "Hush!" drowned his exclamation, which it must be confessed was less bold and less startling this time than the first.
Oscar replied: "Yes! and these monsters are called vampires. A Power whose inscrutable decrees we are not permitted to call in question, has permitted certain miserable beings, who are tormented by the punishments which their crimes have drawn down upon them on this earth, to enjoy a frightful power, which they exercise by preference over the nuptial couch and over the cradle; sometimes their formidable shapes appear clothed in the hideous guise death has bestowed upon them; others, more highly favoured, becausetheir career is more brief and their future more fearful, obtain permission to reclothe themselves with the fleshy vesture lost in the tomb, and reappear before the living in the bodily shapes they formerly possessed."
"And when do these monsters appear?" asked Ithuriel.
"The first hour of the morning wakes them in their sepulchre," replied Oscar. "When the sound of its sonorous stroke has died away among the echoes of the mountains, they fall back motionless in their everlasting tombs. But there is one among them over whom my power is more limited ... what am I saying?... Fate herself can never go back on her decisions! ... After having carried desolation into twenty different countries, always conquered, ever continuing, the blood which sustains its horrible existence ever renewing its vitality ... in thirty-six hours, at one o'clock in the morning, it has at length to submit to annihilation, the lawful punishment of an infinite succession of crimes, if it cannot, at that time, add yet another crime, and count one more victim."
"My God! think of writing a play like that!" murmured my neighbour.
It seemed to me that he was too critical; for I thought this dialogue was couched in the finest style imaginable. The prologue continued. Several persons who had heard my neighbour gave vent to various whispered comments on the presumption of this indefatigable interrupter; but, as he buried himself in hisPastissier françois,the murmurs ceased.
It is unnecessary to point out that the young betrothed asleep on the tomb was the innocent heroine who was destined to be the bride of the Vampire, and had the public been in any doubt, all their doubts would have been dispersed after the last scene of the prologue.
"What do I hear?" said Ithuriel; "thy conversation has kept me long while in these caves."
As the angel of the moon asks this question, the silvery chime of a distant clock is heard striking one, and the reverberation is repeated in echoes again and again.
Oscar."Stay and see."
All the tombs open as the hour sounds; pale shades rise half out of their graves and then fall back under their monumental stones as the sound of the echoes dies away.
A SPECTRE, clad in a shroud, escapes from the most conspicuous of these tombs: his face is exposed; he glides to the place where Miss Aubrey sleeps, exclaiming—
"Malvina!"
Oscar."Withdraw."
Spectre."She belongs to me!"
Oscar puts his arms round the sleeping girl. "She belongs to God, and thou wilt soon belong to the regions of nothingness."
The Spectre retires, but repeats threateningly, "To nothingness."
Ithuriel crosses the stage in a cloud.
The scene changes and represents an apartment in the house of Sir Aubrey.
"Absurd! absurd!" exclaimed my neighbour. And he resumed his reading ofle Pastissier françois.
I did not at all agree with him: I thought the staging magnificent; I had nothing to say about Malvina, for she had not spoken; but Philippe seemed to me exceedingly fine, notwithstanding his paleness, and Moessard very good. Moreover, crude as it was, it was an attempt at Romanticism—a movement almost entirely unknown at that time. This intervention of immaterial and superior beings in human destiny had a fanciful side to it which pleased my imagination, and maybe that evening was responsible for the germ in me from which sprang theDon Juan de Maranaof eleven years later. The play began.
SirAubrey (the reader will see presently why I underline the wordSir)—SirAubrey met Lord Ruthven, a rich English traveller, at Athens, and they became friends. During their wanderings about the Parthenon and their day-dreams by the seashore, they planned means for tying the bonds of their friendship more firmly, and, subject to Malvina's consent, they decided upona union between the young girl, who was at home in the castle of Staffa, and the noble traveller, who had become her brother's closest friend. Unfortunately, during an excursion which Aubrey and Ruthven made to the suburbs of Athens, to attend the wedding of a young maiden endowed privately by Lord Ruthven, the two companions were attacked by brigands: a sharp defence put the assassins to flight; but Lord Ruthven was struck down mortally wounded. His last words were a request that his friend would place him on a hillock bathed by the moon's rays. Aubrey carried out this last request, and laid the dying man on the place indicated; then, as his friend's eyes closed and his breathing ceased, Aubrey began to search for his scattered servitors; but when he returned with them, an hour later, the body had disappeared. Aubrey fancied that the assassins must have taken the body away to remove all traces of their crime.
When he returned to Scotland, he broke the news of Lord Ruthven's death to his brother, Lord Marsden, and told him of the close relationship that had united them during their travels. Then Marsden claimed succession to his brother's rights, and proposed to marry Malvina, if Malvina would consent to this substitution. Malvina, who did not know either the one or the other, made no objection to Lord Marsden's claim or to her brother's wishes.
Lord Marsden is announced. Malvina feels that slight embarrassment which, like an early morning mist, always comes over the hearts of young maidens at the approach of their betrothed. Aubrey, overjoyed, rushes to greet him; but when he sees him he utters a cry of surprise. It is not Lord Marsden—that is to say, a person hitherto unknown—who stands before him; it is his friend Lord Ruthven!
Aubrey's astonishment is intense; but all is explained. Ruthven did not die; he only fainted: the coolness of the night air brought him back to consciousness. Aubrey's departure and his return to Scotland had been too prompt for Ruthven to send him word; but when he was well he returned to Ireland, to find his brother dead; he inheritedhis name and his fortune, and, under that name, with twice the fortune he had before, he offered to espouse Malvina, and rejoiced in anticipation at the joy he would cause his beloved Aubrey, by his reappearance before him. Ruthven is charming: his friend has not overrated him. He and Malvina were both so favourably impressed with one another that, under the pretext of very urgent business, he asked to be allowed to marry her within twenty-four hours. Malvina makes a proper show of resistance before yielding. They return to Marsden's castle. The curtain falls.
Now I had been watching my neighbour almost as much as the play, and, to my great satisfaction, I had seen him close his Elzevir and listen to the final scenes. When the curtain fell, he uttered an exclamation of disdain accompanied by a deep-drawn sigh.
"Pooh!" he said.
I took advantage of this moment to renew our conversation.
"Excuse me, monsieur," I said, "but at the conclusion of the prologue you said,'How absurd!'"
"Yes," said my neighbour, "I suppose I did say so; or, if I did not say it, I certainly thought it."
"Do you then condemn the use of supernatural beings in the drama?"
"Not at all; on the contrary, I admire it extremely. All the great masters have made potent use of it: Shakespeare inHamlet, inMacbethand inJulius Cæsar; Molière inle Festin de pierre, which he ought rather to have calledle Convive de pierre, for his title to be really significant; Voltaire inSémiramis; Goethe inFaust.No, on the contrary, I highly approve of the use of the supernatural, because I believe in it."
"What! you have faith in the supernatural?"
"Most certainly."
"In everyday life?"
"Certainly. We elbow every moment against beings who are unknown to us because they are invisible to us: the air, fire, the earth, are all inhabited. Sylphs, gnomes, water-sprites,hobgoblins, bogies, angels, demons, fly, float, crawl and leap around us. What are those shooting stars of the night, meteors which astronomers in vain try to explain to us, and of which they can discover neither cause nor end, if they are not angels carrying God's orders from one world to another? Some day we shall see it all."
"Did you say, we shall see?"
"Yes, by heaven! we shall see. Do you not think that we see these miracles?"
"You said 'we'; do you think we personally shall see them?"
"Well, I did not exactly say that ... not I, for I am already old; perhaps you, who are still young; but certainly our descendants."
"And why, for heaven's sake, will our descendants see anything that we cannot see?"
"In the same way that we see things which our ancestors never did."
"What things do we see which they did not?"
"Why, steam, piston guns, air-balloons, electricity, printing, gunpowder! Do you suppose the world progresses only to stop half-way? Do you imagine that after having conquered successively the earth, water and fire, man, for instance, will not make himself master of the air? It would be ridiculous to hold that belief. If perchance you doubt it, young man, so much the worse for you."
"I confess one thing, monsieur, and that is, I neither doubt nor believe. My mind has never dwelt on such theories. I have been wrong, I see, since they can be interesting, and I should take to them if I had the pleasure of talking for long with you. So you believe, monsieur, that we shall gradually attain to a knowledge of all Nature's secrets?"
"I am convinced of it."
"But we should then be as powerful as the Almighty."
"Not quite.... As knowing, perhaps; as powerful, no."
"Do you think, then, that there is such a great distinction between knowledge and power?"
"There is an abyss between those two words! God has given you authority to make use of all created things. None of these things is useless or idle: all at the right moment are capable of contributing to the well-being of man, to the happiness of humanity; but, in order to be able to apply these things to the good of the race and to the welfare of the individual, man must know precisely the cause and the end of everything. He will utilise all, and when he has utilised the earth, water, fire and air, neither space nor distance will any longer exist for him: he will see the world as it is, not merely in its visible forms, but also in its invisible forms; he will penetrate into the bowels of the earth, as do gnomes; he will inhabit water, like nymphs and tritons; he will play in fire, as do hobgoblins and salamanders; he will fly through the air, like angels and sylphs; he will ascend, almost to God, by the chain of being and by the ladder of perfection; he will see the supreme Ruler of all things, as I see you; and if, instead of learning humility through knowledge, he should gain pride; if, instead of worshipping, he be puffed up; if because of his knowledge of creation, he thinks himself equal to the Creator, God will say to him, 'Make Me a star or arotifer!'"
I thought I had not heard him correctly, and I repeated—
"A star or a...?"
"Or a rotifer:—it is an animal I have discovered. Columbus discovered a world and I an ephemera. Do you imagine that Columbus weighed heavier, for all that, before the eyes of God, than I?"
I remained in thought for a moment. Was this man out of his mind? Whether or no, his madness was a fine frenzy.
"Well," he went on, "one day people will discover water-sprites, gnomes, sylphs, nymphs, angels, just as I discovered my animalcule. All that is needed is to find a microscope capable of perceiving the infinitely transparent, just as we have discovered one for the infinitely little. Before the invention of the solar microscope, creation, to man's eyes, stopped short at the acarus, the seison; he little thought there were snakesin his water, crocodiles in his vinegar, blue dolphins ... in other things. The solar microscope was invented and he saw them all."
I sat dumbfounded. I had never heard anyone speak of such extraordinary things. "Good gracious! monsieur," I said to him, "you open out to me a whole world of whose existence I knew nothing. What! are there serpents in water?"
"Hydras."
"Crocodiles in our vinegar?"
"Ichthyosauri."
"And blue dolphins in ...? But it is impossible!"
"Ah! that is the usual formula—'It is impossible!' ... You said just now,'It is impossible!' in reference to things we do not see. And now you say 'It is impossible' of things that everybody else but yourself has seen. All 'impossibility' is relative: what is impossible to the oyster is not impossible to the fish; what is impossible to the fish is not impossible to the serpent; what is impossible to the serpent is not impossible to the quadruped; what is impossible to the quadruped is not impossible to man; what is impossible to man is not impossible with God. When Fulton offered to demonstrate the existence of steam to Napoleon, Napoleon said, as you, 'It is impossible!' and had he lived two or three years longer he would have seen pass by, from the top of his rocky island, their funnels smoking, the machines that might still have kept him emperor, had he not scorned them as the creatures of a dream, utopian and impossible! Even Job prophesied steamships...."
"Job prophesied steamships?"
"Yes, most certainly.... What else do you think his description of leviathan meant, whom he calls the king of the seas?—'I will not forget the leviathan, his strength and the marvellous structure of his body. By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron. His breath kindleth coals: his heart is as firm as a stone, yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone. He maketh the deep to boil as a pot; he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.He maketh a path to shine after him: one would think the deep to be hoary. Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.' Leviathan is, of course, the modern steamship!"
"Indeed, monsieur," I said to my neighbour, "you make my head reel. You know so much and you talk so well, I feel carried away by all you tell me, like a leaf by a whirlwind. You spoke of a tiny animal that you discovered—an ephemera: do you call that a rotifer?"
"Yes."
"Did you discover it in water, in wine or in vinegar?"
"In wet sand."
"How did it come about?"
"Oh! why, in a very simple way. I had begun making microscopic experiments upon infinitely small things, long before Raspail. One day, when I had examined under the microscope water, wine, vinegar, cheese, bread, all the ingredients in fact that experiments are usually made upon, I took a little wet sand out of my rain gutter,—I then lodged on a sixth floor,—I put it on the slide of my microscope and applied my eye to the lens. Then I saw a strange animal move about, in shape like a velocipede, furnished with two wheels, which it moved very rapidly. If it had a river to cross, these wheels served the same purpose as those of a steamboat; had it dry land to go over, the wheels acted the same as those of a tilbury. I watched it, I studied its every detail, I drew it. Then I suddenly remembered that my rotifer,—I had christened it by that name, although I have since called it atarentatello>—I suddenly remembered that my rotifer had made me forget an engagement. I was in a great hurry; I had an appointment with one of the animalculæ which do not like being kept waiting—an ephemera whom mortals call a woman.... I left my microscope, my rotifer and the pinch of sand which was his world. I had other work to do where I went, protracted and engaging work, which kept me all the night. I did not get back until the next morning: I went straight to my microscope. Alas! the sand had dried up during the night, and my poor rotifer, which needed moisture, no doubt, to live,had died. Its almost imperceptible body was stretched on its left side, its wheels were motionless, the steamboat puffed no longer, the velocipede had stopped."
"Ah! poor rotifer!" I exclaimed.
"Wait, wait!"
"Ah! was it like Lord Ruthven, then? He was not dead? Was he, like Lord Ruthven, a vampire?"
"You will see! Quite dead though he was, the animal was still a curious variety of ephemera, and his body was as worth preserving as that of a mammoth or a mastodon. Only, you understand, quite other precautions have to be taken to handle an animal a hundred times smaller than a seison, than to change the situation of an animal ten times greater than an elephant! I selected a little cardboard box, from among all my boxes; I destined it to be my rotifer's tomb, and by the help of the feather end of a pen I transported my pinch of sand from the slide of my microscope to my box. I meant to show this corpse to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire or to Cuvier; but I did not get the opportunity. I never met these gentlemen, or, if I did meet them, they declined to mount my six flights of stairs; so for three or maybe six months or a year I forgot the body of the poor rotifer. One day, by chance, the box fell into my hand; and I desired to see what change a year had wrought on the body of an ephemera. The weather was cloudy, there had been a great fall of stormy rain. In order to see better, I placed my microscope close to the window, and I emptied the contents of the little box on to the slide. The body of the poor rotifer still lay motionless on the sand; but the weather, which remembers the colossal so ruthlessly, seemed to have forgotten the tiny atom. I was looking at my ephemera with an easily understood feeling of curiosity, when suddenly the wind drove a drop of rain on to the microscope slide and wet my pinch of sand."
"Well?" I asked.
"Well, then the miracle took place. My rotifer seemed to revive at the touch of that refreshing coolness: it began to move one antenna, then another; then one of its wheels beganto turn round, then both its wheels: it regained its centre of gravity, its movements became regular; in short, it lived!"
"Nonsense!"
"Monsieur, the miracle of the resurrection, in which perhaps you believe, although Voltaire had no faith in it, was accomplished, not at the end of three days ... three days, a fine miracle!... but at the end of a year.... I renewed the same test ten times: ten times the sand dried, ten times the rotifer died! ten times the sand was wetted, and ten times the rotifer came to life again! I had discovered an immortal, not a rotifer, monsieur! My rotifer had probably lived before the Deluge and would survive to the Judgment Day."
"And you still possess this marvellous animal?"
"Ah, monsieur," my neighbour replied, with a deep sigh, "I have not that happiness. One day when, for the twentieth time, perhaps, I was preparing to repeat my experiment, a puff of wind carried away the dry sand, and, with the dry sand, my deathless phenomenon. Alas! I have taken many a pinch of wet sand from my gutters since, and even from elsewhere, but always in vain; I have never found again the equivalent of what I lost. My rotifer was not only immortal but even unique.... Will you allow me to pass, monsieur? The second act is about to begin, and I think this melodrama so poor that I much prefer to go away."
"Oh, monsieur," I said, "I beg of you not to go; I have many more things to ask of you, and you seem to me to be very learned!... You need not listen if you don't want to; you can readle Pastissier françois,and in the intervals we can talk of Elzevirs and rotifers.... I will listen to the play, which, I assure you, interests me greatly."
"You are very good," said my neighbour; and he bowed.
Then came the three raps and, with the charming suavity I had already noticed in him, he resumed his reading.
The curtain rose, revealing the entrance to a farm, a chain of snowy mountains, and a window. The farm represented on the stage was that belonging to Marsden Castle.
Second act of theVampire—Analysis—My neighbour again objects—He has seen a vampire—Where and how—A statement which records the existence of vampires—Nero—Why he established the race of hired applauders—My neighbour leaves the orchestra
Second act of theVampire—Analysis—My neighbour again objects—He has seen a vampire—Where and how—A statement which records the existence of vampires—Nero—Why he established the race of hired applauders—My neighbour leaves the orchestra
While Ruthven's preparations for marrying Malvina were in progress, Edgard, one of his vassals, married Lovette. Lovette made the prettiest, the sweetest and the most graceful betrothed imaginable: she was Jenny Vertpré, at twenty.
Lord Ruthven, who really loved Malvina, would much rather have sucked the blood of another man's wife than that of his own; so, at the request of Edgard, his servant, he willingly acceded to be present at his nuptials. The marriage takes place. Lord Ruthven is seen sitting down: the ballet is just about to begin, when an ancient bard comes forward with his harp; he was a guest at every castle, the poet invited to every marriage. He recognised Ruthven, who did not recognise him, being otherwise employed in ogling poor Lovette.
The bard tunes his harp and sings:—
"O jeune vierge de StaffaBrûlant de la première flamme,Dont le cœur palpite déjàAux doux noms d'amante et de femme!Au moment d'unir votre sortA l'amant de votre pensée,Gardez-vous, jeune fiancée,De l'amour qui donne la mort!"
This first couplet rouses Lord Ruthven's anger, who sees init a warning addressed to Lovette, and who consequently fears to see his victim snatched away from him. So he turns his bewitching glance from the young girl to glare furiously on the bard, who continues unconcernedly:—
"Quand le soleil de ces désertsDes monts ne dore plus la cime,Alors, les anges des enfersViennent caresser leurs victimes....Si leur douce voix vous endort,Reculez, leur main est glacée!Gardez-vous, jeune fiancée,De l'amour qui donne la mort!"
A third stanza and Lovette will escape from the Vampire. The bard, who is the angel of marriage in disguise, must not therefore be allowed to sing his third stanza. Lord Ruthven complains that the song brings back unhappy memories, and sends the old man away.
Then, as night draws on, as there is no time to lose, since, unless he can suck the blood of a maiden before one o'clock in the morning, he must die, he seeks an interview with Lovette. Lovette would fain decline; but Edgard is afraid of displeasing his lord and master, who, left alone with Lovette, endeavours to seduce her, swears to her that he loves her, and places a purse full of gold in her hand. Just at that moment the bard's harp is heard and the refrain of the song:—
"Gardez-vous, jeune fiancée,De l'amour qui donne la mort!"
Then everybody comes on, and the ballet begins. Towards the middle of the ballet, Lovette withdraws, tired; Ruthven, who has not let her go out of sight, follows her. Edgard soon perceives that neither Lovette nor his lord are present. He goes out in his turn. Cries are heard from the wing; Lovette runs on, terrified; a pistol-shot is heard: Lord Ruthven falls mortally wounded on the stage.
"He tried to dishonour my betrothed!" cries Edgard, who appears, his pistol still smoking in his hand.
Aubrey dashes towards the wounded man. Lord Ruthven still breathes; he asks to be left alone with his friend. Everybody goes off.
"One last promise, Aubrey," says Lord Ruthven.
"Oh, ask it, take my life!... it will be unbearable to me without thee," replies Aubrey.
"My friend, I only ask thee for profound secrecy for twelve hours."
"For twelve hours?"
"Promise me that Malvina shall not know anything of what has happened—that you will not do anything to avenge my death before the hour of one in the morning has struck.... Swear secrecy by my dying breath!..."
"I swear it!" says Aubrey, stretching forth his hands. The moon comes out from behind clouds and shines brilliantly during Ruthven's last words.
"Aubrey," says Ruthven, "the queen of night casts light upon me for the last time.... Let me see her and pay my final vows to heaven!"
Ruthven's head falls back at these words. Then Aubrey, helped by Lovette's father, carries the dead man to the rocks in the distance, kisses his hand for the last time, and retires, led away by the old man. At that moment the moonlight completely floods Ruthven's body with its rays and lights up the frozen mountains....
The curtain falls, and the whole house applauds enthusiastically, save my neighbour, who still growls under his breath. Such inveterate animosity against a play which appeared to me to be full of interest astonished me, coming from a person who seemed so well disposed as he. He had not merely contented himself with noisy exclamations, as I have indicated, but, still worse, during the whole of the last scene he had played in a disturbing fashion with a key which he several times put to his lips.
"Really, monsieur," I said, "I think you are very hard on this piece."
My neighbour shrugged his shoulders.
"Yes, monsieur, I know it, and the more so because the author considers himself a man of genius, a man of talent, the possessor of a good style; but he deceives himself. I saw the piece when it was played three years ago, and now I have seen it again. Well, what I said then, I repeat: the piece is dull, unimaginative, improbable. Yes, see how he makes vampires act! And thenSirAubrey! People don't talk ofSirAubrey. Aubrey is a family name, and the title ofSiris only used before the baptismal name. Ah! the author was wise to preserve his anonymity; he showed his sense in doing that."
I took advantage of a moment when my neighbour stopped to take breath, and I said—
"Monsieur, you said just now, 'Yes, see how he makes vampires act!' Did you not say so? I was not mistaken, was I?"
"No."
"Well, by employing such language you gave me the impression that you believe they really exist?"
"Of course they exist."
"Have you ever seen any, by chance?"
"Certainly I have seen them."
"Through a solar microscope?" I laughingly suggested. "No, with my own eyes, as Orgon and Tartuffe."
"Whereabouts?"
"In Illyria."
"In Illyria? Ah! Have you been in Illyria?"
"Three years."
"And you saw vampires there?"
"Illyria, you must know, is the historic ground of vampires like Hungary, Servia and Poland."
"No, I did not know.... I do not know anything. Where were the vampires you saw?"
"At Spalatro. I was lodging with a good man of sixty-two. He died. Three days after his burial, he appeared to his son, in the night, and asked for something to eat: the son gave him all he wanted; he ate it, and then vanished. The nextday the son told me what had happened, telling me he felt certain his father would not return once only, and asking me to place myself, the following night, at a window to see him enter and go out. I was very anxious to see a vampire. I stood at the window, but that night he did not come. The son then told me, fearing lest I should be discouraged, that he would probably come on the following night. On the following night I placed myself again at my window, and sure enough, towards midnight, the old man appeared, and I recognised him perfectly. He came from the direction of the cemetery; he walked at a brisk pace, but his steps made no sound. When he reached the door, he knocked; I counted three raps: the knocks sounded hard on the oak, as though it were struck with a bone and not with a finger. The son opened the door and the old man entered...."
I listened to this story with the greatest attention, and I began to prefer the intervals to the melodrama.
"My curiosity was too highly excited for me to leave my window," continued my neighbour; "there I stayed. Half an hour later, the old man came out; he returned whence he had come—that is to say, in the direction of the cemetery. He disappeared round the corner of a wall. At the same moment, almost, my door opened. I turned round quickly and saw the son. He was very pale. 'Well,' I said,'so your father came?' 'Yes ... did you see him enter?' 'Enter and come out.... What did he do to-day?' 'He asked me for food and drink, as he did the other day.' 'And did he eat and drink?' 'He ate and drank.... But that is not all ... this is what troubles me. He said to me ...' 'Ah!' he said something else than a mere request for food and drink?' 'Yes, he said to me, "This is the second time I have come and eaten with thee. It is now thy turn to come and eat with me."' 'The devil!...' 'I am to expect him the same hour the day after to-morrow.' 'The deuce you are!' 'Yes, yes, that is just what worries me.' The day but one after, he was found dead in his bed! The same day two or three other people in the same village who had also seen the old man, and to whom hehad spoken, fell ill and died too. It was then recognised that the old man was a vampire. I was questioned; I told all I had seen and heard. Justice demanded an examination of the graveyard. They opened the tombs of all those who had died during the previous six weeks: every corpse was in a state of decomposition. But when they came to Kisilowa's tomb—that was the old man's name—they found him with his eyes open, his lips red, his lungs breathing properly, although he was as rigid as if in death. They drove a stake through his heart; he uttered a loud cry and blood gushed out from his mouth: then they laid him on a stack of wood, reduced him to ashes and scattered the ashes to the four winds.... I left the country soon after. I never heard if his son turned into a vampire too."
"Why should he have become a vampire too?" I asked.
"Ah! because it is the custom of those who die from a vampire's bite to become vampires."
"Really, you say this as though it were a known fact."
"But indeed it is a known, registered and well established fact! Do you doubt it?... Read Don Calmet'sTraité des apparitions, vol ii. pp. 41et sqq.; you will find a record signed by the hadnagi Barriavar and the ancient heïduques; further by Battiw, first lieutenant of the regiment of Alexander of Wurtemberg; by Clercktinger, surgeon-major of the Fürstenberg regiment; by three other surgeons of the company and by Goltchitz, captain at Slottats, stating that in the year 1730, a month after the death of a certain heïduque, who lived in Medreiga, named Arnold-Paul, who had been crushed by the fall of a hay waggon, four people died suddenly, and, from the nature of their death, according to the traditions of the country, it was evident that they had been the victims of vampirism; they then called to mind that, during his life, this Arnold-Paul had often related how, in the neighbourhood of Cossova, on the Turko-Servian frontier, he had been worried by a Turkish vampire,—for they too hold the belief that those who have been passive vampires during their lives become active vampires after their death,—but that he had found a cure in the eating of earth from the vampire's grave, and in rubbing himself with its blood—precautions which did not prevent him from becoming a vampire after his death; for, four persons having died, they thought the deed was due to him, and they exhumed his body forty days after his burial: he was quite recognisable, and his body bore the colour of life; his hair, his nails and his beard had grown; his veins were filled with a bloody fluid, which exuded from all parts of his body upon the shroud in which he was wrapped round: the hadnagi, or bailiff of the place, in the presence of those who performed the act of exhumation, and who was a man experienced in cases of vampirism, caused a very sharp stake to be driven through the heart of the said Arnold-Paul, after the usual custom, piercing his body through and through, a frightful cry escaping from his lips, as though he were alive; this act accomplished, they cut off his head, burned him to ashes, and did the same with the corpses of the four or five other victims of vampirism, lest they, in their turn, should cause the deaths of others; but none of these precautions prevented the same wonders from being renewed, five years later, about the year 1735, when seventeen people, belonging to the same village, died from vampirism, some without any previous illness, others after having languished two or three days; among others a young person, named Stranoska, daughter of the heïduque Jeronitzo, went to bed in perfect health, waked up in the middle of the night, trembling all over, uttering fearful shrieks, and saying that the son of the heïduque Millo, who had died nine weeks before, had tried to strangle her during her sleep; she languished from that instant, and died in three days' time: since what she had said of the son of Millo led them to suspect him of being a vampire, they exhumed him, and found him in a state which left no doubt of the fact of vampirism; they discovered, in short, after prolonged investigation, that the defunct Arnold-Paul had not only killed the four persons already referred to, but also many animals, of which fresh vampires, and particularly Millo's son, had eaten; on this evidence, they decided to disinter all who had died since a certain date, and among about forty corpses they discovered seventeen which bore evident signs of vampirism; so they pierced their hearts, cutoff their heads, then burnt them and threw their bodies into the river."
"Does the book which contains this evidence cost as much as an Elzevir, monsieur?"
"Oh dear no! You will pick it up anywhere, two volumes, in 18mo, of 480 pages each. Techener, Guillemot or Frank will have a copy. It will cost you from forty sous to three francs."
"Thanks, I shall give myself the pleasure of buying a copy."
"Now will you allow me to depart?... Three years ago I thought the third act pretty bad; it will seem worse to me to-day."
"If you really must, monsieur ..."
"Yes, really you must let me go."
"But first may I ask your advice?"
"With the greatest pleasure.... Speak."
"Before I came into the orchestra, I entered the pit, and there I had a slight breeze."
"Ah! It was you, was it?"
"It was I."
"You ...?"
"Yes."
"Smacked ...?"
"Yes."
"What occasioned you to allow yourself that diversion?"
I told him my adventure, and asked him if I ought to forewarn my witnesses overnight, or if it would be time enough next morning.
He shook his head.
"Oh, neither to-night nor to-morrow morning," he said.
"What! neither to-night nor to-morrow?"
"No; it would be useless trouble."
"Why so?"
"Because you fell into a nest of hired applauders."
"A nest of hired applauders!... What are they?" I asked.
"Oh! young man," exclaimed my neighbour in paternal accents, "do your utmost to preserve your holy innocence!"
"But suppose I beg you to put an end to it ...?"
"Have you ever heard that in former times there were emperors of Rome?"
"Certainly."
"Do you remember the name of the fifth of those emperors?" "I think it was Nero."
"Right.... Well, Nero, who poisoned his cousin Britannicus, disembowelled his mother Agrippina, strangled his wife Octavia, killed his wife Poppæa with a kick in the stomach, had a tenor voice, after the style of Ponchard; only his style was less cultivated, and occasionally he sang false! That did not matter whilst Nero sang before his roystering companions or before his courtesans at the Palatine or Maison-Dorée; neither was it of much consequence when Nero sang as he watched Rome burn: the Romans were too much occupied with the fire to pay any attention to a semi-tone too high or a flat too low. But when he took it into his head to sing in a public theatre, it was a different matter: every time the illustrious tenor deviated in the slightest degree from musical correctness, some spectator allowed himself—what I shall permit myself to do immediately, if you insist on my remaining to the end of this silly melodrama—to whistle. Of course the spectator was arrested and promptly flung to the lions; but as he passed before Nero, instead of saying simply, according to custom, 'Augustus, he who is about to die salutes thee!' he said,'Augustus, I am to die because you sang false; but when I am dead, you will not sing the more correctly.' This final salutation, taken up and added to by other culprits, annoyed Nero: he had the whistlers strangled in the corridors, and no one whistled any more. But it was not enough for Nero,—thathankerer after the impossible,as Tacitus called him,—it was not enough that no one whistled any more, he wanted everybody to applaud him. Now, he could indeed strangle those who whistled, but he could not exactly strangle those who did not applaud; hewould have had to strangle the whole audience, and that would have been no light job: Roman theatres held twenty, thirty, forty thousand spectators!... As they were so strong in numbers, they could easily have prevented themselves from being strangled. Nero went one better: he instituted a body composed of Roman nobles—a kind of confraternity consisting of some three thousand members. These three thousand chevaliers were not the emperor's pretorians, they were the artist's body-guard; wherever he went, they followed him; whenever he sang, they applauded him. Did a surly spectator raise a murmur, a sensitive ear allow its owner to utter a slight whistle, that murmur or whistle was immediately drowned by applause. Nero ruled triumphant in the theatre. Had not Sylla, Cæsar and Pompey exhausted all other kinds of triumph? Well, my dear sir, that race of chevaliers has been perpetuated under the name ofclaqueurs. The Opéra has them, the Théâtre-Français has them, the Odéon has them—and is fortunate in having them!—finally, the Porte-Saint-Martin has them; nowadays their mission is not only to support poor actors—it consists even more, as you have just seen, in preventing bad plays from collapsing. They are calledromains, from their origin; but ourromainsare not recruited from among the nobility. No, managers are not so hard to please in their choice, and it is not necessary to show a gold ring on the first finger; provided they can show a couple of big hands, and bring these large hands rapidly and noisily together, that is the only quartering of nobility required of them. So, you see, I am quite right to warn you not to upset two of your friends for one of those rapscallions.... Now that I have enlightened you, will you allow me to leave?"
I knew it would be impertinent to retain my neighbour any longer. Though his conversation, which had covered a wide range of subjects in a short time, was agreeable and highly edifying to myself, it was evident he could not say the same of mine. I could not teach him anything, save that I was ignorant of everything he knew. So I effaced myself with a sigh, not daring to ask him who he was, and allowing him to pass by withhisPastissier françoishugged with both hands to his breast, fearing, no doubt, lest one of the chevaliers of whom he had just spoken, curious in the matter of rare books, should relieve him of it.
I watched him withdraw with regret: a vague presentiment told me that, after having done me so much service, this man would become one of my closest friends. In the meanwhile, he had made the intervals far more interesting than the play.
Happily the bell was ringing for the third act, and so the intervals were at an end.
A parenthesis—Hariadan Barberousseat Villers-Cotterets—I play the rôle of Don Ramire as an amateur—My costume—The third act of theVampire—My friend the bibliomaniac whistles at the most critical moment—He is expelled from the theatre—Madame Allan-Dorval—Her family and her childhood—Philippe—His death and his funeral
A parenthesis—Hariadan Barberousseat Villers-Cotterets—I play the rôle of Don Ramire as an amateur—My costume—The third act of theVampire—My friend the bibliomaniac whistles at the most critical moment—He is expelled from the theatre—Madame Allan-Dorval—Her family and her childhood—Philippe—His death and his funeral
The only definite feeling I was conscious of, when my neighbour had gone, was one of utter loneliness in that vast building. So I gave my whole attention to the play. Could I judge clearly? No, certainly not as yet: theVampirewas one of the first melodramas I had come across. The first wasHariadan Barberousse.I have forgotten to tell at the proper time and place how I became acquainted with the work of MM. Saint-Victor and Corse.
A troop of poverty-stricken actors came to Villers-Cotterets (you will understand they must have been poor indeed to come to Villers-Cotterets), and there they pretty nearly died of starvation. They consisted of but one family named Robba. These poor devils were possessed with the idea of giving a benefit for themselves, and they thought of begging two or three young ladies and young gentlemen of the town to play with them and for them. Naturally I was applied to. Nature had already implanted in my heart that fountain of goodwill through which everything that I had, that I have, that I shall have, passed, passes, and always will pass. I agreed to undertake the rôle of Don Ramire. All the other mothers refused to allow their boys and girls to act. Were their children going to mount the boards and play with ordinary actors? No indeed! My mother alone kept her promised word, and I was the only artiste on thisspecial occasion whose name, printed in big letters on the bills, was utilised in the philanthropic mission of obtaining a good audience for them.
I had to concoct a costume. It was a lengthy business to bring such an operation to a conclusion. Happily, no one was very exacting at that period, above all at Villers-Cotterets. Even Talma, who was a great renovator, playedHamletin white satin breeches,bottes à cœurand a polonaise. But of this wardrobe I only had thebottes à cœur:I could not play Don Ramire with the aid only of the boots. We made a tunic,—everybody played in tunics at that epoch,—and a splendid tunic it was, indeed, for it was made out of two red cashmere shawls, ornamented with a great gold-flowered pattern; my father had brought the shawls from Egypt, and I believe I have already referred to them. We contented ourselves with sewing them together, leaving an opening on each side for my arms, a sword-belt at the waist serving as a girdle; out of each arm-hole appeared a satin sleeve, and Don Ramire was, if not exactly sufficiently, at least sumptuously and modestly, clad from the shoulders to half-way down his thighs. A turned-down collar and a satin toque to match the tunic in colour completed the upper part of the costume. But the question of the lower half was more serious. Tights were rare in Villers-Cotterets; I might even say that they were unknown; so it was of no use wishing to procure tights: it would have been time wasted, a vision, a dream. The longest pair of silk stockings that could be found, sewed into a pair of drawers, did the business. Then came the laced boots. Ah! these laced boots, they were an invention of my own. A second pair of silk stockings were dyed red; soles were sewed to them; they were put over the first pair, then turned back, rolled up to within three inches of the ankle; the roll was tied fast to make a pad; we imitated the lacing of a laced boot with green ribbon; and then this footgear formed the base of a presentable-looking Don Ramire, who, atop, indulged in the luxury of a satin toque with an ostrich plume. Finally came the sword. My father's sword, the sword of a Republican, with its cap ofLiberty, looked somewhat odd when compared with the rest of Don Ramire's attire. The mayor, M. Mussart, lent me a silver-mounted Louis XV. sword: the chain which had fastened it was detached; but, though the guard had disappeared, the hilt and the sheath were left, and this was sufficient to satisfy the most exacting.
The announcement of this important entertainment made a great sensation: people came from all the towns and all the villages round, even from Soissons. I looked perfectly absurd, having never seen any play butPaul et Virginieat the age of three, and theJeunesse de Henri V.when I was eleven. But the Robbas took eight hundred francs at the doors—a fortune to them; and a mother, a father, children and grandchildren had wherewithal to keep themselves in food for two-thirds of a year.
Poor Robbas! I recollect that the whole of theirrépertoireonly consisted ofAdolphe et Claraand theDéserteur.God alone knows what became of the poor things! That was how I came to knowHariadan Barberousse, which, with theVampire, whose last act I was about to see, completed the sum total of my melodramatic equipment.
The third act was but a repetition of what had passed in the first. Ruthven, whom his friend Aubrey believed dead at
Marsden's farm, comes to life again, a sepulchral Endymion, under the kisses of the moon. He returns to the castle before Malvina's brother and urges forward his marriage; then Aubrey comes back and finds the bride adorned and the chapel prepared. He approaches his sister to tell her the terrible news of the death of her betrothed, and, seeing him pale and distressed, Malvina exclaims—
"Dear brother, you are in trouble!... For heaven's sake, tell me all!"
"Rally your courage, then," says Aubrey.
"You terrify me!" exclaims Malvina.
Then, turning towards the door—
"Milord is long a-coming," she says.
"Since I must rend your heart, know that all my plans arebroken. A fearful, an unlooked-for event has deprived us, me of a friend, you of a husband!... The unfortunate Ruthven."
At this juncture Ruthven comes forward, seizes Aubrey by the arm and says to him in a grim voice—
"Think of thy oath!"
At these words, and just as the whole audience burst into applause, a loud whistle sounded from one of the boxes. I turned round, and everybody in the orchestra and the pit did likewise. The hired applauders rose in a body and, climbing on the forms, shouted, "Put him out!" This formidable mountain could be seen rising up in the centre of the theatre, like the enormous counterfeit Parnassus of M. Titon-Dutillet at the Bibliothèque. But the whistler continued to whistle, hidden in his box, sheltered behind the railing as behind an impregnable rampart. I do not know why, but I came to the conclusion that it was my neighbour who was at last gratifying to his heart's content his desire to deride the piece which had disgusted him throughout the night. The play was totally stopped: Philippe, Madame Dorval and Thérigny stood on the stage without being able to utter a syllable; shouts of "Put him out!" increased and a police officer was sent for. By dint of gazing hard into the box I could see through the bars, and there I discerned, in the dusky interior, the untoward whistler. It was indeed my neighbour the bibliomaniac. The police officer arrived. In spite of all his protestations, the whistler was expelled from the theatre, and the piece went on in the midst of stampings and bravoes.
The play was drawing to its close. Aubrey, seized by Lord Ruthven's attendants, is carried away from Malvina's side, and she remains unprotected. Ruthven bears her off; a door opens—it is that of the chapel, illuminated for the nocturnal marriage. Malvina hesitates to contract the marriage without the presence of her brother; but Ruthven becomes more and more urgent; for unless the blood of a young damsel gives him renewed life within a very few minutes, hewill be annihilated,as the angel of marriage had predicted! Suddenly,Aubrey, who has escaped from his guardians, appears in the chapel; he stops his sister; he implores her not to go on any farther with the proceedings. Ruthven again recalls Aubrey to his oath.
"Yes," says Aubrey, "but the hour is just about to strike when I may reveal everything."
"Wretch!" cries Ruthven, drawing a dagger, "if you utter one word...."
"You shall only take her bathed in my blood!" cries Aubrey, redoubling his resistance.
"Well, then, you shall both perish!" says Ruthven.
He is about to strike Aubrey. One o'clock sounds; Malvina falls fainting in the arms of Bridget; thunder rumbles.
"Annihilation! annihilation!" shrieks Ruthven.
He lets his dagger fall and tries to flee. Shades come up out of the ground and carry him off; the destroying angel appears in a cloud; lightning flashes, and Ruthven is engulfed amidst the shades.
"PLUIE DE FEU"
It will be gathered that we are copying from the manuscript itself.
Philippe was recalled. But Madame Dorval's part was so execrable that no one dreamt of recalling her; she was only engaged at the Porte-Saint-Martin to play the worst parts; the favourite artiste, Mademoiselle Lévesque, took the good ones.
Allow me a few words concerning that poor dear creature, whom I then saw for the first time, and who died in my arms twenty-six years later.[1]
A large portion of these Memoirs will be devoted to remarks concerning the influence of eminent artistes, great comedians or famous poets; for my pages are intended to deal with the development of art in France during one half of the nineteenth century.
Political events will also no doubt have their share of attention, but only their due share. It is time things were relegated totheir proper positions, and, as our century is first and foremost one of appreciation, it is desirable that men and things should be appreciated at their proper value.
Mademoiselle Mars and Talma, those two great artistic glories of the Empire and the Restoration, will still survive in the thoughts of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, when the very names of those political actors whom men call ministers will long have been forgotten, the men who disdainfully flung to these glorious mendicants the grant annually allowed by the Chamber as though it were an alms.
Who was minister in England the year Shakespeare wroteOthello? Who was gonfalonier in Florence when Dante wrote hisInferno? Who was minister to King Hiero when the author ofPrometheuscame to beg protection from him? Who was archon of Athens when the divine Homer died on one of the Sporades, towards the middle of the tenth centuryB.C.?
To answer such queries one must needs be my neighbour,—my neighbour who knew so many things, who could recognise Elzevirs, who knew where vampires were to be found, who knew the origin of hired applauders and who had been put out of the theatre for whistling at the prose of MM.... for no name was ever printed on theVampirepamphlet, published by Barba, who ostentatiously put below his name:Publisher of the Works of Pigault-Lebrun.
Let us return to Madame Allan-Dorval, as she was called at that period. As I advance with these Memoirs there are many men and women, literary or political comedians whom we shall meet with, who made a name for themselves in their day, and I shall do for these personages what I am just about to do for poor Marie Dorval. When she died I undertook to raise a monument over her grave—a literary monument in my writings, a sepulchral monument in stone. The stones were to be paid for by my literary labours, and it pleased me to think of being the architect of both monuments.
Unluckily, I began the erection of my literary monument in theConstitutionnel.At the second article, I referred toAntonyand the oldConstitutionnel.M. Véron's susceptibility tookfright: the literary monument was arrested at its first attempt. And as the sepulchral monument depended on the literary monument, the sepulchral monument was never begun.
Some day we will take up this matter again, among many others we have been compelled to drop, and with God's help, and in spite of the ill-will of men, we will finish them.
The age of artistes is ever a problem that is never solved until after their death. I never learned Dorval's age until she died. She was born on Twelfth Night in the year 1798; so in 1823, when I was twenty, she was twenty-five. She did not call herself Marie Dorval then: those two names, so easy to pronounce that they seem always to have belonged to her, were not then linked to each other by the golden chain of genius. Her real name was Thomase-Amélie Delaunay: she was born close to the théâtre de Lorient and her earliest steps were patters across its boards. Her mother was an actress who took the part of leading singer.Camille ou le Souterrainwas then the comic opera in vogue. The little maiden was rocked on the stage to these lines, which her mother could hardly sing save with tears in her eyes:—
"Oh! non, non, il n'est pas possibleD'avoir un plus aimable enfant!"
Directly she could talk, her lips stammered out the prose of Panard and Collé, Sedaine and Favart; at seven, she passed into what was called theemploi des Betsy.Her most popular air was inSylvani—
"Je ne sais pas si mon cœur aime."
An artist at Lorient painted her portrait at that time—that is to say, in 1808. In 1839, Madame Dorval returned to Lorient, her native town. The day following a striking success, an old white-haired man came to call upon her to pay her his tribute. His offering was this painting of her as a child: a third of a century had passed by and the woman could not be recognised in it. To-day both painter and Madame Dorval are dead, but the portrait still continues to smile. It hung in MadameDorval's bedroom. I saw it, for the first time, when I helped to close her eyes. It was a melancholy contrast, I need hardly say, to see the face of the rosy child in the picture confronting the livid face on the death-bed opposite. How many joys, hopes, disappointments and sorrows had passed between that childish smile and the death-agony! At twelve years of age little Delaunay left Lorient with the whole company. That was in 1810, when diligences did not traverse France in every direction: in those days railways had not yet carved their way through the valleys or tunnelled the mountains; if you wanted to go to Strassbourg—that is to say, to cross France from west to east—you had to club together and buy a large wicker carriage, and it took six weeks to go from the Ocean, to the Rhine.
The comedy company passed through Paris and stopped four days in the capital. It was the zenith of Talma's reputation: how could anyone pass through Paris without seeing Talma? For three days, the mother and daughter economised in their breakfasts and in their dinners, and on the fourth day they took two tickets for the second gallery. Talma was playingHamlet.
Those of you who knew Madame Dorval will understand what it meant to a nature such as hers to see the famous actor play; what it meant to that heart which was so loyally filial in its early days and so motherly in later years, to listen to the gloomy ravings of the Danish prince, as he speaks of his father in a voice full of tears, in the way Talma represented him. And at these three lines—
"On remplace un ami, son épouse, une amante;Mais un vertueux père est un bien précieuxQu'on ne tient qu'une fois de la bonté des cieux!"—
the young actress, who, with the intuition of genius in her, comprehended the greatness of art displayed, as well as realised, the depth of the pathos, leant backwards, sobbed and fainted away. They carried her into an adjoining room; but the play continued in vain, so far as she was concerned: she would not see any more of it. She did not see Talma again until ten years later.
The company continued its journey and reached Strassbourg. And then Mademoiselle Delaunay gradually became famous. She changed her line of character and playedles Dugazon.She made a fascinating young girl, overflowing with mischievousness and good humour, declaiming M. Étienne's prose excellently, but singing M. Nicholo's music out of tune. Now it is a great defect for aDugazonto sing falsely, while speaking correctly. Happily, Perrier, who was acting at Strassbourg, advised Madame Delaunay to let her daughter give up comic opera, and turn her attention to comedy. In deference to this advice,la Dugazonbecame a young lover. Panard was given up for Molière and the actress and the public profited by the change.