Chapter 12

One day, when I had been lunching with a minister, I was asked—

"How did the luncheon pass off?"

"All right," I replied; "but if I hadn't been there myself I should have been horribly bored!"

And so it was with Nodier; for fear of being bored, he made up paradoxes, just as I told stories.

I must return to what I said about Nodier being a little too much inclined to love everybody. My sentence sounds somewhat reproachful, but it must not be taken so. Nodier was the philanthropist of Terence, the man unto whom nothing is alien. Nodier loved, as fire warms, as a torch lightens, as the sun shines; he loved because to love and make friendships were as much the fruition of his nature as grapes are the fruit of the vine. Let me be permitted to coin amotto describe the man who himself coined so many, he was a lover (aimeur). I have said he loved and made friendships because, for Nodier, women existed as well as men. As he loved all men of goodwill, so, in his youth (and Nodier was never old), did he love all lovable women. How he managed this he himself would have found it impossible to explain. But, in common with all eminently poetic minds, Nodier always confused the dream with the ideal, and the ideal with the material world; for Nodier, every fancy of his imagination really existed—Thérèse Aubert, la Fée aux miettes, Inès de las Sierras—he lived in the midst of all these creations of his genius, and never sultan had a more magnificent harem.

It is interesting to know how a writer who produced so many books, and such entertaining ones too, as he did, worked. I am going to tell you. We will take the Nodier of the week-days, romance-writer, savant and bibliophile, the writer of theDictionnaire des Onomatopées,Trilby, theSouvenirs de Jeunesse.In the morning, after two or three hours of easy work, when he had covered a dozen or fourteen pages of paper six inches long by four wide, with a regular, legible handwriting, without a single erasure, he considered his morning task done, and went out. When he was out of doors, Nodier wandered about aimlessly, going up now one street of the boulevards, now another, now along this or that quay. No matter what road he took, three things preoccupied him: the stalls of the second-hand bookshops, booksellers' windows and book-binders' shops; for Nodier was almost as fond of fine bindingsas of rare books, and I believe he really classed Deneuil, Derome, Thouvenin and the three Elzevirs in the same rank in his mind. These adventurous walks of Nodier, which were protracted by discoveries of books or by meetings with his friends, usually began at noon and nearly always ended between three and four o'clock at Crozet's or at Techener's. In these houses, at about that hour, the book-lovers of Paris gathered together: the Marquis de Ganay, the Marquis de Châteaugiron, the Marquis de Chalabre; Bérard, the Elzevir collector, who, in his spare moments, made the Charter of 1830; finally, the bibliophile Jacob, king of bibliographical knowledge when Nodier was not present, viceroy when Nodier came on the scenes. Here they exchanged opinions and discussedde omni rescibili et quibusdam aliis.These causeries lasted till five o'clock. At five o'clock, Nodier went home by some other route than that which he had traversed in the morning; thus, if he had come by the quays he would return by the boulevards, and if he had gone along the boulevards, he would return by the quays. At six o'clock, Nodier dined with his family. After dinner, came a cup of coffee sipped like a true Sybarite, in little and big draughts, then the cloth was removed with everything on it, and three candles were placed on the bare table. Three tallow candles, not three wax ones. Nodier preferred tallow to wax—why, no one ever knew: it was one of Nodier's caprices. These three candles, never more, never fewer, were placed triangularly. Then Nodier brought out the work on which he was engaged and his quill pens—he detested steel pens—and he worked until nine or ten o'clock at night. At that hour, he went out a second time; but, this time, he invariably followed the course of the boulevards; and, according to what might be on, he would go to the Porte-Saint-Martin, to the Ambigu or to the Funambules. It will be remembered that it was at the Porte-Saint-Martin that I met him for the first time.

There were three actors whom Nodier adored—Talma, Potier and Debureau. When I made Nodier's acquaintance, Talma had been dead three years; and Potier had retired two yearsbefore; so there only remained to him the irresistible attraction of Debureau. He it was who first extolled the famous Pierrot; in this respect, Janin came after Nodier and was merely his imitator. Nodier saw theBœuf enragénearly a hundred times. At the first representation of the piece he waited for the ox until the end, and not seeing it, he went out and spoke about it to the boxkeeper.

"Madame," he asked, "will you please inform me why this pantomime that I have just seen is called theBœuf enragé?"

"Monsieur," replied the boxkeeper, "because that is its title."

"Ah!" exclaimed Nodier; and he withdrew satisfied with the explanation.

The six days of the week were spent in exactly the same way: then came Sunday. Every Sunday Nodier went out at nine o'clock in the morning to breakfast with Guilbert de Pixérécourt, for whom at that time he had a profound admiration and the friendliest feelings. He called him the Corneille of the boulevards. Here he met the scientific gatherings of Crozet or of Techener.

We have mentioned that one of these bibliomaniacs was called the Marquis de Chalabre. He died leaving a very valuable library, which he bequeathed to Mademoiselle Mars. Mademoiselle Mars read very little or, to be truthful, she did not read at all. She commissioned Merlin to classify the books left her and to arrange for their sale. Merlin was the most honest man on the face of the earth; and he set about this commission with his usual conscientiousness, and he turned and re-turned the leaves of each volume so carefully that one day he went to Mademoiselle Mars with thirty or forty one-thousand franc notes in his hand, which he laid on a table.

"What is that, Merlin?" asked Mademoiselle Mars.

"I do not know, madame," he replied.

"What do you mean? Why, those are bank-notes!"

"Certainly."

"Where have you found them?"

"In a pocket-book, within the cover of a very rare Bible;and, as the Bible belongs to you, these bank-notes are yours too."

Mademoiselle Mars took the bank-notes, which were of course hers, and she had the greatest difficulty in making Merlin accept a present of the Bible in which he had, as I understand, discovered the bank-notes.

Nodier would return home between three and four o'clock, and, like M. Villenave, would allow his daughter Marie to dress and titivate him. For we have omitted to mention that Nodier's family was composed of his wife, his daughter, his sister Madame de Tercy and his niece. At six o'clock, Nodier's table would be laid. Three or four spare covers would be provided in excess of the number of the family party, and these were for regular habitués. Three or four more covers were put for chance comers. The habitués were Cailleux, the director of the Musée; Baron Taylor, who was soon to leave his place vacant because of his journey to Egypt; Francis Wey, whom Nodier loved as though he were his own child, whose old French aristocratic accent was but little less noticeable than Nodier's own, and Dauzats'. The casual diners were Bixio, the huge Saint-Valery and myself. Saint-Valery was a librarian, like Nodier. He was six feet one inch in height and an extremely well informed man but possessed of no originality or any wit: it was of him that Méry wrote this line—

"Il se baisse, et ramasse un oiseau dans les airs!"

When he was at the library, it was a very rare thing for him to need a ladder to reach down a book, so tall was he. He would stretch up one of his long arms, standing on tiptoe, and find the book that was required, even if it were close to the ceiling. He was susceptible in the extreme, and could not bear any joking references to his tall figure no matter how harmless they were; he was angry with me for a long while because once, when he was complaining to Madame Nodier of a violent cold in his head, I asked him if he had had cold feet a year ago.

When you were admitted into that charming and desirableinner circle of the Nodier family, you could dine with them as often as you liked. If one, two or three covers were needed beyond the number already laid, they were added; if the table had to be enlarged, it was made longer. But unlucky was the man who happened to be the thirteenth! he was pitilessly placed at a little table to dine by himself, unless a fourteenth guest, still less expected than he, should turn up to relieve him of his penance. I was very soon among the number of the more intimate friends of whom I have just spoken, and my place at the table was settled once for all, between Madame Nodier and Marie Nodier. When I appeared at the door I was greeted with exclamations of joy; they all rushed at me, from Nodier downwards, who stretched out his two great arms to embrace me or shake me by the hand. At the end of a year, from being an accepted fact, my place became recognised as mine by right: it remained vacant for me until after the soup course; then they ventured to fill it, but if I happened to arrive, either ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or half an hour late, even if I did not arrive until dessert, the interloper got up, or was made to do so, and my place given up to me. Nodier used to make out that I was as good as a fortune to him, because I saved him from doing the talking; but what may have been a pleasure, in this respect, to the idle master of the house, was a source of sorrow to his guests: to relieve the most fascinating talker imaginable from conversing was tantamount to a crime. Nevertheless, when I was charged with being viceroy of the conversation I was on my mettle to fill my position to the best of my abilities. There are certain houses wherein one is spontaneously brilliant; others where one is dull no matter how one tries to be the reverse. There were three houses where I was at my best, three houses in which my spirits ever rose and scintillated with youthful exuberance; these houses were Nodier's, Madame Guyet-Desfontaines' and Zimmermann's. At all other places I could still be entertaining, but merely in the ordinary way of social intercourse. However, no matter whether Nodier himself was the talker (and when this wasthe case, grown-up people and small children all held their peace to listen); whether his silence left the conversation to Dauzats, to Bixio or to me, the time flew by unheeded until the close of dinner was reached—a dinner that might have been envied by the most powerful prince of the earth, provided his tastes were intellectually inclined. Dinner over, coffee was handed round, while we were still at table. Nodier was far too much of a Sybarite to rise from the table to take his Mocha standing uncomfortably in a half-warmed salon, when he could take it lolling back in his chair, in a warm dining-room, well scented with the aroma of fruits and liqueurs. During this last act, or rather this epilogue to the dinner, Madame Nodier and Marie rose to go and light up the salon, and I, who took neither coffee nor liqueurs, accompanied them, to help in their task, my tall figure being very useful to them in lighting the lustres and candelabras without the necessity of standing on chairs. I need hardly say that if M. Saint-Valery, who was a foot taller than I, were there, the charge of lighting up fell to him by right.

When, thanks to us, the salon was lit up,—a ceremony that only took place on Sundays, for on week-days the receptions were held in Madame Nodier's room—the light illuminated white panelled walls with Louis XV. mouldings, and furniture of extreme simplicity, comprising a dozen chairs or easy-chairs and a sofa covered with red cashmere, the hangings being of the same colour; a bust of Hugo, a statue of Henri IV. as a child, a portrait of Nodier and a landscape of a view in the Alps, by Régnier. On the left, as you entered, was Marie's piano, in a recess almost like a room in itself. This recess was large enough, like the spaces between bedsteads in the time of Louis XIV., for the friends of the household to stand round and talk with Marie as she played quadrilles and valses with her clever, agile fingers. But quadrilles and valses did not begin before the given moment: two hours, from eight to ten, were invariably devoted to conversation; then we danced from ten to one in the morning. Five minutes after Madame Nodier, Marie and I had lighted up the salon, Taylorand Cailleux were the first to come in—they were far more at home in the house than was Nodier himself; then came Nodier with his arm through that of Dauzats or Francis Wey or Bixio; for although Nodier was only thirty-eight or forty at that time, he was like a tall climbing plant that covers walls with leaves and flowers, but already needs something to lean on. Behind Nodier entered the rest of the guests, with his little daughter dancing and skipping. Ten minutes later, the usual callers began to drop in—Fontanay and Alfred Johannot, with their two impassive faces, always melancholy in the midst of our laughter and gaiety, as though they were under some vague presentiment of death; Tony Johannot, who never came without a fresh drawing or an engraving to enrich Marie's album or collection; Barye, who looked lonely in the midst of the tumult, for it always seemed as though his mind were far away from his body in quest of something wonderful; Louis Boulanger, with his variable moods, to-day sad, to-morrow gay, ever the same great artist, great poet and faithful friend; Francisque Michel, a seeker of old manuscripts, often so preoccupied with his researches of the day that he would forget he had come in an ancient hat of the period of Louis XIII. and yellow slippers; de Vigny, who, in ignorance of his future transfiguration, still deigned to mix with mortals; de Musset, almost a boy, dreaming over hisContes d'Espagne et d'Italie; and, bringing up the rear, Hugo and Lamartine, the two kings of poetry, the peaceful Eteocles and Polynices of Art, one bearing the sceptre of the ode and the other the crown of elegy.

Alas! and alas! what has become of all those who gathered there? Fontanay and Alfred Johannot are dead; de Vigny has made himself invisible; Taylor is given over to his travels; Lamartine, with his provisional government, has let France slip through his fingers; Hugo is a deputy and strives to hold the country together, a task that proved too difficult for his colleague's hands; and the rest of us are all scattered, each following his own laborious career, hampered with spiteful enemies, harassing laws and petty ministerial hatreds; westruggle on, blindfold and weary, towards that new world which Providence is preserving for our sons and our grandsons, which we shall not see, but towards which at least our tombs, like milestones, will point the way.

Let us go back to our salon, into which those of whom I have just been speaking were now entering, hailed with effusive greetings of delight. If Nodier, when he left the dinner-table, went and stretched himself out in his arm-chair by the fireside, it was because he liked, after the fashion of the egoistic Sybarite he was, to enjoy at his ease some chance play of his imagination, during that blissful moment which follows in the wake of coffee; if, on the other hand, making an effort to remain standing, he leant against the chimneypiece, his calves to the fire and his back to the mirror, it meant he was going to tell some of his stories. We were then all on thequi viveto smile at the anecdotes which were to drop from those finely modelled, satirical and witty lips; everybody kept silence; and he would pour forth one of the delightful stories of his youth, which sounded like a romance of Longus, or an idyll of Theocritus. He seemed like Walter Scott and Perrault; the savant grappling with the poet, memory battling with imagination. Nodier was not merely amusing to listen to, but in addition he was delightful to watch. His tall, lean body, his long thin arms, his white tapering hands, his long face, full of a serene melancholy, all harmonised and fitted in with his rather languid voice, and with the afore-mentioned aristocratic accent; and, whether Nodier were reciting a love-story, or describing a fight on the plains of la Vendée, or some drama that happened in the place de la Révolution, a conspiracy of Cadoudal or of Oudet, his hearers would hold their breath to listen, so wonderfully did the story-teller know how to get at the heart of everything he described. Those who came in in the middle bowed silently and sat down in an arm-chair or leant against the wainscotting; the recital always came to an end too soon; why he ever concluded was a mystery, for we knew that Nodier could draw eternally on that purse of Fortunatus which we call imagination. We did not applaud,—do weapplaud the murmur of a stream, the song of a bird, the perfume of a flower?—but when the murmur ceased, the song died away, the perfume evaporated, we listened, we waited, we longed for more! Then Nodier would slide back quietly from his position at the fireplace into his big arm-chair; would smile and turn to Lamartine or Hugo with—

"Enough of such prose as that—now let us have poetry, poetry!"

And, without a second bidding, one of the two poets would, from where he was, with hands leant on the back of an armchair, or shoulders propped up against the panelled walls, give birth to the harmonious and eager flow of his poetic fancy; then every head would turn in the fresh direction, every intellect would follow the flight of a thought which soared above them on eagle's wings to play now in the mist of clouds among the lightnings of the tempest, now in the rays of the sun.

On these occasions applause followed; then, when the applause had ceased, Marie would go to her piano and a brilliant rush of notes would burst upon the air. This was the signal for a quadrille; arm-chairs and chairs were put away, card-players took refuge in corners, and those who, instead of dancing, preferred to talk with Marie, would slip into her alcove. Nodier was one of the earliest at the card-tables; for a long time he would only play atbataille, at which he claimed to be very expert; but, finally, he was induced to make a concession to the taste of the century and playedécarté. When the ball had begun, Nodier, who was usually very unlucky, would call for cards. From the moment he began, Nodier effaced himself, disappeared and was utterly forgotten; he was one of those old-fashioned hosts who obliterated themselves in order to give precedence to their guests, who, when made welcome, become masters of the house themselves. Moreover, after Nodier had disappeared for a time, he would disappear entirely. He went to bed in good time, or, to speak more correctly, he was put to bed early. To Madame Nodier belonged the care of putting this great child to bed; shewould therefore leave the salon first in order to get his bed ready. If it were winter, and very cold, and the kitchen fire had perchance gone out, a warming-pan would be seen to thread its way amidst the dancers to the salon fireplace, its wide jaws would open to receive the glowing coals, and then it would be taken away to Nodier's bedroom. Nodier followed the warming-pan, and we saw him no more that night.

Such was Nodier; such was the life of that excellent man.

Once we came upon him in a mood of humiliation and shame and embarrassment. The author of theRot de Bohème et ses Sept Châteauxhad just been nominated an Academician. He made very humble apologies to Hugo and to me, and we forgave him.

After having been rejected five times, Hugo was nominated in his turn. He offered me no excuses, which was as well; since I should certainly not have forgiven him!

Oudard transmits to me the desires of the Duc d'Orléans—I am appointed assistant librarian—How this saved His Highness four hundred francs—Rivalry with Casimir Delavigne—Petition of the Classical School against Romantic productions—Letter of support from Mademoiselle Duchesnois—A fantastic dance—The person who called Racine ablackguard—Fine indignation of theConstitutionnel—First representation ofMarino Faliero

It will be remembered that, during the brief conversation which I had the honour of holding with M. le Duc d'Orléans in his private box, he had expressed the desire to keep me near him. I had no motive, now I had gained my liberty of action, for leaving the man who, at any rate, had assured me a living for six years and had allowed me to continue my studies and to become what I was. Moreover, at that time, M. le Duc d'Orléans was a typical representative of that Opposition party to which I belonged by rights as the son of a Republican general. M. le Duc d'Orléans, son of a regicide, member of the Jacobin Club, defender of Marat and indebted to Collot d'Herbois, seemed, indeed, to me, I must admit, if he had not greatly degenerated since 1793, to be far more advanced in 1829 than I was myself. He acted well up to themothe uttered the day I was writing to his dictation: "Monsieur Dumas, bear in mind that, if one is descended from Louis XIV., if only by means of one of his bastards, it is still a sufficient honour to be proud of." I had, of course, called forth thismotby my ignorant hesitation. Besides, one could be proud of being descended from Louis XIV., while still blaming the turpitude of Louis XV. and the faults of Louis XVI.; furthermore, where had even our Republican fathers come from?—theParc-aux-Cerfs and the Petit Trianon. So then the Duc d'Orléans, if not precisely a Republican prince, as he had been styled in 1792, was at least a citizen prince, as he was called in 1829. In short, it was good for my position, and in harmony with my sympathies, to remain attached to M. le Duc d'Orléans. All these reflections had had sufficient time to ripen in my mind before I received a letter from Oudard asking me to call on him at his office. Formerly, such an invitation would have made me very uneasy; now, it only made me smile, and I presented myself. Raulot bowed nearly to the ground before me; he opened the door and announced—

"M. Alexandre Dumas."

Oudard came to meet me with a laughing face.

"Well, my dear poet," he said, "it seems you have had an undoubted success?"

"Yes."

"First, let me congratulate you heartily.... But who could have foreseen it?"

"Those who suppressed my bonus money and kept back my salary; for I presume that if they had foreseen a failure they would not have had the cruelty to expose my mother and me to die of starvation."

"Did not M. de Broval write to you the night of the representation?" Oudard asked in some confusion.

"Yes, indeed; here is his letter."

I showed him the letter the reader has seen.

"And I am keeping it as a model," I continued, putting it back into my pocket again.

"As a model of what?"

"Of diplomatic lying and of stupid sycophancy."

"Come, that is strong language!"

"True, but one ought to call a spade a spade."

"However that may be, let us drop the subject and speak of your position here."

"That is equivalent to discussing castles in the air."

"I do not refer to your past position, for I am well awarethat you would decline to remain in the household under the old conditions; neither do we desire you to do so.... You must have leisure for your work."

"Continue, my lord Mæcenas, speak in the name of Augustus; I am listening."

"No, on the contrary it is for you to speak. What do you desire?"

"I? I desired success and I have had it. I do not want anything else."

"But what can we do that will be agreeable to you?"

"Not a great deal."

"Nevertheless, there must be some position in the house you would like."

"There is none I covet; but there is one post that would suit my convenience."

"Which is that?"

"To be M. Casimir Delavigne's colleague at the library."

Oudard's facial muscles twitched with an expression indicative of, "You are indeed ambitious, my friend."

"Oh! indeed I quite understand the difficulties," I said.

"You see," Oudard continued, "we already have Vatout and Casimir, a librarian and assistant librarian."

"Of course, and that is ample, is it not, when there is no library?"

For, as a matter of fact, the library of the Duc d'Orléans, at that time especially, was very inferior.

"What do you mean by no library?" Oudard exclaimed; for, like the servant of a curé, he could not bear to have his master's house depreciated. "We have three thousand volumes!"

"You are mistaken, my dear Oudard: there are three thousand and four; for I saw theMémoires de Dumouriez, which had just come from London, in the house of M. le Duc d'Orléans, the day before yesterday."

I gave the thrust good-humouredly, and so Oudard took it. He could not ward it off without acknowledging himself hit: he continued—

"Well, well, you are wonderfully clever, my friend; I will convey to monseigneur your desire to become attached to the household as librarian."

I stopped him.

"Stay, let us quite understand one another, Oudard."

"I do not wish for anything better."

"Did you not ask me to come to you?"

"Certainly."

"It was not I who came on my own initiative?"

"No."

"I should not have come if you had not written to me."

"That would have been very remiss on your part."

"Possibly; but, all the same, I did not come. Now you talk of a desire: I have not expressed any; it is not I who desire to remain attached to the household. If they want to keep me, they must make me librarian; as to salary, they need not give me any. You see I am making things exceedingly easy for His Royal Highness."

"Ah! are you always going to be wilful?"

"No, but I remember what M. le Duc d'Orléans condescended to write, by the side of my name, in his own handwriting, a month ago: 'Suppress his bonuses,' etc. etc."

"Come, I will tell you something that will restore the prince in your estimation."

"Ah! my dear Oudard, I am indeed far too insignificant an individual to lay claim to the right of quarrelling with him."

"Well, then, I fancy he would accept the dedication of your drama."

"The dedication of my play, my dear Oudard, belongs to the man who got it acted; my dramaHenri III.will be dedicated to Taylor."

"You are making a mistake, my dear friend."

"No, I am repaying a debt."

"All right, we will not continue the subject; so, a librarian like Casimir Delavigne...."

"Or like Vatout, if the comparison seems to you to be simpler."

"Are you aware how epigrammatic you have become since your success?"

"No; it is only that I can now say aloud what I formerly thought unspoken."

"Well, I see clearly that you mean to have the last word."

"Of course; try and find a word to which I cannot fit an answer.Au revoir!"

"Adieu!"

Two days later, Oudard called me in again; he had discovered a post that would suit me much better than being librarian: namely, to be reader to Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans. I thanked Oudard; but I assured him that I still held to my first idea of being librarian or nothing at all.

We parted rather more coldly than at first. Two days later, I received a third letter; this time, he had found something that would suit me best of all. They would make mechevalier d'honneurto Madame Adélaïde! I persisted obstinately that I wanted to be librarian. Finally, I received a fourth invitation, and I paid a fourth visit. They had decided to grant my request, and I was appointed assistant librarian, at a salary of 1200 francs.

As I had announced beforehand that the question of money was not of any consequence, they had taken advantage of it to suggest to monseigneur to pay me 300 francs less as librarian than they had paid me as a clerk. That didn't matter; but listen, and may Harpagon and Grandet hang themselves for not having invented what the people devised who arranged the affairs of M. le Duc d'Orléans and myself. As they had not paid me any salary for six months, they antedated my nomination by six months. Consequently, as I had a salary of 1500 francs as clerk and 1200 francs as librarian, they saved, by paying me for these six months as a librarian, the sum of 150 francs, which, added to my unpaid up bonuses of 1829, saved them 350 francs; and the 350 francs, added to the 50 francs cut off my bonus of 1828, amounted to a net total of 400 francs more into the princely coffers. It will be admitted, will it not? that the Duc d'Orléans was surrounded by men of large views!Unfortunately, these were the very same men who, later, surrounded the king.

When I was installed at the Library, I became acquainted with Vatout and Casimir Delavigne, who, as Oudard had warned me, did not welcome my advent with much warmth. Casimir Delavigne in particular, who, although he made it up with me afterwards, at first could not forgive me the success I had had withHenri III.Indeed, my success withHenri III.continued throughout the year, and, as there is a proverb to the effect that two successes, on the stage, never come together, the success ofHenri III.prevented the success ofMarino Faliero, which was awaiting its turn, and in which Mademoiselle Mars was to play Héléna. But Mademoiselle Mars was engaged for three long months inHenri III.; then came her two months' holiday; soMarino Falierowas put off until the coming winter. This did not in the least suit Casimir Delavigne.

I have related how Casimir Delavigne's dramatic affairs were conducted: a family council was called on account ofMarino Faliero, and it was decided that the Doge of Venice should migrate to the Porte-Saint-Martin; that Madame Dorval, whose reputation had begun to spread, should replace Mademoiselle Mars and that Ligier should be seduced from the Odéon to play Marino Faliero. This migration made a great sensation. Casimir at the Porte-Saint-Martin! It was Coriolanus among the Volscians; all the papers wailed aloud and made moan over this exile of the national bard, and people began to look on me as a usurper who had risen up to drive out a crowned and anointed king from his legitimate throne. The situation was complicated by an event as novel as it was unexpected. A petition to the king appeared, entreating His Majesty to do for Corneille, Molière and Racine—who stood on their marble pedestals in thefoyerunmoved by this agitation—what His Majesty's august predecessor had done for King Ferdinand VII. when he was expelled by the Cortes:—to re-establish them on their thrones. Alas! no one was ever less ambitious to snatch other people's thrones than I.... I was willing enough to take a seat or a comfortable arm-chair, ay, an elevated one, well inview, by all means, but a throne! the word and the position were too classic, and I never aspired thereto. It is inconceivable, is it not? that there could be found seven men of letters sufficiently intolerant, silly and ridiculous to appeal to a king to proscribe a method of art, an invisible, indefinable and intangible conception, and boldly to say to him, "Sire, we are the representatives of Art; we alone know what is beautiful; we alone possess knowledge, taste and genius; true, the public hisses at us as soon as we appear; true, our tragedies do not attract anyone when they are acted; the Comedians play our pieces with marked aversion, it is true, since they do not draw the same profits from them, although expenses are the same; but what does all that matter! It is hard for us to die and to be forgotten; we would rather be hooted at than buried. Sire, issue your commands that our plays, and ours alone, be played;—for we are the sole descendants of Corneille, and Molière and Racine, whilst these new-comers are but the bastards of Shakespeare and Goethe and Schiller!"

How very logical! I was a bastard of Shakespeare, of Goethe and of Schiller, because I had just composedHenri III., a play so pre-eminently French, that, if it were open to any reproach, it would be that I had represented the manners of the end of the sixteenth century too faithfully. And as the thing really sounds incredible, we will place before our readers' own eyes the petition of these gentlemen:—

"SIRE,—The glory of letters is not the least brilliant among French glories, and the glory of our theatre is not the least brilliant of our literary glories. So thought your ancestors when they honoured the Théâtre-Français with a special protection; so thought Louis XIV., to whom it owed its first organisation. That regal protector of letters, persuaded that thechefs d'œuvrewhich his reign had produced could not be represented too perfectly, decreed that the best actors who were scattered about in the various companies which the capital then possessed should be united into one company, to be called the Comedians in Ordinary to the King. He gave rules to this select company, granted them rights and, amongothers, the exclusive privilege of representing tragedy and high comedy; and he added to these favours that of endowment. His object in doing this, sire, as you are aware, was not solely to reward those actors who had the good fortune to please him, but also to encourage them in the exercise of an art which by its elevation should be in harmony with his royal spirit; also to perpetuate the prosperity of that art, and to establish a model theatre on a solid foundation, for both actors and authors. For a long while, the intentions of Louis XIV. were fulfilled by his successors, in whom there was no falling off, either in good taste or in generosity; the two arts that he loved, and to which the French stage owed its dignity and its superiority, have reigned there in almost undisputed sway. Such was the condition of things at the time of the decease of your august brother; why must it be confessed that it is no longer the same to-day? The death of the actor whose talents vied with those of the most perfect artist of any epoch, has brought about more than one injury to the noble art which he upheld. Whether from depravity of taste or from consciousness of their inability to take his place, certain associates of the Théâtre-Français have pretended that the method of art in which Talma excelled could no longer be beneficially carried on; they are seeking to exclude tragedy from the stage and to substitute for it plays composed in imitation of the most eccentric dramas that foreign literature affords—dramas which no one had ever dared before to reproduce except in our lowest theatres. It is quite conceivable that third-rate actors should pursue these tactics, which are in accordance with their indifferent performances; and that, since they are incapable of rising to the height of tragedy, they should wish to lower art to the level of their talent; but it is almost inconceivable, sire, that this attitude should be encouraged by those who should combat it. They not only violate the privileges granted them in order to advance, on every possible occasion, the particular method of art to which they have become attached; but, in order to satisfy the exigencies of this method, which seeks less to elevate the soul, entice the heart and occupy the mind, than to dazzle the eyes by material means, by the distraction of vain show and by stage effect, they are exhausting the capital of the theatre, increasing its debt and bringing about its ruin. And, in addition, as tragedy still struggles, and struggles with some success, against itsignoble rival, in spite of all that is done to prevent it, the authorities, not satisfied with refusing to undertake necessary expenses and supply the apparatus needed, are doing their best to discourage tragic representations altogether, and only give subsidies to the principal actors in subjects of which the public disapproves; far worse still, in order to make all tragic acting henceforth impossible, in anticipation of the time when the two leading exponents of tragedy, Mademoiselle Duchesnois and M. Lafond, shall have retired from the stage, they have compelled them to submit to an exile of a year, under cover of a holiday, during which time they promise themselves to complete the absolute ruin of the theatre of Racine, Corneille and Voltaire."Sire, are the agents in whom you have placed confidence, to watch over and control the theatre, responding properly to your beneficent designs? Was it intended that the liberty with which they were entrusted was to be used to advance the cause of melodrama to the detriment of tragedy? Ought the funds placed, by your liberality, at their disposal, in order to advance the cause of good taste, to be squandered over their own particular fancies, which tend to make the greatest names in Art subservient to the Melpomene of the boulevards, and to reduce their sublime art to the condition of a vile trade? We are convinced, sire, that the glory of your reign is concerned in the preservation of all sources of French glory, and we therefore consider it our duty to call your attention to the degradation by which the foremost of our theatres is threatened. Sire, the evil is already grave! In a few months' time it will be past redress; in a few months' time the theatre founded by Louis le Grand will be entirely closed to works which have been the delight of the most polite of courts, the most enlightened of nations; it will have fallen below the level of the meanest of stages, or, rather, the Théâtre-Français will have ceased to exist."(Signed)A. V. ARNAULT, N. LEMERCIER, VIENNET,JOUY, ANDRIEUX, JAY, O. LEROY"

"Sire, are the agents in whom you have placed confidence, to watch over and control the theatre, responding properly to your beneficent designs? Was it intended that the liberty with which they were entrusted was to be used to advance the cause of melodrama to the detriment of tragedy? Ought the funds placed, by your liberality, at their disposal, in order to advance the cause of good taste, to be squandered over their own particular fancies, which tend to make the greatest names in Art subservient to the Melpomene of the boulevards, and to reduce their sublime art to the condition of a vile trade? We are convinced, sire, that the glory of your reign is concerned in the preservation of all sources of French glory, and we therefore consider it our duty to call your attention to the degradation by which the foremost of our theatres is threatened. Sire, the evil is already grave! In a few months' time it will be past redress; in a few months' time the theatre founded by Louis le Grand will be entirely closed to works which have been the delight of the most polite of courts, the most enlightened of nations; it will have fallen below the level of the meanest of stages, or, rather, the Théâtre-Français will have ceased to exist.

"(Signed)A. V. ARNAULT, N. LEMERCIER, VIENNET,JOUY, ANDRIEUX, JAY, O. LEROY"

This curious epistle was capped by another quite as strange—or, more correctly speaking, it was preceded by it. The letter of Mademoiselle Duchesnois, which we shall produce in its entirety, in the same way that we have produced the petitionof these gentlemen, was the rocket which warned the public that a great pyrotechnic display was about to take place.

My readers will recall the visit M. Lafond paid me in my office, to ask me if I had a smart, well-groomed fellow in my play who could say to Queen Christine, "Sacrebleu!your Majesty has not the right to assassinate this poor devil!" It will be remembered that I told him I had not. Whereupon M. Lafond had turned daintily upon his heels, remarking that his visit was, therefore, fruitless.

After the reading ofHenri III., M. Lafond had said to himself that the part of that extremely well set up courtier, the Duc de Guise, would be his by right; but, alack, he had seen the rôle given to Joanny, who played it strikingly well although he was not irreproachable. It had been just as bad for poor Mademoiselle Duchesnois: she had seen successively the rôle of Christine and that of the Duchesse de Guise pass over her; she had done me the honour of wishing to act them both, and each time, with infinite trouble, I had had to explain to her how impossible it was for her to undertake either rôle; consequently, she was furious. Now, anger is a bad counsellor, so it came about that Mademoiselle Duchesnois wrote the following letter under its sway:—

"MONSIEUR,—I should have preferred to keep out of the quarrel which is engaging the attention of the newspapers concerning the Théâtre-Français; but, inasmuch as the defence of a system which is compromising our social existence is based upon erroneous facts, I have thought it my duty to the public to offer certain explanations which will show the question in its true light. Unquestionably, the first duty of the French Comedians should be to retain the favour of the public, and we cannot be reproached with respect to this, since, during the past three years, we have successively produced, at a very heavy expense, all the works of the new school; in consequence, our shares have fallen from sixteen thousand to seven thousand francs, and we have contracted, in the interim, a debt estimated at a hundred thousand francs. However, the old repertoire and works based on those of the old masters, such asTartufe, Phèdre, Zaïre, Germanicus, Sylla, Pierre dePortugal, Marie Stuart, l'École des Vieillards, Blanche, le Romanwhile they no longer glorify the stage, still bring some money to our pockets, and help to provide for the terrible expenses of the scenery and properties required for the dramas. In spite of the ruin of our prosperity and the increase of our liabilities, I should have kept silence if the rumour had not spread abroad that we were about to dissolve our Association in order to prepare ourselves for a new management, and to raise a so-called Romantic theatre on our ruins. These reports have gained enough strength to be repeated by several papers, and it has been noticed that the usual supporters of the Commissary Royal have gone out of their way to point out the advantages of such an absurd proposition, instead of denying it. The tragic actors, who, since the arrival of M. Taylor, have been the object of an animadversion for which, until recently, they have not been able to find a cause, were attacked in these same papers with unheard-of bitterness, and with the catchword of the moment,The public does not want any more tragedies.There is no denying that tragedy no longer brings in the enormous sums of the prosperous days of Talma and of the first fifteen years of my theatrical career; but, without dwelling upon its importance and its necessity, it can be seen by the receipts—not those obtained from the Commissary Royal, but the actual receipts entered on theregistre des pauvres(which I am having looked out, at this very moment, in order to their publication)—that tragedy would again see prosperous days if the Government would grant it the protection that is its due, rather than persecute the actors and authors who are still its supporters. It would be a difficult task to enumerate all the instances of M. Taylor's ill-will: here are one or two which will be enough to convince you. Three young actors who were taken away from the Odéon showed some interest and aptitude for tragedy. M. Taylor tried to drive them away from the Comédie-Française. He succeeded with regard to MM. Ligier and Victor; and, if M. David has been saved to us, it was because a decision of the court overruled the Commissary Royal. M. Beauvallet, a young man who roused high hopes among the friends of dramatic art, has been obliged to take an engagement at a secondary theatre. Nor is this all; my presence and that of M. Lafond were obstacles in the way of carrying out the plans of the Romantic school. So we received, this winter, an intimation, almost tantamount to acommand, to leave Paris for a year, without having solicited anything of the kind, as certain wrongly informed journals have announced. It is under these circumstances, monsieur, that distinguished literary men who, by their connection with actors, are much better acquainted with the situation at the Théâtre-Français than are the writers of many articles, have felt it their duty to present a memorial to the King, not in order to exclude the new style of drama (a pleasantry invented by M. Taylor's friends to hold up toridiculea perfectly justifiable proceeding), but to claim a protection for authors who belong to theClassicalschool and for the actors who support them, at least equal to that given to the Romantic school."I beg you, monsieur, to have the goodness to announce that I have just cited MM. Taylor and the Vicomte de la Rochefoucauld before the courts to answer for their violation of the rules of our company, by means of which they have prorogued a committee for the past four years, a third part of which, according to the terms of our statutes, ought to have been renewed annually. I beg you also to be so good as to announce, in my name, that the article contained in theJournal de Parisof this morning is incorrect in all its statements and in all its calculations, and that I shall hasten to put the proofs of this statement before the public with the least possible delay. Allow me at the same time to contradict the false statement that any one of those who signed the petition wished towithdrawor todisownhis signature; on the contrary, I know that several of our most distinguished authors are preparing to make public their adhesion to the memorial to the King.—I am, etc.,J. DUCHESNOIS"

"I beg you, monsieur, to have the goodness to announce that I have just cited MM. Taylor and the Vicomte de la Rochefoucauld before the courts to answer for their violation of the rules of our company, by means of which they have prorogued a committee for the past four years, a third part of which, according to the terms of our statutes, ought to have been renewed annually. I beg you also to be so good as to announce, in my name, that the article contained in theJournal de Parisof this morning is incorrect in all its statements and in all its calculations, and that I shall hasten to put the proofs of this statement before the public with the least possible delay. Allow me at the same time to contradict the false statement that any one of those who signed the petition wished towithdrawor todisownhis signature; on the contrary, I know that several of our most distinguished authors are preparing to make public their adhesion to the memorial to the King.—I am, etc.,

J. DUCHESNOIS"

We said before that under a clever ministry everybody, even the king, has his wits sharpened.

The king made answer to his petitioners as follows:—

"GENTLEMEN,—I cannot do anything in the matter you desire; I only occupy one seat in the theatre, like every other Frenchman."

Now, I shall be asked how it was that M. Arnault reconciled this demand directed against me with his friendliness towards me? How could he receive me intimately at his house andtable every Sunday, while he was doing his best to have me driven away from the theatre? Oh! be quite easy on that score! M. Arnault had a more logical mind than that. On the Sunday following the production ofHenri III.—namely, the very next day—I found Madame Arnault quite alone in the house, and she said to me, in course of conversation—

"Dumas, when you intend dining with us, tell us beforehand; for otherwise you will run the risk of diningtête-à-têtewith me, as to-day, which is not very entertaining for you."

I took the hint, and I never returned there again.

The success ofHenri III., therefore, it will be seen, brought in its train all the advantages and all the drawbacks of great successes. I was the fashionable author for the rest of the winter of 1829; I received invitations innumerable, and M. Sosthène de la Rochefoucauld, Minister of the King's Household, wrote me a letter, giving me free entry to all the royal theatres, being shrewd enough to see that, if he did not give me the privilege, I was just the sort of man to take it. Devéria made a lithograph of me; David d'Angers, a medallion. It will be seen that nothing was wanting to complete my triumph, not even the ridiculous side which always accompanies a rising reputation.

Then a crowd of anecdotes were related about me, each more absurd than the last. It was said that, after the representation ofHenri III., when the lights in the house had all been put out, a sabbatical dance took placeroundthe bust of Racine (it is set against the wall!), by the light of the dying fires in the green-room, similar to Boulanger's magnificent dance; that the spectral dancers were heard to utter the sacrilegious refrain, "Racine is fallen!" and that even shouts for blood were raised by a young fanatic of the name of Amaury Duval, who demanded the heads of the Academicians—a parricidal cry, since this unfortunate creature was the son of M. Amaury Duval of the Institut, and nephew of M. Alexandre Duval of the Académie française.

Further, a rabid Romantic, to whom God had sent one of the seven plagues of Egypt in punishment for his sins, wasaccused—and this story might well be true—of saying in a burst of frenzied scratching, "Racine was a regular scoundrel!"

This fanatic was called Gentil.

Stories like these, told by the fireside, were enough, it may well be imagined, to make the hair of all respectable people stand on end, and theConstitutionnel, which has always been the literary and political representative of respectable people, was particularly shocked.

It was from this period that every worthy man gave himself up to hatred of all ideas which did not date back a half-century, and of every author who was not at least sixty years of age—a style of writing which lasted from 1830 to 1850—the vigorous style of hatred to which Alceste refers, and which, we think, eats far more readily into the hearts of weak-minded, wicked and jealous people, than into the hearts of men of goodwill.

People waited in daily expectation of a new St. Bartholomew's Eve, and poor M. Auger, who had just killed himself under such sad circumstances, was congratulated on having escaped a general massacre by means of suicide. So great was the consternation that the whole of the Classical party only produced one play—which was a failure. This wasElisabeth d'Angleterre, by M. Ancelot. For we do not call Casimir Delavigne'sMarino Faliero, pompously christened a melodrama in verse, a classical production. The very choice of subject,Marino Faliero, and the imitation of Byron's principal scenes, formed a twofold concession to foreign genius and to modern taste.

Casimir Delavigne, as we have remarked elsewhere, was born fifteen years too soon to take part whole-heartedly in the new school; his style seemed ever hampered, and incessantly vacillating between Voltaire and Byron, Chénier and Shakespeare, never succeeding in clothing his ideas in a definite manner. Still, nothing had been neglected to makeMarino Falieroa success. The papers had made much of the ingratitude of the members of the Comédie-Française and of the transfer of M. Ligier to the Porte-Saint-Martin. It wasannounced that the music of the overture was by Rossini, and the costumes by M. Delaroche. Now M. Delaroche was the exact analogy in painting of what Casimir Delavigne was in literature; both at that time enjoyed far too great a reputation to last, and were destined to see it pale and decrease and almost expire during their life-time. However, Rossini had composed the music, and Delaroche had designed the costumes.

The play was produced on 30 May, and was very successful; but, strange to relate, the author's most elaborately conceived rôle was not the most applauded one, nor did the actor's chief success fall to the share of Ligier or of Madame Dorval: it fell to Gobert, who played the rôle of Israël Bertuccio.

The work was mounted with great sumptuousness and scrupulous care, especially with regard to the costumes. M. Delaroche, having deemed it desirable, in order to lend a more picturesque effect to his designs, that they should be wafted by the wind, the theatrical costumier devised the ingenious notion of sewing air into the mantles.

I have elsewhere given my opinion of this play.

Mesmerism—Experiment during a trance—I submit to being mesmerised—My observation upon it—I myself start to mesmerise—Experiment made in a diligence—Another experiment in the house of theprocureur de la Républiqueof Joigny—Little Marie D——Her political predictions—I cure her of fear

Between the representation of my play and Casimir Delavigne's, the scientific world was much taken up with an important event which established the power of magnetism, that had been under dispute since Mesmer's day.

One of the cleverest surgeons of the time, Jules Cloquet, had just performed an operation on Madame Pl—— for cancer in the breast, without her feeling the least pain, she having been put into a trance by mesmerism.

One word about mesmerism. Let us leave actualities and turn to abstractions.

Madame Pl——, upon whom this strange experiment had just been made, was between sixty-four and sixty-five years of age; she had been a widow ten years and had suffered for two or three years from glandular swellings on the right breast. Doctor Chap—— was her medical adviser; he had practised magnetism for some time and found himself apt at it. He attempted to apply it to the cure of Madame Pl——, but the disorder had gone too far, and he decided to try if it might be possible to lessen her pain while the operation was being performed. Jules Cloquet was consulted, and it was proposed that he should operate on the sleeping patient. He consented, welcoming the opportunity of seeing for himself a phenomenon concerning which he was sceptical, and also, at the same time, glad to be able to spare the patient thesuffering inevitably connected with one of the most painful of surgical operations. Doctor Chap—— magnetised Madame Pl—— and rendered the whole of her right side completely insensible to pain. The ablation of the breast began by an incision eleven inches long, followed by another nine inches long. By means of these two incisions they could get at several glands under the armpit, which were carefully dissected. During the operation, which lasted ten minutes, the patient gave no signs of sensibility. To use the surgeon's own words—

"It seemed as though he wereoperating on a dead body; save that, when the operation was over and the patient's wound was being bathed with a sponge, she twice cried out, without coming out of her state of trance, 'Be quick and finish, and do not tickle me like that!'"

When the operation was over, Madame Pl—— was brought out of her trance: she did not remember anything, had not felt any pain and showed profound astonishment that the operation was over. The dressing was done in the usual way, and the wound showed every symptom of quick healing. At the end of a week's time Madame Pl—— drove out in a carriage. The suppuration was decreased and the wound was making rapid progress towards healing, when, about the evening of the fifteenth day, the patient complained of feeling great oppression, and swellings began to show in the lower extremities.

All this is nothing but the simple truth: now comes in the marvellous. Madame Pl—— had a daughter who came from the country to nurse her mother. Dr. Chap——, having seen that she had a very clear mind, put her into a magnetic sleep and consulted her about her mother's condition. At the first attempt she made to see, her face grew troubled and tears rose to her eyes.

Then she announced that the peaceful but inevitable death of her mother would take place the next morning. When questioned upon the internal state of her mother's chest, she said that the right lung was quite dead, that it was empty, suppurating on the side nearest the lower portion of the spine and bathed in serous fluid; that the left lung was sound and alone supported life. As for the abdominal viscera, the liver,according to her, was whitish and wrinkled; but the intestines were sound.

These depositions were taken down in the presence of witnesses.

The next day, at the given hour, Madame Pl—— died. The autopsy was made in the presence of deputies from the Académie, and the state of the body was found to conform precisely with the description given by the mesmerised girl.

This was what was reported in the papers, stated in the official return, related to me and confirmed by Jules Cloquet himself, one day when we were talking together—before the discovery of chloroform—of the great mysteries of nature which baffle human intelligence. Later, when I was preparing my bookJoseph Balsamo, being interested to fathom the often debated question of the power or impotence of magnetism, I decided to make some personal experiments, not relying upon those produced by foreigners interested in accrediting magnetism. So I studied magnetism first hand, and the result of my investigations was as follows:—

I was endowed with great magnetic powers, and this power, as a rule, took effect on two out of every three persons upon whom I experimented. Let me hasten to state that I never practised it except upon young girls or women. This power in connection with physical phenomena is incontestable. A woman who has once submitted to magnetic sleep is the slave of the man who sent her to sleep. Even after she has waked she remembers or forgets what passed during her sleep, according to the will of the magnetiser. She could be made to kill someone during her sleep and, if he willed that she should be totally ignorant of having committed her crime, she would never know anything about it. The mesmeriser can make his victim feel pain of any kind in any part; he has only to touch the place with the tip of his finger, the end of a stick, or the end of an iron rod. He can cause a sensation of warmth with ice, a sensation of cold with fire; he can cause drunkenness with a glass of water, or even with an empty glass. He can put an arm, a leg or the whole bodyinto a state of catalepsy, and make it hard and rigid as a bar of iron or as soft and supple as a scarf. He can cause insensibility to the prick of a needle, to the blade of a bistoury or the smart of cautery.

I believe all these things come under the domain of physical phenomena. Even the brain can be impelled to such a pitch of excitement as to make an ordinary being a poet, a child of twelve possess the ideas, feelings and manner of expressing them of a person of twenty or twenty-five.

In 1848, I made a tour in Burgundy. My daughter and I were in the same coach with a very charming lady of thirty to thirty-two; we only exchanged a few words; it was eleven o'clock at night; and one of the things she had told me was that she never slept when she was travelling. Ten minutes later, she was not only asleep, but asleep with her head on my shoulder. I waked her up; she was extremely surprised to find she had fallen asleep, and fallen asleep in the position in which she found herself. I renewed the experiment two or three times during the night, and my strength of will was sufficient, without my needing to touch my neighbour, to be successful in every instance.

When the coach stopped at the posting-house and horses were being changed, I woke her abruptly and asked her what time it was; she opened her eyes and tried to pull out her watch.

"Never mind that," I said to her; "tell me the time by your watch without looking at it."

"Three minutes to three o'clock," she replied immediately

We called the postillion, and by the light of his lantern we verified that it was exactly three minutes to three.

These were nearly all the experiments I tried upon that lady; they yielded the results I have just related, and, with the exception of the time being told without looking at the watch, they all appertain to the order of physical phenomena.

At Joigny, I made an official call on M. Lorin, theprocureur de la République, whom I had never met before. It was just about the time of the publication ofBalsamo, which had made magnetism quite the rage. I rarely entered asalon at that period without being questioned about this great mystery. At Joigny I replied, as I always did—

"Magnetic power exists; it can be practised, but its scientific basis is not yet known. It is in a similar condition to that of air balloons: we can send them up, but no means of directing them have yet been devised."

Doubts were then expressed by persons present, and especially by women. I asked one of these ladies, Madame B——, if she would allow me to put her to sleep; she refused in such a manner as to convince me that she would not be overweeningly angry if I did it without her leave. Nevertheless, I assumed an attitude of submission to her; but, five minutes later, having got up as though to look at an engraving hanging above her arm-chair, I summoned to my aid all my magnetic power and for five minutes I persistently willed her to go to sleep; at the end of that five minutes she was asleep. Then I began a series of extremely curious experiments on this lady, who was a total stranger to me, in a house which I had never entered before or have since re-entered. Madame B——, in spite of her will, obeyed both my expressed mandates and also my mute wishes. Every ordinary sensation in her was reversed: fire felt like ice, ice like fire. She complained of a bad headache: I bound her forehead with an imaginary bandage which I told her contained snow, and she immediately experienced a delicious sensation of coolness; then, a moment later, she wiped away from her forehead the water from the imaginary bandage, as though the heat of her head were melting the supposititious snow; but, soon, her handkerchief was not enough for the operation; she borrowed a friend's; finally, the demand for a handkerchief was followed by that for a serviette; then, her dress and the rest of her clothes being damp, she asked to be allowed to go to a room to change everything. I let her feel this sensation of cold till she shivered; then, suddenly, I gave the order for her clothes to dry themselves, and they dried themselves. The whole thing, of course, was in the imagination of the lady mesmerised. She had an extremely fine voice, of a fairly wide range, butwhich stopped short at the Ionicsi.I ordered her to sing as high asre;she sang, and gave the two last notes perfectly—an impossible feat for her in her ordinary state, and one which she tried in vain when I had wakened her from her magnetic sleep. A woman was working in the next room. I put a paper-knife in the somnambulist's hands and made her think it was a real knife. Then I ordered her to go and stab the workwoman. Thereupon what free will she had left in her revolted; she refused, writhed, hung back on the furniture, but I had only to will and to point in the direction I wished her to take, and she obeyed and went up to the workwoman, utterly stupefied, the knife raised.

Her eyes were open and her face, which was a very lovely one, assumed an admirable stage expression, as beautiful as that of Miss Faucit when she is acting the sleep-walking scene inHamlet.Theprocureur de la Républiquewas terrified at the thought of such a power, which could urge a person to a crime, in spite of herself. When I had willed Madame B—— back to calmness, I tried to make her see things at a distance. When Colonel S. M——, who was a friend of mine, had been staying in Joigny with his regiment, she had made his acquaintance, so I asked where the colonel was at that hour, and what he was doing.

She replied that Colonel S. M—— was in garrison at Lyons and at that moment, at the officers' café, where he was standing talking with the lieutenant-colonel, near the billiard-table. Then, suddenly, she saw the colonel grow pale, totter and sit down on a bench. He had just been seized with rheumatics in his knee. I touched her on the knee and willed that she should feel the same pain herself: she uttered a cry, grew rigid and shed many tears. We were so alarmed by this fictitious grief, which showed every symptom of real trouble, that I woke her up. As soon as she was awakened, she remembered what I wished her to remember, and forgot the things I commanded her to forget.

Then began another series of experiments on the woman when she was awake.

I enclosed her within an imaginary circle, which I drew with a stick, and I left the room, forbidding her to quit the circle. In five minutes' time I came back, and found her seated in the centre of the salon, waiting my permission to regain her liberty. She sat in one corner of the room, and I placed myself at the opposite end; I told her to do her utmost to resist coming over to me, and at the same time I commanded her to come to me. She clung tight to her arm-chair, but, drawn by an irresistible force, she was obliged to release her hold; then she sat down on the floor to resist the attraction, but the precaution was useless: she came, dragging herself along. When she was at my feet, I only had to stretch out my hand to her head and slowly lift my hand; she rose obediently, and in spite of her efforts, she stood before me. She asked for a glass of water; she tasted it, and it was really water; then, before she had put the glass down, or it had left her hands, I told her the water was Kirsch: she knew perfectly well it was not, and yet, at the first draught she swallowed, she cried out that it was burning her mouth. Poor woman! She was a charming young creature, who has since experienced an even profounder mystery—that of death! I wonder whether she remembers or has forgotten what happened when she was on the earth?

I have not yet done with the subject of magnetism; on the contrary, I have another most extraordinary incident of this kind to relate which took place in the presence of twelve to fifteen people. What follows is a simple recital, drawn up in the form of a legal report by two of the witnesses and signed at the time by us all.

During my stay at Auxerre, I was received into the house of M. D——. He had two children, a boy of six and a girl of eleven years of age. Marie was the name of the daughter, and she was a lovely child, like an angel, for her cheeks were pale and her eyes were black and almost austere. She was an exquisitely delicate creature, but, of course, she only possessed the intelligence and qualities usual to a child of her age, and I had, accordingly, paid very little attention to her, beyond remarkingto my daughter that she was very pretty. And my daughter, who agreed with me, made a portrait of the child awake. One day we were dining in a room which opened out on the garden. We had reached dessert; the two children had left the table and were playing amidst the shrubs and flowers. We were discussing the everlasting question of magnetism, a subject the constant recurrence of which bored me the more because the usual doubts were expressed which I could only confront with facts; now, as these facts had nearly always taken place in a different locality from that in which the discussion was being held, I was obliged to choose from among those present a subject whom I guessed might be easily hypnotised, and, whether willing or not, to operate on this subject. Now, anyone who has ever practised the hypnotic art knows that the exercise is as fatiguing to the hypnotiser as to the hypnotised. I related several of the incidents I have just recorded in the preceding chapter, but they were received with the utmost incredulity.

"I should not believe in mesmerism," Madame D—— said to me, "unless, for instance (and she tried to think of the most unlikely subject she could find),—unless you could send my daughter Marie into a trance."

"Call Mademoiselle Marie and let her sit down to her usual place at the table; give her a biscuit and some fruit, and while she is eating I will try and put her into a trance."

"There is no danger, is there?"

"Of what?"

"It will not injure my daughter's health?"

"Not in the least."

"Marie!"

They called the child, and she ran up; they put some greengages and a biscuit on her plate and told her to eat them, where she was. Her seat was near me, on my left. While everyone continued talking, as though nothing were going on, I stretched out my hand behind the child's head and was the only one to keep silence, my will being concentrated on making the child go to sleep. In half a minute, she had stopped everymovement, and seemed absorbed in the contemplation of a greengage which she was just going to put into her mouth.

"What is the matter, Marie?" asked her mother.

The child did not reply: she was asleep.

The thing had come about so rapidly that I could hardly believe it myself. I made her lean her head against the back of the chair without touching her, just by my power of attraction; her face looked the picture of perfect peace. I made some passes with my hand, up and down in front of her eyes, to make her open them. She opened her eyes, her eyeballs lifted skywards, a light iridescent film appearing beneath them,—the child was in a state of trance. When in this condition the eyelids do not flinch, and objects can be brought quite close to the pupil without causing the slightest movement. My daughter drew her portrait, while she was in this trance, as a companion to the other. There was such a striking likeness in the second portrait to that of an angel, that she added wings to it, and the drawing looked like a study after Giotto's or Perugino's lovely angel-heads. The child was in a trance: it now remained to find out if she could speak. A simple touch of my hand on hers gave her her voice: a simple invitation to get up and walk about endowed her with movement. But her voice was plaintive and toneless; her movements were more like those of an automaton than of a living creature. Whether her eyes were closed or open, whether she walked forward or backward, she moved with the same ease and sense of safety. I began by isolating her from others, so that she only heard me and only replied to me. The voices of her father and mother ceased to reach her; a simple wish on my part I expressed by a sign, changed her state of isolation and put the child again in touch with whatsoever person I chose to select as her interrogator. I transmitted several questions to her, to which she responded so accurately, so intelligently and so concisely that the idea suddenly came into her uncle's head to say to me—

"Question her upon political subjects."

The child, let me repeat, was eleven years old. All politicalquestions were therefore perfectly unknown to her; she was equally ignorant of politics and of political personages.

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