Chapter VI: The Novel of Style--Gautier, Mérimée, Gérard De Nerval, Musset, Vigny (1)

In arranging this volume I have thought it worth while to include, in a single chapter and _nominatim_ in the title thereof, five writers of prose novels or tales; all belonging to "1830"; four of them at least ranking with all but the greatest of that great period; but no one exclusively or even essentially a novelist as Balzac and George Sand were in their different ways, and none of them attempting such imposing bulk-and-plan of novel-matter as that which makes up the prose fiction of Hugo. Gautier was an admirable, and Musset and Vigny at their best were each a consummate, poet; while the first-named was a "polygraph" of the polygraphs, in every kind of _belles-lettres_. Mérimée's novels or tales form a small part of his whole work. "Gérard" is perhaps only admissible here by courtesy, though more than one or two readers, I hope, would feel his absence as a dark gap in the book. Musset, again, not ill at short stories, is far better at short plays. _One_ novel of Vigny's has indeed enjoyed great fame; but, as will be seen, I am unluckily unable to admire it very much, and I include him here--partly because I do not wish to herd so clear a name with the Sues and the Souliés, even with the Sandeaus and Bernards--partly because, though his style in prose is not so marked as that in verse, some of his minor work in fiction is extremely interesting. But though so much of their work, and in Musset's and Vigny's cases all their best work, lies outside our province, and though they themselves, with the possible exception of Gérard and Gautier, who have strong affinities, are markedly different from one another, there is one point which they all have in common, and this point supplies the general title of this chapter. Style of the more separable and elaborate kind does not often make its appearance very early in literary departments; and there may be (_v. inf._) some special reasons why it should not do so in prose fiction. With the exception of Marivaux, who had carried his attention to it over the boundary-line of mannerism, few earlier novelists, though some of them were great writers, had made a point of it, the chief exceptions being in the particular line of "wit," such as Hamilton, Crébillon _fils_, and Voltaire. Chateaubriand had been almost the first to attempt a novel-_rhetoric_; and it must be remembered that Chateaubriand was a sort of human _magnus Apollo_ throughout the July monarchy. At any rate, it is a conspicuous feature in all these writers, and may serve as a link between them.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Gautier--his burden of "style."]

Some readers may know (for I, and the others, which I shall probably quote again, have quoted it before now) a remark of Émile de Girardin when Théophile Gautier asked him how people liked a story which "Théo" had prevailed on that experienced editor to insert as a _feuilleton_ in the _Presse_: "Mon ami, l'abonné ne s'amuse pas _franchement_. Il est gêné par le style." Girardin, though not exactly a genius, was an exceedingly clever man, and knew the foot of his public--perhaps of "_the_ public"--to a hundredth of an inch. But he could hardly have anticipated the extent to which his criticism would reflect the attitude of persons who would have been, and would be, not a little offended at being classed with _l'abonné_. The reproach of "over-styling" has been cast at Gautier by critics of the most different types, and--more curiously at first sight than after a moment's reflection--by some who are themselves style-mad, but whose favourite vanities in that matter are different from his. I can hardly think of any writer--Herrick as treated by Hazlitt is the chief exception that occurs to me at the moment--against whom this cheap and obvious, though, alas! not very frequently possible, charge of "bright far-shining emptiness," of glittering frigidity, of colour without flesh and blood, of art without matter, etc., etc., has been cast so violently--or so unjustly. In literature, as in law and war, the favourite method of offensive defence is to reserve your _triarii_, your "colophon" of arms or arguement, to the last; but there are cases in all three where it is best to carry an important point at once and hold it. I think that this is one of these cases; and I do not think that the operation can be conducted with better chance of success than by inserting here that outline,[198] with specimens, of _La Morte Amoureuse_ which has been already promised--or threatened--in the Preface. For here the glamour--if it be only glamour--of the style will have disappeared; the matter will remain.

[Sidenote: Abstract (with translations) of _La Morte
Amoureuse_.]

You ask me, my brother, if I have ever loved. I answer
"Yes." But it is a wild and terrible story, a memory whose
ashes, with all my sixty-six years, I hardly dare to
disturb. To you I can refuse nothing, but I would not tell
the tale to a less experienced soul. The facts are so
strange that I myself cannot believe in their actual
occurrence. For three years I was the victim of a diabolical
delusion, and every night--God grant it was a dream--I, a
poor country priest, led the life of the lost, the life of
the worldling and the debauchee. A single chance of too
great complacency went near to destroy my soul; but at last,
with God's aid and my patron saint's, I exorcised the evil
spirit which had gained possession of me. Till then my life
was double, and the counterpart by night was utterly
different from the life by day. By day I was a priest of the
Lord, pure, and busied with holy things. By night, no sooner
had I closed my eyes than I became a youthful gallant,
critical in women, dogs, and horses, prompt with dice and
bottle, free of hand and tongue; and when waking-time came
at dawn of day, it seemed to me as if I then fell asleep and
was a priest only in dreams. From this sleep-life I have
kept the memory of words and things, which recur to me
against my will; and though I have never quitted the walls
of my parsonage, those who hear me talk would rather think
me a man of the world and of many experiences, who has
entered the religious life hoping to finish in God's bosom
the evening of his stormy day, than a humble seminarist,
whose life has been spent in an obscure parish, buried deep
in woods, and far removed from the course of the world.

Yes, I have loved--as no one else has loved, with a mad and
wild passion so violent that I can hardly understand how it
failed to break my heart.

After rapidly sketching the history of the early seminary days of the priest Romuald, his complete seclusion and ignorance almost of the very names of world and woman, the tale goes on to the day of his ordination. He is in the church, almost in a trance of religious fervour; the building itself, the gorgeously robed bishop, the stately ceremonies, seem to him a foretaste of heaven, when suddenly--

By chance I raised my head, which I had hitherto kept bowed,
and saw before me, within arm's length as it seemed, but in
reality at some distance and beyond the chancel rails, a
woman of rare beauty and royally apparelled. At once, as it
were, scales dropped from my eyes. I was in the case of a
blind man whose sight is suddenly restored. The bishop, but
now so dazzling to me, became dim, the tapers in their
golden stands paled like the stars at morning, and darkness
seemed to pervade the church. On this background of shade
the lovely vision stood out like an angelic appearance,
self-illumined, and giving rather than receiving light. I
dropped my eyelids, firmly resolving not again to raise
them, that so I might escape the distraction of outward
things, for I felt the spell more and more, and I hardly
knew what I did; but a minute afterwards I again looked up,
for I perceived her beauty still shining across my dropped
lashes as if with prismatic glory, and encircled by the
crimson halo that, to the gazer, surrounds the sun. How
beautiful she was! Painters, when in their chase of the
ideal they have followed it to the skies and carried off
therefrom the divine image of Our Lady, never drew near this
fabulous reality. Nor are the poet's words more adequate
than the colours of the limner. She was tall and
goddess-like in shape and port. Her soft fair hair rolled on
either side of her temples in golden streams that crowned
her as with a queen's diadem. Her forehead, white and
transparent, tinged only by blue vein-stains, stretched in
calm amplitude over two dark eyebrows--a contrast enhanced
still further by the sea-green lustre of her glittering and
unfathomable eyes. Ah, what eyes! One flash of them was
enough to settle the fate of a man. Never had I seen in
human eyes such life, such clearness, such ardour, such
humid brilliancy; and there shot from them glances like
arrows, which went straight to my heart. Whether the flame
which lit them came from hell or heaven I know not, but from
one or the other it came, most surely. No daughter of Eve
she, but an angel or a fiend, perhaps--who knows?--something
of both. The quarrelets of pearl flashed through her scarlet
smile, and as her mouth moved the dimples sank and filled by
turns in the blush-rose softness of her exquisite cheek.
Over the even smoothness of her half-uncovered shoulders
played a floating gloss as of agate, and a river of large
pearls, not greatly different in hue from her neck,
descended towards her breast. Now and then she raised her
head with a peacock-like gesture, and sent a quiver through
the ruff which enshrined her like a frame of silver
filigree.

The strange vision causes on Romuald strange yet natural effects. His ardent aspiration for the priesthood changes to loathing. He even tries to renounce his vows, to answer "No" to the questions to which he should answer "Yes," and thus to comply with the apparent demand of the stranger's eyes. But he cannot. The awe of the ceremony is yet too strong on his soul, if not on his senses and imagination; and the fatal words are spoken, the fatal rites gone through, despite the promises of untold bliss which the eyes, evermore caressing and entreating, though sadder, as the completion of the sacrifice approaches, continue to make him.

At last it was over--I was a priest. Never did face of woman
wear an expression of such anguish as hers. The girl whose
lover drops lifeless at her side, the mother by her dead
child's cradle, Eve at the gate of paradise, the miser who
finds his buried treasure replaced by a stone, the poet
whose greatest work has perished in the flames, have not a
more desolate air. The blood left her countenance, and it
became as of marble; her arms fell by her side, as if their
muscles had become flaccid; and she leant against a pillar,
for her limbs refused to support her. As for me, with a
livid face bathed as if in the dews of death, I bent my
tottering steps towards the church door. The air seemed to
stifle me, the vaulted roof settled on my shoulders, and on
my head seemed to rest the whole crushing weight of the
dome. As I was on the point of crossing the threshold a hand
touched mine suddenly--a woman's hand--a touch how new to
me! It was as cold as the skin of a serpent, yet the contact
burnt like the brand of a hot iron. "Unhappy wretch! What
have you done?" she said to me in a low voice, and then
disappeared in the crowd.

On the way to the seminary, whither a comrade has to support him, for his emotion is evident to all, a page, unnoticed, slips into Romuald's hand a tablet with the simple words, "Clarimonde. At the Concini Palace." He passes some days in a state almost of delirium, now forming wild plans of escape, now shocked at his sinful desires, but always regretting the world he has renounced, and still more Clarimonde.

I do not know how long I remained in this condition, but, as
in one of my furious writhings I turned on my bed, I saw the
Father Serapion standing in the middle of the cell gazing
steadily at me. Shame seized me, and I hid my face with my
hands. "Romuald," said he, at the end of a few minutes,
"something extraordinary has come on you. Your conduct is
inexplicable. You, so pious, so gentle, you pace your cell
like a caged beast. Take heed, my brother, of the
suggestions of the Evil One, for he is wroth that you have
given yourself to the Lord, and lurks round you like a
ravening wolf, if haply a last effort may make you his."

Then, bidding him redouble his pious exercises, and telling him that he has been presented by the bishop to a country cure, and must be ready to start on the morrow, Serapion leaves him. Romuald is in despair at quitting the neighbourhood of Clarimonde. But his seminarist inexperience makes him feel, more than ever, the impossibility even of discovering her, and the hints of Serapion have in a manner reawakened his conscience. He departs on the morrow without protest. They quit the city, and begin to climb the hills which surround it.

At the top I turned round once more to give a last look to
the place where dwelt Clarimonde. The city lay wholly in the
shadow of a cloud; its blue and red roofs were blended in
one general half-tint, above which here and there white
flakes of the smoke of morning fires hovered. By some
optical accident a single edifice stood out gilded by a ray
of light, and more lofty than the mass of surrounding
buildings. Though more than a league off, it seemed close to
us. The smallest details were visible--the turrets, the
terraces, the windows, and even the swallow-tailed vanes.
"What is that sunlit palace yonder?" I asked of Serapion. He
shaded his eyes with his hand, and after looking he
answered, "It is the palace which Prince Concini gave to the
courtesan Clarimonde. Terrible things are done there." As he
spoke, whether it were fact or fancy I know not, it seemed
to me that I saw a slender white form glide out on the
terrace, glitter there for a second, and then disappear. It
was Clarimonde! Could she have known that at that moment,
from the rugged heights of the hill which separated me from
her, and which I was never more to descend, I was bending a
restless and burning gaze on the palace of her abode,
brought near me by a mocking play of light, as if to invite
me to enter? Ah yes! she knew it doubtless, for her soul was
bound to mine too nearly not to feel its least movements;
and this it must have been which urged her to climb the
terrace in the cold morning dews, wrapped only in her snowy
nightgear.

But the die is cast, and the journey continues. They reach the modest parsonage where Romuald is to pass the rest of his days, and he is installed in his cure, Serapion returning to the city. Romuald attacks his work desperately, hoping to find peace there, but he very partially succeeds. The words of Clarimonde and the touch of her hand haunt him constantly, and sometimes even stranger things happen. He sees the flash of the sea-green eyes across his garden hedges; he seems to find the imprint of feet, which are assuredly not those of any inhabitant of the village, on the gravel walks. At last one night he is summoned late to the bedside of a dying person, by a messenger of gorgeous dress and outlandish aspect. The journey is made in the darkness on fiery steeds, through strange scenery, and in an unknown direction. A splendid palace is at length reached--too late, for the priest is met by the news that his penitent has already expired. But he is entreated, and consents, at least to watch and pray by the body during the night. He is led into the chamber of death, and finds that the corpse is Clarimonde. At first he mechanically turns to prayer, but other thoughts inevitably occur. His eyes wander to the appearance and furniture of the boudoir suddenly put to so different use: the gorgeous hangings of crimson damask contrasting with the white shroud, the faded rose by the bedside, the scattered signs of revelry, distract and disturb him. Strange fancies come thick. The air seems other than that to which he is accustomed in such chambers of the dead. The corpse appears from time to time to make slight movements; even sighs seem to echo his own. At last he lifts the veil which covers her, and contemplates the exquisite features he had last seen at the fatal moment of his sacrifice. He cannot believe that she is dead. The faint blush-rose tints are hardly dulled, the hand is not colder than he recollects it.

The night was now far spent. I felt that the moment of
eternal separation was at hand, and I could not refuse
myself the last sad pleasure of giving one kiss to the dead
lips of her, who, living, had had all my love. Oh, wonder! A
faint breath mingled with mine, the eyes opened and became
once more brilliant. She sighed, and uncrossing her arms she
clasped them round my neck with an air of ineffable
contentment. "Ah!" she said, with a voice as faint and as
sweet as the last dying vibrations of a harp, "is it you,
Romuald? I have waited for you so long that now I am dead.
But we are betrothed to one another from this moment, and I
can see you and visit you henceforward. Romuald, I loved
you! Farewell; this is all I have to say; and thus I restore
the life you gave me for a minute with your kiss. We shall
soon meet again." Her head fell back, but she still held me
encircled. A furious gust of wind forced in the window and
swept into the room: the last leaflet of the white rose
quivered for a minute on its stalk and then fell, and
floated through the open casement, bearing with it the soul
of Clarimonde. The lamp went out, and I sank in a swoon.

He wakes in his own room, and hears from his ancient _gouvernante_ that the same strange escort which carried him off has brought him back. Soon afterwards his friend Serapion comes to visit him, not altogether to his delight, for he, rightly suspects the father of some knowledge of his secret. Serapion announces to him, as a matter of general news, that the courtesan Clarimonde is dead, and mentions that strange rumours have been current respecting her--some declaring her to be a species of vampire, and her lovers to have all perished mysteriously. As he says this he watches Romuald, who cannot altogether conceal his thoughts. Thereat Serapion--

"My son," said he, "it is my duty to warn you that your feet
are on the brink of an abyss; take heed of falling. Satan's
hands reach far, and the grave is not always a faithful
gaoler. Clarimonde's tombstone should be sealed with a
triple seal, for it is not, say they, the first time she has
died. May God watch over you." Saying this, Serapion slowly
went out, and I saw him no more. I soon recovered
completely, and returned to my usual occupations; and though
I never forgot the memory of Clarimonde and the words of the
father, nothing extraordinary for a time occurred to confirm
in any way his ill-omened forebodings, so that I began to
believe that his apprehensions and my own terror were
unfounded. But one night I had a dream. Scarcely had I
fallen asleep when I heard my bed-curtains drawn, the rings
grating sharply on the rods. I raised myself abruptly on my
elbow and saw before me the shadowy figure of a woman. At
once I recognised Clarimonde. She carried in her hand a
small lamp of the shape of those which are placed in tombs,
and the light of it gave to her tapering fingers a rosy
transparency which, with gradually fainter tints, prolonged
itself till it was lost in the milky whiteness of her naked
arm. The only garment she had on was the linen shroud which
covered her on her death-bed, and she tried to hold up its
folds on her breast as if shame-stricken at her scanty
clothing. But her little hand was not equal to the task; and
so white was she that the lamplight failed to make
distinction between the colour of the drapery and the hue of
the flesh. Wrapped in this fine tissue, she was more like an
antique marble statue of a bather than a live woman. Dead or
alive, woman or statue, shadow or body, her beauty was
unchangeable, but the green flash of her eyes was somewhat
dulled, and her mouth, so red of old, was now tinted only
with a faint rose-tint like that of her cheeks. The blue
flowerets in her hair were withered and had lost almost all
their petals; yet she was still all charming--so charming
that, despite the strangeness of the adventure and the
unexplained fashion of her entrance, no thought of fear
occurred to me. She placed the lamp on the table and seated
herself on the foot of my bed; then, bending towards me, she
spoke in the soft and silvery voice that I have heard from
none but her. "I have kept you waiting long, dear Romuald,
and you must have thought that I had forgotten you. But I
come from very far--from a place whence no traveller has yet
returned. There is neither sun nor moon, nor aught but space
and shadow; no road is there, nor pathway to guide the foot,
nor air to uphold the wing; and yet here am I, for love is
stronger than death, and is his master at the last. Ah! what
sad faces, what sights of terror, I have met! With what
pains has my soul, regaining this world by force of will,
found again my body and reinstalled itself! With what effort
have I lifted the heavy slab they laid upon me, even to the
bruising of my poor feeble hands! Kiss them, dear love, and
they will be cured." She placed one by one the cold palms of
her little hands against my mouth, and I kissed them again
and again, while she watched me with her smile of ineffable
content. I at once forgot Serapion's advice, I forgot my
sacred office; I succumbed without resistance at the first
summons, I did not even attempt to repulse the tempter.

She tells him how she had dreamed of him long before she saw him; how she had striven to prevent his sacrifice; how she was jealous of God, whom he preferred to her; and how, though she had forced the gates of the tomb to come to him, though he had given life back to her with a kiss, though her recovery of it has no other end than to make him happy, she herself is still miserable because she has only half his heart. In his delirium he tells her, to console her, that he loves her "as much as God."

"Instantly the glitter as of chrysoprase flashed once more from her eyes. 'Is that true?--as much as God?' cried she, winding her arms round me. 'If 'tis so you can come with me; you can follow me whither I will.'" And fixing the next night for the rendezvous, she vanishes. He wakes, and, considering it merely a dream, resumes his pious exercises. But the next night Clarimonde, faithful to her word, reappears--no longer in ghostly attire, but radiant and splendidly dressed. She brings her lover the full costume of a cavalier, and when he has donned it they sally forth, taking first the fiery steeds of his earlier nocturnal adventure, then a carriage, in which he and Clarimonde, heart to heart, head on shoulder, hand in hand, journey through the night.

Never had I been so happy. For the moment I had forgotten
everything, and thought no more of my priesthood than of
some previous state of life. From that night forward my
existence was as it were doubled, and there were in me two
men, strangers each to the other's existence. Sometimes I
thought myself a priest who dreamt that he was a gallant,
sometimes a gallant who dreamt that he was a priest.... I
could not distinguish the reality from the illusion, and
knew not which were my waking and which my sleeping moments.
Two spirals, entangled without touching, form the nearest
representation of this life. The young cavalier, the
coxcomb, the debauchee, mocked the priest; the priest held
the dissipations of the gallant in horror. Notwithstanding
the strangeness of the situation, I do not think my reason
was for a moment affected. The perceptions of my two
existences were always firm and clear, and there was only
one anomaly which I could not explain, and this was that the
same unbroken sentiment of identity subsisted in two beings
so different. Of this I could give myself no explanation,
whether I thought myself to be really the vicar of a poor
country village, or else Il Signor Romualdo, lover in
possession of Clarimonde.

The place, real or apparent, of Il Signor Romualdo's sojourn with his beloved is Venice, where they inhabit a gorgeous palace, and where Romuald enters into all the follies and dissipations of the place. He is unalterably faithful to Clarimonde, and she to him; and the time passes in a perpetual delirium. But every night--as it now seems to him--he finds himself once more a poor country priest, horrified at the misdeeds of his other personality, and seeking to atone for them by prayer and fasting and good works. Even in his Venetian moments he sometimes thinks of Serapion's words, and at length he has especial reason to remember them.

For some time Clarimonde's health had not been very good;
her complexion faded from day to day. The doctors who were
called in could not discover the disease, and after useless
prescriptions gave up the case. Day by day she grew paler
and colder, till she was nearly as white and as corpse-like
as on the famous night at the mysterious castle. I was in
despair at this wasting away, but she, though touched by my
sorrow, only smiled at me sweetly and sadly with the fatal
smile of those who feel their death approaching. One morning
I was sitting by her. In slicing some fruit it happened that
I cut my finger somewhat deeply. The blood flowed in crimson
streamlets, and some of it spurted on Clarimonde. Her eyes
brightened at once, and over her face there passed a look of
fierce joy which I had never before seen in her. She sprang
from the bed with catlike activity and pounced on the wound,
which she began to suck with an air of indescribable
delight, swallowing the blood in sips, slowly and carefully,
as an epicure tastes a costly vintage. Her eyelids were half
closed, and the pupils of her sea-green eyes flattened and
became oblong instead of round.... From time to time she
interrupted herself to kiss my hand; then she began again to
squeeze the edges of the wound with her lips in order to
draw from it a few more crimson drops. When she saw that the
blood ran no longer, she rose with bright and humid eyes,
rosier than a May morning, her cheeks full, her hands warm,
yet no longer parched, fairer in short than ever, and in
perfect health. "I shall not die! I shall not die!" she
said, clasping my neck in a frenzy of joy. "I can live long
and love you. My life is in yours, my very existence comes
from you. A few drops of your generous blood, more precious
and sovereign than all the elixirs of the world, have given
me back to life."

This scene gave me matter for much reflection, and put into
my head some strange thoughts as to Clarimonde. That very
evening, when sleep had transported me to my parsonage, I
found there Father Serapion, graver and more careworn than
ever. He looked at me attentively and said, "Not content
with destroying your soul, are you bent also on destroying
your body? Unhappy youth, into what snares have you fallen!"
The tone in which he said this struck me much at the time;
but, lively as the impression was, other thoughts soon drove
it from my mind. However, one evening, with the aid of a
glass, on whose tell-tale position Clarimonde had not
counted, I saw her pouring a powder into the cup of spiced
wine which she was wont to prepare after supper. I took the
cup, and, putting it to my lips, I set it down, as if
intending to finish it at leisure. But in reality I availed
myself of a minute when her back was turned to empty it
away, and I soon after went to bed, determined to remain
awake and see what would happen. I had not long to wait.
Clarimonde entered as soon as she had convinced herself that
I slept. She uncovered my arm and drew from her hair a
little gold pin; then she murmured under her breath, "Only
one drop, one little crimson drop, one ruby just to tip the
bodkin! As you love me still I must not die. Ah, poor love!
I am going to drink his blood, his beautiful blood, so
bright and so purple. Sleep, my only treasure; sleep, my
darling, my deity; I will do you no harm; I will only take
so much of your life as I need to save my own. Did I not
love you so much I might resolve to have other lovers, whose
veins I could drain; but since I have known you I hate all
others. Ah, dear arm, how round it is, and how white! How
shall I ever dare to pierce the sweet blue veins!" And while
she spoke she wept, so that I felt her tears rain on the arm
she held. At last she summoned courage; she pricked me
slightly with the bodkin and began to suck out the blood.
But she drank only a few drops, as if she feared to exhaust
me, and then carefully bound up my arm after anointing it
with an unguent which closed the wound at once. I could now
doubt no longer: Serapion was right. Yet, in spite of this
certainty, I could not help loving Clarimonde, and I would
willingly have given her all the blood whereof she had need,
to sustain her artificial life. Besides, I had not much to
fear; the woman was my warrant against the vampire; and what
I had heard and seen completely reassured me. I had then
well-nourished veins, which were not to be soon drawn dry,
nor had I reason to grudge and count their drops. I would
have pierced my arm myself and bid her drink. I was careful
to make not the slightest allusion to the narcotic she had
given me, or to the scene that followed, and we lived in
unbroken harmony. But my priestly scruples tormented me more
than ever, and I knew not what new penance to invent to
blunt my passion and mortify my flesh. Though my visions
were wholly involuntary and my will had nothing to do with
them, I shrank from touching the host with hands thus
sullied and spirit defiled by debauchery, whether in act or
in dream. To avoid falling into these harassing
hallucinations, I tried to prevent myself sleeping; I held
my eyelids open, and remained in a standing posture,
striving with all my force against sleep. But soon the waves
of slumber drowned my eyes, and seeing that the struggle was
hopeless, I let my hands drop in weariness, and was once
more carried to the shores of delusion.... Serapion exhorted
me most fervently, and never ceased reproaching me with my
weakness and my lack of zeal. One day, when I had been more
agitated than usual, he said to me, "There is only one way
to relieve you from this haunting plague, and, though it be
extreme, we must try it. Great evils need heroic remedies. I
know where Clarimonde was buried; we must disinter her, and
you shall see the real state of your lady-love. You will
hardly be tempted to risk your soul for a vile body, the
prey of worms and ready to turn to dust. That, if anything,
will restore you to yourself." For my part, I was so weary
of this double life that I closed with his offer. I longed
to know once for all, which--priest or gallant--was the
dupe of a delusion, and I was resolved to sacrifice one of
my two lives for the good of the other--yea, if it were
necessary, to sacrifice both, for such an existence as I was
leading could not last.... Father Serapion procured a
mattock, a crowbar, and a lantern, and at midnight we set
out for the cemetery, whose plan and arrangements he knew
well. After directing the rays of the dark lantern on the
inscriptions of several graves, we came at last to a stone
half buried under tall grass, and covered with moss and
lichen, whereon we deciphered this epitaph, "Here lies
Clarimonde, who in her lifetime was the fairest in the
world." "'Tis here," said Serapion; and, placing his lantern
on the ground, he slipped the crowbar into the chinks of the
slab and essayed to lift it. The stone yielded, and he set
to work with the spade. As for me, stiller and more gloomy
than the night itself, I watched him at work, while he,
bending over his ill-omened task, sweated and panted, his
forced and heavy breath sounding like the gasps of the
dying. The sight was strange, and lookers-on would rather
have taken us for tomb-breakers and robbers of the dead than
for God's priests. The zeal of Serapion was of so harsh and
savage a cast, that it gave him a look more of the demon
than of the apostle or the angel, and his face, with its
severe features deeply marked by the glimmer of the lantern,
was hardly reassuring. A cold sweat gathered on my limbs and
my hair stood on end. In my heart I held Serapion's deed to
be an abominable sacrilege, and I could have wished that a
flash of lightning might issue from the womb of the heavy
clouds, which rolled low above our heads, and burn him to
ashes. The owls perched about the cypress trees, and,
disturbed by the lantern, came and flapped its panes heavily
with their dusty wings, the foxes barked in the distance,
and a thousand sinister echoes troubled the silence. At
length Serapion's spade struck the coffin with the terrible
hollow sound that nothingness returns to those who intrude
on it. He lifted the lid, and I saw Clarimonde, as pale as
marble, and with her hands joined; there was no fold in her
snow-white shroud from head to foot; at the corner of her
blanched lips there shone one little rosy drop. At the sight
Serapion broke into fury. "Ah! fiend, foul harlot, drinker
of gold and blood, we have found you!" said he, and he
scattered holy water over corpse and coffin, tracing the
sign of the cross with his brush. No sooner had the blessed
shower touched my Clarimonde than her fair body crumbled
into dust, and became nought but a hideous mixture of ashes
and half-burnt bones. "There, Signor Romuald," said the
inexorable priest, pointing to the remains, "there is your
mistress. Are you still tempted to escort her to the Lido or
to Fusina?" I bowed my head; a mighty ruin had taken place
within me. I returned to my parsonage, and Il Signor
Romualdo, the lover of Clarimonde, said farewell for ever to
the poor priest whose strange companion he had been so long.
Only the next night I again saw Clarimonde. She said to me,
as at first in the church porch, "Poor wretch, what have you
done? Why did you listen to that frantic priest? Were you
not happy? And what harm had I done you that you should
violate my grave, and shamefully expose the misery of my
nothingness? Henceforward all communication between us, soul
and body, is broken. Farewell, you will regret me." She
vanished in the air like a vapour, and I saw her no more.

Alas! she spoke too truly. I have regretted her again and
again. I regret her still. The repose of my soul has indeed
been dearly bought, and the love of God itself has not been
too much to replace the gap left by hers. This, my brother,
is the history of my youth. Never look at woman, and let
your eyes as you walk be fixed upon the ground; for, pure
and calm as you may be, a single moment is sufficient to
make you lose your eternal peace.

[Sidenote: Criticism thereof.]

Now, though to see a thing in translation be always to see it "as in a glass darkly"; and though in this case the glass may be unduly flawed and clouded, my own critical faculties must not only now be unusually[199] enfeebled by age, but must always have been crippled by some strange affection, if certain things are not visible here to any intelligent and impartial reader. The story, of course, is not pure invention; several versions of parts, if not the whole, of it will occur to any one who has some knowledge of literature; and I have recently read a variant of great beauty and "eeriness" from the Japanese.[200] But the merit of a story depends, not on its originality as matter, but on the manner in which it is told. It surely cannot be denied that this is told excellently. That the part of Serapion (though somebody or something of the kind is almost necessary) is open to some criticism, may be granted. He seems to know too much and yet not enough: and if he was to interfere at all, one does not see why he did not do it earlier. But this is the merest hole-picking, and the biggest hole it can make will not catch the foot or the little finger of any worthy reader. As to the beauty of the phrasing, even in another language, and as rendered by no consummate artist, there can be little question about that. Indeed there we have consent about Gautier, though, as has been seen, the consent has not always been thoroughly complimentary to him. To go a step further, the way in which the diction and imagery are made to provide frame and shade and colour for the narrative leaves very little room for cavil. Without any undue or excessive "prose poetry," the descriptions are like those of the best imaginative-pictorial verse itself. The first appearance of Clarimonde; the scene at her death-bed and that of her dream-resurrection, have, I dare affirm it, never been surpassed in verse or prose for their special qualities: while the backward view of the city and the recital of what we may call Serapion's soul-murder of the enchantress come little behind them.

But, it may be said, "You are still kicking at open doors. The degree of your estimate is, we think, extravagant, but that it is deserved to some extent nobody denies. In mere point of expression, and even to some extent, again, in conception of beauty, Gautier's manner, though too much of one kind, and that too old-fashioned, is admitted; it is his matter which is questioned or denied."

[Sidenote: A parallel from painting.]

Here also, I think, the counter-attack can be completely barred or broken to the satisfaction of all but those who cannot or will not see. In the first place one must make a distinction, which ought not to be regarded as over-subtilising, but which certainly seems to be ignored by many people. There are in all arts, and more especially in the art of literature, two stages or sets of stages in the discharge of that duty of every artist--the creation of beauty. The one is satisfied by the achievement of the beautiful in the presentation itself; the other gives you, in your own interior collection or museum, the thing presented. This is not the common distinction between form and matter, between style and substance, between subject and treatment; it is something more intimate and "metaphysical." To illustrate it, let me take a pair of instances, not from letters, but from painting as produced by two dead masters of our own, Rossetti and Albert Moore. I used to think the last-named painter disgracefully undervalued both by the public and by critics. One could look at those primrose-tinted ladies of his, with their gossamer films of raiment and their flowerage always suggestive of the asphodel mead, for hours: and if one's soul had had a substantial Palace of Art of her own, there would have been a corridor wholly Albert Moorish--a corridor, for his things never looked well with other people's and they could not, by themselves, have filled a hall.

But their beauty, as has been untruly said of Gautier's representation in the other art, _was_ "their sole duty." You never wanted to kiss even the most beautiful of them, or to talk to her, or even to sit at her feet, except for purposes of looking at her, for which that position has its own special advantages. And although by no means mere pastiches or replicas of each other, they had little of the qualities which constitute personality. They were almost literally "dreams that waved before the half-shut eye," and dreams which you knew to be dreams at the time; less even than dreams--shadows, and less even than shadows, for shadows imply substance, and these did not. If you loved them you loved them always, and could not be divorced from them. But it was an entirely contemplative love; and if divorce was unthinkable it was because there was no _thorus_ and no _mensa_ at which they could possibly have figured.[201] They were the Eves of a Paradise of _two_ dimensions only.

Now with Rossetti it was entirely different. His drawing may have been as faulty as people said it was, and he may have been as fond as they also said of bestowing upon all his subjects exaggerated and almost ungainly features, which possibly belonged to the Blessed Damozel, but were not the most indisputable part of her blessedness. But they were, despite their similarity of type, all personal and individual, and all suggestive to the mind and the emotions of real women, and of the things which real women are and do and suffer. And they were all differently suggestive. Proserpine and Beata Beatrix; the devotional figures in their quietude or their ecstasy, and the forlorn leaguer-lasses of that little masterpiece of the novitiate, "Hesterna Rosa"; the Damozel herself and a Corsican lady whose portrait, unpublished and unexhibited, has been familiar to me for six-and-thirty years;--all these and all the others would behave to you, and you would behave to them, if they could be vivified, in ways different individually but real and live.

[Sidenote: The reality.]

Now it is beauty of reality as well as of presentation that I at least find in _La Morte Amoureuse_. Clarimonde alive is very much more than a "shadow on glass"; Clarimonde dead is more alive than many live women.

[Sidenote: And the passion of it.]

But the audacity of infatuation need not stop here. I should claim for _La Morte Amoureuse_, and for Gautier as the author of it, more than this. It appears to me to be one of the very few expressions in French prose of really passionate love. It is, with _Manon Lescaut_ and _Julie_, the most consummate utterance that I at least know, in that division of literature, of the union of sensual with transcendental enamourment. Why this is so rare in French is a question fitter for treatment in a _History of the French Temperament_ than in one of the French Novel. That it is so I believe to be a simple fact, and simple facts require little talking about. No prose literature has so much love-making in it as French, and none so much about different species of love: _amour de tête_ and _amour des sens_ especially, but also not unfrequently _amour de coeur_, and even _amour d'âme_. But of the combination that _we_ call "passionate love"--that fills our own late sixteenth, early seventeenth, and whole nineteenth century literature, and that requires love of the heart and the head, the soul and the senses, together--it has (outside poetry of course)[202] only the three books just mentioned and a few passages such as Atala's dying speech, Adolphe's, alas! too soon obliterated reflections on his first success with Ellénore, perhaps one or two more before _La Morte Amoureuse_, and even since its day not many. Maupassant (_v. inf._) _could_ manage the combination, but too often confined himself to exhibitions of the separate and imperfect divisions, whereof, no doubt, the number is endless.

That Gautier always or often maintained himself at this pitch, either of what we may call power of projecting live personages or of exhibition of great passions, it would be idle and uncritical to contend; that he did so here, and thereby put himself at once and for ever on the higher, nay, highest level of literature, I do, after fifty years' study of the thing and of endless other things, impenitently and impavidly affirm.

[Sidenote: Other short stories.]

What is more, in his shorter productions he was often not far below it, save in respect of intensity. If I do not admire _Fortunio_ quite so much as some people do, it is not so much because of its comparative heartlessness--a thing rare in Gautier--as because for once, and I think once only in pieces of its scale, the malt of the description _does_ get above the meal of the personal interest, though that personal interest exists. But _Jettatura_, with its combination of romantic and tragical appeal; _Avatar_, with its extraordinary mixture of romance, again, with humour, its "excitingness," and its delicacy of taste; the equally extraordinary felicity of the dealings with that too often unmanageable implement the "classical dictionary" in _Arria Marcella_, _Une Nuit de Cléopâtre_, and perhaps especially _Le Roi Candaule_; the tiny sketches--half-_nouvelle_ and half-"middle" article--of _Le Pied de la Momie_, _La Pipe d'Opium_, and _Le Club des Haschischins_,--what marvellous consummateness in the various specifications and conditions do these afford us!

Sometimes, however, I have thought that just as _La Morte Amoureuse_ is almost or quite sufficient text for vindicating the greatness or greaterness of "Théo," so his earliest book of prose fiction, _Les Jeune-France_, will serve the same purpose for another side of him, lesser if anybody likes, but exceptionally "complementary." In particular it possesses a quality which up to his time was very rare in France, has not been extraordinarily common there even since, and is still, even in its ancestral home with ourselves, sometimes inconceivably blundered about--the quality of Humour.[203]

[Sidenote: Gautier's humour--_Les Jeune-France_.]

For wit, France can, of course, challenge the world; nay, she can do more, she can say to the world, "I have taught you this; and you are no match for your teacher." But in Humour the case is notoriously altered. None of the Latin nations, except Spain, the least purely Latin of them, has ever achieved it, as the original or unoriginal Latins themselves never did, with the exception of the lighter forms of it in Catullus, of the grimmer in Lucretius--those greatest and most un-Roman of Roman poets.[204] In all the wide and splendid literature of French before the nineteenth century only Rabelais and Molière[205] can lay claim to it. Romanticism brings humour in its train, as Classicism brings wit; but it is curious how slow was the Romanticisation of French in this respect, with one exception. There is no real humour in Hugo, Vigny, George Sand, Balzac, scarcely even in Musset. Dumas, though showing decidedly good gifts of possibility in his novels, does not usually require it there; the absence of it in his dramas need hardly be dwelt on. Mérimée, one cannot but think, might have had it if he had chosen; but Mérimée did not choose to have so many things! If Gérard de Nerval's failure of a great genius had failed in the comic instead of the romantic-tragical direction, he would have had some too--in fact he had it in the embryonic and unachieved fashion in which the author of _Gaspard de la Nuit_, and Baudelaire, and Paul Verlaine have had it since in verse and prose. But Gautier has it plump and plain, and without any help from the strange counterfeiting fantasy of verse which sometimes confers it. He has it always; at all times of his life; in the hackwork which made abortion of so much greater literature, and in his actually great literature, poems, novels, travels--what not. But he never has it more strongly, vividly, and originally than in _Les Jeune-France_, a coming-of-age book almost as old as _mil-huit-cent-trente_, written in part no doubt in the immortal _gilet rouge_ itself, if only as kept for study wear like Diderot's old dressing-gown.

There are two dangers lying in wait for the reader of the book. One is the ordinary and quite respectable putting-out-of-the-lip at its juvenile improprieties; the other, a little more subtle, is the notion that the things, improper or not (and some of them are quite _not_), are mere _juvenilia_--clever undergraduate work. The first requires no special counterblast; the old monition, "Don't like it for its impropriety, but also don't let its impropriety hide its merits from you if it has any," will suffice. The other is, as has been said, more insidious. I can only say that I have read much undergraduate or but slightly post-graduate literature of many generations--before the day of _Les Jeune-France_, about its date, between that day and my own season of passing through those "sweet hours and the fleetest of time," and since that season till the present moment. But many equals of this book I have not read.

It is of course necessary to remember that it is expressly subtitled "Romans Goguenards," thereby preparing the reader for the reverse of seriousness. That reverse, especially in young hands, is a difficult thing to manage. "Guffaw" and "yawn" are two words which have actually two letters in common; _y_ and _g_ are notoriously interchangeable in some dialects and circumstances, while _n_ and _u_ are the despair of the copyist or the student of copies. There remain only "ff"--the lightest of literals. We need not cite _nominatim_ (indeed it might be rash) the endless examples in French and English where the guffaw of the writer excites the yawn of the reader. But this is hardly ever the case, at least as I find it, with Gautier.

The _Preface_, in which the author presents himself in his unregenerate and un-"young-France" condition, is really a triumph; I wish I could give the whole of it here. And what is more, it is a sort of epitome by anticipation of the entire Gautier, though without, of course, the mastery of artistry he attained in years of laborious prose and verse. For that quality of humour which his younger friend Taine was to define happily, though by no means to his own comfort or approval, in the phrase devoted to one of our English masters of it, "Il se moque de ses émotions à l'instant même où il s'y livre," you must go to Fielding or to Thackeray to beat it.