Chapter II: Part 2

'On the edge of the path there were little white shells, out of
them frail tentacles trembled and stretched to the light. From
a rock above hung twisted dead roots like entwined snakes.
Farther on there was a large peasant's house, bearing on the
summit of its roof a floral ornament in clay. An outside
staircase led up to a covered terrace. Two women sat spinning
at the head of the stair, and the flax shone in the sun like
gold. You could hear the wheels turn. By a window sat another,
weaving; you could see her rhythmical gestures in moving the
shuttle. In the courtyard a huge grey ox was lying down; he
shook his ears and moved his tail faintly but incessantly in
war against the flies. The cocks and hens cackled and crowed
around him. Farther on still another little river crossed the
road; it laughed aloud, crisp, mirthful, vivid, limpid.

'Near another farmhouse a thick bay hedge shut in an orchard.
The straight, shining stems rose immovable, crowned with their
glistening foliage. One of the bay trees was enveloped in the
embrace of a clematis, which lovingly conquered the martial bay
with her blossoms of snow, the veil of her nuptial freshness.
Underneath, the earth was dewy and fragrant. In an angle a
black cross leaned over the hedge, the silence had the resigned
sadness of a graveyard. At the end of a line there arose a
flight of steps, half in shade, half in sunshine; they led to a
door standing half open, protected by two branches of olive
hung from its rustic architrave. On the lowest step sat an old
man asleep, his head uncovered, his chin on his breast, his
hands on his knees; the light touched his aged brow. From the
half-open door there came, to soothe his senile sleep, the
cadence of a rocking cradle, the rise and fall of a murmured
lullaby.'

[Footnote 2: Campanulas, spotted orchis, or foxglove, I suppose. It it characteristic of him that he sighs for an 'unseizable secret,' and does not take the trouble to learn the names of the flowers he sees.]

What can be more true or more beautiful than this? Mark the contrast of the old man sleeping on the stone steps, with the young mother, unseen within, singing _sotto voce_ her cradle song. In totally different style and tone take these few lines on Orvieto:--

'A rock of tufa hanging above a melancholy valley; a city so
silent that it seems empty: the windows are closed, in the grey
lanes grass grows; a capuchin crosses a square; a bishop
descends from a closed carriage before the gate of a hospital;
a tower rises in a white and rainy sky; a clock strikes the
hour slowly; all at once at the end of the street a miracle in
stone--the Cathedral.'

Is not the city of Luca Signorelli set before you with those few lines? There is here something far beyond dexterity or ingenuity of style; there is the poet's, the painter's, power to embrace a world at a glance, and with a touch set before duller eyes that world in all its varieties and suggestions, all its past and its present, all its secrets of the grave and of the future.

Take again this very different picture:--

'He found the gorse.

'On a tableland the thickly-growing gorse had flowered so
densely as to spread a vast golden mantle over all the soil.
Five maidens were gathering the flowers and filling with them
skips and baskets, singing as they worked. They sang a song of
thirds and fives in perfect harmony. When one of them reached a
special phrase she lifted her whole bust out of the yellow maze
of blossom that the notes might go forth from her throat with
fuller liberty, and held it long sustained in air, looking her
companions in the eyes whilst they applauded with their hands
of flowers.

'When they saw the stranger they stopped and bent again over
the gorse. Stifled saucy laughter rippled under the yellow sea.
Giorgio asked,--

'"Which of you is Favetta?"

'A girl, brown as an olive, raised her head in reply, amazed,
almost terrified: "It is I, sir."

'"Are you not the finest singer of San Vito?"

'"No, sir. That is not true."

'"It is true. It is true!" cried her companions.

'"Sir! make her sing."

'"No, sir, it is not true. I cannot sing."

'She hid herself, laughing, her face all aflame; she twisted
her apron whilst the others teased her. She was of short
stature but well-formed; her bosom was high and large, swollen
with songs. She had curly hair, dark eyebrows, aquiline
profile; something in her carriage wild and free. After the
first resistance she yielded.

'The others, taking her by the arms, held her in their circle.
They were up to their waists in the flowering gorse, whilst
round them the bees were humming.

'Favetta began unsteadily, but with each note her voice grew
firmer. It was limpid, liquid, crystal, clear as a water
spring. She sang a couplet and the others sang in chorus a
ritornello. They prolonged the harmonies, putting their mouths
close to form one single vocal flute; the song rose and fell in
the light air with the slow regularity of a litany.

'Favetta sang:--

'"All the springs are dry,
O poor love of mine!
He dies of thirst.
Where is the water thou broughtest me?
We have brought thee an earthen jar,
But round it is a chain of gold!"

'The others sang:--

'"Long live Love!"

'It was the salutation of May to Passion, pouring from young
breasts, which perchance as yet knew not its sweetness and
perchance never would know its sorrow.'

Or take the following passage which is as essentially true in its accurate observation as it is beautiful in its expression. Tullio Hermil and Giuliana are listening at Villa Lilla to the first songster of that spring.

'The nightingale sang. At first it was like a burst of
melodious glee; a jet of easy trills which fell through the air
like pearls falling on the glass of a harmonium. Then came a
pause. A shake arose, agile, marvellously prolonged, like a
proof of strength, in an impulse of insolence, a challenge to
some unknown rivals.

'A second pause. A phrase of three notes with a tone of
interrogation passed on a chain of light variations repeating
the interrogative phrase five or six times, modulated softly
like a slender reed flute on which is played a pastoral. A
third pause: the song becomes elegiac, turns to a minor key,
tender as a sigh; it is almost a groan; it expresses all the
grief of the lonely lover, a heartrending desire; a vain hope;
it flings out a last appeal, improvised, acute as a scream of
anguish: then it ceases. A longer pause, more ominous. Then one
hears a new accent which scarcely seems to come from the same
throat so humble is it, so timid, so slight; it resembles the
twitter of scarce-fledged birds, the chirrup of sparrows; then,
with a miraculous volubility, this noisy note changes into a
breathless song, more and more rapid in its trills, vibrating
in sustained shakes, turning in daring flights of sound,
leaping, growing, bounding, attaining the highest heights of
the soprano. The songster is drunk with his own song. With
pause so brief that one note scarce ceases ere another succeeds
it, he spends his delirium in ever-varied melody, impassioned
and sweet, subdued and ear-piercing, light and grave, now
interrupted by broken sighs, by lament and supplication, now by
impetuous lyrical improvisation and supreme appeal. It seems
that even the gardens are listening, that the sky stoops over
the old tree from whose summit this poet, invisible to mortal
eyes, pours out such floods of eloquence. The flowers breathe
deeply and silently. A yellow glow lingers in the west. This
last lingering glance of the dying day is sad. But a single
star has risen, alone and tremulous like a drop of luminous
dew.'

He who can write thus is a great writer; and the charm of this passage is not alone its poetry but its exact truth. The song of the nightingale varies much in accord with age, with species (for there are two species, Luscinia Philomela, and Luscinia Major), with climate, with the sense of security, and the want of security, but the song of a nightingale in its maturity, who is unalarmed and feels at home in the gardens of his choice, is precisely such a song as is described in this passage, and is more completely echoed in it than in the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven. This sympathy with the melody of birds is the more singular in D'Annunzio, because Italians are almost invariably indifferent to such melody, and snare the divine songster in the net, or shoot him whilst he shouts his nuptial _Io Triumphe!_ with the most stolid indifference. And it may, perhaps, be that D'Annunzio does not care for the bird himself more than the rest of his countrymen, but only cares for his own eloquence concerning it. It may be said, without risk of injustice to him, that great tenderness is at no moment found in him. He has not 'the pathetic fallacy'; but he approaches it very nearly at times. When women shall have lost for him some of the intensity of their physical charm, nature in her wider and more profound meanings will, perhaps, become more visible and more dear to him. Perhaps, however, it will not, for the Italian is rarely impersonal.

Something of the affectation to which the delicate taste of my Italian correspondent justly objects must be admitted to mar, by its artificiality, the many magnificent pages dedicated by him to the sea. Magnificent they are, true also, entirely true; but some mannerism there is in them, some over-intricate embroidery of phrase. The sea he knows best, and remembers always, is the Adriatic, of which the extreme beauty of the colour, like the leaves of the silverweed, as wind and sun pass over the meadows, has always before him been too little noted except, I may venture to say, by myself.

'O, fair, clear seas of September!' he cries in the _Piacere_.
'The water is calm and innocent as a sleeping child, and lies
outstretched under a pearl-like sky. Sometimes it is all green
of the brilliant and intense green of malachite, and on it the
small rosy sails seem like wandering fires. Sometimes it is all
azure, of an intense blue, like the ultramarine which heralds
use for blazonries, veined with gold like lapis-lazuli, and on
it the painted sails seem like a procession of standards, of
banners, of spears borne on a Catholic holy day. And yet again
at other moments it takes on a metallic gleam, a silvery
paleness, the hues of a ripening lemon, something indefinable
and strange, and on this mystical surface the boats then glide
and fade, and are seen no more as the illumined wings of
cherubim sink into the faint fundamental hues of an old
Giottesque fresco.

'The sea was not alone for him a delight for the eyes, but it
was a perennial wave in which he steeped his thirsting
thoughts; a magical fountain of youth in which his body
recovered health and his mind nobility. The sea had for him the
mysterious attraction of a native country, and he abandoned
himself to it with filial confidence, as a weak child in the
arms of an omnipotent father; and he derived consolation from
it, for no one had ever confided his sorrows, his desires, or
his dreams to the ear of the sea in vain.'

So, we are told by D'Annunzio, thinks Andrea Sperelli, and so thought also Giorgio Aurispa. But the sea has no permanent power on the soul of either; the one returns from his contemplations of it to his life of voluptuous pleasure, and the other drowns both himself and the woman, whom he has adored to frenzy, in its waves, whilst the dog mourns 'forsaken beneath the olive trees, and the waters murmur softly, rocking as in a cradle the reflections of the stars.'

Only once in D'Annunzio's work does genuine and yearning regret, of which it is impossible to doubt the spontaneity and sincerity, thrill through him, and move him to intense emotion and unstudied eloquence. It is when, in the person of Claudio Cantelmo, he speaks in furious invective of the modern desecration of Rome; in these passages he is strong without effort, eloquent without study, and veracious alike in sorrow and in scorn. His invective is poured from his heart's depths, and thrills with the force of the Latin orators of the ruined Forum.

'I have lived several years in Rome; in that third Rome which
should have represented "Love reigning by Latin blood on Latin
soil," and have seen radiant on its heights the wondrous lights
of a new Ideal. I have been witness to its most ignominious
evolutions, to the most obscene unions that have ever
desecrated a sacred place. And I have understood the symbolism
hidden in that act of an Asiatic conqueror, who cast myriads of
human heads in the fountains of Samarcand, when he desired to
create a capital. The wise and cruel tyrant meant to signify
the necessity of merciless destruction in the creation of a new
order of things.

* * * * *

'The ship which bore the Thousand of Marsala only set sail that
the art of exchange and barter should be protected and covered
by the State!

* * * * *

'It was the epoch of the most frenzied fury of the destroyers
and contractors on the site of Rome. With the storms of dust
there were propagated a sort of lunacy of gain, a malignant
delirium, seizing not only on the tradesman and money-lenders,
and the workers in brick and mortar, but also on the elect
heirs of the papal _majorat_, who primarily had looked with
scorn and disgust on the newcomers from the windows of their
palaces of travertine, indestructible under the encrustations
of ages.

'The magnificent patrician races founded there, renewed and
strengthened by nepotism, and the strife of opposing houses,
descended and abased themselves one by one, slid down into the
new mud, sank, and vanished. The illustrious riches, amassed
through centuries of gorgeous pillage and Maecenic luxury, were
thrown into the whirlpool of the speculations of the Bourse.

'And around them, on these patrician lawns, where, only the
previous spring, the violets had blossomed more numberless than
the blades of grass, there were now mounds of lime, heaps of
bricks, the wheels of stone-laden carts creaked on the turf, on
the air were the oaths of the drivers, the shouts of the
overseers, while every hour hastened on the brutal work which
was to efface and occupy the sacred soil once dedicated to
Beauty and to Dreams. There passed over Rome a blighting
blizzard of barbarism, menacing all that greatness and
loveliness which were without equals in the memory of the
world. Even the laurels and the rose trees of the Villa
Schiarra, for so many nights of so many summers hymned by their
nightingales, fell destroyed, or remained in their desecration
behind the gates of little gardens parcelled out to the little
cockney boxes of tradesmen. The gigantic Ludovisian cypresses,
those of the Aurora, those which spread the clouds of their
solemn and mystic antiquity above the Olympian brows of Goethe,
were now laid prone in line one after another, with all their
dishonoured roots stretching towards the pallid sky, the black
dishonoured roots which still seemed to hold in their immense
network the web of a life greater than our own.

'Even over the box alleys of the Villa Albani, which had seemed
as immortal as their Caryatides and their Hermes, there hung
that shadow of a vandal's ruin. The contagion of destruction
spread everywhere. In the ceaseless combat of gain, in the
savage fury of avaricious greed and passions, in the disordered
haste of commercial activity, every sense of common decency was
forgotten, all respect for the past was trampled under foot.
The struggle for gain was carried on with blind fury, with
neither check nor curb. The pickaxe, the shovel, and the
cunning of fraud were the weapons employed. And week after
week, with incredible velocity, there arose on the violated
earth the huge foolish cages of brick and mortar, pierced with
square holes, surmounted with sham cornices, encrusted with
shameful stucco ornaments. A kind of immense white tumour rose
and spread on the wounded and bleeding side of the great Urbs
and drained away its life.

'And then, day after day, at sunset, along the princely avenues
of the Borghese Park, we could see in gorgeous brand-new
equipages the new elect of Fortune, from whom not barber, nor
tailor, nor boot-maker, had power to take away the ignoble
stamp. We could see them pass and repass with the sonorous trot
of their shining bay and brown horses; they were recognisable
at a glance by the insolence of their pose and the awkward
carriage of their rapacious and vulgar hands; and they seemed
to cry aloud,--

'"We are the new rulers of Rome. Bow down to us!"

'In truth such are its rulers; such the present masters of that
Rome which prophets and poets once likened to the bow of
Ulysses.'

Often have I myself written similar things, but in me they have been considered exaggerations. They cannot be so considered in Gabriele D'Annunzio of Francavilla.

All who love Rome and loathe her modern violation must thank him from their hearts for such passages, and must mourn with him that we cannot drive out the spoilers from our desecrated temples.

This is, indeed, his greatest strength, that, whilst still a young man, he yet has the courage to resist the intellectual tendencies of his contemporaries, to refuse to worship their gods, to see and despise the falseness of those scientific pretensions which enslave the multitude in modern life. His intellect, richly stored by learning, is, in a large measure, free of prejudice. This is a great and rare distinction in a generation which more completely than any which has preceded it, is the timid slave of formula and the credulous servant of professional bigotry.

He has kept a complete mental liberty; free from the superstitions of religion, which, in this day, it is easy to be; but also free from the superstitions of science, which is far harder, and incurs far greater obloquy and opposition.

In his study on Giorgione, he says what it needs much courage to say in these days:--

'The scientific spirit has invaded the generation of the second
half of our century. Struck by the surprising results of
physics and calculation, men were inclined to believe for a
time, that by the aid of the one or the other, they would be
able to penetrate into all mysteries and solve all problems.
But to this proud exaltation has now succeeded a discouragement
mingled with suspicion. They say to themselves, and not without
reason: "Where is this certainty that science promised us?" If
ever certainty were incomplete, deprived of solid criterion, it
is that offered by natural science. As for the sciences called
exact, some, like geometry, repose on a tottering base of
arbitrary affirmations; others, like algebra, on mere methods
of reasoning, and contain as much or as little certainty as the
formula of a syllogism.'

This is emphatically true; but it is a fact which is by no means recognised by all, and which is still violently denied by those fanatics whose form of bigotry is either experimental or exact science.

The mind of D'Annunzio refuses all bondage. It is a law to itself, as the mind of the great writer should be. I imagine that the opinion of him held by others, is to him of the most absolute unimportance. His teaching is always to preserve the independence of the Ego, to live without attention to formula or usage, to be, both materially and spiritually, that which we were created to be by nature.

His morality is of the most primitive kind; or rather, he has none whatever, no more than has a South-Sea islander lying in the sun under a cocoa-nut tree whilst the surf bathes his naked limbs. It would be absurd to accuse him of immorality because the indulgence of the senses is as natural and as legitimate in his estimation, as Favetta's song amongst the golden furze, or the reapers' welcome of the purple wine. Yet by a not rare anomaly, this demand for perfect freedom of the passions is accompanied by a tendency to desire tyranny in political matters. He is disposed to deify force. In one or two expressions there is an echo of Carlyle which sounds oddly and jarringly amongst the amorous liberties and artistic debaucheries of the rest; and is not worthy of a writer who has so much courage in opposing scientific pharisaism and the thraldom of the schools. He is disposed to admire what is strong simply because it is strong, forgetful that such strength is sustained and nourished by the suffering of the weak. It is true that he has lived in an atmosphere in which the verities embodied in the aspirations, abortive but always noble, of the higher efforts of revolution have been received with fear and misunderstanding. The tendencies and training of the _Codini_ are visible through the eloquence of the poet and the conclusions of the philosopher. The entire lack in him of all altruism comes from this. Mazzini must be as unintelligible to him as Tolstoi. The mass of humanity is always to him the filthy, surging, bestial multitudes of the crowd at Casalbordino. But even this absence of benevolence is better than the pitiful sycophancy of writers who are as fulsome in their flattery to Demos as to kings; is manlier than the nauseating self-worship of a Humanity at once its own pimp and pander, its own adorer and assassin.

In his scorn of the human flocks of sheep, he forgets, I admit, too entirely the justice to which the humblest unit amongst these flocks has right, but that scorn, even when misdirected, is fresh and bracing as the dash of his own Adriatic waves, when the east wind drives them hurrying on to the shingle beach. He has no fear; and he never stoops to that base flattery of his own species which is the most nauseous feature of modern politics and of modern science.

'This alone is your office,' he cries to his contemporaries, if
they would resist the debasing influences of their time,
'defend the dream which is in you. Since in this day mortals no
longer bring tribute of love and honour to the choristers of
the Muses, defend yourselves, O poets, with all your weapons,
steep the point of your rapiers in the most biting poisons. Let
your satires bear such corrosive acid in them that they shall
pierce to the very pith of the spine and destroy it. Brand to
the very bone the stupid forehead of those fools who would mark
every soul with the same label, and make every brain like
another, as the heads of nails are beaten into a common
likeness by the blows of the nailmaker. Let your mordant
laughter reach to heaven when you hear the stablemen of the
Great Beast shouting in the parliaments of the earth.... Defend
the thought which they menace, defend the beauty which they
outrage, defend the antique freedom of your masters and the
future freedom of your disciples, against the insane assaults
of drunken slaves. Despair not, though you be few in number.
You have the supreme force of the world: the written word.'

The written word is indeed in his hand a scourge, a sword, a sheaf of arrows from the quiver of the divine Python Slayer.

And in no country more than in the Italy of his generation is such a scourge, such a sword, such flame-tipped arrows, needed to slay the courtiers, the usurers, the sycophants, the knaves, the brutes, the sellers of justice who fasten like leeches on her body.

This son of Italy is a great writer; a great poet. Read his works in the original text all ye who can, men and women for whom life has no secrets and truth has no terror.

He is young; the time will come, as it comes to all, when the joys of the senses will fade for him as the roses of the summer are scattered by autumn winds.

Let us hope that there will be later a second period of his creative art, in which there will be developed an original genius free of exotic influences, and untrammelled by the search for idioms and pruriencies. Genius, like the river at its source, takes the colour of the earth it springs from. It is only when it has reached its full volume, its deepest currents, that it becomes clear and reflects the sky alone.

Let us hope that such a future awaits him, and that more and more fully will he realise what he has already said in noble words:--

'Art! Here is the one faithful passion ever youthful, nay,
immortal; here is the fountain of pure joy unknown to the
multitude; here is the divine food which makes men like to
gods. How could he have stooped to drink at other cups when he
had once tasted of this?[3] How could he have bent to taste of
other joys, once having known this ecstasy? How could his
senses have let themselves be weakened and debased to lowest
lusts when they had once been stirred to that highest
sensibility which beholds the invisible, which touches the
impalpable, which divines the most hidden secrets in the heart
of nature?'

[Footnote 3: He is writing of Andrea Sperelli in _Il Piacere_.]

With these words, which are the greatest in meaning that he has hitherto written, I will, for the present moment, take my leave of him.

II

GEORGES DARIEN

Of all countries, France remains the land in which it is possible to tell the most truth. The nation of Montaigne and Moliere is always the first to recognise and award the title of talent to lay bare the shoulders of her community and use the scourge upon them. If at its first appearance the strange and terrible revelations contained in the work entitled _Biribi_ were met by official obstruction and attempted suppression, the book has conquered them, and has been allowed to carry the light of its torches into the dark places of military administration and oppression. In Italy, as in Germany and Austria, it would have been stopped by fine, exile, and seizure. In Russia it could never have been issued at all. In England it would have been as costly to the author as were his issues of Zola to the unhappy and martyrised Vizetelly. In France alone its pictures of the most terrible facts pass unarrested, by right of that literary liberty which the _esprit gaulois_ has always awarded, however much government and law may have been alarmed.

It has been said that the accusations contained in the works of Georges Darien are a _Retrissure a la France_, and as such should never have been made public by a patriotic writer and a ci-devant soldier. But here we merely meet again the hackneyed question whether the writer of talent is bound by patriotism or any other scruple to withhold truth, or whether he is not rather bound to disclose the truth as he believes it to be at all costs, whether to himself or to others. It is not necessary for me to say with which of these opinions I agree. The little which has been done towards any true progress of the human mind has been done by the expression of free thought, and by its fearless exposure of evils protected by the crystallisation of time, usage, and prejudice. Over the modern world which chatters of liberty, but does not anywhere possess it, or even know actually what it means, there hang, in heavy and icy weight, two ever-increasing despotisms: the scientific and the military. Of the former it is not necessary to treat in these pages; of the latter the yearly increase throughout Europe, ever since the war of 1870-71, must alarm every unbiassed thinker, bringing with it, as it does, the impoverishment of the people, the curse of youth and manhood, the endless strain of a fiscal burden, so enormous that every class groans under it, and the perpetual and diseased anxiety in which every nation lives, suspecting its neighbours, and turn by turn affronting them insolently and cringing to them obsequiously, according as it is made to feel the power of its own strength or the weakness of its own inferiority. Every syllable printed which tends to show the reality of military tyranny at this moment is valuable, and should be welcomed, however odious it may be to military authority and government; and especially valuable when it comes from one who has passed through the scenes which he depicts, and draws, not from imagination, but from memory.

Georges Darien has been the man whom he describes; treated as the worst of criminals, though wholly guiltless of breaking any criminal law. Georges Darien in using the first person, both in _Biribi_ and in _Bas les Coeurs_, is but writing portions of his own autobiography; he was a boy of ten, like his young hero in the latter book, and a volunteer like the gunner of the second class in the 41st battery of artillery in the former work, and to this fact there are owing that directness, simplicity, and virility which are the distinguishing characteristics of both these volumes. They are alive with life. The reader may resent them, detest them, dread them and their revelations; but he must be impressed by them; he must receive from their perusal that thrill which can only come from reality. They are saturated with the tears of blood of a strong man who feels his own impotency to rouse his generation and to change humanity; who knows that his voice is the voice of the prophet crying in the wilderness, and echoing over a desert of dead bones and drifting sand. There are few greater pangs than to see the truth and know it, and feel that the salvation of others lies in it, and to tell it in vain to deaf ears, and offer its water of life to lips closed by pride and cruelty and folly.

The name _Biribi_ sounds too light for such a subject; it sounds like a joke; but the joke is grim indeed, grim as the dance of skeletons round a gallows-tree. In actual fact _Biribi_ is the nickname given by French and native soldiers in Algeria to the punishment-battalions of the Franco-African army; a slangy _petit nom_ given in jest to one of the most awful hells that earth holds. The tortures which are suffered in every army, in the best army, and in the time of greatest peace, can scarcely ever be over-rated; and they are not the less, but the more terrible, because almost always endured in silence and ignored by authority. Now and then a voice is raised from the ranks, occasionally, very rarely, some punishment, or injustice, more brutal than usual, comes to light, and rouses public indignation. _Biribi_ is one of those rare utterances rising from the sealed pits, in which uncared-for and unpitied lives are beaten into senseless pulp of bruised and bleeding flesh.

There is great originality in the literary talent of Georges Darien. His style is all his own. His manner of relation resembles no other. He has nothing of the modern school, except its hopelessness; he is strong, intense, virile, rough; he seeks no ornament, he strives for no effect; he writes as he feels, boldly, passionately, with that eloquence which is the offspring of simplicity and of veracity, and that potency which comes from wide knowledge of literatures and of mankind. Belonging by birth to the _bourgeoisie_, son of a Catholic father and a Calvinist mother, his early years were embittered by religious strife. He has later on travelled much; he has known the lowest classes and the hardest ways of life; he is still young in years, but old in the most varied experiences; and he has, certainly, uncommon powers, which have as yet not been duly recognised, for he offends the prejudices and vested interests of his generation, and even in France prejudice and vested interests are strong and close many channels.

He disdains, moreover, to appeal to that large class of readers who require a book, cast in the form of a story, to possess a story. Like the famous knife-grinder he has none to tell, if by story we understand, as most people do, a love-tale in some one of its forms. _Biribi_ is the stern and terrible narrative of the career of an _insoumis_; _Bas les Coeurs_ is the simple, domestic record of a boy's recollections of the _Annee Terrible_. In neither is there any hint or fragment of romance. This fact at once limits his public to the restricted number who appreciate the skill which can afford to dispense with the elements of romance, and to rely solely on its own power of description and analysis of character. In this respect for literary excellence and harmonious treatment I should place _Bas les Coeurs_ before _Biribi_. The relation of events at Versailles, before and after the Prussian occupation, as seen from the point of view of a family of the town, is told with such perfect naturalness that the reader follows it with the deepest interest, and remains fascinated by the admirable manner in which the most tragic and momentous events of history are reflected in the mind of a boy of ten years old.

The tranquillity and precision of his use of the etching-needle, with which he describes the daily life and street scenes in Versailles, contrasts curiously with the hot colour and broad charcoal marks with which he portrays the tortures of the punishment-battalions in Africa.

This testifies to the flexibility of Darien's talent, since nothing can be more different to the impetuous and turgid violence of _Biribi_ than the restrained and delicate irony of _Bas les Coeurs_: the one is a battle-piece of Vereschagin, crowded with begrimed and panting figures, in which the dumb canvas seems to shriek with war and smoke with blood; the other is a cabinet picture of Meissonier's, finished, polished, small in measurement, illimitable in suggestion, fine as the point of a needle, cruel as the fork of a snake's tongue. For, undoubtedly, Darien is cruel; but he is cruel from the impotent rage which is in him, the powerless sorrow and scorn which his country, his generation, his fellow mortals, his vision of things as they are, awaken in his memory and in his desires.

The apathy and sheepishness of the general multitude fill him with wrath; he longs to pull down on the world its temple, like Samson, regardless of the fall of the column and the roof on himself. No one who loves received doctrines, crystallised commonplaces, undisputed formulae, should open these books. Such persons will only see in them blasphemies against their honoured gods; for this author is not suited to the smug self-complacency of Philistinism, 'sanding its sugar and praising its Lord.'

To represent war as it is done in the terrible pages of _La Debacle_, or in the heartrending sketch of the _Attaque du Moulin_, is not difficult to the novelist who has power and knowledge. To represent the effects of war on entirely uninteresting and commonplace persons, and yet keep the attention of the reader riveted to what is passing in one ordinary household during a frightful national calamity, is a far more difficult feat; especially when all the sympathies of the reader which would be easily roused by noble sentiments in the sufferers are voluntarily alienated, and the only motives and feelings depicted are sordid, egotistic, and miserable, except in the young narrator, whose childish intelligence is so slowly awakened to the baseness of those around him, but whose naturally honest and patriotic little soul burns and thrills with shame when once it becomes conscious of the meanness and cowardice of his family and of his neighbours. The highest literary faculty seems to me to show itself in the completeness with which the childlikeness of the young observer is retained, the vague apprehension, the slowly awakening comprehension, the gradually dawning horror with which the events around him impress themselves on a mind remaining instinctively loyal and just in the midst of corrupt and unworthy examples.

Take this as an example of its style:--

'Shouts are heard afar off in the woods.

'"Ah, my poor child!" says my aunt, weeping, "what a hideous
thing is war!"

'She looks very feeble, very worn, my poor great-aunt Moreau.
The sight of her thin face, her skeleton-like hands, moves me
painfully. She sees this.

'"At my age," she murmurs, "these events, my dear, are hard to
bear."

'However, she assures me the Germans are not very cruel. The
Captain in command of those billeted on her, despite his rude
exterior, is not uncivil.

'At that moment, indeed, this officer returns with his men; his
heels ring on the bricks of the ante-chamber. He opens the door
of the little room where we are sitting.

'"Do not be disturbed, Madame," he says, addressing my aunt,
"on account of the firing you may have heard. There is nothing
of any consequence. A wood-cutter, in whose hut we found arms,
and whom we have shot: nothing more."

'He salutes and retires. My aunt shudders. She turns white, her
eyes close, her head falls back against the chair. She is
faint. I call her maid, who runs to my summons, with the cook
and the servant just come to fetch me. The three women try and
revive her. She remains so weak when again conscious, that they
carry her to her chamber. She is grieved to have fainted.

'"When my dear little Jean came to see me," she murmurs! "It
was the thought of that poor wood-cutter--"

'She trembles like a leaf as I leave her.

'Germaine, who has come from my grandfather's to fetch me, asks
me to wait a moment; she has a message for the Prussian Captain
from my grandfather. The officer is walking up and down,
smoking, under the lime-trees. I hear his guttural voice as he
answers, "Tell your master that I shall expect him here." What
can this mean? When I reach my grandfather's house I rush to
the dining-room to question the old man, but Germaine catches
hold of my arm.

'"You must not disturb Monsieur. He is engaged with someone."

'Through the door, which I hold half-opened, I have seen that
someone. He is a person dressed like a peasant, who looks not
like a peasant, nevertheless. His large hat is worn too
gracefully; his ragged blue blouse is too old to accord with
his proud and delicate features. Is he an officer of
franc-tireurs? A French spy, perhaps? Is my grandfather giving
or receiving information? Is he not, as I hope, planning to
surprise the Prussians? I question Germaine. She is astonished
at my anxiety.

'"That man? He wanted to see the Mayor, and as the Germans have
put the Mayor in prison, he was brought here. Do not trouble
yourself about him, Monsieur Jean."

'I hear a sound of closing doors. It is, of course, the
stranger going away.

'My grandfather joins me.

'"Well, how is your aunt?"

'I tell him what happened, the story of the wood-cutter and its
effect upon her.

'"Ah! what a pity!--humph, humph!--I will go and see her.
Germaine, my cloak."

'"Shall I come with you, grandpapa?"

'"No, no; not worth while. I shall be back in half an hour."

'In twenty minutes' time he returns.

'"You see I am as good as my word. I made haste, eh?"

'"Is my aunt better?"

'"Your aunt? Yes--no--that is, yes, much better."

'"Jean," he says to me after dinner, "you were to go back the
day after to-morrow, but as I must go on business to Versailles
in the morning early, I will take you with me. Does it
disappoint you, eh?"

'"A little, yes."

'"Bah! you shall make up for it another time. You shall come
again soon for several days, and send your lessons to the
deuce."

'I laugh. I think I must have been mistaken. The man whom I saw
must have been really a peasant. My grandsire could not be so
gay if there were to be fighting at Maussy this evening.
However, before going to bed I look out over the country, and
when I lie down I strain my ear to catch a sound. All night
long I cannot sleep; I can only listen. All at once a hand
touches my elbow. I start up, screaming. Germaine laughs.

'"What is the matter, Monsieur Jean? Were you dreaming?"

'I stare round me in amaze. It is broad day.

'"Make haste and get up; the chocolate is ready; master is
waiting."

'Half an hour later we leave the house. We are at the end of
the street which opens on to the Versailles road, when a
platoon of Prussian soldiers, with bayonets fixed, appears upon
that road. My grandfather seizes me brutally and throws me down
under a fence behind a hedge. I look through the branches. The
Prussians pass at quick march. Amidst them marches a man, with
his hands tied behind his back. I see a broad-leafed hat, a
pale proud face, an old blue blouse. It is the man of
yesterday. I know him at a glance.

'"Grandfather, who is that?"

'"Eh! Who? who? Some vagabond a Prussian patrol has picked up
out of some ditch. The Prussians are very severe for--for--for
wayfarers. It is better not to be seen in these affairs--it is
better not to be mixed up--I mean--"

'My grandfather is lying, I am certain; I feel it. Why should
he lie? Where are they taking this fettered man? Why force me
to lie hidden under a hedge? From behind the village a loud
volley thunders through the air.

'"Grandpapa, grandpapa, did you hear that?"

'The old man is livid.

'"It is the Prussians who practise--who practise at firing--in
the morning. It is their custom--their custom--every morning--"

'His teeth chatter.'

Or see this description of the troops leaving for the frontier:--

'To-day the last regiment quartered here goes to the front; it
is a regiment of the line.

'Leon and I wait in the market-place to go with the soldiers to
the railway station.

'It is an epic, this departure of the troops. I have never felt
what I feel now. There is a sense and scent of battle in the
air; the midsummer sun shining on the musket-barrels and
sparkling on the accoutrements sets fire to one's brain. The
earth trembles under the passage of artillery which is about to
vomit death; and one's heart dances in one's breast whilst the
ponderous caissons, with their iron-circled wheels, shake the
stones, and the mouths of the bronze guns display their yawning
jaws. Bands play warlike tunes, men chant the _Marseillaise_,
the gold of epaulets and the lace on uniforms glow in the
light; the flags flap against the flagstaffs, on whose summits
eagles spread their wings; the shoes of the chargers glitter
like silver crescents; and one feels some mighty spirit of war
soar above these hearts of flesh and of iron who are about to
face the shock of battle. The blood steams in one's veins; the
fever of the hour devours one; and one shouts louder and
louder, faster and faster, not to become mad.

'It is market-day. The square is filled by country people who
have brought in their vegetables and fruits for sale. Their
stalls are under all the trees, and, here and there, take up
the pavement. We are standing between a woman selling salads
and an old man who has onions, and is on all fours beside his
skips, because every moment or so an onion slides off the heap
and rolls towards the gutter, unless he stops it. What a funny
old fellow he is to take so much trouble for an onion! Ah!
there goes another one! The old man hurries to catch it, but an
officer, booted and spurred, steps on it; slips, slides,
tumbles down. The onion-seller takes off his cap: "Oh, sir! a
thousand pardons!"

'The officer gets up, takes his riding-whip by the whip-end,
and brings it with all his force on the uncovered head of the
old man, who falls backward on his skull. Blood bespatters his
skips of onions.

'"Here comes the regiment!" screams Leon.

'The band sounds at the end of the street. We run towards it.

'"Did you see the poor old man?" I ask.

'"Yes. He deserved what he got. Only think! The officer might
have broken his legs, eh?"

'I do not answer. I am absorbed in watching the soldiers whom
we escort, walking on the pavement, keeping step with them.

'The soldiers do not all keep step with one another; emotion,
enthusiasm, the delights of going to thrash the Prussians, the
natural sorrow at leaving those they love--a thousand different
feelings. There is an old soldier, a decorated soldier next to
me, who is very unsteady on his legs. A young officer, very
young, almost beardless, puts his musket straight on the old
fellow's shoulder every second. It is admirable to see the
harmony which reigns between privates and officers. The
Colonel, a grey-beard, salutes with his sword when the people
cheer him; and a trumpeter in the front rank has stuck a great
bouquet of roses to the banner of his instrument, and carries
it as a priest carries the host. Other nosegays are thrust into
the barrels of muskets. Bottles of wine show their corks from
under the piles of knapsacks, and two or three dogs are
stretched out on the haver-sacks in the baggage-waggons. The
crowd cheers the dogs.

'All the peasants throng to see, shouting their applause to
the regiment. Before the chemist's shop at the corner, a knot
of young men wave their caps in the air; the chemist waves his
white handkerchief; behind him I see the blue blouse of the old
onion-seller, who lies unnoticed on the ground.

'All at once the music breaks out into the _Marseillaise_.

'"Allons, enfans de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrive!"

'Oh, how beautiful it all is! The soldiers fall into line. The
populace, shouting and cheering, accompanies them to the
station. Through the bars of the station-gates a private passes
me his drinking-cup, and asks me to get it filled at the
wine-shop in front of the gates.

'"Wait; here is the money."

'But I do not wish for the brave fellow's money, I have a franc
in my pocket. I will pay for his pint. In a moment I run back
again.

'"Thanks, young sir," says the soldier. "It is perhaps the last
drop I shall ever drink."

'"The last!" cries Leon, red as a turkey-cock; so proud is he
to be able to rouse the spirit of a warrior. "The last? Ah! we
shall give you floods of wine when you come back from victory."

'The townspeople, who are crowding round us, cheer. The soldier
shakes his head dubiously.

'"Thanks all the same," he says sadly.

'He does not seem very confident of success.

'"Doubt that we shall be victorious?" says Leon in disgust as
we go homeward. "Leave the town for the frontier with so
little confidence! I would give--oh, what wouldn't I give?--to
be old enough to go and beat the Prussians. My dear Jean, that
soldier has no soul!"

'I am not sure. The soldier perhaps does not look on the
campaign as a picnic. Perhaps he sees more clearly than we do?
Perhaps? A great many things I had never thought of before
crowd into my brain.'

A few days later, after Sedan, Jean sees the Germans enter Versailles.

'"Here they are!"

'It is the octroi-guards who cry out this as they come flying
from the gates across the town. They brush me roughly as they
pass, and their abject terror gains on me.

'I follow them. But as I run I see on the other side of the
boulevard five or six inquisitive persons, who have stopped in
their walk, and hide themselves behind the trees. If they stay
to see, why may not I? I, too, get behind the stem of a tree,
and I watch with staring eyes to see what will happen. On the
road, fifty yards from the gates, a dozen horsemen are coming
onward at a walk. They stop a moment before the
octroi-officers; then they come on into the town in two lines,
almost touching the pavement.

'"The Uhlans!" says someone behind me. Ah, I think with a
thrill, these are the Uhlans!

'They draw near us; their pistols are cocked. They pass me
close, and I feel that I shall fall from fright; my nails
clutch the bark of the tree which screens me. These riders are
covered with blood. There is blood on the pennons of their
lances, on the hocks of their horses, on the rents in their
torn uniforms, and one of the foremost has a white linen band
stained with red on his forehead. Ah! it is hideous! I want to
run away--I want to run away; it is impossible. Before me there
are these Germans, riding slowly, searching with piercing
glances the streets which open out to the left and to the
right. Behind them comes on a dense dark mass. One can hear the
tramp of feet. One can distinguish the spikes of helmets, the
barrels of muskets, the little drums no bigger than
tambourines, and the fifes which are playing a march. These
drummers and pipers are followed by linesmen in dark blue, shod
with boots drawn up above their trousers, the musket held
straight on the shoulder, the cloak rolled.

'And these men, grey with dust and mud, black with powder, with
their coats in rags--these men, who fought no doubt this
morning, and who have just made a forced march--preserve the
most marvellous exactitude, the most perfect regularity in the
dressing of their ranks, and the rhythm of their steps keeps
measure from the first line to the last of the whole column.

'They pass--they pass--they will never end. I have almost
forgotten my fear. I am partly in front of my sheltering tree.
The drums and the fifes cease to sound, and music replaces it
from a band marching in front of a group of staff-officers.
They play a warlike march, a battle-hymn, and all down the line
of troops, from the foremost company which has reached the
Chateau of Versailles, to the last which is leaving the
Chesnay, shouts of triumph arise and drown the brazen voice of
the cymbals. The victorious chant thunders down the wind. It is
the _Marseillaise_--the _Marseillaise_ which our own troops
played as they left for the frontier, the hymn which was to
render every French soldier invincible, which I had sung myself
when we had been so sure of supremacy, and when I had planted
my little tricolour flags on the map, all along the route from
Paris to Berlin in a Via Triumphalis!

'Now the artillery comes on; its black cannon on their blue
gun-carriages, with their attendants on foot and in saddle,
wearing helmets surmounted with brass balls. There are flowers
in the mouths of the cannon, and they are garlanded with ivy
and green boughs. The cavalry follow on the artillery;
dragoons, cuirassiers, hussars with white facings and a
death's-head on their shakoes. Then come the carriages, the
waggons, the vehicles with ladders, the baggage-carts.... All
at once my heart sickens and stands still. Behind the wheels of
the last waggons I seem to see some red cloth. Yes, it is our
red cloth--our soldiers. Between two rows of Prussians, who
have their bayonets fixed, our prisoners march without arms,
dirty, ragged, miserable, and ashamed. There are at least two
hundred of them, and I strain my eyes after these, my
countrymen, who are destined to rot in German fortresses.'

It seems to me that in no contemporary fiction do we possess studies of spectacles, of sentiments, of street-life in a momentous hour, more accurate, more vivid, more simple in diction, more touching in suggestion, than in the above passages.