Chapter VI: Part 6

M. Bovary, a young doctor of moderate attainments, but of earnest purposes, kindly disposition, and upright life, falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy peasant in the neighborhood, who has received at a convent an education above her station, whose mind is filled with romantic notions, and whose eyes are constantly dazzled by the glamour of the rank, wealth and splendor that are just beyond her reach. She becomes more and more dissatisfied with her surroundings and with her rather uninteresting husband, who on his part is entirely devoted to her and who sacrifices his most important interests merely to gratify her whims. She falls into one intrigue after another, becoming first the victim of a _roué_, and then the paramour of a young man much like herself. To gratify her fancies she involves her husband in financial ruin, and at last ends her worthless life by suicide. The death scene is powerfully narrated, and from a merely artistic point of view the novel is a highly finished production. It is said that such works teach an important lesson--the inevitable results of wrong doing; but in this case at least it may well be questioned whether the details presented in the author’s brilliant descriptions are not more likely to lead to the imitation rather than the avoidance of conduct whose present delights are most alluring, however disastrous may be their final consequences. In this tale we see the effect of sentimental and immoral novels upon the heroine herself, and it is hard to resist the conviction that it is largely by reading such works as “Madame Bovary” that Madame Bovarys are made.

THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL
GEORGE MEREDITH

The fiction of George Meredith, like the poetry of Browning, appeals to a limited class of intellectuals. Close attention is often required to understand the drift of events as well as the philosophy injected at every point into the narrative. A considerable general education is requisite to comprehend the literary and historical references and no little insight is needed to appreciate the subtleties of a dialogue which is often brilliant but sometimes obscure. There are elaborate explanations of the complicated motives and feelings which control the actors of the drama. They do not speak for themselves like the characters in more primitive fiction. There are no such graphic descriptions as that of the London fog in Bleak House, or of the Battle of Waterloo in Les Misérables, and there are few portraits that stand out clearly in the memory like those of Don Quixote or Beatrix Esmond. The whole work is more like a mural decoration or a tapestry than a painting with a clear perspective and strong lights and shades. The style is highly finished, and there are sometimes interesting digressions, though these have not the exquisite _abandon_ so often found in those of Thackeray, and the satire lacks something of the airiness which is often its greatest charm. The author probes many of the hidden recesses of the human heart, but his types are hardly so universal as those of other great masters of fiction. His women are far more attractive than his men.

Meredith is at his best when he is simplest, and Richard Feverel, especially in its early chapters, is simpler than many of his other novels.

Richard Feverel is the only son of Sir Austin, a baronet, who has written his philosophy of life in a series of aphorisms entitled “The Pilgrim’s Scrip.” Left alone by a faithless wife in the care of his child, to whom he is tenderly attached, he devises a scientific system of training so perfect that the boy is to be “guiltless even of the impulse to gainsay his father’s wishes.” It works well in the young lad’s early escapades, including the setting of fire to Farmer Blaize’s hay rick, but it comes to naught when the father attempts to guard his son from the perils of love and imprudent matrimony, and to hunt a wife for him, and it ends in Richard’s clandestine marriage with the fair Lucy Dorchester, the niece of this same Farmer Blaize. The father’s efforts to keep young Richard and his wife apart after their marriage as a further discipline in accordance with his absurd system of education ends with the wrecking of two lives; with the boy’s temptation and fall and a succession of follies terminating in a duel, and finally with the death of his young wife, whose gentle spirit is broken at last under the continual sufferings to which she is subjected. It is a story of unutterable sadness in its concluding chapters.

A picture of surpassing beauty is that in which young Richard rowing upon the river on his father’s estate, first encounters the fair creature who is to become his wife.

“Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the thunder below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the reeds. Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick with weed and trailing bramble, and there also hung a daughter of earth. Her face was shaded by a broad straw hat with a flexible brim that left her lips and chin in the sun, and, sometimes nodding, sent forth a light of promising eyes. Across her shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose curls, brown in shadow, almost golden where the ray touched them. She was simply dressed, befitting decency and the season. On a closer inspection you might see that her lips were stained. This blooming young person was regaling on dewberries. They grew between the bank and the water making pretty progress to her mouth.... The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue; from a dewy copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note; the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers; a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude: a boat slipped towards her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes. Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weir-fall’s thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair setting, a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision. Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric clouds. Her posture was so graceful, that though he was making straight for the weir, he dared not dip a scull. Just then one enticing dewberry caught her eyes. He was floating by unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched low, and could not gather what it sought. A stroke from his right brought him beside her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang from his boat into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save herself, he enabled her to recover her balance, and gain safe earth, whither he followed her.”

The scene which succeeds--the revelation of the love of each to the other--is worthy to stand by the side of the very best in all dramatic literature, and in the later chapters the utter devotion and perfect womanliness of the young wife, who is made a sacrifice to the baronet’s impossible “system,” creates a character which is one of the most lovable ever portrayed by the fancy of a writer of fiction.

THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH
CHARLES READE

“The Cloister and the Hearth” is a novel which, like “Ivanhoe” and “Romola,” illustrates the fact that it is occasionally possible for a novelist to deal with distant scenes and times long past almost as effectively as with immediate surroundings. In such cases the general groundwork of human nature is ever present, and in matters of detail the imagination supplies the place of accurate knowledge, while the style and the thoughts acquire added dignity by being transported from the commonplace.

This work is unlike most of the other novels of Charles Reade, and is of a higher quality. The dignity of style, however, is by no means uniformly sustained. There are many defects in the book, and very glaring ones. I read it for a long time before its full power and beauty dawned upon me. There is in places an artificial conciseness and often an apparent straining for effect which is unpleasant. There are instances of great carelessness of construction, and colloquialisms which resemble very closely modern slang. As the tale deals with a remote period, the diction is generally archaic; yet the archaism consists not so much in the style as in the use of obsolete English words, such as “buss me,” “hosen,” “shoon,” “cowen,” etc., which seem inappropriate since the conversation was necessarily in another language. Moreover, these archaisms are not consistently carried out in all places. Many of the jokes and saws are stilted, and some of the poetical quotations are lugged headforemost into places where they do not belong. The main plot is often stifled by the abundance of incidents, and there is an appearance of mechanism in the sudden alternations of hope and fear, success and failure, which chase each other in rapid succession through the pages. There are false notes here and there; language is used and events described which are in atrociously bad taste; incidents are told in a sensational way worthy of yellow journalism; and in places you have the conviction that the characters would not naturally do the things described. Yet, with all these defects, the story of the love of Gerard Eliassoen and Margaret Brandt is full of deep human interest, and in many places the tale is one of singular beauty.

Elias, a small tradesman of Tergou, and Catherine, his wife, have many children, and to provide for them the utmost economy is necessary. One of the sons, Gerard, an illuminator of manuscripts, is destined for the clergy. He becomes a competitor for two of the prizes offered by Philip the Good of Burgundy for the best painting and writing on vellum. On his way to the competition at Rotterdam he falls in with an old man, Peter Brandt, a so-called magician, and his daughter Margaret; and when he wins a prize, and when in addition the Princess Marie has promised him a benefice, he has fallen so deeply in love with Margaret that “the hours they spent together were the hours they lived; the rest they counted and underwent.”

His parents oppose the marriage, and the burgomaster, Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, has strong personal reasons for preventing it. Gerard and Margaret are betrothed, and have signed their marriage lines in the presence of witnesses, so that the law holds them for man and wife; but twice when they appear at the altar the wedding is interrupted, and the second time Gerard is imprisoned in the tower of the Stadthouse, from which he escapes by the device and aid of Margaret. He is pursued by Ghysbrecht and his retainers, and after many hairbreadth escapes, in which Margaret repeatedly rescues him, he flees from Holland and goes on foot to Rome, where he intends to pursue his art, and then return to claim his bride. The liveliest descriptions are given of his adventures on the way--of the German inns, of the companion who accompanies him, Denys the Burgundian soldier, a well drawn character, garrulous, brave, generous, and debonair, whose constant formula of encouragement is “_Courage, l’ami, le diable est mort!_” and whose foible, like that of many of his compatriots, is a fondness for women. There is a blood-curdling description of a combat with a bear, whose cub they have stolen; of a supper under a gibbet; of a pedantic doctor, who is burned by the irons with which he had proposed to cauterize Gerard. In places the story seems almost like some mediæval Baedeker, filled with accounts of the sights to be seen and of the customs of the people, as well as with tales of the carousals of the monks in the convents. The two companions pass into Burgundy, and Burgundian manners are vividly contrasted with those of Germany. They betake themselves to an inn, where the landlord and six confederates conspire to murder them; but after a bloody struggle, with marvelous incidents and prodigies of daring, they are rescued, and their assailants are duly hanged or broken on the wheel. But now the two friends are separated; Denys is impressed by a band of soldiers, and Gerard is left alone, to be robbed by highwaymen.

At home, in the meantime, there is a conspiracy between the burgomaster and two brothers of Gerard, who seek to prevent his marriage, and a false letter is sent to him at Rome telling him Margaret is dead.

A graphic picture is drawn of his despair, of his plunging madly into a reckless and wicked life, to drown his grief. He resolves upon suicide, but he is rescued from the Tiber and awakens to consciousness in a convent, where, filled with penitence, he embraces the monastic life, and becomes a preacher of great power. And now come alternating chapters, picturing Gerard in the cloister and on his pilgrimages, and Margaret, with her child, by the hearth at home.

Finally, on a pilgrimage to England, Gerard passes through Rotterdam, and preaches with great eloquence in the convent church. Margaret is present. The chapters are of great power which portray the recognition of the lovers, the discovery of the false letter, and the curse launched by Gerard upon his two brothers who had planned it. But soon Gerard disappears, and becomes an anchorite in a cave not far away. There is a superb description of the struggles of his soul; of the temptations that beset him; of his “turning to gloomy madness”; of his dreams, in which the face of Margaret comes to him irradiated with sunshine, while she blushes and casts on him looks of ineffable tenderness, murmuring, “Gerard, be whose thou wilt by day, but at night, be mine!”; of his terrible efforts to subdue the body, and of his spiritual conquest. But Margaret has discovered the anchorite in his retreat, where she has identified him by a mark upon the finger which he stretches forth from the small window of his cave to feed the birds; and on one occasion, as he returns to his hermitage, which he leaves only in the night, he finds that Margaret is there. He believes she is an evil spirit sent to tempt him; he seeks to exorcise her, and a dreadful scene ensues, as she tries to lead him away from his foul den. They part in fury, but she has left behind her sleeping boy, who, when he wakes, by his innocent prattle wins the heart of the monk, who is quite unconscious that the child is his own. Margaret comes upon them, and beseeches her husband to take courage now that God has sent the boy to comfort him for what he has lost in her, and “that is not so very much, for the better part of love shall never cool.” Eloquent is the pleading by which at last she wins him to go to Gouda Manse, which she has already prepared for his coming, and to care for the flock over which he had been appointed vicar.

The remainder of the story deals with the quiet life of Gerard in the Manse, and of Margaret,--still separated by the church and by their own consciences, but united by a living pledge of affection. At last she is taken down with the plague, and the final scene between the two is pathetic and beautiful to the last degree. Gerard can not survive her; he ends his days in a convent near the Manse; and when he confesses to the stern Father Jerome, he says:

“She was my good angel; she sustained me in my duty and charity;
her face encouraged me in the pulpit; her lips soothed me under
ingratitude. She intertwined herself with all that was good
in my life; and after leaning on her so long, I could not go
on alone. And, dear Jerome, believe me, I am no rebel against
heaven. It is God’s will to release me. When they threw the earth
upon her poor coffin, something snapped within my bosom here
that mended may not be. I heard it and I felt it.... He in whose
hands are the issues of life and death gave me that minute the
great summons; ’twas some cord of life snapped in me. He is very
pitiful. I should have lived unhappy; but He said, ‘No; enough
is done, enough is suffered; poor, feeble, loving servant, thy
shortcomings are forgiven, thy sorrows touch their end; come thou
to thy rest!’”

The child that survived them was known as the great scholar of mediæval times, Erasmus; for the foundation of the story is laid in historic fact. The author, to use his own simile, has turned the epitome into a narrative, and the skeleton into a human figure.

There are many passages in the book that are vivid and beautiful. For instance, a fine description is given of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy:

“He could fight as well as any king going; and he could lie as
well as any, except the King of France. He was a mighty hunter,
and could read and write. His tastes were wide and ardent. He
loved jewels like a woman, and gorgeous apparel. He dearly loved
maids of honor, and indeed paintings generally, in proof of which
he ennobled Jan Van Eyck. He had also a rage for giants, dwarfs,
and Turks. These last stood ever planted about him, turbaned, and
blazing with jewels. His agents inveigled them from Istamboul
with fair promises; but, the moment he had got them, he baptized
them by brute force in a large tub, and, this done, let them
squat with their faces towards Mecca, and invoke Mahound as much
as they pleased, laughing in his sleeve at their simplicity in
fancying they were still infidels. He had lions in cages, and
fleet leopards trained by Orientals to run down hares and deer.
In short, he relished all rarities, except the humdrum virtues.
For anything singularly pretty, or diabolically ugly, this was
your customer. The best of him was, he was open-handed to the
poor; and the next best was, he fostered the arts in earnest,
whereof he now gave a signal proof.”

Listen to the following description of a Mystery:

“In this representation divine personages, too sacred for me
to name here, came clumsily down from heaven to talk sophistry
with the cardinal Virtues, the nine Muses, and the seven deadly
Sins, all present in human shape, and not unlike one another. To
enliven which weary stuff, in rattled the Prince of the Powers
of the Air, and an imp that kept molesting him and buffeting
him with a bladder, at each thwack of which the crowd were in
ecstasies. When the Vices had uttered good store of obscenity
and the Virtues twaddle, the celestials, including the nine
Muses, went gingerly back to heaven one by one; for there was but
one cloud; and two artisans worked it up with its supernatural
freight, and worked it down with a winch, in full sight of the
audience. These disposed of, the bottomless pit opened and flamed
in the centre of the stage; the carpenters and Virtues shoved the
Vices in, and the Virtues and Beelzebub and his tormentor danced
merrily round the place of eternal torture to the fife and tabor.”

One of the stories told in this novel seems too good to have been wholly an invention of the novelist. It is the story of the poor _curé_ who was summoned before his bishop for demanding the burial fees in advance whenever he baptized a child. His excuse to the bishop was:

“I have been _curé_ of that parish seven years, and fifty
children have I baptized, and buried not five. At first I used
to say, ‘Heaven be praised, the air of this village is main
healthy,’ but on searching the register book I found ’twas always
so, and on probing the matter it came out that of those born at
Domfont, all but here and there one did go and get hanged at Aix.
But this was to defraud not their _curé_ only, but the entire
church of their dues; since pendards pay no funeral fees, being
buried in air.”

LES MISÉRABLES
VICTOR HUGO

I find it hard to understand much that I find in the modern French novel. The conduct of the characters described in “Don Quixote” or “The Betrothed” is perfectly intelligible to me. I can thread my way through mists of German psychology and the extravagances of Russian fiction, but the Frenchman of my own time is quite beyond me. And whether he appears in a novel or actual life, his conduct often seems to me as remote from the possibilities of human character as if he were an inhabitant of Mars. The older French fiction is not so incomprehensible; the absurdities of Rabelais and the follies of Gil Bias and Manon Lescaut are not unnatural, but I confess myself utterly unable to follow the motives which actuate Javert, Jean Valjean, and some of the revolutionists in “Les Misérables.”

And yet in this great novel there are episodes of wonderful beauty. The natural and the impossible, the simple and the incomprehensible are thrown together in hopeless confusion. Jean Valjean, a convict discharged from the galleys after nineteen years of penal servitude, passes through the little town of “D,” where every door is closed against him. Nowhere, not even in the jail, can he find shelter for a single night, until the good bishop, as saintly and lovable a character as ever illustrated the pages of fiction, receives him in simple confidence. Jean Valjean repays his hospitality by stealing the bishop’s silver candlesticks. He is arrested, but the good man, to save him from punishment, tells the gendarmes that the candlesticks have been taken with his own consent. On his way from the village Jean Valjean robs the little Gervais, a poor Savoyard. But the generosity of the bishop now produces a strange tumult in his heart, remorse overcomes him, the whole current of his life is changed, and he is at once transformed into a man as heroic and self-sacrificing as imagination can conceive.

Under the name of M. Madeleine he becomes a successful manufacturer at “_M. sur M._,” charitable, public-spirited, and beneficent, and he is elected mayor of the city. Javert, an incorruptible but unamiable sleuth hound of the police, believes that he recognizes in M. Madeleine the convict Jean Valjean, and he writes to his superior officer announcing the discovery, but the proof is insufficient, and when at last he learns that Jean Valjean has been arrested elsewhere, Javert is convinced that he has been mistaken. He thereupon appears before the mayor and tells him what he has done and asks M. Madeleine to remove him from his position, which he considers himself unqualified to fill.

Fantine, the mistress of one Tholomyès, a student, is abandoned by her lover and seeks employment, leaving her child Cosette with one Thenardier, an innkeeper at Montfermeil, by whom the little creature is maltreated and abused, while ever increasing demands are made on the poor mother for her support. Fantine obtains employment in the factory of M. Madeleine, but is discharged without his knowledge, and gradually sinks to the lowest depths of poverty and degradation. When M. Madeleine knows of her misery and the cause of it, he takes Fantine under his protection, but it is now too late, for when he learned that another man under the name of Jean Valjean was about to be sent to the galleys for robbing the little Gervais, he discloses his own identity at the trial in order to prevent another from suffering in his stead. He is arrested by Javert, and Fantine dies committing her little daughter to his care. Jean Valjean is again sent to the galleys, but he escapes, finds Cosette, rescues her from the inhuman Thenardier and his wife, and they live long together in an old house in Paris. Here he is again detected by Javert and followed, but escapes with Cosette after superhuman exertions, climbing over a high wall into a convent, where he is cherished by the old gardener whose life he had saved some time before, and after a remarkable episode in which he is buried alive for a short time, he takes service in the garden of the convent where Cosette becomes a pupil.

The boy Marius now becomes Cosette’s lover, and there are many passages of natural though rather silly love-making, and the sacrifices made by Jean Valjean to the happiness of the young couple are extraordinary, and often indeed unnecessary and unreasonable.

Through the book the French melodramatic instinct and love for exaggeration everywhere appears. Jean Valjean himself is a man of more than human powers. His transformation from a criminal to a saint is very hard to believe. The virtues of the good people and the wickedness of the villains are excessive and unnatural. There is a small group of desperate and impossible bandits, and a small coterie of revolutionists for revolution’s sake, heroic absurdities who could exist nowhere outside of France or bedlam. There are fights at the barricades and labyrinthian journeys through the sewers of Paris, a great deal of slaughtering and many hairbreadth escapes; but in this strange kaleidoscope figures of marvellous beauty sometimes appear--the little Gavroche, the _gamin_ who protects and patronizes his small brothers and lodges them in the entrails of a wooden elephant; the old bourgeois, M. Gillenormand, charitable, wrong-headed, and gallant, to whom “the republic was a guillotine in the twilight and the empire a saber in the night”; and his daughter, Mlle. Gillenormand, “the incombustible prude.”

When Javert, the detective, is at last overcome by the magnanimity of Jean Valjean so that he can no longer pursue his prey and discharge his duty to the state, he finds refuge only in suicide!

There are many wise observations and brilliant passages, also a great abundance of mere conceits. For instance: “Man is not a circle with a single center, but an ellipse with two foci--facts are the one, ideas the other.” There are long descriptions of motives for acts which explain themselves, and there are other acts, the motives for which are not only not explained, but quite inexplicable. There are interminable digressions everywhere. A trifling episode at Waterloo is the occasion for a very long and graphic account of that battle, which has, in fact, nothing to do with the novel. The fact that Jean Valjean happens to take refuge in a convent leads to an elaborate description of the entire conventual system; a few words of slang introduce a long treatise on _argot_; Gavroche is the peg upon which is hung a treatise on the _gamins_ of Paris; and interminable discussions regarding barricades, sewers, and many other things which appear casually in the story consume more than half the entire space in the whole work. In the meantime the action is wholly suspended. Of course there are many valuable things in these digressions. Hugo is a man of encyclopædic knowledge, and much philosophy, some good, some bad, appears in the book; but the feeling is inevitable that this information and this philosophy ought to be furnished in some other place, and not hung disjointedly upon the thread of a novel with which it has no natural connection.

But in spite of these defects, “Les Misérables” has perhaps appealed more strongly than any novel ever written to the universal sympathy of mankind for sorrow and suffering.

ROMOLA
GEORGE ELIOT

It is no false judgment which has assigned to George Eliot a very distinguished place among the masters of fiction. This writer had a better right than perhaps any other of her sex to assume the _nom-de-plume_ of a man; for one of the striking characteristics of her work is its essentially masculine quality.

“Romola” is a somber tale. There is very little merriment in it, hardly the faintest suspicion of humor, but there is a great deal of deep feeling, and perhaps even more thought than feeling. Every chapter is pervaded with reflections which are often striking, sometimes subtle, and nearly always convincing.

Many phrases can be taken from different parts of the book, which, while perfectly appropriate to the places where they are found, would also be adapted to a general collection of maxims or epigrams. For instance:

“Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness.”

“There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder.”

“Our lives make a moral tradition for our individual selves, as the life of mankind at large makes a moral tradition for the race, and to have acted nobly seems a reason why we should always be noble.”

“It is the lot of every man who has to speak for the satisfaction of the crowd, that he must often speak in virtue of yesterday’s faith, hoping it will come back to-morrow.”

Moralizing of this kind is apt to become tiresome in an ordinary writer, but George Eliot’s mind, like that of Shakespeare, has the rare and masterful power of appropriately blending fiction and philosophy into a single substance.

The story opens in 1492, at the time of the death of Lorenzo dei Medici, when Tito Melema, a young Greek scholar, who has been recently shipwrecked, makes his appearance in Florence, where the barber Nello (a gossipy fellow, as barbers are wont to be, and with a smattering of learning) offers to get him introduced to Bartolomeo Scala, the Secretary of the Republic, who will perhaps employ him, and purchase some valuable gems which he has in his possession. For this purpose Nello brings him to the house of Bardo dei Bardi, a blind old scholar, who has collected a valuable library which he intends to bequeath to Florence to be kept as a memorial of himself. In this library Tito meets Romola, the daughter of Bardo and the companion and associate of her father in his classical researches. Through Bardo, Melema is introduced to Scala, who buys some of his gems, and moreover finds the young Greek very useful to him in a war of epigrams he is waging with Politian, another celebrated scholar of the time.

The gems which Tito sells are not, however, his own. They belong to Baldasarre, a man now stricken in years, who had rescued Melema in childhood, had adopted him, had loved him, and had educated him. The galley in which Baldasarre was travelling had been taken by a Turkish vessel, and it was not certain whether he had perished or was held as a slave. Tito says to himself, “If it were certain my father is alive, I would search for him throughout the world to ransom him.” But as he does not know, he keeps the money, stays in Florence, and consoles himself with the thought, “I believe he is dead.”

And Tito flourishes. He assists Bardo in his studies and soon becomes enamored of Romola. And when later, a monk who has come from the East gives him a bit of parchment from his father saying: “I am sold for a slave. I think they are going to take me to Antioch. The gems alone will serve to ransom me,” he reasons that he is not bound to seek his father and give up his prosperous life. But he is filled with fear lest his baseness may be discovered, when he learns that the monk who gave him the parchment is Dino, the brother of Romola.

Melema’s love is returned, and old Bardo regards him as the son who has taken the place of the one who forsook him to become a monk. But Dino is about to die. He sends for his sister and tells her a vague vision which has appeared to him, warning her not to marry. Romola, however, shares her father’s skepticism of monkish prophecies, and the betrothal is not long postponed.

The second book opens after a lapse of eighteen months, when Charles VIII, the French king, is about to enter Florence. Before he comes, three prisoners are brought in bound by three French soldiers and ordered to beg money for their ransom. One of these, the oldest, escapes, and as he flees to the cathedral he encounters Tito upon the steps and clutches him by the arm. Melema turns and sees the face of Baldasarre close to his own. And when one of Tito’s companions asks “Who is he?” Tito answers, “Some madman surely.”

The old man, transformed into a fiend by this shameless ingratitude, now devotes his failing faculties and clouded mind to the one purpose of revenge, and Tito, filled with inexpressible terror, purchases a suit of chain armor, which Romola discovers and is filled with suspicion, not only at this, but also at a picture of “Fear” which she accidentally sees, painted by Piero di Cosimo, who saw the incident on the steps of the cathedral and used her husband as his model.

In the meantime Bardo has died, and Tito, in violation of his plighted word, determines to dispose of the library of the blind scholar, appropriate the proceeds, and depart from Florence. The library is sold before he discloses this purpose to his wife. When her husband’s treachery is thus made clear to her, she asks him in bitter scorn, “Have you robbed somebody else who is not dead? Is that the reason you wear armor?”

Tito is about to depart from Rome on an errand of importance. Before he leaves he goes to a banquet in the Rucellai gardens, and old Baldasarre suddenly appears before the guests and denounces him. Melema coolly declares that his accuser is an old servant, who had been dismissed for misdemeanors, and had become insane. Rucellai, the host, proceeds to test the old man’s scholarship in proof of his credibility, but his memory is a blank. Tito is exonerated and Baldasarre is cast into prison.

Romola, unwilling to live longer with a husband whom she has come to despise, departs from the city. On her way Savonarola meets her, declares to her her name and purpose, and commands her to return and resume her duties, not only as wife, but as a citizen of Florence. Overcome by his commanding presence and persuasive words, she obeys and returns to her dreary home, throwing all the energy of her will into a life of renunciation.

At the opening of the third book, two years more have elapsed.

Romola learns of Tito’s participation in a plot for decoying Savonarola without the walls of the city. The monk is now the support and inspiration of her life. She determines to save him, and threatens to denounce her husband. The plot is thwarted, but the abyss between Romola and Melema constantly widens. Baldasarre, released from prison, tells her the story of her husband’s perfidy, and also of Melema’s relations to another wife, an innocent, harmless little peasant girl, named Tessa, who thinks she has been married to Tito by a sham ceremony performed by a mountebank, and by whom he has two children. And now Bernardo del Nero, Romola’s godfather, to whom she is deeply devoted, has been arrested, together with a number of the companions and intimates of Tito, for conspiring to restore the Medici, and her heart is filled with loathing for her husband when she learns from him that he is safe, for she realizes that this must be by reason of some new treachery of his own. And so indeed it was. He has been playing fast and loose with each of the three factions in Florence, and betraying each by turns to secure his own safety or promotion.

Bernardo and his associates are condemned to death, and the question is whether an appeal shall be allowed to the Grand Council according to the law. Romola seeks an interview with Savonarola and implores him to intercede, reminding him that it was through his agency that the law was passed, and that he has already spoken on behalf of another and more guilty conspirator. But she fails to secure his help, and departs with deep indignation against the man who had so long been the controlling influence of her life. She consoles Bernardo in his last moments, and is present even at the execution. Then, filled with bitterness, she flees again, and on the shore of the Mediterranean enters a small skiff and sets sail alone, drifting across the sea, hoping for death.

In the meantime Savonarola has fallen into the toils of his enemies. He has attacked the evil life of Pope Alexander, he has been excommunicated and has defied the excommunication. And now a challenge comes to him to submit to an ordeal. A Franciscan monk offers to walk through the fire with him. He declines, but his associate, Fra Domenico, accepts the challenge. The ordeal is to prove whether the tenets and prophecies of Savonarola be true or false. On the appointed day the multitude assemble to see the spectacle. Fra Domenico is ready, but there are long disputes regarding details--what garb he shall wear, whether he shall bear the crucifix or the host into the flames, until a shower of rain renders the trial impossible. But there are loud murmurs among the multitude against Savonarola. If he were a prophet, why did he not himself accept the ordeal? That night there was a wild riot, and Savonarola was arrested and hurried to prison.

In the meantime Dolpho Spini, the leader of the Compagnacci, who have instigated the riot, learns that Tito has also been false to that faction, and orders him to be seized. He escapes, leaps into the Arno and swims down the river in the darkness, but when, exhausted and fainting, he reaches the shore, there is waiting for him among the rushes the old man Baldasarre, who has found the opportunity for vengeance, and under whose hand he falls at last.

Romola has drifted to a little village on the coast which the plague had emptied of most of its inhabitants. Here for a while she tends the suffering, and finally, reconciled again with life, she feels that she must return. When she reaches Florence and learns of her husband’s death, she seeks the helpless little Tessa and her children and takes them under her protection.

And now Savonarola, amid the agonies of the torture, has confessed that he was not a prophet, and he is condemned to death. She is present at the solemn scene of execution, awaiting from him some word, free from constraint, which should tell the final truth of his past life. But he is silent upon the scaffold.

It is in the Epilogue that it first clearly appears that “Romola” is a novel with a purpose, for here the heroine, many years afterwards, in an earnest talk with Tessa’s boy, thus tells him the moral of his father’s life:

“There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a
great deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him,
for he was young and clever and beautiful, and his manners to all
were gentle and kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never
thought of anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip
away from everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing
else so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some
of the basest deeds, such as make men infamous. He denied his
father, and left him to misery; he betrayed every trust that was
reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe and get rich and
prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him.”

The account of the gradual degeneration of the character of Tito Melema is, indeed, the strongest feature in the book. Tito was a man of sunny disposition, who never made himself disagreeable, never boasted of his own doings, was generous in small things, gave others the credit to which they were entitled, and claimed little for himself, was frank and engaging in manners, subtle in thought, supple in conduct, and had an innate love of reticence, which often acted as other impulses do, without any conscious motive. This was the character selected by the author for her story of degradation and ruin.

The painter Piero foreshadows the outcome when he desires the face of Tito as a model for his picture of Sinon deceiving old Priam: “A perfect traitor,” says Piero, “should have a face which vice can write no marks on--lips that will lie with a dimpled smile--eyes of such agate-like brightness and depth that no infamy can dull them--cheeks that will rise from a murder and not look haggard.”

The character of Romola herself is a very interesting one. She is full of womanly dignity and genuine nobility of soul, honorable, proud, self-sacrificing, devoted to her duty, but she is too clear-headed to deceive herself as to her husband’s baseness. At first, although her dreams of happiness have not been fulfilled, she makes every excuse; and even afterwards she seeks a return of his confidence. But when that is impossible, her love becomes entirely extinct.

Running side by side with the character of Romola, and in sharp contrast to it, is that of Tessa, the innocent peasant girl, with a baby face. In her presence, Melema finds no reproaches, nothing but artless affection. It was pity more than anything else which first induced Tito to take her under his protection, and his relations with her have been developed so unconsciously that there seems very little guilt in each particular act. No doubt the author’s purpose was to describe the almost imperceptible steps by which men pass from virtue to crime.

“Romola” is a historical novel, and the part of it which deals with Savonarola is history itself, or perhaps more properly biography. George Eliot has not created the character of the Florentine monk; she has merely analyzed and interpreted that character by the light of her own imagination. Whether the man she has thus drawn is the real Savonarola or not, he is a very interesting personage, who, with many inconsistencies and shortcomings, is essentially a great man, as well as a benefactor of mankind. He is often a hero, though he falls short of heroism at the supreme moment; and his last words, written in prison before his execution, the outpouring of self-abasement, fill us with added sympathy for his misfortunes.

“God placed thee,” he says, “in the midst of the people even as if thou hadst been one of the excellent. In this way thou hast taught others, and hast failed to learn thyself. Thou hast cured others, and thou thyself hast been still diseased. Thy heart was lifted up at the beauty of thy own deeds, and through this thou hast lost thy wisdom, and art become, and shalt be to all eternity, nothing.”

The psychological development of each of the chief characters in this remarkable book proceeds by a natural law from the antecedents and surroundings of the individual. We feel as we read that the changes of thought and motive must have occurred just as they are described, yet in that description itself it is evident that George Eliot lacks something of dramatic power. She tells us in great detail what her characters think and why they act as they do. The highest form of art would show us this from their own words and actions without the telling. Her characters are often extremely complex. It might be harder to make them speak for themselves than in the case of simpler personages, such as those described by Dickens or Cervantes. Still the reader will often wish that George Eliot had not told him so much of motives and reasons, but had left these to necessary inference.

“Romola” is a work not addressed to the great mass of mankind, but to the student. It presupposes considerable knowledge on the part of the reader of Italian names, customs, and events. It is evidently the product of an elaborate study and of a rather intimate knowledge of Florentine institutions and history. It is essentially accurate in its description of the public events of the time, although there are some facts of minor importance which are not confirmed by the most authentic records.

George Eliot follows the chronological and not the logical order in her narrative. There is sometimes a lack of vividness which results from this, and the book as a whole does not impress itself readily on the memory. There are portions of the work which are overloaded with details concerning public ceremonies or historical facts, or illustrating the manners of the people; for instance, the long description of the festival of San Giovanni in the early part of the book. Indeed, the feeling is irrepressible that this work, especially the first half of it, is too prolix, and that unimportant and subsidiary matters becloud in a measure the essential facts upon which the tale depends. In the latter part of the work, however, the dramatic interest of the story becomes more intense, and the narrative proceeds naturally and directly to the double tragedy with which it closes--the death of Melema and the execution of Savonarola.

“Romola” is very little like “The Scarlet Letter” either in the scenes or the construction of the plot. It is far more elaborate than the American romance, yet there is a close similarity in the methods of thought of George Eliot and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The husband of Hester Prynne and the father of Tito Melema appear in the same sinister way, demanding vengeance. Though Florence is very little like the Puritan town, religious fanaticism is a prominent feature in both the stories. The two books leave much the same general impression upon the mind.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
FEODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

Dostoyevsky is one of the masters of the Russian realistic school. His best known novel, “Crime and Punishment,” is a psychological study of great power. It describes the atrocious murder of two women, an old money lender and her sister, by a young student, Raskolnikoff, and the train of events which afterwards led to the confession of the murderer and his transportation to Siberia.

Raskolnikoff has no sufficient motive for the crime, but he is led by the contemplation of Napoleon and other great men who have committed crimes to feel that he, too, is an exceptional creature, authorized to violate all laws of morality, and that he is guilty of no sin in killing the old women. His immediate purpose is robbery, to get the money necessary to prosecute his studies; yet so blunderingly does he go to work that he secures but little, and can make no use of it. The way in which his half crazed, vacillating intellect is finally induced to make a confession, is delineated with great dramatic skill. The examining magistrate, Porphryrius, also an eccentric, certainly shows great ability, not only in discerning the criminal, but in bringing him by gradual steps into a frame of mind which leads to confession, where there is no other sufficient evidence of guilt.

Most of the individuals described in the book are morbid, and some of them are grotesque; yet the reader is impressed with the consciousness that, in spite of inconsistencies and paradoxes, the story must be essentially true to the peculiar nature of the characters described.

The maudlin babbling of the drunkard Marmeladoff, giving the story of his debasement and the ruin and dishonor into which he has plunged his family, is just such talk as that kind of a man would indulge in when in liquor, and the picture which it sets before us is revolting, but infinitely pitiful and real. All the dreadful things which happen afterwards in the drunkard’s household--his tragical death, the insanity of his wife, and the beggary of their children--lie heavy upon our hearts, while they convince us that we are in a world where such things are realities.

In the girl Sonia, the eldest daughter of this household, we have the remarkable spectacle of a self-sacrificing, devoted and beautiful character, who has been constrained by necessity and by pity for her little brothers and sisters into a life of shame.

The most incomprehensible person in the story is one Svidrigailoff, an unscrupulous man of the world, given to sensuality, who commits suicide in a most unaccountable way after a nightmare. He is a character which puts at fault all calculations of what a man will do under given circumstances.

In strong contrast with the rest of the _dramatis personæ_, the mother and sister of Raskolnikoff display a dignity, strength of character and womanly tenderness which show us that Dostoyevsky is able to portray a normal and healthy character, a thing which might be otherwise in doubt.

This novel, dealing as it does with the submerged tenth of society, contains such a preponderance of repulsive features that it is by no means agreeable, nor even desirable, reading for the general public. Its tendency undoubtedly is to generate some of the morbid characteristics it describes.

SMOKE
IVAN TURGENIEFF

I have never quite understood the extravagant praises showered upon Turgenieff by his admirers. A few of his short stories in “A Sportsman’s Sketches” are very impressive, but his novels never appeared to me as convincing as those of Tolstoi, nor as vivid as “Dead Souls,” by Gogol, though they are more highly finished and more artistic in form. Turgenieff spent most of his life in France, and his works have distinctly a French flavor. “Smoke” offers perhaps the best illustration of his distinguishing characteristics. In the preface to a late edition of this work, a critic declares that it is “in every sense of the word a classic for all time.” This estimate seems high, though the book is in many ways a remarkable one.

The scene is laid at Baden-Baden, which for a long time was the residence of Turgenieff himself. Here we are introduced to a coterie of Russian “reformers” and “thinkers” of various sorts, who meet at the apartments of Gubaryoff, “a great man,” who is writing a great work “about everything” (as the enthusiastic Bambaeff declares), “after the style of Buckle, you know, but more profound--more profound. Everything will be solved and made clear in it.” At this meeting there is a perfect Babel of inane discussion and vociferation.

“Madame Suhantchikoff talked about Garibaldi, about a certain
Karl Ivanovitch, who had been flogged by the serfs of his own
household, about Napoleon III, about women’s work, about a
merchant, Pleskatchoff, who had designedly caused the death of
twelve work-women, and had received a medal for it with the
inscription ‘for public services’; about the proletariat, about
the Georgian Prince Tchuktcheulidzoff, who had shot his wife with
a cannon, and about the future of Russia. Pishtchalkin, too,
talked of the future of Russia, and of the spirit of monopoly,
and of the significance of nationalities, and of how he hated
above everything what was vulgar. There was an outburst all of
a sudden from Voroshiloff; in a single breath, almost choking
himself, he mentioned Draper, Virchow, Shelgunoff, Bichat,
Helmholtz, Starr, Stur, Reiminth, Johann Müller the physiologist,
and Johann Müller the historian--obviously confounding
them--Taine, Renan, Shtchapoff, and then Thomas Nash, Peele,
Greene--‘What sort of queer fish may they be?’ Bambaeff muttered
bewildered. ‘Shakespeare’s predecessors having the same relation
to him as the ranges of the Alps to Mont Blanc,’ Voroshiloff
replied cuttingly, and he too touched on the future of Russia.
Bambaeff also spoke of the future of Russia, and even depicted
it in glowing colors; but he was thrown into special raptures
over the thought of Russian music, in which he saw something.
‘Ah! great indeed!’ and in confirmation he began humming a song
of Varmaloff’s, but was soon interrupted by a general shout,
‘He is singing the Miserere from the Trovatore, and singing it
excruciatingly too.’ One little officer was reciting Russian
literature in the midst of the hubbub; another was quoting verses
from “The Spark”; but Tit Bindasoff went further; he declared
that all these swindlers ought to have their teeth knocked out,
... and that’s all about it, but he did not particularize who
were the swindlers alluded to. The smoke from the cigars became
stifling; all were hot and exhausted, every one was hoarse, all
eyes were growing dim, and the perspiration stood out in drops
on every face. Bottles of iced beer was brought in and drunk off
instantaneously. ‘What was I saying?’ remarked one; ‘And with
whom was I disputing, and about what?’ inquired another. And amid
all the uproar and the smoke, Gubaryoff walked indefatigably up
and down as before, swaying from side to side and twitching at
his beard; now listening, turning an ear to some controversy, now
putting in a word of his own; and every one was forced to feel
that he, Gubaryoff, was the source of it all, that he was the
master here, and the most eminent personality.”