Chapter III (4)

All the sounds of nature; the winds, those awful breathings from an unknown mouth, rouse up the innumerable instruments in the plains or on the mountains, hidden in the hollow of valleys or massed among the forests; the waters with their marvellous scale of tone, ranging from the tinkling of a fountain through moss, to the wondrous harmonies of the ocean; thunder, the voice of that sea that floats above us; the rustling of dry leaves beneath a human foot or before a whirling breeze; in short, for I must stop short in enumerating innumerable sounds, this continual emission of tone, the floating rumor of the elements, dilates my thoughts into strange reveries, and throws me into unutterable amazement. The voice of nature has taken such hold upon me that I can hardly free myself from its perpetual influence, and in vain I try to turn a deaf ear. But to wake at midnight amid the cries of the storm, to be assailed in the darkness by a wild, tumultuous harmony, overthrowing night's peaceful empire, is something incomparable among strange impressions. It is ecstasy in the midst of terror.

CAEN, 24th January.

I have been wandering along the streets of this city by the dim light of the street lamps. What did I see? Black phantoms of steeples and churches, whose outline I could barely trace. The mystery of night, which enveloped them without limiting their dimensions {688} like dear daylight, added to their impressive influence, and filled me with an emotion that was worth more, I believe, than forms. My thoughts soared up to heaven with the never-ending spires, and wandered awe-struck through naves that were mournful as sepulchres. That was all. The streets were crowded, but what is a crowd by night, or even, by day? At night I enjoy more the sound of the wind, and in the daytime those grand assemblies, now silent and now rocking and roaring, called forests. Besides, I met several of that class of men who always put me to flight; students strutting along in gown and cap, and wearing in every feature a nameless expression that reduces me to rout and discomfiture. Oh! my dear journal, my gentle friend, how I felt that I loved thee, as I worked my way out of the multitude. And here I am with thee now, though the night is far advanced and I am half dead with fatigue; all alone with thee, telling thee my griefs, and letting thee peacefully into my secrets. Can I recall often enough those memories all steeped in tears, that will ever dwell incorruptible within my soul? Kind Hippolyte and his exquisite Marie! I bade her farewell; she answered me in a few words of touching kindness. I stammered out a few words more, and was running down the steps thinking that she had not come beyond the threshold, and that all was over; when I heard another farewell coming to me from above, and, looking up, saw her leaning over the balustrade. I answered very softly, for her voice had taken away the little strength I had to keep back my tears.

MAURICE DE GUÉRIN TO
M. H. DE LA MORVONNAIS.

PARIS, Feb. 1st, 1834

You thought you would receive news of me by the end of this week. Your calculation has proved false, and you are feeling impatient, and thinking that I am neglectful, and that the tumult of Paris has dulled my ear to the sweet, lovely voice of friendship that sings unceasingly in the depths of my soul. Imagine no such thing, my dear friend. God knows that since I came to Paris I have listened to nothing but the two farewells that I heard on that black Thursday evening, one from her whom you must let me call your sweet Marie, who, as I went down-stairs thinking that everything was at an end, leaned over the balustrade to say good-by once more; and the other from you, on the steps of the carriage, uttered half aloud as you clasped my hand. I hear these two voices incessantly, and never fail to listen to them, while all other sounds pass by as if they were not.

I did not see Quemper until two days after my arrival, Tuesday morning, when I surprised him in bed, dreaming, between sleeping and waking, of music, dancing, fresh garlands of young maidens, and all the other vague and enchanting images that float through the imagination long after the magic of a ball has passed away. Our friend had spent the night at one of those radiant entertainments, whose brilliancy his pen, fresh as if dipped in a dew-drop, depicts with such sparkling charm. All of a sudden my pale and melancholy visage appeared to put these fair dreams to flight; but though it must have looked among them much like one of those crows that we used to see flying among flocks of white sea-gulls, he embraced me with all the cordiality that you remember in him. I sat down by his bedside, and the vivacity of our first greetings having effervesced, a long and charming conversation gradually unrolled itself, of which this is the substance: remember that he was the speaker and that I interrupted him very seldom, so anxious was I to gather up all his instructions.

The most difficult task to accomplish at the beginning of the career which we have chosen _is to get published_, to bring one's name before the public; {689} and he mentioned the names of several young men who had been vainly knocking at the gates of journals for several years past. We are already far advanced, since two are thrown open to us, Catholic France and the European Review. Booksellers have no faith in the unknown, and would refuse obstinately to have a masterpiece printed if it were the first attempt of its author, while if they have seen his name ever so little in reviews and journals they would prove facile and accommodating. Therefore we must devote our whole strength to making our names known through magazines and papers.

But in order to write acceptably for this sort of publication one must adapt one's self to its habits, speak its language, and become all things to all men--in matters of style merely, you understand. Let us strive, then, to catch their ways, as the saying is, and to throw our thoughts into the conventional mould, until we shall have attained to such independence of pen as will leave us free to clothe our thoughts after our own fashion. There is no use in disguising the fact that as long as we serve under an editing committee (I dwell upon this point because it is an important one, and Quemper insisted upon it very strongly), we must, to a certain degree, renounce the habits of style peculiar to ourselves, and adopt those of the journal; so that, while preserving our individuality, we may blend and combine it with customs foreign to our nature. It is hard for men like us, with characteristic traits of their own, proud and independent of the fashions they have railed at and disdained; it is hard for such men to muffle themselves in the livery of the day, to follow instead of leading, to copy instead of designing; but necessity with her iron nail stands before us. Finally, the committee of the European Review refused an article of Cazalès himself because it was in Germanic form.

As to the Review, we must share the editing of it thus: Each number should contain a leading article purely philosophical, an article of a high order of literary criticism, and an article, artistic or imaginative, of a light character fitted to relax the mind after reading the first two. You, Duquesnel, and I could share the labor and play into each other's hands, so that each number should have as often as possible three articles from us, conceived in the manner that I have just indicated; only remember that you must leave the light article for me, because I know nothing of philosophy or criticism.

. . . . .

And now let me tell what my present position is. I have hired a little room at twenty francs a month, near my cousin. He could not take me into his own family; my friend, Lefebvre, could not accommodate me either; and besides, the fact is that one must be alone and quite independent if one would work well; it is better to have a house of one's own. I take my meals at my cousin's; in short, I am in a very tolerable position, and one that will allow me to try my fortune for three months to come, and I hope much longer.

Add to this a most charming perspective, from which I hope much for the advancement of my fortunes and the maintenance of my courage. At the end of this month Quemper is going to change his lodgings. He has in view, still, in the rue des Petits-Augustins, an apartment consisting of three rooms, two bed-chambers and a parlor. He proposes that I should take one of these rooms, which would cost me twenty francs, like the one I have at present, and that we should share the parlor. You may imagine that I accepted the plan with both hands, especially because it will be so delightful to live with such a friend. We have already laid out a life of uninterrupted happiness not to be described, a sort of Le Val for us two in the midst of Paris. {690} Can discouragement seize upon me there? and if it comes, cannot we put it to flight? Quemper has drawn up a rule of life for me, and given lessons in a double economy of which I knew nothing--that of time and money; in short, as he says, he will pilot me through life and Paris, two paths where I lose myself completely, though I number twenty-three years of life and eight years of Paris. I begin to believe that in spite of myself or any evil genius, I shall accomplish something.

If I turn to the source of all these blessings, I find you, my dear friend, who by your exhortations and generous reproaches, sowed in my soul the first germs of the courage that I feel stirring within me now. You urged me to come to Paris when I was contemplating a cowardly retreat; you bound me in that ripe sheaf of friendship with yourself, Quemper, and Duquesnel, an endless blessing from which, perhaps, all the success of my life will grow; to you I owe two months of beautiful impressions and pure happiness. You let me look upon Le Val as a second Le Cayla, love it with the affection that belongs to one's birthplace, for it was the June of my second birth; weep for it in momenta of sadness, and sing of its charms when I am glad.

My cousin's little girl is nine months old; she is charming, can stand alone already, without walking of course, has an enchanting smile; in short, would be a companion angel for Marie. When her tongue is loosed, I will teach her all the little words that her baby sister in Le Val can say, "_Bon jour, ma, à tantôt, le v'la lia_" and I will swing her in a napkin; in short, I will do everything I can to make her another Marie, her faithful and bewitching likeness.

I have not yet written to my sister. I shall do so this evening with exhortations and entreaties. How happy it would make me to see a firm friendship grow up between Madame de La Morvonnais and Eugénie! those two souls so formed for mutual understanding, and to draw forth the wealth of sweetness from each other's souls.

Offer my homage to her who will, I hope, soon call my sister friend, and win the same title from her; as it is between you and me, my dear friend. Countless kisses to Marie. Don't forget me, I beg, when you write to Mordreux and St. Malo. Love to Duquesnel and François.

At the time the following idyl was written, the pernicious style of literature which it satirizes was confined to France. To-day, when our bookstores teem with works of the same class, we fear that the allegory may meet with less favor among American readers than it would have aroused thirty years ago.

MAURICE DE GUÉRIN TO
M. H. DE LA MORVONNAIS.

PARIS, February, 1834.

I fear me much that the month of May will bring us snow-balls instead of roses.

When I left you, dear friend, your solitude was just ready to burst forth into flowers and verdure. The reddening fruit walls in your garden, and the little chilly shrubs that love the sun, were trusting their tender foliage, in all confidence, to the benign and gentle winter, smiling upon them with the grace of spring. The wood that stretches over your sloping shore, dipping almost into the sea, wore that look of life and gladness that trees put on as spring-time draws near. The sticky, oval buds of the Indian chestnut, glistened in the sun; beech buds, sharp and slim, pricked themselves up with pert vivacity, even the small round oak buds were beginning to gather in bunches at the end of the branches, and yet the oak leaves out later than other forest-trees. We saw the young shoots of undergrowth blushing with the red tint that colors them at the awakening of vegetation, as if blood were purling through their veins instead of sap. The grass, pushing its way up through the bed of dead leaves and withered vegetation, thrown over {691} it in autumn, was bordering the paths, and spreading a velvet carpet in every glade, decked with the enamel of a thousand Easter buds and daisies. Everything was gay in preparation for the great feast of nature. Oh! if nightingale, swallow, oriole, and sparrow knew all this, how they would bestir themselves to fly _dulcesque revisere nidos_. It may be that their European brothers have sent messengers to tell them that everything is ready for their reception, woods, groves, hedge, and bush; that seeds and berries will come early; that, morning and evening, the gnats are whirling in myriads in the beams of the rising and setting sun; that all is lovely here, and they must hurry home to enjoy the glorious festival. I don't know that our domestic birds have paid this attention to their travelled brethren, but at least they have given themselves up to joy and harmony in awaiting their return. Do you remember, Hippolyte, how the blackbirds whistle, the gay, sweet warble of the thrush, or the twitter of some wren perched on the top of a wall, used to beguile us from our study, tempting us forth to pleasant rambles?

Such was your Thebaïd, as you call it, the day before I left you, full of warmth and animation, vivid with rising sap and the labor of vegetation. To-day I will wager that the eruption of leaves and flowers is far advanced, that the birds are hopping about in search of moss, twigs, stray feathers, and bits of down, and that you are wandering in spring revery under the first shade of your chestnut trees. But, my friend, are you slumbering serenely on these fair promises? Does it never occur to you that this may be all a stratagem of winter, and that the old despot may have manoeuvred, merely to draw out verdure and blossom, and kill them with his baleful breath? Do you never fear that thus the acme may be reached of our delusions? What if this balmy, perfumed air turned to a north wind; if a black, sharp cold condensed all this living sap, this fecundity now gushing through the veins of nature; if the frost crystallized your woods and their tender leaflets; if your little eddying brooks were to clasp in ice the flower, stems, and stalks of herbs that grow upon their beds and borders; if, instead of nightingales and singing-birds from southern shores, you should see triangles of long-necked geese and swans pouring down from the north, and files of those ducks that we used to hear cutting the clouds with whistling wings on December evenings; if the exterminator, winter, were to kill in one night all these first-born of the year; in short, if your Thebaïd were to turn into a Siberia, what would become of your dreams of plenty, fruits, and flowers, soft siestas under the shade of a tree, songs on the sea-shore, and of that whole existence, nourished upon sunlight, gentle breezes, and sweet odors, that you lead in your dear wilderness?

If you had power over nature, I should say to you: "Give your gardens and woods and birds a lesson of wisdom. Bid those buds that I saw gaping in the sunshine to hold back well in their envelope the leaves entrusted to their care, scare them with the rigors that may surprise them; the brightest sun is a deceiver. Put them on their guard against the wiles of a fair day, teach them to be austere, and tell them the thousand tales you know of flowers that have crumbled into dust because they heeded the lures of a passing breeze or of a glowing sunbeam. Tell them that, if perchance a few be saved amid the general havoc, they will one day bear shrivelled, meagre, tasteless fruit that no fair hand shall ever gather, and that shall wither on the branch or fall a prey to the vile appetite of insects. Tell them that their thin and pallid foliage shall draw disdain upon them from the panting traveller, the young maidens, and the winged musicians that take refuge under their shade to rest or dance or sing. Men will take them for useless cumberers of the earth, and one day {692} perhaps the axe will be laid at their root." As to the birds, the best advice you can give them is, to leave their brothers in exile until the first day of true spring shines. It is better to bear banishment a little longer than come home to find their country the wretched slave of winter. Let your birds beware how they recall their brethren or begin to build their own nests. The brood would not prosper; the poor mothers would shiver on their eggs, and the bitter cold, stealing under their wings, would kill the chicks in the shell, despite the warmth of the maternal bosom. Oh! if you had, power over nature, what a discourse I would send you for your Thebaïd, to save it from the seductions of this perfidious spring whose perils I know so well.

Do you take all this seriously, my friend? I fear not, and that you will dismiss it with a smile, as the prattle of a child. I even fear that you may regard my letter as very eccentric, and say to yourself: "What nonsense is this? Talking of woods and flowers to a hermit; wandering on into homilies addressed to birds and flowers, when he is writing from Paris, and not one word of what is stirring in the world! He deserves in punishment that I should send him an essay upon the dramas and romances of last year!" My friend, restrain your wrath, and contain yourself long enough to hear, my reasons.

Horace said: "At Rome I prate of Tiber, and at Tiber I prate of Rome." Don't imagine that my taste is light and changeable as the wind, and thus explain to yourself my long tirades on your solitude. When I was in your Thebaïd, did I ever speak regretfully of the joys of Paris? Did I not, on the contrary, say always that a city life is repugnant to my taste, and that I care not at all for any pleasures to be enjoyed here? Don't you remember how the little rough huts of your tidesmen used to excite my envy, and that I used to have dreams of hollowing out a cool, dark grotto in the heart of a rock in one of your creeks, and letting my life glide away in the contemplation of the vast ocean, like a sea-god? If you recall all this, you'll easily understand why in Paris I talk of the country and forget Paris. Indeed, you will see that it cannot be otherwise; for having said to the fields, as you know,

"Le corps s'en va, mals le cocur vous demeure," [Footnote 199]

my discourse must turn on them, and I can only live in this mad tornado of Paris as not belonging to it.

[Footnote 199: Froissart (manuscript note).]

If you know me well, these reasons will more than suffice to make you understand the beginning of my letter. But will you be able to resist the perpetual impulse that makes you look for mysteries in the clearest things, so insatiable is your taste for divining? No; you will look under the natural sense of my words, and think you have surprised a sly meaning, crouching like a serpent under flowers, beneath my sentences, which breathe only sweet images of spring. I'm not afraid of your discovering some political allusion in them, for you are too solitary, and hold yourself too much aloof from such things for that idea to occur to you. But, if your eyes turn from the arena of politics, they will settle on the noble field of literary doctrines; and because lately the combat has grown hot, and the noise of the mêlée is resounding far and wide, you will fancy that I am a passionate spectator of the struggle, amusing myself with winding the opposing party in subtle mocking allegories. Let me tell you that this interpretation, or any similar one given to my idyl on the precocious spring, misses its aim; that my idyl veils no satire; and that if it seems to you the least in the world insidious or guileful, 'tis only because you've breathed your own malice upon the innocent thing. I repeat, it conies merely to discourse with you about nature; and what can be more natural? Know that never has a ray of sunlight shone directly {693} into the room where I live; I receive it only by repercussion. Toward noon the sun strikes some garret windows opposite that send across to me a few pale reflections, without warmth or cheerfulness, like the rays of a lamp; and even this vague, languishing light vanishes in a quarter of an hour. These are the beams that gladden my eyes, accustomed to the broad overflowing liberality of a southern sky. A narrow, sombre court-yard, where there's not a blade of grass growing in the cracks of the pavement, nor a flower-pot on a window-sill to smile upon me--this is the horizon to which I am reduced; I, who so many, many times have scaled with you your rocks and downs and sea-cliffs, whence our eyes embraced the divine expanse of ocean, the marvellous indentures of your coast, and the wide fields all green with wheat and flax. And now that I've fallen from these fair heights into a hole that hardly admits the light of day, do you suppose I shall not try to live over again these charms in imagination, or that I shall talk to you of anything but yourself and your solitude? And you, you cynical recluse, would envenom these sweet, innocent recollections, and find some apologue or another in the images of nature among which I seek recreation? But as I have every reason to suppose that you are not attending to me, and are still working to disentangle the metaphors, let us see if perchance malice can make anything out of my precocious spring, and to what allusion it can be turned.

Interested as you are in literary matters, and attentive to the disturbances that have risen tip lately among our authors, I am sure that it will not be long before the _facile literature_ comes to your mind. Then you will think you have the clew, and with that thread you'll plunge into the labyrinth of my supposed allegory, hoping to emerge maliciously triumphant and content. I allow that, without any extraordinary flights, imagination might pass from the buds, opening prematurely on the faith of a brilliant winter sun, to this young literature, which has burst into blossom before its time, and innocently exposed itself to the returns of frost that I predict to your woods and groves. But, my friend, will you, who rejoice so ardently at sight of an almond-tree in flower, will you reproach severely these trusting souls that have opened in the broad-day light and displayed with touching faith their treasures to the graces of heaven? Blame rather the burning sun of our day, and the atmosphere all charged with fatal heat, which have hastened this development and perhaps reduced the harvest of our age to a few ears.

And the trees whose blossoms are only born to die, and those that bear bitter fruits which no one will ever pluck, or will gather only to throw away--ah! you'll not have much trouble in seeing in them the emblems of the many authors who have appeared once and vanished for ever; the many authors whose books, distasteful to a few grave judges, are welcomed by seekers after novelty and romance readers; and who, having filled these vain souls with vain ideas, often sink into the well of oblivion with hands relaxed by the lethargy that comes from dull satiety.

Will you have it that the trees shunned by travellers, young maidens, and birds figure those renowned books, worthy of their fame as works of art, which do not contain a grain of the hidden manna, nor one of the sweet, beneficent thoughts that nourish the soul and relax it after fatigue?--books that maidenly hands dare not touch, and that put to flight everything fresh and innocent--a thought to make one die of shame and grief! Will you have it so? I yield the point with good grace, for in truth my thoughts bear your interpretation as well as if I had really hidden it therein, and I will follow you no further in your suspicious investigations, feeling sure that my test will not suffer violence from you, {694} and that you will go on to the end without losing your way.

What conclusion do you draw from all this? First, that, resolved to enter the lists, I am preparing in secret my lance and chariot, and kindling my wrath. But are my peaceful inclinations unknown to you, or the weakness of my arm and my very doubtful courage? I a combatant! Just remember that the least tumult scares and routs me like a flying prey, and that my strength bravely suffices to drag me out of danger; so how could it drag me in?

In the second place, you will suppose that I am nursing an aversion for the new school and calling out for a classical reform. M. Nisard, of course, does not wish the new school to perish, but to amend its ways; and it is with that belief, and, I dare to say, on that condition, that I pray ardently for the success of the campaign he is about to open. The Catholic faith would never allow me to sympathize entirely with a sceptical and fatalist literature, that sets no value upon morality. But, on the other hand, the same faith makes me feel a certain interest in it; for is not this disorderly, frantic new school a truant from our fold?

No, dear friend, I am not a prey to devouring anger; but I must groan in solitude over the wanderings of this literature, which has forgotten the home and the teaching of its father, and has so hopelessly lost itself, until the last and most terrible romance, in that style, would now be its own history. Amid these sighs there come to me a few reflections upon the cause of the evil and the means to remedy it; and that is what I meant to announce to you in this incoherent letter, in which I beg you to see only a whimsical prelude of my imagination, turning, as it always does, toward you.

MAURICE DE GUÉRIN TO
M. H. DE LA MORVONNAIS,
AU VAL SAINT POTAN.

AU PARC, July 9th, 1834.

I wrote to you on leaving Paris a short letter, of which I begged you not to take any notice. To-day, dear Hippolyte, when I have all possible leisure, and the untroubled peace of the country is around me, I resume our talk with every intention of carrying my confidence to the utmost limits; that is, to the point where I shall begin to fear that my chattering bores you.

I announced to you a complete account of my affairs and my position during these five months past. Now I am going to begin and you must listen. You know what my hopes were when I left Le Val; I felt a decided taste for literary life, the profession of a journalist smiled upon me, and I was hugging some bright phantom or other of the future that had sprung up in my imagination; and in spite of the distrust that you know I mingled with my love, I had given myself up to this dream with intense ardor. For, let me tell you, _en passant_, that I throw myself impetuously into every new project that can modify my existence; and whether a walk is proposed to me for the next day, or whether I am told, "To-morrow your destiny is to be completely altered," I feel equally excited, and rush to meet the two events with equal impatience. A strange activity of thought possesses me, and I shake myself and champ my bit because time prevents me from seizing at a bound what I am already devouring with my eyes. You may imagine that, with a soul subject to such ardent cravings, I reached Paris full of enthusiasm and seized the journalist's pen with a quiver of delight. But, as usual, my enthusiasm did not last long, and difficulties, personal as well as external, made themselves felt. I saw the entrance to the journals bolted and barred by that selfishness which guards the gates of everyplace against the approach of poor young fellows who come to Paris full of innocent hopes. Catholic France alone admitted me within its circle; but this journal, notwithstanding the good-will of its directors, could not satisfy my needs. My articles were favorably received, {695} but the narrow frame of the journal cut me off from frequent contributions, and in four months I had only appeared four times.

In the mean time expenses were not behindhand, and, although I lived in a very small way, my expenditure was large in comparison to my resources. I was exhausting fruitlessly time and money, my own patience and my father's. For several months I persisted in this disposition, holding my ground against adverse fortune in order to save appearances and not yield the field without making fight. But at last everything went so badly that I had to decide promptly upon a plan suggested by the extremity of the ease. If I had been alone, I don't know what would have become of me in my utter failure of strength and courage; but God, as if for my preservation, has placed around my wavering soul friends who prop and sustain it, restoring me to myself with touching solicitude. I went to Paul, and laid before him the whole story of my painful position. I proposed to him the terrible enigma of my destiny and asked him for a solution. Without an effort he untied the Gordian knot with these words: "If you leave Paris, the future will slip through your hands. Do not let go your hold at any cost. Make your father feel that this concerns your whole life, that our last effort may save everything, and a first refusal may ruin everything." And thereupon we set to work to compute article by article all the necessities to be satisfied, all the debts to be paid, all the most threatening possibilities of the future; and the whole account, amounting to the sum of twelve hundred francs, I sent to my father, with a petition written by my cousin in order to give it more weight.

At the end of a fortnight my father returned it with his approbation and a gift of the sum I had asked. What happiness it was to go in search of Paul that I might thank him, triumph with him, overwhelm him with joy for my joy; for I knew his kindness too well to doubt that he would share all my transports. I was not mistaken; his rejoicings over my success were sweeter to me than my own, and I had the inestimable pleasure of seeing it communicated to my other friends, François, Elic, etc. How delightful it is to receive such proofs of pure, heartfelt sympathy! In short, my dear Hippolyte, here I am launched upon the waves, provisioned with money and courage, and walking with assured step to meet the future; I feel as if a light were guiding me, and as if I were advancing toward an unknown goal. For the present this is what I mean to do: I shall spend the end of August and the whole of September at the College Stanislas, where I shall have a class during vacation: when the term begins, I shall establish myself in the college if there is a place for me; if not, I can have quite an advantageous situation at my cousin's, by helping him to keep his little _pension d'elèves_. This is an abridged history of these last five months; it gives only a superficial view, but you are well enough acquainted with my inner life to understand the course of my thoughts during the time. Here I am at rest, dreaming of the future, giving myself up to the pleasures of friendship and conversation, and drinking in the country-life and all the dear idleness that one can never fully enjoy except in the fields. Our solitude is so profound that we do not even know the result of the elections. Another ignorance, harder to bear, is concerning all that is going on among our friends and affairs in Paris. I know nothing more than when I left them, and it is a very long time also since I heard from my sister.

Pray, present my respectful compliments to Madame Morvonnais, and my remembrances at Mordreux and Saint-Malo. I am going to write to Amédée. Ask Marie, who can answer me now, if she remembers M. Guérin, who sends her a thousand kisses.

TO M. H. DE LA MORVONNAIS.
PARIS, Sept. 21st, 1834.

I have just received your manuscript, my dear friend, and the letter {696} it enclosed; it has only this moment arrived, and I write before reading, that my despatch may be ready for Paul, who leaves day after to-morrow in the morning. You are to possess this inestimable treasure of friendship, freshness of soul, and warmth of heart. He will rest from his busy, devoted life in the fair sanctuary of peace and friendship, of which you are the priest; he will bathe in the current of those easy, limpid days that murmur beneath your roof. What an interruption and vacuum in my life will be between his departure and the day of his return with the other brothers! What will become of me in my _ennui_. Tomorrow evening we shall have our farewell _soirée_. Do you know what evenings we have now and then? We meet at dinner-time and have a cosy dinner, intimate talks, long wandering walks under the chestnut-trees of the Tuileries, through the perfume of orange-blossoms and flower-beds in the gleams of the setting sun. These talks come and go between Paris and Le Val, from one friend to another, from present to future, from melancholy to the liver, philosophy to poetry, weak sadness to firm and manly resolutions, from one thing in life to another. To paint these conversations for you would be like trying to render with a style the colors of twilight, the vague nonchalance of the breezes, or, a still more difficult task, what comes more softly shaded to our hearts. Tomorrow will be the farewell evening, the close of these melodious evenings. How many things come to an end under our eyes! I will not speak of my own affairs; Paul will tell you where I stand, and how my hopes ebb and flow, rising to the chair of rhetoric of Juilly, and falling to a little schoolroom. He will tell you about my firm resolutions and the manly efforts of my will to seize the empire of my soul. It would be a long story to relate the history of my interior revolutions, changes of government, civil wars, anarchy, despotism, gleams of liberty. These are annals that write themselves in rude characters upon the soul and in wrinkles on the brow. Sometimes I feel that I _can no more_, like an old empire. O my charming hermit, my sea-swan, my poet-philosopher, how shall I express the jumble there is in my soul at this moment of pleasure and pain, the pell-mell of joyful and sad tears that rush from my eyes and roll over each other down my cheeks? I see you in my soul; I see Paul's departure and embrace him in farewell; I see Le Val, your meeting, the charm of your life, the isolation of mine, and my longings after my dear Brittany. My friend, sometimes the soul wanders out of sight, and is restless and troubled like the sea.

MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
TO M. H. DE LA MORVONNAIS.

PARIS, Oct. 19th, 1834.

At last, my dear friend, I can be with you, I can open my heart and confide my soul to you; a doubtful privilege, perhaps you think, but unluckily I cannot keep it to myself. Today, then, this gray Sunday, a calm day, a day of decline quite suited to the fall of leaves and the emigration of souls, my busy life, heated with action, pauses to recover its strength, and resume its confidential intercourse so long interrupted; to give itself up to the genius of autumn and lend its ear to the memories whose rustling we hear so distinctly on certain days; and, all laden with impressions, reminiscences, and autumnal melodies, to retire into some lonely corner far from chances of interruption, and pour itself out to you. But I have left behind me the mystery that I wish to unveil to you: _My busy life, heated with action_. What! I a man of action! Some potent voice must have bade me take up my bed and walk! The day after Paul left me I was to go to Versailles, where I had reason to hope I could have a place as teacher in an institution. I went to Versailles, and this was what I found: four hours of teaching {697} every day, _des salles d'études_, recreations, walks with the pupils, and a salary of 400 francs. The position I had hoped for in the College Stanislas having failed me also, there remained only my last plan, that of going to my cousin's. But, as if to complete and crown the lesson that she was resolved to give me, fortune decreed that my cousin should all of a sudden be absolutely without scholars. Thus for a time was I trampled beneath the feet of destiny. Then indeed I had time to write to you, I had a superabundance of leisure. To punish me for my sins--me, so long a rebel against the ancient condemnation to labor, God took from me the possibility of doing anything. He turned aside and removed from my reach all working tools at the moment when my hands were eager for them. Leisure on every side, far stretching, never ending, condemned to bury myself in unlimited leisure as in a doleful desert. Why did I not write to you when my whole life lay before me at my own disposal? My friend, I had nothing to tell but misfortunes, and my recital would only have grieved you. I preferred waiting for the wind to blow away these black days and clear my atmosphere. The tempest was short; the sky of my little world is tinged anew in the east, and it is by the light of its first gleams that I write to you. The professor of the fifth class at Stanislas asked leave of absence for a month; I have taken his place and shall have 100 francs for the work. I am looking for private lessons and have found several. Classes and recitations occupy my day from half-past seven in the morning until half-past nine in the evening; I sleep at my cousin's, the college dinner serves me for breakfast, and in the evening I get a dinner for twenty-four sous like a _débutant_. Such has been my life for the last three weeks; a sudden revolution in my existence, an abrupt transition from careless revery to breathless action. An urgent pressure, a little reason, a few grains of irritating self-love, supply fresh strength to my soul, which is exhausted at the first tug. However, I must say that in the deepest and most hidden recesses of my being, in the sanctuary of the will, lives a resolution, that is, I believe, firm and steady, to sacrifice half my existence to external things, in order to insure repose to the inner man; and therefore I have decided to prepare myself for the _agrégation_ (corresponds to the expression, master of arts). I have explained to you the facts, accidents, and external circumstances; let us go deeper. Latin, Greek, and all the bustle of laborious life, absorb a certain portion of my thoughts; but it is that floating and least, valuable portion which, without regret, I let flutter in the wind like the fringe of a cloak. These are the waves that break upon he beach; the sand drinks them in, men gather their spoils, the sea tosses them to any one who wants them. Thus, as I tell you, my mind near its shores is occupied by the cares and duties of active life; but far out at sea nothing touches it, nothing passes over it, nothing is lost from its waves, except by the continual evaporation of my intelligence drawn up by some unknown star.

It will soon be a year since from the heights of Créhen I hailed Le Val, lying all golden on the hillside beneath the beautiful autumn sun. Dear anniversary, full of gentle melancholy like the season that brings it. Every morning, on the way to college, I cross the Tuileries where the ground is covered with the heaps of autumn leaves, the wind sighs through the branches as in a desert, and, like the ring-doves that build their nests in ancient chestnut-trees, a few of the poems of solitude flutter about in these city groves. Sometimes the murmur of a breeze among the boughs recalls to me the sound of the sea, and I pause to possess myself of the delusion, and isolate myself with it from the whole world: these are the waves, I am walking along the shore with you, wandering over headlands in the evening twilight; I am sitting on La {698} _Rôche-Alain_. Then when I feel the illusion is fading away, I resume my walk, all full of emotion, all full of you, and cry like the _Young Bard_: "Good God, give us back the sea!"

MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
TO M. H. DE LA MORVONNAIS.

PARIS, Dec. 5th, 1835.

Your impatience to know how I dispose of my time, and all the turnings of the roads I am following, that you may go with me in thought, roused in me a very delightful feeling, and one that does not easily find expression in words. But your idea of my life is quite too elevated; you attribute to it a dignity with which it is not invested when you speak of my sufferings and the courage with which I bear them. No, my dear Hippolyte, my lot is not so beautiful as you would make it out. The difficulties of my life consist in a few material fatigues, to which the body easily becomes hardened, even deriving a certain strength from contending with them; and in the distaste for a profession which is conquering my antipathy through the slow but irresistible action of habit, which tames the wildest spirits, and reduces them to complete submission almost without their knowledge, everything becomes deadened, everything dissolves insensibly. The firmest revolutions yield each day something to the progress of the hours. All rebellions are absorbed again by degrees into the common soul. All things lie upon a declivity which opposes itself to continued ascent. I have chosen my course in life; I come and go in the leading-strings of habit, keeping my mind in the middle of the road, restraining it carefully from those thoughts that would draw it aside, and mar the blessed monotony which lends something to the pettiest existence. Being reduced to this state, I have no need of courage. I required, of course, some resolution to arrive at it, but it was not worth much and was borrowed from circumstances.

These are the principal features of my day: I set forth on foot at seven o'clock to give a lesson in the neighborhood; then I go to the College Stanislas; at the other end of Paris, and remain there until six in the evening. That leaves me an hour and a half to dine and retrace my steps again to the further extremity of Paris, where my last lesson awaits me, which ends at half past eight. My liberty claims possession of the night. Custom having worn away the asperities of this life, only one defect remains, but a capital one; and that is the difficulty of using the fragments of time that are left to me after using the larger portions for studies that are to raise me above my present condition. How to make the cares of self-subsistence agree with these exacting labors seems to me an insoluble problem in Paris. But time is so fertile in good advice, and sometimes unties knots so easily that would have defied a sword, that I await its solution in patience. You wish me to compose, to unveil the gifts which you think I possess. My friend, why interrupt the course of a wise resolution and mar a work that is so slow of formation and so costly? Let the waters flow in their natural hidden course, following their tranquil destinies in a narrow, nameless bed. My mind is a domestic animal, and shuns adventure; that of the literary life is especially repugnant to its humor, and excites its contempt, speaking without the least self-sufficiency. I see delusion in the career, both in its essence and in the prize we seek, charged often with the venom of a secret ridicule. Looking at life with the naked eye, in the severe, monotonous expanse she presents to some of us, seems to me more conformable to the interest of the mind, and more in accordance with the laws of wisdom, than unceasingly applying one's eyes to the prism of art and poetry. Before I embrace art and poetry, I wish to have them demonstrated with an eternal solemnity and certainty, like {699} God. They are two doubtful phantoms, and wear a perfidious gravity that conceals a mocking laugh. That laugh I will not bear.

MAURICE
TO MLLE. EUGÉNIE DE GUÉRIN.

PARIS, Feb. 9th, 1836.

I saw Madame ------ (name illegible) day before yesterday. She is to leave Paris in a fortnight, and offered very obligingly to take charge of my commissions to Gaillae. I shall profit by her kindness to send you what you ask, the velvet neck-ribbons, the net for your hair (but, pray, why have you adopted this very ugly coiffure?) and the albe that Mimi asked me to send her. I hope the little articles I send will suit you both and fulfil your expectations exactly. But why be afraid of being indiscreet in drawing upon my purse a little? Think, dear friends, that I am your treasurer here, and that I wish you to consider me as such. If you had reminded me sooner of the cloaks, you would have had them now. I would gladly have deferred getting one for myself until next year, and should not now be regretting the fact that my shoulders are well covered, while I know that cold and damp air are penetrating to yours as you go to Andillac. I am quite provoked with myself for not having thought of it. Am I not very ungracious, never beforehand with any idea, but waiting to be urged out of what looks like indifference? Are you annoyed with me for this, and could you ever judge me by mere external signs? Never, I am sure. You have too much penetration to deceive yourselves for a moment about my affection, when it is most hidden or most ungainly.

I am glad to know that the union which has been so long uncertain is at last secured. I have no doubt that all the conditions of happiness will be found in it, if only health can be added to them.

The lime of papa's journey is drawing near. From a distance it is difficult to judge his course correctly; the moment itself must have arrived before one can appreciate it truly.

I am trying to find out at this moment what I may count upon in the future for the accomplishment of my dearest hopes.

The last sentences in this letter refer to Guérin's marriage with Mlle. de Gervain, which is so fully described in Eugénie's letters from Paris that it needs no comment here. Then followed a few months of tranquil success, a lingering illness at Le Cayla, a happy death-bed; and our story ends, as all true stories must end, in a graveyard. By the gateway of that old cemetery of Andillac, where Eugénie sunned herself one day sitting on a tombstone, while waiting for her turn to go to confession, is a white marble obelisk surmounted by a cross. Caroline placed it there as her last gift to her husband, and it bears these words:

Here rests my friend
Who was my husband
Only eight months. Farewell.
Pierre George Maurice
De Guérin du Cayla.
Born August 4th, 1810,
Died at Le Cayla
July 19th, 1839.

Close by stands the little church whose chief ornament is a delicately wrought statue of the Blessed Virgin, presented by Queen Marie Amélie at Eugénie's petition. The belfry is crumbling to decay, and the tottering porch under which the dove of Le Cayla passed so often appeals pitifully to those who have a zeal for the preservation of God's house.

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A record has been made of Eugénie's daily life by one who had hourly opportunities of watching her actions, and we cannot refrain from laying it before our readers. Nothing concerning the sister of Maurice can be inappropriate in an article devoted to him, and it will be well to see how holy and regular a life may be led in the world without singularity or narrowness.

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