Chapter XXXVII: Part I: Awakening (1)

Berthe was holding a council about bonnets with her maid and Mme. Augustine when I went in. The complexion of the sky, it would seem, was a grave complication of the question at issue; it was of a dull leaden color, for, though the heat was intense, the sun was not shining outright, but sulking under a heavy veil of cloud that looked as if it might explode in a thunder-storm before the day was over.

“What a blunderer you are, Antoinette!” exclaimed Berthe impatiently. “The idea of putting me into pearl-color under a sky like that! Where are your eyes?”

Antoinette looked out of the window, saw the folly of her conduct, and proposed a pink bonnet to relieve the unbecoming sky and the gray costume. The amendment was approved of; so she left the room to fetch the bonnet.

“She is a good creature, Antoinette; but she is wonderfully absent-minded,” remarked Berthe.

Mme. Augustine sighed, smiled, and shrugged her shoulders.

“What will you, Madame la Comtesse? Every one is not born an artist.”

“Every one who is born with eyes in their head can use them if they have any sense,” said Berthe; and she took up the ivory puff on her dressing-table, and began very deliberately shaking out delicate white clouds of _poudre à la violette_ over her forehead and cheeks.

We were going together to a marriage at St. Roch, and we were to be there at _midi précis_, the _faire-part_ said, so I had to remind Berthe that, if the business of powdering and puffing proceeded at this rate, we might save ourselves the trouble of the drive. With the sudden impulse that carried her so swiftly from one object to another, she dropped the puff, snatched her pink bonnet from Antoinette, put it on, fastened it herself, seized her gloves and prayer-book, and we hurried down-stairs and were off.

On turning into the Faubourg St. Honoré, we found a crowd collected in front of the _mairie_. Berthe pulled the check-string.

“It’s news from the _frontière_!” she exclaimed eagerly. “If we were to miss the wedding, we must know what it is!”

She sprang out of the brougham, and I after her. The crowd was so deep that we could not get near enough to read the placards; but, judging by the exclamations and commentaries that accompanied the perusal by the foremost readers, the news was both exciting and agreeable.

“_Fallait pas nous effrayer, mes petites dames_,” said a _blouse_, who had seen us alight, and saw by our faces that we were alarmed. “We’ve beaten one-half of the Prussians to a jelly, and driven the rest across the Rhine.”

“The _canaille_! I always said they would run like rabbits the first taste they got of our chassepots,” exclaimed a lad of fourteen, who halted with arms akimbo and a basket of vegetables on his head to hear the news.

“And these are the chaps that marched out of Berlin to the cry of _Nach Paris! nach Paris!_ The beggars! They were glad enough to clean our streets--aye, and would have cleaned our boots in their moustachios, and thankful, just to turn a penny that they couldn’t make at home,” cried the first speaker.

“_Nach Paris_ indeed!” cried the lad with the vegetables. “Let them come; let them try it!”

“Let them!” echoed several voices. “We’ll give them a warm welcome.”

“Aye, that we will,” declared a pastry-cook from the other end of the _trottoir_; “and we’ll treat them well; we’ll serve them up _aspic à la bayonette et petits-pois à la mitrailleuse_.”

This keen joke was received with hilarity and immense applause, and the pastry-cook, with his _bonnet de coton_ perched on one side, strode off with an air of commanding insolence, like a man who has done his duty and knows it.

The remarks of the crowd, if not very lucid, were sufficiently conclusive as to the character of the placard that held them gaping before the _mairie_. The news was clearly good news: so, satisfied with this broad fact, Berthe and I jumped into the brougham and continued our way to St. Roch.

But it seemed as if there was a conspiracy against our getting there. Before we came to the Rue Royale, we were blocked in front by a troop of recruits, marching down from the boulevards to the Rue de Rivoli. Flags, and banners, and bunches of tricolored ribbons hoisted on sticks floated at intervals above the moving mass, and the stirring chant of the “Marseillaise” kept time to the roll of drums and the broken tramp of undrilled feet. The shops emptied themselves into the street; buyers and sellers rushed out to see the recruits and greet them with cheers and embraces, while many joined in the chorus, and shouted enthusiastically, “_Marchons, marchons, pour la patrie!_” the recruits every now and then, with an utter neglect of all choral harmony, relieving their pent-up patriotism by hurrahing and _Vive-la-France_-ing with frantic energy.

“Poor devils!” exclaimed a tradesman, who stood near us watching the stream flow past. “How many among them will ever set eyes on Paris again, I wonder!”

“Ah, indeed,” said his wife; “but, all the same, it’s a proud day for them this, whatever may come of it. If our _gamin_ were but a few years older, he would be stepping out with the best of them, and, who knows? he might come home with a pair of gold epaulets to his coat.”

“Tut, woman,” retorted the man sharply; “there is plenty of food for powder without him.” And he went back to his shop.

“What a horrible thing war is when one comes to think of it!” said Berthe, turning suddenly round with a flushed face. “Every man going by there is the centre of another life--some, perhaps, of many lives--that will never know happiness again if he is killed. It is a dreadful scourge. Thank God, I have no brothers!”

The way was cleared at last, and the carriages were able to move on. The noise and clamor that rose on all sides of us grew louder and wilder as we proceeded. One would have fancied the entire population had been seized with _delirium tremens_. The news of a victory coming unexpectedly after the first disasters of the campaign had elated the popular depression to frenzy, and, as usual with Paris, there was but one bound from the depths of despair to the wildest heights of exultation. Flags were thrust out of windows and chimney-pots, an eruption of tricolor broke out on the fronts of the houses, and the blank walls were variegated with red, white, and blue, as if by magic. Innumerable _gamins_ cropped up from those mysterious regions where _gamins_ dwell, and whence they are ready to emerge and improve the opportunity at a moment’s notice; the bright-faced ragged young vagabonds mustered in force on the pavement, formed themselves into an impromptu procession, and marched along the middle of the street, bawling out the “Marseillaise” at the top of their voice; older _gamins_ caught the infection, and bawled in response, and turned and marched with them. At the corner of the Place Vendôme, a citizen, unable to restrain the ardor of his patriotism, stopped a _fiacre_, and jumped up beside the driver, and bade him stand while he poured out his soul to the _patrie_. The cabman reined in his steed, and stood while the patriot spouted his improvisation, stretching out his arms to the column--the “immortal column”--and pointing his periods with the talismanic words, “_Invincible! Enfans de la France! Terreur de l’ennemi!_” and so forth. No speaker in the forum of old Rome ever elicited more inspiriting response from his hearers than the citizen patriot from the motley audience round his cab. Again and again his voice was drowned in vociferous cheers and bravos, and when he was done and about to descend from the rostrum, the cabman, altogether carried away by the emotions of the hour, flung his arms round the orator, and pressed him to his heart, and then, addressing himself to the assembled citizens, defiantly demanded if their fellow-citizen had not deserved well of them; if there was any danger for the _patrie_ while she could boast such sons as that! The appeal was rapturously responded to by all, but most notably by a native of the Vosges, who tossed his cap into the air, and caught it again, and cried vehemently: “_Prafo! prafo! Fife le pourgeois! fife la padrie!_”

If the words had been a shell scattering death among the listeners, their effect could not have been more startling. Like lightning the spirit of the crowd was changed; its joy went out like the snuff of a candle; for one second it swayed to and fro, hesitating, then a yell, a hiss, and a scream shot up in quick succession.

“A spy! a traitor! a Prussian! _A l’eau! à la lanterne!_” And away they flew in hot pursuit of the luckless Alsatian, whose German accent had raised the devil in them. The orator stood by the column alone in his glory, pelted by the jargon of cries that shot across him on every side from the boulevards and the many streets running out of the Place. “_Marchons! à l’eau! à Berlin! un espion!_” It was like the clash of contending tongues from Babel.

This was our last adventure till we reached St. Roch. As might have been expected, we were late. The wedding was over, and the bride was undergoing the ceremony of congratulations in the sacristy. We elbowed our way through the throng of guests, and were in due time admitted to embrace the Marquise de Chassedot, _née_ Hélène de Karodel, and to shake hands with the bridegroom, and sprinkle our compliments in proper proportion over the friends and relatives on both sides.

At the wedding breakfast, the conversation naturally turned, to the exclusion of all other topics, on the happy event which had brought us all together; but as soon as the bride left the table, to change her bridal dress for a travelling one, everybody, as if by common consent, burst out into talk about the war and the news that had thrown the city into such commotion. The cautious incredulity with which the bulletin was discussed contrasted strangely with the tumult of enthusiasm which we had just witnessed outside. It was quite clear no one believed in the “famous victory.” Some went so far as to declare that it was only a blind to hide some more shameful disaster that had yet befallen us; others, less perverse, thought it might be only a highly colored statement of a slight success. As to the authorities, it was who would throw most stones at them. The government was a rotten machine that ought to have been broken up long ago; it was like a ship that was no longer seaworthy, and just held together while she lay at anchor in the port, but must inevitably fall to pieces the first time she put out to sea, and go down before the wind with all her crew. The only exceptions to the rule were those government officials who happened to be present, and these were, of course, the life-boats that had been left behind by the stupidity of the captain. But this had always been the way. In the downfall of every government, we see the same short-sighted jealousy--the men who might have saved it shoved aside by the selfish intriguers who sacrifice the country to their own aims and interests. Some allusion was made to the threatened siege of Paris; but it was cut short by the irrepressible merriment of the company. The most sober among them could not speak of such an absurdity without losing their gravity. It was, in fact, a heavy joke worthy of those beer-drinking, German braggarts, and no sane Frenchman could speak of it as anything else without being laughed at. As a joke, however, it was discussed, and gave rise to many minor pleasantries that provoked a good deal of fun. An interesting young mother wished the city might be invested and starved, because it would be so delightful to starve one’s self to death for one’s baby; to store up one’s scanty food for the innocent little darling, and see it grow fat on its mother’s _dénouement_. A young girl declared she quite longed for the opportunity of proving her love to her father. The Grecian daughter would be a pale myth compared to her, and the daughter of Paris would go down to posterity as a type of filial duty such as the world had never seen before. The kind and quantity of provisions to be laid in for the contingency gave rise to a vast deal of fun. One young _crévé_ hoped his steward would provide a good stock of cigars; he could live on smoke by itself, rather than without smoke and with every other sort of nourishment; but it should be unlimited smoke, and of the best quality. His sister thought of buying a monster box of chocolate bonbons, and contemplated herself, with great satisfaction, arrived at her last _praline_, which she heroically insisted on her brother’s accepting, while she embraced him and expired of inanition at his feet.

“Do you intend to stay for the tragedy, madame?” said the gentleman who was to live on smoke, addressing himself to Berthe.

“If I believed in the tragedy, certainly not,” she replied; “but I don’t. Paris is not going to be so obliging as to furnish us with an opportunity for displaying our heroism.”

“Not of the melodramatic sort,” observed her Austrian friend, with a touch of sarcasm in his habitually serene manner; “but those who have any prosaic heroism to dispose of can take it to the ambulances, and it will be accepted and gratefully acknowledged. I went yesterday to see a poor fellow who is lying in great agony at Beayon. His mother and sisters are watching him day and night. They dare not move him to their own home, lest he should die on the way. He lost both arms at Gravelotte.”

Berthe shuddered.

“Thank God, I have no brothers!” she murmured, under her breath.

“What is to be the end of it all?” I said. “Admitting that the siege of Paris is an utter impossibility, half Europe must be overhauled before peace is definitely re-established.”

“So it will be,” asserted the Austrian, coolly. “Wait a little, and you will see all the powers trotted out. First, Russia will put her finger in the _mêlée_, and then England’s turn will come.”

“I hope England will have the sense to keep out of it,” said Berthe; “she would be sure to get the worst of it, fighting single-handed, as she would do now.”

“That’s precisely why Russia will take care that she does not keep out of it,” remarked the Austrian.

“And what would Russia gain by England’s being worsted?”

“She would gain the satisfaction of paying off old scores that have rankled in her side these fifteen years. Do you fancy that she has forgotten that little episode in the Crimea, or that she is less bent on revenge because she doesn’t blast and blow and wake her enemy’s suspicions by threatening to annihilate her and so forth? Not a bit of it! Russia doesn’t boast and brag and put her victim on the _qui vive_; but quietly holds her tongue, and keeps her temper, and bides her time. When she is ready--and the day is not, perhaps, very remote--she will pick a fight with England; and the day the war is proclaimed, every pope and peasant in Holy Russia will light a candle to his holy images; and when the news comes in that England is thrashed, they will light as many as will illuminate the whole of Europe.”

“_Après?_” I said.

“_Après_ what, madame?”

“When they have thrashed her, as you say, what will they do with her?”

“Do with her? Annex her.”

He looked me straight in the face without a smile on his; but I could not believe he was speaking seriously, and I burst out laughing.

“The position of the conquered territory might offer some difficulties in the way of annexation,” I said, presently; “but we will assume that the obliging Providence of pious King William interferes in behalf of his Muscovite brother, and overcomes all obstacles by land or by sea, and that the doughty little island is constituted a colony of the czar’s dominion: what would he do with it? What earthly use would it be to him?”

“Use!” echoed the Austrian, elevating his eyebrows with a supercilious smile. “In the first place, he might make it a little _succursale_ of Siberia. There is a whole generation of those unmanageable, half-mad Poles safely walking about this side of Europe, plotting and dreaming and rhapsodizing. Only think what a convenience it would be to their father, the czar, if he had a centre of action so near to them! He could catch them like rabbits; and then, instead of hawking them over the world to Nerchintz and Irkoutsk, he could sentence them to perpetual sciatica, or chronic lumbago, or a mild term of ten years’ rheumatism, in the isle of fogs, _versus_ the mines, and the knout, and all the rest of the paternal chastisements administered in Siberia. Then, over and above this immense accommodation, he might have his docks in England; he might make the naughty Poles learn of his English subjects how to build ships, till by-and-by the navy of Holy Russia would be the finest in the world, and big, top-heavy Prussia would shake in her shoes, and hot-headed France would keep still on her knees, and all Europe would bow down before the empire of Peter the Great. Use, indeed! Let Russia catch England, and she’ll find plenty of use for her.”

“Yes,” I said; “just so; let her catch her.”

It was near three when the wedding-party broke up and Berthe and I drove away. We found the excitement abroad still unabated. At many street corners, patriots were perorating to animated crowds; tongues innumerable were running up and down the gamut of noise with the most extraordinary variations. There is always something stirring in the sight of great popular emotion; but this present instance of it was more threatening than exhilarating. You felt that it was dangerous, that there were terrible elements of destruction boiling up under the surface-foam, and that the chattering and shouting and good fellowship might, in a flash of lightning, be changed to murderous hate and a madness beyond control. It was madness already; but it was a harmless madness so far. Was it nothing more? was there no method in it? I wondered, as we beheld the people haranguing or being harangued, rushing and gesticulating, and all showing, in their faces and gestures, the same feverish excitement. Were they all no better than a cityful of apes, chattering and screaming from mere impulse? Was it all quackery and cant, without any redeeming note of sacrifice and truth and valor; and would all this fiery twaddle die out presently in smoke and dumbness?

We had turned down to the Rue de Richelieu, and were coming back, when our attention was arrested by a body of volunteers marching past the Place de la Bourse. They were in spruce new uniforms, and they were singing something that was not the “Marseillaise,” or “La Casquette au Père Bugeaud,” or any other of the many chants we had been listening to; altogether, their appearance and voices roused our curiosity, and Berthe desired the man to follow in their wake, that we might find out what kind of troops they were, and what they were singing. They turned up the Rue de la Baupe to the Place des Petits Pères, and there they entered the church of Notre Dame des Victoires, as many of them as could find room, for they numbered several thousand, and nearly half had to remain outside. The great front doors were thrown up, and remained open, so that those who were in the Place could see all that went on within. The soldiers were upon their knees, bare-headed, and a venerable old priest was speaking to them; but his voice was so feeble that what he said was only audible to those close to the altar-steps where he stood. There was no need to ask now who these men were, or whence they came. None but the men of Brittany, the sons of the men who went out to death against the ruthless soldiers of Robespierre, to the cry of _Dieu et le Roi!_ were likely to traverse Paris, bearing the cross at their head, and make the ex-votos of Notre Dame des Victoires shake on the walls to the stirring old Vendean hymns. None but the descendants of the men “whose strength was as the strength of ten, because their hearts were pure,” would dare in these days of sneaking, shamefaced Christianity to commit such a brazen act of faith. The volunteers were accompanied by a great concourse of people, mostly relatives and friends, but they all remained outside, leaving the church quite to the soldiers. It was a strange and beautiful sight to see all these brave, proud Bretons kneeling down with the simplicity of little children before the shrine of the Virgin Mother, and singing their hymns to the God of Hosts, and asking his blessing on themselves and their arms before they went out to battle. When they came out of the church, with the curé at their head, all the people of a common impulse fell upon their knees in the Place to get his blessing; the men received it with bare heads and in silence; the women weeping, most of them, while some lifted up their hands with the old priest and prayed out loud a blessing on the soldiers. Then he spoke a few words to them, not to the soldiers only or chiefly, but to all, and especially to the women. He bade them remember that they too had their part in the national struggle, and that they might be a noble help or a guilty hindrance, as they chose. Those who had husbands, or sons, or brothers in the ranks would understand this without any explanation from him. But there were very many amongst them who had no near relatives in danger, and who fancied that this would exempt them from sharing the common burthen, and that they could stand aloof from the general anxiety and pain. It was a selfish, pagan feeling, unworthy of a daughter of France, and still more of a Christian. There could be no isolation at a time like this. All should suffer, and all should serve. Those who happily had no kindred of their own at the frontier should adopt in spirit the brave fellows who had left none behind. They should care for them from a distance like true sisters, helping them in the battle-field with their prayers, and in the camp and the hospital by their active and loving ministration; let such among them as were fit and free to do it, go and learn of that other sisterhood of the diviner sort how to serve as they do who serve with the strong, pure love of charity; let those who could not do this give abundantly wherewith the stricken soldier might be healed and comforted on his bed of pain; if they could not give their hands, let them give their hearts and their money; let them help by sacrifice--sacrifice of some sort was within the reach of all. He blessed them again at the close of his little exhortation, and then every one got up. The Bretons fell into rank, and, rending the welkin with one loud cry of _Dieu et la France!_ set out to the Northern Railway. Berthe and I had been kneeling with the crowd.

“Let us follow and see the last of them,” she said, and we got into the brougham and went on at a foot-pace.

The scene at the station was one that will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. The pathos of those rough farewells, the lamentations of some of the women, the Machabean courage of others, the shrill crying of little children, the tears of strong men, who tore out their hearts, feeling it like men, but bearing it with the courage of soldiers and the exulting hope of Christians: it was a sight to make one’s heart glad to rapture or sad to despair. Some of the volunteers were of the noblest families in Brittany, others were workingmen, farmers, and peasants; there was the same mixture of classes in the throng of people that accompanied them; the pure accent of the most cultivated French, crossed here and there with the coarser tones of the Vendean patois; side by side with the suppressed agony of the chatelaine, who strove to hide her tenderness and tears from the gaze of bystanders, you saw the wretched sorrow of the peasant wife, who sobbed on her husband’s neck and clung to him in a last embrace. There was something more heart-rending in these humbler farewells, because one felt the sacrifice was more complete. If this was a last parting, there was nothing for either to fall back upon.

I lost sight of Berthe as soon as we alighted, and indeed I forgot her. My whole thoughts were absorbed in the scene going on around me. It was only when the bell rang, and the soldiers passed out to the platform, leaving the space comparatively empty, that I looked about for her, and saw her in the middle of the sidewalk with her arms round a young girl, who was sobbing as if her heart would break. It appeared that she was just a fortnight married to a Breton lad of her own age, nineteen; they had worked hard and saved all their little earnings these five years past in order to get married; and now, just as they were so happy, he had gone away from her, and she would never see him again; he was certain to be killed, because he was so good and loving and clever. Berthe pressed the poor child to her heart, and committed herself to the wildest pledges for the safe return of the young hero, and finally, after evoking a burst of passionate gratitude from the girl, who half-believed her to be a beneficial fairy sent to comfort her, Berthe exacted a promise that she was to come and see her the next day, and we set our faces towards home.

We drove on for a little while in silence, looking each out of our separate window, our hearts too full for conversation. I saw by Berthe’s eyes that she had been crying. I felt instinctively that there was a great struggle going on within her, but, though my whole heart was vibrating in sympathy with it, I could not say so. Presently she turned towards me, and exclaimed:

“And I was thanking God that I had no brothers! Blind, selfish fool that I was!”

She burst into tears, sobbing passionately, and hid her face in her hands. The change in her bright and volatile spirit seemed to make a change in all the world. I could not accuse the people, as I had done an hour ago, of being mere puppets, dancing to a tune and throwing themselves into attitudes that meant no more than a sick man’s raving. It seemed to me as if the aspect of the city and the sound of its voice had quite altered, and I all at once began to hope wonders of and for the Parisians. One could not but believe that they were striving to be in earnest, that the mother-pulse of patriotism, so long gagged and still, was now waking up, and beating with strong, hot throbs in the hearts of the people, and that, once alive and working, it would break out like a fire and burn away the unreality and the false glitter and the tragic comedy of their lives, and serve to purify them for a free and noble future. No; it was not all cant and tinkle and false echo. There was substance under the symbolizing. There were men amongst them who worshipped God, and were proud to proclaim it. There were hearts that seemed dead, but were only sleeping. Paris was dancing in mad mirth like a harlequin to-day, but to-morrow it would be different--the smoke and the flame would go out, leaving behind them the elements of a great nation burnt pure of the corroding dross that had choked and held them captive so long.

On arriving at home, Berthe found a costume which had just come from M. Grandhomme’s laid out on her bed. At any other moment, the sight would have claimed her delighted attention, but she turned from it with a feeling of indifference now, almost of disgust. Antoinette, who had been puzzling over some new trick in the tunic, took it up in a flurry and was for trying it on at once, to see how it fitted and whether the novelty became her mistress, but Berthe, with a movement of impatience, told her to put it away, that she was in no mood for attending to _bétises_ just then. The girl opened her eyes in astonishment. A costume of Grandhomme’s, that cost eleven hundred francs, to be called a _bétise_! It was flat profanity. She left the room with a painful presentiment that something very serious was amiss with Madame la Comtesse.

A soon as Berthe was alone, she began to think. It was a new experience in her life, this process of thinking, and she was hard pressed by it, for it was no vacant reverie that she was indulging in, but a sharp, compulsory review of her past and present existence--and the result was anything but soothing. Her life up to this day had been the life of a human butterfly, gay, airy, amusing, very enjoyable as regarded herself, and harmless enough as regarded her fellow-creatures. She had drunk her fill of the good things of life, enjoying herself in every possible way, but legitimately; she was incapable of wronging or hurting any one; she was extravagant in her dress and other luxuries, but her fortune allowed this, and she made no debts. So far, her life was blameless, and indeed, if she compared it with that of many of those around her, it was a very respectable one. But suddenly all her theories had collapsed, and her comfortable standard been upset. It turned out that she had a soul somewhere, though she had forgotten all about it, and been living, as if happily free from that incumbrance, in selfishness and folly, that were counted by this newly revealed standard little short of guilt. It was an unexpected discovery, and a most unpleasant one. That exclamation which had escaped her twice, and the thought of the great general sorrow, kept ringing in her ears like a warning and a reproach--“Thank God, I have no brother!” Who, then, were these men that she had just seen going forth in voluntary self-devotion to fight for her, and those who, like her, could not depend on themselves? Was there such a thing in Christendom as a woman or a man who had no brothers? Yet Berthe had believed herself to be this impossibility; she had been living up to it in utter forgetfulness of her brethren, ignoring them as a heathen might, or using them coldly for her own selfish purposes, to work for her and minister to her interests or her pleasures. There were some people whom she loved, but it was a love that narrowed to self; those who were disagreeable, or stupid, or bad she disliked, and, unknown to herself perhaps, despised. There were no wide sympathies in this discarded soul of hers for the great family of mankind; for the publicans and sinners and the lepers and the blind and the lame; she was kind-hearted, but suffering, to touch her, must be seen through some æsthetic coloring; the miseries and follies and infirmities of a prosaic kind that abounded on all sides of her she turned from in disgust, she avoided them like noisome things that belonged to creatures of an inferior clay and had no kinship with her more refined and privileged individuality. “Sacrifice is within the reach of all of you; you must help by sacrifice,” that old man had said. What a strange sound the words had! What did he mean? Sacrifice! Was there any place in her life for such a thing? She looked round at the azure hangings of her room, at the bright mirrors that reflected her figure in a dozen varying aspects, at the costly goods and trinkets that littered her dressing-table, at the couches and chairs of every modern contrivance inviting the body to luxurious repose, and she saw that her nest was fair to look at, but too full for this unbidden guest called sacrifice to find a place in it. Her eye wandered absently from one object to another till it fell upon a pale ivory figure on a velvet background, fastened to the wall, and half-shrouded by the curtains of the bed.

“I am young; it is not too late; I will begin life afresh,” said Berthe, rising and moving restlessly across the room; “I will begin to-morrow, no, to-day--now.”

She went close up to the bed, and stood for a moment with clasped hands, her lips moving in quick, low utterances, and then fell upon her knees before the pale, thorn-crowned head looking down upon her.

They never knew it, but this conquest of a noble woman’s life was perhaps the first victory won by the Breton soldiers who set out to battle that day!

TO BE CONTINUED.

AFTER READING MR. TUPPER’S PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY.

On wisdom’s steed sit Solomon and Tupper,
The saddle one bestrides, and one the crupper.

AN ESSAY ON EPIGRAMS.

Who nowadays writes epigrams? The species _epigrammatist_ seems to be well-nigh extinct. Now and then some Herr Professor, whose learning is less ponderous than common, after due incubation hatches what he calls a _Sinngedicht_. But his achievement is too often a paraphrase, if not a literal translation, of some Latin original. At intervals, too, Thorold Rogers, clergyman and social reformer, flings into London journals some explosive squib couched in verse, but the missile is tolerably harmless, and draws far less attention than a telegram. No doubt before the invention of the newspaper the epigram, so easy to remember and so incisive in its effect, was no mean engine of cajolery, or calumny. But the days are gone when such weapons were effective in the political arena, and either conquered a pension or provoked a _lettre de cachet_. Byron, who worshipped Pope, and deemed everything his master had done worth doing, sometimes ventured into Martial’s province, but rarely successfully, except in _Don Juan_. A score of epigrams might be culled from that poem which would answer all the conditions of a rigorous definition. Since Byron, no poet of eminence has condescended to this form of art. Tennyson indeed is terse and telling, as is proved by the facility with which we quote him; yet he seems as incapable of epigrams as Morris, of whom most of us, much as we like him, can with difficulty remember a line. Browning might write them if he chose, but he does not choose, and so it is that the old epigrammatist lingers only in some isolated representative, as the dodo did in Madagascar, or like that Tasmanian survivor whose present existence is clouded with a doubt.

Epigrammatists may perish from the face of the earth, but the epigram is immortal. It well deserves to be so. What form of wit imparts so much pleasure to so many persons? If the world could be fairly polled, it might be found that some tiny epigram has yielded more genuine delight than the most ambitious works of genius, as, for instance, the _Paradise Lost_. If there is one Latin author who is still read for hearty amusement, it is Martial, and even the candid schoolboy who declines to be charmed by the _Iliad_ can see some fun in the _Anthology_.

It would probably pose most persons to be suddenly called on to define an epigram. And no wonder, for every great scholar since the manuscripts of Martial were recovered in Western Europe has tried his hand at a definition, and none except Lessing has grasped it. The literal meaning is, of course, _inscription_, and the word was originally applied to the writing on a monument or tomb. But in later times the word obtained in Greek rhetoric and poetry the peculiar significance which in English distinguishes the epigram from an epitaph, and in German the _Sinngedicht_ from a mere _Aufschrift_ or _Ueberschrift_. We shall at once lay our finger on this peculiar significance by answering the question, why the Greeks had but one word where the Germans have two?

We need hardly say that it could be neither a poverty of language nor a contempt for precision which led the former to content themselves with the original term. If there is anything notorious, it is that the Athenian never suffered a new idea, or the finest shade of deviation from an old idea, to shiver in the cold of paraphrase, but straightway clothed it with a snug, warm word, cut and fitted to the shape. We may be sure that a sense of some nice propriety, the recognition, perhaps, of some just and suggestive metaphor, induced him to attach the name of _epigram_ to a particular class of little poems, without any direct reference to their fitness for inscription on memorial stones.

The fact is, that every genuine epigram is divisible into two distinct parts, of which the first answers precisely to the monument or tomb on which the primitive _epigram_ was written, and the second to the inscription proper which the monument bore. To _surprise_, and thereupon to _explain_, to secure the twofold delight which springs in curiosity and ripens in gratification, was the purpose of the inscribed monument, and is still the aim of the true epigram. Let us apply this to some faultless type, like that stanza by Sir William Jones:

On parent knees, a naked new-born child,
Weeping thou sat’st, while all around thee smiled;
So live that, sinking to thy last long sleep,
Thou then may’st smile when all around thee weep.

It is plain that the first two lines awaken _curiosity_, excite _interest_. They answer to the graceful shaft which arrests the eye and allures the step. They win us to approach and investigate, to look for some further revelation, to ponder on the lesson which the last two lines convey. In a word, attention is first secured, and then rewarded. Let the reader test this analysis in other instances, and he will find it essential to the epigram that both these feelings, the _longing_ of expectation and the _satisfaction_ of it, should be evoked, and in this order. All the other qualities which have been supposed to be peculiar to the epigram, but are really common to many sorts of short and witty poems, may be easily deduced from this definition. Thus, the more terse and vigorous are the lines which introduce the subject, the more potent will be their appeal to curiosity, and the more tenacious their hold upon our interest. Architecturally, the monument will be more impressive. On the other hand, the more novel and delightful is the concluding thought, or the more felicitous and pointed the expression of it, the more complete is our satisfaction, the more amply do we feel repaid for our pains in deciphering the inscription. It follows likewise that the second half, or _thought_, of the epigram must interpret the _fact_ embodied in the first, otherwise the inscription, instead of explaining the particular monument which bears it, serves merely to point us to another. So much for the veritable _Sinngedicht_. Of the pseudo-epigram there are many varieties, but the two commonest are those which awaken curiosity without appeasing it, or else instruct without enlisting attention. Without stopping to point out the flaws in many little poems, more or less witty, more or less compact, which are falsely called epigrams, we shall perceive the accuracy and value of the above definition by glancing at some famous models of the true form. In all the examples we may cite, we will give the originals, that they who do not like our version may make a better for themselves.

Let us begin with a couplet from Wenicke, who has written so much and so well in this way as to merit the name of the German Martial:

Du liebest Geld und Gut, noch so, dass dein Erbarmen
Der Armen fühlt. Du fliehst die Armuth, nicht die Armen.

We have not been able in this instance to preserve both the rhyme and the metre, and prefer to keep the latter. The lines convey a noble eulogy.

Thou lovest gold and goods, yet so that thy compassion
Feels for the needy still, shunning need, and not the needy.

Here are two more from German sources. We have forgotten who wrote them, but our readers may remember. The turn of the thought in the second is novel and rather pretty:

Ihr sagt, die Zeit vergeht!
Weil Ihr das falsch versteht.
Die Zeit ist ewig: Ihr vergeht!

We say. Time passes! Is it so?
Time waits! ’Tis only we who go.

* * * * *

Schon vier Mal kam ich, deine Diener sprachen
Du seist nicht da, man liess mich nicht herein.
Mein Kind! um eine Göttin mir zu sein
Brauchst du dich ja nicht unsichtbar zu machen.

Four times I called, the servant said,
“She’s out!”--I might not see my maid.
To seem a goddess, dear, to me,
Invisible thou needst not be!

The greatest of German poets are not ashamed to stoop to epigram, and sometimes aim to reproduce the metre which Martial preferred. Of the following essays in elegiacs the first three are by Schiller, the others by Emanuel Geibel:

Glaubt mir, es ist kein Märchen, die Quelle von Jugend sie rinnet
Wirklich und immer! Ihr fragt, wo? In der dichtenden Kunst!

Trust me,’tis more than a fable; the Fountain of Youth springeth ever
Jocund and fresh as of old! Where? In the art of the bard!

* * * * *

Glücklicher Säuglung! Dir ist ein unendlicher Raum noch die Wiege!
Werde Mann, und dir wird eng die unendliche Welt.

Happy the soul of a babe, finding infinite room in the cradle!
Grown to be man, he will find narrow the infinite world.

* * * * *

Willst du dich selber erkennen, so sieh wie die Ander’n es treiben!
Willst du die Ander’n versteh’n, blick’ in dein eigenes Herz!

Man, wilt thou study thyself, scan keenly the conduct of others!
Aiming to know other men, turn the eye in on thy heart!

* * * * *

Doppelte Schwing hat die Zeit. Mit der Einen entführt sie die Freuden,
Doch mit der Anderen sanft kühite den thränenden Blick.

Time in a dream I beheld twi-winged, with one silently stealing
Joy, with the other he fanned kindly the tear-swollen eye.

* * * * *

Darin gleichet der Dichter dem Kind. Es erscheint das Bekannte
Ihm wie ein Wunder: Bekannt’ blickt das Geheimniss ihn an!

Dwells in a poet the child, who still with a feeling of wonder
Eyes the familiar; to him still looks familiar the strange.

* * * * *

The grand-master of epigrammatists, Martial, with the proud humility of conscious power, confessed himself a pupil of Catullus. But it was rather his purity of diction and naïve simplicity which Martial borrowed from the elder poet, not the point and sparkle of his epigrams, which are of right his own. The minor poems of Catullus include few which are strictly epigrams, and of these only two or three admit of distillation into a modern language. We give one which is addressed, like most of his amatory verse, to Lesbia. In this instance we abandon the attempt to reproduce the Latin elegiacs.

Lesbia mi dicit semper male, nec tacet unquam
De me. Lesbia me, dispeream, nisi amat!
Quo signo? Quasi non totidem mox deprecor illi
Assiduē, verum dispeream, nisi amo.

Always my Lesbia treats me ill,
By this I’ll swear she loves me well!
How so? I’m rude to her, but still
I’ll swear I love my Lesbia well!

While we are on the subject of lover’s whims and inconsistencies, we venture to give an experiment of our own. At least we may claim the expression, although the thought, if we remember rightly, belongs to Moore:

Love halts, you said, but will not stay,
And soon fares on his pilgrim’s way.
A pilgrim, yes! O’er wave and sand,
His eye still sought the Holy Land,
Welcomed each altar, as he passed,
Until he found the Shrine at last.

Before we come to Martial, let us pause a moment over the Greek _Anthology_, of which some parts, no doubt, were written later than his day, but others must share with Catullus the honor of suggesting to the brilliant Spaniard the right conception of the epigram, as well as the appropriate treatment. Unlike Horace, however, Martial rarely condescended to borrow either thought or expression from a foreign source. We may say of him, and more truthfully, what Denham said of Cowley, that he “melted not the ancient gold.” Perhaps the most famous epigram in the _Anthology_ is that on a picture of Pythagoras. It has been a dozen times translated into Latin or expanded in Greek, but generally with indifferent success:

Αὐτὸν Πυθαγόρην ὁ ζωγράφος ὃν μετὰ φωνῆς
Εἶδες ἂν εἴγε λαλεῖν ἤθελε Πυθαγόρης.

Most of the versions require four lines, and some eight, to project the idea, and only two that we have seen matches the original in compression; here is one of them, by Hugo Grotius:

Ipsum Pythagoram dat cernere pictor et ipsum
Audires sed enim non cupit ipse loqui.

The objection to this is--and it lies to the Greek as well--we are asked to imagine that Pythagoras expressly desired to be depicted silent, in other words, requested the painter _not_ to perform an impossibility--which is very like an absurdity. The true idea, and one that gives point and beauty to the compliment, is rather this, that since a prime tenet of the Pythagoreans was the maintenance of a thoughtful silence and a wise reserve, it would have been false to the mental posture of the man, and therefore bad art (supposing it to have been possible) to have represented him otherwise than in speechless meditation. We have attempted to give some such turn to the thought in English elegiacs.

There Pythagoras stands to the life! Be sure we should hear him
Speak--but Pythagoras taught wisdom in silence to muse.

It is no mean honor to be indisputably the first in any line of art, and certainly within the field of the epigram Martial is prince of poets. He conceived the form of poetry to which he devoted his life to possess much more of dignity and importance than we incline to allow it, and he did much to make good his claim. He held towards previous epigrammatists the same commanding position which Dante holds towards Sicilian and Provençal poets, or Marot towards the Trouvères, and he wrought the epigram to that climax of perfection from which progress means nothing but decline. He filed and fitted his lines with a punctilious care which we should expect to betray itself, yet his verse flows with a limpid ease through which the eye seeks in vain the labor that smoothed the channel. We may call him in simple justice what Bulwer called Addison:

Exquisite genius, to whose chiselled line
The ivory’s polish lends the ivory’s shine!

To hope to reflect in a translation the gleam and edge of Martial would be absurd. We shall merely aim in a general way, while preserving the metre, to sketch the outlines of the central thought. If our readers miss the bloom on the rose, we at least cannot help them. They must seek the garden where it grew, and pluck it for themselves.

In the course of a long residence in Rome, Martial seems to have suffered the usual vicissitudes of authors, and sometimes in moments of eclipse found his friends more willing to reproach than to relieve him. He fancies he detects a reason for it:

Genus, Aucte, lucri divites habent iram.
Odisse quam donasse vilius constat.

Auctus, the rich count wrath a gain:
That to hate costs less than to give is plain.

In the time of Domitian a round portion was as essential to the marriage of a Roman virgin as it is now with French ladies of condition, who must either endow or derogate. The Latin prototype of the Belgravian mother must have had grievous cause of complaint when the state bestowed prizes on such as were at once husbands and fathers. The following epigram, however, takes a more elevated view, and strikes the key-note of Tennyson’s rhapsody in the well-known lines of _The Princess_:

Uxorem quare locupletem ducere nolim
Quæritis. Uxori nubere nolo meæ!
Inferior matrona suo sit, Prisce, marito!
Non aliter fuerint femina virque pares.

Why so reluctant, you ask, to wed with a woman of fortune?
Friend, I would marry a wife, not have a wife marry me!
Trust me, the rule is sound, let the woman owe all to her husband,
Thus shall they, man and wife, each owe the other nothing.

Here is a playful innuendo which has often been copied. Marot’s version is exceedingly neat, but somewhat coarse, so our readers must take ours in place of it:

Nubere vis Prisco, non miror, Paula, sapisti!
Ducere te non vult Priscus, et ille sapit!

Jill fancies Jack for a husband--truly a sensible woman!
Jack has no fancy for Jill--truly a sensible man!

No epigram of Martial’s is more admired, and none seems to us more admirable, than that which chronicles the magnanimous act of Arria, who showed her husband the way to death. She lived in the time of Messalina, but the deed was worthy of Lucrece. Perhaps the traditional fortitude and fashionable stoicism of Rome might have paused contented with the historical fact, but modern sentiment cannot fail to welcome the touch of tenderness in the concluding line. We place beside it _The Death of Portia_ because the two poems are pitched in the same key. The latter, however, is a mere _historiette_, told with rare force and fervor, but without the point and turn which distinguish a true epigram. To recur to our metaphor, the monument is a noble one, but the superscription is wanting. Our readers will observe that Martial’s Portia follows her husband to the grave, while she precedes him in Shakespeare’s play.

Casta suo gladium cum traderet Arria Paeto,
Quem de visceribus traxerat ipsa suis;
Si qua fides, vulnus quod feci non dolet, inquit.
Sed quod tu facies hoc mihi, Paete, dolet!

Paetus reluctant to die wavered; him Arria marking
Brued in her bosom the sword, which to her husband she gave;
Think not, she cried, that my wound bears with it aught that
is painful!
That which thou dealest thyself, _that_ will be painful to me!

* * * * *

Conjugis audisset fatum cum Porcia Bruti,
Et subtracta sibi quæreret arma dolor,
Nondum scitis, ait, mortem non posse negari
Credideram satis hoc vos docuisse patrem
Dixit et ardentes avido bibit ore favillas,
I nunc, et ferrum, turba molesta, nega!

Portia, thy Brutus is dead! they told her. She in her anguish
Silently sought for a sword--kindness had hid it from her.
Dream ye, officious, she cried, that death will admit of denial!
Truly I trusted my sire, Cato, had taught ye better!
Pausing she thrust in her mouth live coals, and eagerly swallowed;
Go, ye officious, refuse Portia a useless weapon!

In so far as the modern epigram is modelled upon Martial, we should expect it to flourish with especial luxuriance in the classic literature of France. Modern French, of all the daughters of Latin, inherits the most terseness and precision, and adapts herself with peculiar ease to a compact and pregnant style. The burst of admiration for the ancients which deserved the name of Renaissance, and rose in Ronsard and Du Bellay to a fervent and naïve enthusiasm, was tempered by Malherbe and Boileau to a cautious study of principles and the elaborate finish of expression. It is a significant fact that Malherbe during the most fruitful period of his life, from twenty to forty-five, composed on the average but thirty-three lines a year. Waller had such examples in his mind when he urged his countrymen to prune their style:

Our lines reformed and not composed in haste,
Like marble polished, would like marble last.

Malherbe himself made but few epigrams, and none comparable to the familiar stanza in the elegy which he wrote to console a friend. Translating it is like handling a butterfly:

She bloomed in a world where the sweetest that blows
Is the first to decay;
And rosebud, her life was the life of a rose,
The space of a day.