Chapter XXIII: Victor’s Death.—plots Against Louis (4)

It is not that she is dazzled with the prince, but with what she considers the perfect man. And indeed, in the eyes of the world, Count George is a perfect man, whilst, in the eyes of his mother, he is something still more; and therefore a _mésalliance_ would to her, whose heart was entirely her son’s—all the rest of her being divided between the _modiste_, the physician, and the _salon_—seem a greater crime than many of those which bring men to the scaffold. Fleurange knows this, and therefore—though, when the confession is forced from her, she does not even to himself deny her love for George and her desire to be his wife—she is convinced that their union is impossible. She does the best thing under the circumstances: she determines to leave the household of the princess; and thus, not for the first time, do the promptings of _duty_, of what one ought to do, of what God would have us do, correspond with those of common sense. George has avowed his love for Fleurange to his mother, and the confession has such an effect upon her that she is cured for the time from an attack of one of those incurable maladies not uncommon with ladies who are blessed with everything that this world can offer. There is _caste_ even in illnesses, and fashion in a complaint as in a bonnet. Thus, when some years back the eye-glass became a fashionable ornament, all young England, fashionable and would-be fashionable, suddenly grew weak in one eye, whilst the “sons of industry” remained in their normal condition.

The princess rises to the gravity of the situation, and extracts a promise from her son that he will never marry Fleurange without her consent. But all her difficulties are smoothed away by Fleurange herself, who, even though the count has asked her to be his wife, determines to sacrifice herself for his sake, and go.

“‘Fleurange,’ said the count, with a grave accent of sincerity far more dangerous than that of passion, ‘you shall be my wife if you will consent to be—if you will accept this hand I offer you.’

“‘With your mother’s consent?’ said Fleurange slowly, and in a low tone. ‘Can you assure me of that?’

“After a moment’s hesitation, George replied: ‘No, not to-day; but she will yield her consent, I assure you.’

“Fleurange hesitated in her turn. She knew only too well to what a degree this hope was illusory, but this was her last opportunity of conversing with him. The next day would commence their lifelong separation, which time, distance, and prolonged absence would continually widen. There was no longer any danger in telling the truth—the truth, alas! so devoid of importance now, but which would, perhaps, second the duty she had to accomplish quite as well as contradiction.

“‘Ah! well,’ she at last replied, with simplicity. ‘Yes, why should I deny it? Should life prove more favorable to us; if by some unforeseen circumstance, impossible to conceive, your mother should cheerfully consent to receive me as a daughter, oh! then what an answer I would make you know without my telling you. You are likewise perfectly aware that until that day I will never listen to you.’

“‘But that day will come,’ cried George vehemently, ‘and that speedily.’

“‘Perhaps,’ said Fleurange. ‘Who knows what time has in store for us? And who knows that in time the obstacle may not come from yourself?’

“She endeavored to say these last words in a playful tone. They were hardly uttered before she suddenly stopped; but the shade of the large cypresses that bordered the road prevented George from seeing the tears that inundated her face.”

Thus they part, under the cypresses. George thinks she is only leaving for a short time, to return again. She goes back to the convent, to bury there her broken heart and the hopes her own strong will has blighted. But convents are not built on broken hearts; and Madre Maddalena, who is none the less gifted with common sense and worldly prudence for leading a retired and saintly life, sends her back into the world “to continue the contest,” for the reasons already given, with these words:

“O my poor child! it would be much easier for me to tell you to remain and never leave us again. It would be sweeter for me to preserve you thus from all the sufferings that yet await you. But, believe me, the day will come when you will rejoice you were not spared these sufferings; and you will acknowledge that she who is now speaking to you knew you better than you knew yourself.”

Fleurange goes back to the world, to her uncle’s family, which is gradually recovering its fall through the efforts of Clement, her cousin, who was the first to welcome her among them. Notwithstanding her suffering, she carries on all the duties of life like a Christian woman, without despondency as though God were blotted out of the world, and equally without that foolish ostentation of gaiety sometimes assumed. She never thought with Dorothea that she had suffered “all the troubles of all the people on the face of the earth.” The hour never came to her “in which the waves of suffering shook her too thoroughly to leave any power of thought”; not that she suffered or loved less than Dorothea, but because she saw through all something higher than human suffering and more lovely than human love. That pagan hour never came to her, when Dorothea “repeated what the merciful eyes of solitude have looked on for ages in the spiritual struggles of man”; when “she besought hardness, and coldness, and aching weariness to bring her relief from the mysterious incorporeal might of her anguish”; nor did “she lie on the bare floor and let the night grow cold around her, while her grand woman’s frame was shaken by sobs as if she had been a despairing child.” Fleurange never, as did Dorothea, “yearned toward _the perfect Right_, that it might make a throne within her, and rule her errant wrong.” Whether she yearned or not, she knew what was right and what was wrong, and, by praying to God for help and strength, she did right. If women in love stop to ask themselves what is the “perfect right,” in nine cases out of ten in love matters the perfect right will be the absolute wrong. Right is fixed; there is a law in those things, as in all questions of the soul, not evolved out of the individual’s brains, but out of the heart of Christian charity, which is in Christ. Duty does not depend on feeling “the largeness of the world,” and on being “a part of that involuntary, palpitating life,” but on being a creation of God. George Eliot tends to pantheism, and, spite of herself, Christian instinct only prompts her heroine to do what is right. If we are “a part of that involuntary and palpitating life,” and _nothing more_, there is no _necessary_ reason for charity.

The difference between Dorothea and Fleurange, two characters which, allowing for side differences of clime, are naturally similar, consists in all the sufferings of the one bearing the aspect of self-torture, whilst those of the other are a sacrifice. The sorrows of Fleurange, which, after all, are much greater than those of Dorothea, are endured for God’s sake and as coming from God. They are not a whit less painful to nature on this account; but they are explicable, and have a meaning which Dorothea never seems to realize. One suffers because she cannot help herself; the other because it is God’s will. On George Eliot’s principle, there is no guarantee for a person doing right at all, inasmuch as it is so very difficult to determine what is right. If right be “a part of that involuntary and palpitating life” _only_, it has no meaning beyond what is contained in the word accident; that is to say, right and wrong are effects of circumstance. Nor is this forcing a meaning, as may be seen from various passages in the book—unless, indeed, we have read them very wrongly. Thus, she speaks of the spirit struggling “against _universal pressure_, which will one day be too heavy for it, and bring the heart to its final pause.” She sneers at our referring a man “to the divine regard with perfect confidence,” and says: “Nay, it is even held sublime for our neighbor to expect the utmost there, however little he may have got from us.” And in another place: “Any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like _a calculated irony_ on the indifference or frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbor. Destiny stands by sarcastic, with our _dramatis personæ_ folded in her hand.”

This sounds very fine, and that last sentence might have been written by one of the Greek poets. It is beautifully pagan; but, after all, human life is regulated in man and woman by a will that is free to use or reject the “slow preparation of effects,” to laugh at the phantom, destiny; and when it pleases God to bring this lesser life of time to “a final pause,” man goes before his Creator to give an account of his servitude indeed, but not of his slavery.

Fleurange writes from the convent to the princess. She herself had arranged the plot which was to blind George to her final departure, and this is how the princess receives the letter of the girl who had so freely offered up her heart on the altar of duty. The princess knew of the sacrifice. It is doubtful whether Rosamond Vincy ever displayed her unconscious selfishness so thoroughly as this:

“The Princess Catherine, in an elegant morning _négligé_, was alone with the Marquis Adelardi in her small _salon_, when a letter was brought her on a silver salver. She glanced at the address.

“‘Ah! from Gabrielle’ [Fleurange], she exclaimed. ‘The very letter I was expecting to-day.’

“She opened it and hastily ran over its contents. ‘Very well done—very,’ she said. ‘Nothing could be more natural. She hit upon the very best thing to say.... Here, Adelardi,’ continued she, throwing him the letter, ‘read it. It must be owned that this Gabrielle is reliable and true to her word. Moreover, she has a good deal of wit.’

“Adelardi attentively read the letter.

“‘What you have just remarked, princess, is very true; but this time circumstances have favored you. This letter was not written for the occasion; it is sincere from beginning to end. This young girl can keep a secret, but is incapable of prevarication. This is not the kind of a letter she would have written if the contents were not absolutely true.”

“‘Do you think so?’ said the princess. “It is of no consequence, however, as to that, though it would simplify everything still more. But in that case—ah! _ciel!_ let me look at the letter again.’

“She now read it entirely through, instead of merely glancing at the contents.

“‘But in that case, I have lost my physician, and the only one who ever understood my case. This, _par exemple!_ is a real misfortune. If he had had time, at least, to answer my last letter, and tell me what springs I should go to this year! Whom shall I consult now? May is nearly gone, and next month I ought to be there. Really, I am unlucky!’

“‘What do you expect, princess?’ said the marquis, in a tone imperceptibly ironical. ‘One cannot always have good luck.’”

In the quiet of her German retreat, Fleurange suddenly receives the news that an insurrection has broken out in Russia, in which George is implicated. He is taken prisoner, and only awaits in St. Petersburg the sentence which is to banish him to that living tomb, Siberia. Fleurange now sees the opportunity of uniting herself to her lover by burying herself with him. As his hopes in this world are for ever blasted, she obtains the consent of the princess to their union, and sets out for St. Petersburg under the guidance of her young cousin Clement, who knows the object of her mission. This journey and its results complete the fourth book, entitled “The Immolation,” and in it the author rises to a height of power in pathos, description, and incident which is all the more telling that it was altogether unsuspected: The long ride along the dreary strand through the day and through the night; the crossing of the frozen river in the darkness, with the ice cracking ominously beneath them; the scene where Clement and Fleurange are left alone in the face of eternity and immediate death, and where, for the first and last time, when hope of life seems banished, the confession of his love bursts out of his young heart to the half-conscious girl; the last struggle to carry her safe through on her mission of self-immolation to the man she loves—all told in the same simple, unpretentious style, but with an inner force that carries the reader along, and absorbs him as though he were witnessing a tragedy. The strain is sustained to the close of the story. Amid all the fascination, and glitter, and glare of the imperial court of the Czar, when the late Emperor Nicholas was in his “golden prime,” creeps the oppressive sense of a mute but awful terrorism through an atmosphere of combustible human passion all the more dangerous for being so constrained. The petition of Fleurange is about to be granted; but, as it passes through the hands of Vera, a favorite maid of the empress, it is represented as coming from her, between whom and George a sort of betrothal had taken place, and who is in love with him. His sentence, through the instrumentality of Fleurange, is commuted to pardon on condition that he should pass four years on his estates in Livonia, and that he marry Vera before setting out. George is ignorant of the arrival of Fleurange, of her petition, of her desire to bury herself alive with him in Siberia. Vera sees Fleurange, and implores her to save him by the still greater sacrifice of renouncing him for ever. Fleurange goes back again without a word. The man for whom she made so many sacrifices was utterly unworthy of her, and congratulates himself that he escaped committing the foolishness of marrying her, though really in love with her for a time. The selfishness of the mother comes out in the son. As Fleurange and her cousin turn homewards, they meet the bridal party leaving the church. Once more she seeks to bury herself in the convent, and once more Madre Maddalena warns her back. She tells her that, at her first visit, her sufferings appeared as the expiation of an idolatry the extent of which she did not realize; but that something more was essential—the shattering of the idol, though its destruction seemed to involve the very breaking of her own heart.

The shattering of Dorothea’s idol brings a blank despair; and although she marries Ladislaw, and is presumably happy with him, nevertheless she felt “that there was always something better which she might have done, if she had only been better and known better.” The final shattering of Fleurange’s idol brings peace and opens her eyes to the silent heroism that had stood at her side all through, and for every pang of hers suffered a thousand. There is a vast amount of latent power in this story that stands out the more it is considered. Clement is kept in the background through much of the action. We only know that he loves Fleurange, and, prominently as her self-sacrifice is advanced, the shadow of his always overreaches it with the quiet that becomes a true man. At last her eyes are opened, and she sees, no longer Clement, “her brother,” but Clement, the man who has loved her all the while. The closeness of their relationship—that of first cousins—was almost necessary to bring out this part of the story, their almost continual intercourse after their first seeing each other, without the idea ever occurring to Fleurange that her cousin, who was a stranger to her up to the age of eighteen, might possibly fall in love with her. It is no encouragement to marriage within the prohibited degrees to hit upon such an incident once in a story; as little as it is necessary to inform the Catholic reader of what he or she will know beforehand: that the dispensation of the church is necessary to the contracting such a marriage.

The book, which has only been touched upon in its leading character, will afford an excellent foil to _Middlemarch_ in many ways. The latter, as perhaps the very title indicates, devotes itself chiefly to the English _middle_ class. _Fleurange_ gives pleasant glimpses of German and Italian life with what, from intrinsic evidence, might be judged to be a very true picture of the Russian court and social atmosphere. Though there are plenty of titled folk, it is a consolation for once to find a princess talking like a rational being; not always addressing her attendant as “minion,” her butler as “slave,” and terrifying the ears and eyes of the groundlings by the splendor of her cheap tragedy rhetoric, the glory of her equipages, or the coruscations of her diamonds. Her son, the count, does not, as do most of his class in the titled novel, divide his time between the stable and the green-room. The marquis is not “a villain of the deepest dye,” whether natural or artificial. Though an Italian, he does not carry a poison philter about with him; he employs no bravos, he never carries off Chastity in the shape of a milliner, to be finally chastised by Virtue in a smock-frock. In fact, all these titled folk are very unlike the article one is accustomed to find within flaming covers. The heartlessness and artificiality almost necessarily evoked in the high social atmosphere which Fleurange breathes for a time, is none the less strikingly brought out because it is not taken in epigrammatic parcels, as it were, and flung in your face, after the manner of the author of _Middlemarch_. The lesson of Felix Dornthall’s wicked life is none the less impressive because, when dying in the hospital ward, Charity stands by his bedside and prays for him as the ill-spent life flickers out in the darkness. It is no shock to human feelings to see Fleurange in her bitter hours kneel down and pray for help to a God she believes can help her. If life is not all “beer and skittles,” neither is it all a continual mistake and a bitter trial. If we cannot have “ideal perfection,” it may be a consolation to some to feel assured that we can do very well without it, and that there is something in the striving after _real_ perfection worthy of human endeavor. To George Eliot, the world was born yesterday, and only grew with her growing faculties. Christianity has practically gone by, and this is not the age for its heroes and heroines. The sham and the cant of it only remain. As long as the sham and the cant produce such characters as Madre Maddalena, Fleurange, Dr. Leblanc, and Clement, we shall welcome the sham and the cant in preference to the reality which can only give us Dorothea and Lydgate as types of true nobility and all that the perfection of manhood and womanhood may expect to come to nowadays. Whilst admiring the wit, and the worldly wisdom, and that power which only ripened genius can give of saying the best thing in the best way which _Middlemarch_ displays throughout, we confess to a little heartsickness at seeing all the nature of a woman author going out over Rosamond Vincy.

_Fleurange_ is certainly a relief after the unnatural atmosphere of _Middlemarch_, where all is false, uncertain, cold, hard, and brilliant. Though the story is very human, and in this respect has not a whit less of earth than the other, it suffers nothing by an occasional glimpse of heaven. Poor humanity likes a little hope, particularly when it has a very sound title to hope. These two authors traverse it as a hospital; the one surgeon-like, knife in hand, cutting and lopping the useless and unsightly limbs with bright, keen weapon and merciless precision, leaving the dead to bury their dead; the other, like a sister of charity, to bandage the wound, and comfort the sick, and pray by the dying. How different is the same scene to the eyes of each, and how different is each in the eyes of the sick patients! While they admire the skill of the one, they shudder and turn instinctively from her; on the other streaming eyes are bent, and troubled hearts murmur, “God bless you!”

GRAPES AND THORNS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”