dmond and Jules Huot De Goncourt, French writers who became famous alike for the perfectness of their collaboration, the originality of their methods, and the finish of their style, were born, the first in Nancy in 1822, the other in Paris in 1830. Until the death of Jules in 1870 they wrote nothing for the public that did not bear both their names; and so entirely identical were their tastes and judgment that it is impossible to say of a single sentence they composed that it was the sole product of one or the other. "Charming writers," Victor Hugo called them; "in unison a powerful writer, two minds from which springs a single jet of talent." Born of a noble family of moderate wealth, they were educated as became their station in life. Both had an early leaning toward the arts; but Edmond, in deference to the wishes of his family, took a government appointment and held the office till the death of his mother, when he was twenty-six years of age. Their father had died while they were boys.
Drawn together by their common bereavement and the death-bed injunction of their parent that Edmond should be the careful guardian of his younger brother, whose health had always been delicate, the young men then began a companionship which was broken only by death. They set out to make themselves acquainted with southern Europe, and at the same time to escape the political turmoils of Paris; and extended their travels into Africa, which country they found so congenial that in the first ardor of their enthusiasm they determined to settle there. Business arrangements, however, soon recalled them to Paris, where ties of friendship and other agreeable associations bound them fast to their native soil. They took up their residence in the metropolis, where they lived until a short time before the death of Jules, when, to be free from the roar of the city, they purchased a house in one of the suburbs. Their intellectual development may be traced through their Journal and letters to intimate friends, published by the surviving brother. From these it appears that most of their leisure hours during their travels were taken up with painting and drawing. Jules had attempted some dramatic compositions while at college, and Edmond had been strongly drawn to literature by the conversation of an aunt, of whom he saw much before his mother's death. It was while engaged with their brushes in 1850 that it occurred to the brothers to take up writing as a regular vocation; and thus was begun their remarkable literary partnership.
Their first essay was a drama. It was rejected; whereupon, nothing daunted, they wrote a novel. It was entitled '18—,' and it is interesting to observe that here, at the very outset of their career, they seem to have had in mind the keynote of the chord on which they ever afterwards played: the eighteenth century was the chief source of their inspiration, and it was their life's endeavor to explore it and reproduce it for their contemporaries with painstaking fidelity. The novel engaged their serious and earnest attention, and when it was given to the publisher they watched for its appearance with painful anxiety. Unfortunately it was announced for the very day on which occurred the Coup d'État. The book came out when Paris was in an uproar; and though Jules Janin, one of the most influential critics of the day, unexpectedly exploited it at great length in the Journal des Débats, its circulation in that first edition was not more than sixty copies, most of which were distributed gratuitously.
The blow was a hard one, but the brothers were not thus to be silenced, nor by the subsequent failure of other dramatic ventures and an effort to found a newspaper. They had been little more than imitators. They now entered the field they soon made their own. The writers of their day were for the most part classicists; a few before Victor Hugo were romanticists. The De Goncourts stood for the modern, what they could see and touch. In this way they became realists. What their own senses could not apprehend they at once rejected; all they saw they deemed worthy to be reproduced. They lived in a period of reconstruction after the devastation of the revolution. The refinement and elegance of the society of the later Bourbon monarchy, still within view, they yearned for and sought to restore. A series of monographs dealing with the art and the stage of these days, which appeared in 1851-2, won for them the first real recognition they enjoyed. These were followed by various critical essays on the same subjects, contributed to newspapers and periodicals, and a novel, 'La Lorette,' which had a large sale and marked the beginning of their success from a financial point of view. "This makes us realize," they wrote in their Journal, "that one can actually sell a book."
Their reputation as men of letters was established by the publication in 1854-5 of 'Histoire de la Société Pendant la Revolution' and the same 'Pendant le Directoire' the aim of which, they said, was "to paint in vivid, simple colors the France of 1789 to 1800." This object they accomplished, so far as it concerned the society of which they themselves were descendants; but the reactionary spirit in them was too strong for an impartial view of the struggle, and their lack of true philosophic spirit and broad human sympathy led them to make a picture that, interesting as it is, is sadly distorted. Their vivid colors are lavished mainly on the outrages of the rioters and the sufferings of the aristocrats. But for wealth of detail, the result of tireless research, the history is of value as a record of the manners and customs of the fashionable set of the period. Of the same sort were their other semi-historical works: 'Portraits Intimes du XVIIIième Siècle,' separate sketches of about a hundred more or less well-known figures of the age; 'L'Histoire de Marie Antoinette,' and 'La Femme au XVIIIième Siècle,' in which the gossip and anecdote of former generations are told again almost as graphically as are those which the authors relate of their own circle in their memoirs. Their most important contribution to literature was their 'L'Art au XVIIIième Siècle,' monographs gathered and published in seventeen volumes, and representing a dozen years' labor. This was indeed a labor of love, and it was not in vain; for it was these appreciative studies more than anything else that turned public attention to the almost forgotten delicacy of the school of painters headed by Watteau, Fragonard, Latour, Boucher, Debricourt, and Greuze, whose influence has ever since been manifested on the side of sound taste and sanity in French art.
A volume entitled 'Idées et Sensations,' and their Journal and letters, complete the list of the more important of their works outside the field of fiction. The Journal will always be valuable as an almost complete document of the literary history of France in their time, made up as it is of impressions of and from the most important writers of the day, with whom they were on terms of intimate friendship, including Flaubert, Gautier, Renan, Sainte-Beuve, Hugo, Saint-Victor, Michelet, Zola, and George Sand. In fiction the De Goncourts were less prolific, but it is to their novels mainly that they owe their reputation for individuality, and as true "path-breakers" in literature. They have been called the initiators of modern French realism. Their friend Flaubert perhaps better deserves the title. Their determination to see for themselves all that could be seen, the result of which gave real worth to their historical work, even where their prejudice robbed it of weight, was what put the stamp of character upon their novels. How much importance they attached to correct and comprehensive observation may be gathered from their remark, "The art of learning how to see demands the longest apprenticeship of all the arts." They took life as they found it, examined it on every side,—rarely going far under the surface,—and then sought to reproduce it on their pages as the artist would put it on canvas. Capable of terseness, of suggestiveness, quick to note and communicate the vital spark, they were yet rarely content with it alone. Every minute particle of the body it vivified, they insisted on adding to their picture. Nothing was to be taken for granted; as nothing was accepted by them at second hand, so nothing was left to the imagination of the reader until their comprehensive view was his. It was in this way that they were realists. They did not seek out and expose to public view the grossness and unpleasantness of life. Their own preference was for the beautiful, and in their own lives they indulged their refined tastes. But they looked squarely at the world about them, the ugly with the beautiful, the impure with the pure, and they did not hesitate to describe one almost as faithfully as the other.
Curiously, the discrimination against the masses and the bias that mar their history do not appear in their fiction. "They began writing history which was nothing but romance," says one of their critics, "and later wrote romance which in reality is history." Indeed, their novels are little more than sketches of what occurred around them. 'Madame Gervaisais' is a character study of the aunt of strong literary predilections who influenced Edmond; 'Germinie Lacerteux' is the biography of their servant, at whose death, after long and faithful service, they discovered that she had led a life of singular duplicity; 'Sœur Philomène' is a terribly true glimpse of hospital life, and 'Manette Salomon,' with its half-human monkey drawn from the life, is transferred without change from the Parisian studios under the Empire. 'Renee Mauperin' comes nearest to the model of an ordinary novel; but no one can read of the innocent tomboy girl struck down with fatal remorse at the consequences of her own natural action, on learning of her brother's dishonor, without feeling that this picture too was drawn from the life. Several of their stories were dramatized, but with scant success; and a play which they wrote, 'Henriette Maréchal' and had produced at the Comédie Française through the influence of Princess Mathilde, their constant friend and patroness, was almost howled down,—chiefly however for political reasons.
After the death of Jules de Goncourt, his brother wrote several books of the same character as those which they produced in union, the best known of which are 'La Fille Élisa,' and 'Chérie,' a study of a girl, said to have been inspired by the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff. The best critics in France, notably Saïnte-Beuve, have given the brothers Goncourt a very high place in literature and conceded their originality. English reviewers have been less ready to exalt them, mainly on account of the offensive part of their realism. They have objected also to their superficiality as historians, and to their sympathy with the sentimental admirers of such types as Marie Antoinette; but they too have been ready to praise the brothers as leaders of a new fashion, and especially for their devotion to style. In this respect the Goncourts have few rivals in French literature. Balzac himself was not more finical in the choice of words, or more unsparing of his time and energy in writing and re-writing until his exact meaning, no more or less, had been expressed; and they covered up the marks of their toil better than he. In a letter to Zola, Edmond de Goncourt said:—"My own idea is that my brother died of work, and above all from the desire to elaborate the artistic form, the chiseled phrase, the workmanship of style." He himself spent a long life at this fine artistry, and died in Paris in July, 1896.
March 3D [1862].—We took a walk and went off to find Théophile Gautier.... The street in which he lives is composed of the most squalid countrified buildings, of court-yards swarming with poultry, fruit shops whose doors are ornamented with little brooms of black feathers: just such a suburban street as Hervier might have painted.... We pushed open the door of a house, and found ourselves in the presence of the lord of epithet. The furniture was of gilded wood, covered with red damask, after the heavy Venetian style; there were fine old pictures of the Italian school; above the chimney a mirror innocent of quicksilver, on which were scraped colored arabesques and various Persian characters,—such a picture of meagre sumptuousness and faded splendor as one would find in the rooms of a retired actress, who had come in for some pictures through the bankruptcy of an Italian manager.
When we asked him if we were disturbing him, he answered: "Not at all. I never work at home. I get through my 'copy' at the printing-office. They set up the type as I write. The smell of the printers' ink is a sure stimulant to work, for one feels the 'copy' must be handed in. I could write only a novel in this way now; unless I saw ten lines printed I could not get on to the next ten. The proof-sheet serves as a test to one's work. That which is already done becomes impersonal, but the actual 'copy' is part of yourself; it hangs like filaments from the root of your literary life, and has not yet been torn away. I have always been preparing corners where I should do my work, but when installed there I found I could do nothing. I must be in the midst of things, and can work only when a racket is going on about me; whereas, when I shut myself up for work the solitude tells upon me and makes me sad."
From there Gautier got on the subject of the 'Queen of Sheba.' We admitted our infirmity, our physical incapacity of taking in musical sound; and indeed, a military band is the highest musical enjoyment of which we are capable. Whereupon Gautier said, "Well, I'm delighted to hear that: I am just like you; I prefer silence to music. I do know bad music from good, because part of my life was spent with a singer, but both are quite indifferent to me. Still it is curious that all the literary men of our day feel the same about music. Balzac abhorred it, Hugo cannot endure it, Lamartine has a horror of it. There are only a few painters who have a taste for it."
Then Gautier fell to complaining of the times. "Perhaps I am getting an old man, but I begin to feel as if there were no more air to breathe. What is the use of wings if there is no air in which one can soar? I no longer feel as if I belonged to the present generation. Yes, 1830 was a glorious epoch, but I was too young by two or three years; I was not carried away by the current; I was not ready for it. I ought to have produced a very different sort of work."
There was then some talk of Flaubert, of his literary methods, of his indefatigable patience, and of the seven years he devoted to a work of four hundred pages. "Just listen," observed Gautier, "to what Flaubert said to me the other day: 'It is finished. I have only ten more pages to write; but the ends of my sentences are all in my head.' So that he already hears in anticipation the music of the last words of his sentences before the sentences themselves have been written. Was it not a quaint expression to use? I believe he has devised a sort of literary rhythm. For instance, a phrase which begins in slow measure must not finish with a quick pace, unless some special effect is to be produced. Sometimes the rhythm is only apparent to himself, and escapes our notice. A story is not written for the purpose of being read aloud: yet he shouts his to himself as he writes them. These shouts present to his own ears harmonies, but his readers seem unaware of them."
Gautier's daughters have a charm of their own, a species of Oriental languor, deep dreamy eyes, veiled by heavy eyelids, and a regularity in their gestures and movements which they inherit from their father; but this regularity is tempered in them by womanly grace. There is a charm about them which is not all French; nevertheless there is a French element about it, their little tomboyish tricks and expressions, their habit of pouting, the shrugging of their shoulders, the irony which escapes through the thin veil of childishness intended to conceal it. All these points distinguish them from ordinary society girls, and make clear a strong individuality of character which renders them fearless in expressing their likings and antipathies. They display liberty of speech, and have often the manner of a woman whose face is hidden by a mask; and yet one finds here simplicity, candor, and a charming absence of reserve, utterly unknown to the ordinary young girl.
November 23D [1863].—We have been to thank Michelet for the flattering lines he wrote about us.
He lives in the Rue de l'Ouest, at the end of the Jardin du Luxembourg, in a large house which might almost be workmen's dwellings. His flat is on the third floor. A maid opened the door and announced us. We penetrated into a small study.
The wife of the historian has a young, serious face; she was seated on a chair beside the desk on which the lamp was placed, with her back to the window. Michelet sat on a couch of green velvet, and was banked up by cushions.
His attitude reminded us of his historical work: the lower portions of his body were in full sight, whilst the upper were half concealed; the face was a mere shadow surrounded with snowy white locks; from this shadowy mass emerged a professorial, sonorous, singsong voice, consciously important, and in which the ascending and descending scale produced a continuous cooing sound.
He spoke to us in a most appreciative manner of our study of Watteau, and then passed on to the interesting study which might be written on French furniture.
"You gentlemen, who are observers of human nature," he cried suddenly, "there is a history you should write,—the history of the lady's-maid. I do not speak of Madame de Maintenon; but you have Mademoiselle de Launai, the Duchesse de Grammont's Julie, who exercised on her mistress so great an influence, especially in the Corsican affair. Madame Du Deffand said sometimes that there were only two people sincerely attached to her, D'Alembert and her maid. Oh! domesticity has played a great part in history, though men-servants have been of comparative unimportance....
"I was once going through England, traveling from York to Halifax. There were pavements in the country lanes, with the grass growing on each side as carefully kept as the pavements themselves; close by, sheep were grazing, and the whole scene was lit up by gas. A singular sight!"
Then after a short pause:—"Have you noticed that the physiognomy of the great men of to-day is so rarely in keeping with their intellect? Look at their portraits, their photographs: there are no longer any good portraits. Remarkable people no longer possess in their faces anything which distinguishes them from ordinary folk. Balzac had nothing characteristic. Would you recognize Lamartine if you saw him? There is nothing in the shape of his head, or in his lustreless eyes, nothing but a certain elegance which age has not affected. The fact is that in these days there is too great an accumulation of people and things, much more so than in former times. We assimilate too much from other people, and this being the case, we lose even the individuality of our features; we present the portrait of a collective set of people rather than of ourselves."
We rose to take our leave; he accompanied us to the door; then by the light of the lamp he carried in his hand we saw, for a second at least, this marvelous historian of dreams, the great somnambulist of the past and brilliant talker of the present.
The next morning the whole hospital knew that Barnier, having scratched his hand on the previous day while dissecting a body in a state of purulent infection, was dying in terrible agonies.
When at four o'clock Malivoire, quitting for a few moments the bedside of his friend, came to replace him in the service, the Sister went up to him. She followed from bed to bed, dogging his steps, without however accosting him, without speaking, watching him intently with her eyes fixed on his. As he was leaving the ward:—
"Well?" she asked, in the brief tone with which women stop the doctor on his last visit at the threshold of the room.
"No hope," said Malivoire, with a gesture of despair; "there is nothing to be done. It began at his right ankle, went up the leg and thigh, and has attacked all the articulations. Such agonies, poor fellow! It will be a mercy when it's over."
"Will he be dead before night?" asked the Sister calmly.
"Oh no! He will live through the night. It is the same case as that of Raguideau three years ago; and Raguideau lasted forty-eight hours."
That evening, at ten o'clock, Sister Philomène might be seen entering the church of Notre Dame des Victoires.
The lamps were being lowered, the lighted tapers were being put out one by one with a long-handled extinguisher. The priest had just left the vestry.
The Sister inquired where he lived, and was told that his house was a couple of steps from the church, in the Rue de la Banque.
The priest was just going into the house when she entered behind, pushing open the door he was closing.
"Come in, Sister," he said, unfurling his wet umbrella and placing it on the tiled floor in the ante-room. And he turned toward her. She was on her knees. "What are you doing, Sister?" he said, astonished at her attitude. "Get up, my child. This is not a fit place. Come, get up!"
"You will save him, will you not?" and Philomène caught hold of the priest's hands as he stretched them out to help her to rise. "Why do you object to my remaining on my knees?"
"Come, come, my child, do not be so excited. It is God alone, remember, who can save. I can but pray."
"Ah! you can only pray," she said in a disappointed tone. "Yes, that is true."
And her eyes sank to the ground. After a moment's pause the priest went on:—
"Come, Sister, sit down there. You are calmer now, are you not? Tell me, what is it you want?"
"He is dying," said Philomène, rising as she spoke. "He will probably not live through the night;" and she began to cry. "It is for a young man of twenty-seven years of age; he has never performed any of his religious duties, never been near a church, never prayed to God since his first communion. He will refuse to listen to anything. He no longer knows a prayer even. He will listen neither to priest nor any one. And I tell you it is all over with him,—he is dying. Then I remembered your Confraternity of Notre Dame des Victoires, since it is devoted to those who do not believe. Come, you must save him!"
"My daughter—"
"And perhaps he is dying at this very moment. Oh! promise me you will do all at once, all that is in the Confraternity book; the prayers,—everything, in short. You will have him prayed for at once, won't you?"
"But, my poor child, it is Friday to-day, and the Confraternity only meets on Thursday."
"Thursday only—why? It will be too late Thursday. He will never live till Thursday. Come, you must save him; you have saved many another."
Sister Philomène looked at the priest with wide-opened eyes, in which through her tears rose a glance of revolt, impatience, and command. For one instant in that room there was no longer a Sister standing before a priest, but a woman face to face with an old man.
The priest resumed:—
"All I can do at present for that young man, my dear daughter, is to apply to his benefit all the prayers and good works that are being carried on by the Confraternity, and I will offer them up to the Blessed and Immaculate Heart of Mary to obtain his conversion. I will pray for him to-morrow at mass, and again on Saturday and Sunday."
"Oh, I am so thankful," said Philomène, who felt tears rise gently to her eyes as the priest spoke to her. "Now I am full of hope; he will be converted, he will have pity on himself. Give me your blessing for him."
"But Sister, I only bless from the altar, in the pulpit, or in the confessional. There only am I the minister of God. Here, my Sister, here I am but a weak man, a miserable sinner."
"That does not signify; you are always God's minister, and you cannot, you would not, refuse me; he is at the point of death."
She fell on her knees as she spoke. The priest blessed her, and added:—
"It is nearly eleven o'clock, Sister; you have nearly three miles to get home, all Paris to cross at this late hour."
"Oh, I am not afraid," replied Philomène with a smile; "God knows why I am in the street. Moreover, I will tell my beads on the way. The Blessed Virgin will be with me."...
The same evening, Barnier, rousing himself from a silence that had lasted the whole day, said to Malivoire, "You will write to my mother. You will tell her that this often happens in our profession."
"But you are not yet as bad as all that, my dear fellow," replied Malivoire, bending over the bed. "I am sure I shall save you."
"No, I chose my man too well for that. How well I took you in, my poor Malivoire!" and he smiled almost. "You understand, I could not kill myself. I did not wish to be the death of my old mother. But an accident—that settles everything. You will take all my books, do you hear? and my case of instruments also. I wish you to have all. You wonder why I have killed myself, don't you? Come nearer. It is on account of that woman. I never loved but her in all my life. They did not give her enough chloroform; I told them so. Ah! if you had heard her scream when she awoke—before it was over! That scream still re-echoes in my ears! However," he continued, after a nervous spasm, "if I had to begin again, I would choose some other way of dying, some way in which I should not suffer so much. Then, you know, she died, and I fancied I had killed her. She is ever before me,... covered with blood.... And then I took to drinking. I drank because I love her still.... That's all!"
Barnier relapsed into silence. After a long pause, he again spoke, and said to Malivoire:—
"You will tell my mother to take care of the little lad."
After another pause, the following words escaped him:—
"The Sister would have said a prayer."
Shortly after, he asked:—
"What o'clock is it?"
"Eleven."
"Time is not up yet;... I have still some hours to live.... I shall last till to-morrow."
A little later he again inquired the time, and crossing his hands on his breast, in a faint voice he called Malivoire and tried to speak to him. But Malivoire could not catch the words he muttered.
Then the death-rattle began, and lasted till morn....
A candle lighted up the room.
It burnt slowly, it lighted up the four white walls on which the coarse ochre paint of the door and of the two cupboards cut a sharp contrast....
On the iron bedstead with its dimity curtains, a sheet lay thrown over a motionless body, molding the form as wet linen might do, indicating with the inflexibility of an immutable line the rigidity, from the tip of the toes to the sharp outline of the face, of what it covered.
Near a white wooden table Malivoire, seated in a large wicker arm-chair, watched and dozed, half slumbering and yet not quite asleep.
In the silence of the room nothing could be heard but the ticking of the dead man's watch.
From behind the door something seemed gently to move and advance, the key turned in the lock, and Sister Philomène stood beside the bed. Without looking at Malivoire, without seeing him, she knelt down and prayed in the attitude of a kneeling marble statue; and the folds of her gown were as motionless as the sheet that covered the dead man.
At the end of a quarter of an hour she rose, walked away without once looking round, and disappeared.
The next day, awaking at the hollow sound of the coffin knocking against the narrow stairs, Malivoire vaguely recalled the night's apparition, and wondered if he had dreamed it; and going mechanically up to the table by the bedside, he sought for the lock of hair he had cut off for Barnier's mother: the lock of hair had vanished.
A little stage had been erected at the end of the Mauperins' drawing-room. The footlights were hidden behind a screen of foliage and flowering shrubs. Renée, with the help of her drawing-master, had painted the curtain, which represented a view on the banks of the Seine. On either side of the stage hung a bill, on which were these words, written by hand:—
LA BRICHE THEATRE
THIS EVENING,
'The Caprice,'
To conclude with
'Harlequin, A Bigamist.'
And then followed the names of the actors.
On all the chairs in the house, which had been seized and arranged in rows before the stage, women in low gowns were squeezed together, mixing their skirts, their lace, the sparkle of their diamonds, and the whiteness of their shoulders. The folding doors of the drawing-room had been taken down, and showed, in the little drawing-room which led to the dining-room, a crowd of men in white neckties, standing on tiptoe.
The curtain rose upon 'The Caprice.' Renée played with much spirit the part of Madame de Léry. Henry, as the husband, revealed one of those real theatrical talents which are often found in cold young men and in grave men of the world. Naomi herself—carried away by Henry's acting, carefully prompted by Denoisel from behind the scenes, a little intoxicated by her audience—played her little part of a neglected wife very tolerably. This was a great relief to Madame Bourjot. Seated in the front row, she had followed her daughter with anxiety. Her pride dreaded a failure. The curtain fell, the applause burst out, and all the company were called for. Her daughter had not been ridiculous; she was happy in this great success, and she composedly gave herself up to the speeches, opinions, congratulations, which, as in all representations of private theatricals, followed the applause and continued in murmurs. Amidst all that she thus vaguely heard, one sentence, pronounced close by her, reached her ears clear and distinct above the buzz of general conversation:—"Yes, it is his sister, I know; but I think that for the part he is not sufficiently in love with her, and really too much in love with his wife: did you notice it?" And the speaker, feeling that she was being overheard by Madame Bourjot, leaned over and whispered in her neighbor's ear. Madame Bourjot became serious.
After a pause the curtain went up again, and Henry Mauperin appeared as Pierrot or Harlequin, not in the traditional sack of white calico and black cap, but as an Italian harlequin, with a white three-cornered hat, and dressed entirely in white satin from head to foot. A shiver of interest ran through the women, proving that the costume and the man were both charming; and the folly began.
It was the mad story of Pierrot, married to one woman and wishing to marry another; a farce intermingled with passion, which had been unearthed by a playwright, with the help of a poet, from a collection of old comic plays. Renée this time acted the part of the neglected woman, who in various disguises interfered between her husband and his gallant adventures, and Naomi that of the woman he loved. Henry, in his scenes of love with the latter, carried all before him. He played with youth, with brilliancy, with excitement. In the scene in which he avows his love, his voice was full of the passionate cry of a declaration which overflows and swamps everything. True, he had to act with the prettiest Columbine in the world: Naomi looked delicious that evening in her bridal costume of Louis XVI., copied exactly from the 'Bride's Minuet,' a print by Debucourt, which Barousse had lent for the purpose.
A sort of enchantment filled the whole room, and reached Madame Bourjot; a sort of sympathetic complicity with the actors seemed to encourage the pretty couple to love one another. The piece went on. Now and again Henry's eyes seemed to look for those of Madame Bourjot, over the footlights. Meanwhile, Renée appeared disguised as the village bailiff; it only remained to sign the contract; Pierrot, taking the hand of the woman he loved, began to tell her of all the happiness he was going to have with her.
The woman who sat next to Madame Bourjot felt her lean somewhat on her shoulder. Henry finished his speech, the piece disentangled itself and came to an end. All at once Madame Bourjot's neighbor saw something glide down her arm; it was Madame Bourjot, who had just fainted.
"Oh, do pray go indoors," said Madame Bourjot to the people who were standing around her. She had been carried into the garden. "It is past now; it is really nothing; it was only the heat." She was quite pale, but she smiled. "I only want a little air. Let M. Henry only stay with me."
The audience retired. Scarcely had the sound of feet died away, when—"You love her!" said Madame Bourjot, seizing Henry's arm as though she were taking him prisoner with her feverish hands; "you love her!"
"Madame—" said Henry.
"Hold your tongue! you lie!" And she threw his arm from her. Henry bowed.—"I know all. I have seen all. But look at me!" and with her eyes she closely scanned his face. Henry stood before her, his head bent.—"At least speak to me! You can speak, at any rate! Ah, I see it,—you can only act in her company!"
"I have nothing to say to you, Laura," said Henry in his softest and clearest voice. Madame Bourjot started at this name of Laura as though he had touched her. "I have struggled for a year, madame," began Henry; "I have no excuse to make. But my heart is fast. We knew each other as children. The charm has grown day by day. I am very unhappy, madame, at having to acknowledge the truth to you. I love your daughter, that is true."
"But have you ever spoken to her? I blush for her when there are people there! Have you ever looked at her? Do you think her pretty? What possesses you men? Come! I am better-looking than she is! You men are fools. And besides, my friend, I have spoiled you. Go to her and ask her to caress your pride, to tickle your vanity, to flatter and to serve your ambitions,—for you are ambitious: I know you! Ah, M. Mauperin, one can only find that once in a lifetime! And it is only women of my age, old women like me,—do you hear me?—who love the future of the people whom they love! You were not my lover, you were my grandchild!" And at this word, her voice sounded as though it came from the bottom of her heart. Then immediately changing her tone—"But don't be foolish! I tell you you don't really love my daughter; it is not true: she is rich!"
"O madame!"
"Good gracious! there are lots of people. They have been pointed out to me. It pays sometimes to begin with the mother and finish with the dower. And a million, you know, will gild a good many pills."
"Speak lower, I implore—for your own sake: some one has just opened a window."
"Calmness is very fine, M. Mauperin, very fine, very fine," repeated Madame Bourjot. And her low, hissing voice seemed to stifle her.
Clouds were scudding across the sky, and passed over the moon looking like huge bats' wings. Madame Bourjot gazed fixedly into the darkness, straight in front of her. Her elbows resting on her knees, her weight thrown on to her heels, she was beating with the points of her satin shoes the gravel of the path. After a few minutes she sat upright, stretched out her arms two or three times wildly and as though but half awake; then, hastily and with jerks, she pushed her hand down between her gown and her waistband, pressing her hand against the ribbon as though she would break it. Then she rose and began to walk. Henry followed her.
"I intend, sir, that we shall never see each other again," she said to him, without turning round.
As they passed near the basin, she handed him her handkerchief:—
"Wet that for me."
Henry put one knee on the margin and gave her back the lace, which he had moistened. She laid it on her forehead and on her eyes. "Now let us go in," she said; "give me your arm."
"Oh, dear madame, what courage!" said Madame Mauperin, going to meet Madame Bourjot as she entered; "but it is unwise of you. Let me order your carriage."
"On no account," answered Madame Bourjot hastily: "I thank you. I promised that I would sing for you, I think. I am going to sing."
And Madame Bourjot advanced to the piano, graceful and valiant, with the heroic smile on her face wherewith the actors of society hide from the public the tears that they shed within themselves, and the wounds which are only known to their own hearts.
dmund William Gosse, or Edmund Gosse, to give him the name he has of late years adopted, is a Londoner, the son of P.H. Gosse, an English zoölogist of repute. His education did not embrace the collegiate training, but he was brought up amid cultured surroundings, read largely, and when but eighteen was appointed an assistant librarian in the British Museum, at the age of twenty-six receiving the position of translator to the Board of Trade. Gosse is a good example of the cultivated man of letters who fitted himself thoroughly for his profession, though lacking the formal scholastic drill of the university.
He began as a very young man to write for the leading English periodicals, contributing papers and occasional poems to the Saturday Review, Academy, and Cornhill Magazine, and soon gaining critical recognition. In 1872 and 1874 he traveled in Scandinavia and Holland, making literary studies which bore fruit in one of his best critical works. He made his literary bow when twenty-one with the volume 'Madrigals, Songs, and Sonnets' (1870), which was well received, winning praise from Tennyson. His essential qualities as a verse-writer appear in it: elegance and care of workmanship, close study of nature, felicity in phrasing, and a marked tendency to draw on literary culture for subject and reference. Other works of poetry, 'On Viol and Flute' (1873), 'New Poems' (1879), 'Firdausi in Exile' (1885), 'In Russet and Gold' (1894), with the dramas 'King Erik' (1876) and 'The Unknown Lover' (1878), show an increasingly firm technique and a broadening of outlook, with some loss of the happy singing quality which characterized the first volume. Gosse as a poet may be described as a lyrist with attractive descriptive powers. Together with his fellow poets Lang and Dobson, he revived in English verse the old French metrical forms, such as the roundel, triolet, and ballade, and he has been very receptive to the new in literary form and thought, while keeping a firm grip on the classic models.
As an essayist, Gosse is one of the most accomplished and agreeable of modern English writers; he has comprehensive culture and catholic sympathy, and commands a picturesque style, graceful and rich without being florid. His 'Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe' (1879) introduced Ibsen and other little-known foreign writers to British readers.
Gosse has been a thorough student of English literature prior to the nineteenth century, and has made a specialty of the literary history of the eighteenth century, his series of books in this field including—'Seventeenth-Century Studies' (1883), 'From Shakespeare to Pope' (1885), 'The Literature of the Eighteenth Century' (1889), 'The Jacobean Poets' (1894), to which may be added the volume of contemporaneous studies 'Critical Kit-Kats' (1896). Some of these books are based on the lectures delivered by Gosse as Clark Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge. He has also written biographies of Sir Walter Raleigh and Congreve, and his 'Life of Thomas Gray' (1882) and 'Works of Thomas Gray' (1884) comprise the best edition and setting-forth of that poet. In such labors as that of the editing of Heinemann's 'International Library,' his influence has been salutary in the popularization of the best literature of the world. His interest in Ibsen led him to translate, in collaboration with William Archer, the dramatic critic of London, the Norwegian's play 'The Master Builder.'
Edmund Gosse, as editor, translator, critic, and poet, has done varied and excellent work. Sensitive to many literatures, and to good literature everywhere, he has remained stanchly English in spirit, and has combined scholarship with popular qualities of presentation. He has thus contributed not a little to the furtherance of literature in England.
[The poems are all taken from 'On Viol and Flute,' published by Henry Holt & Co., New York.]