8vo. Paris, 1834.
2. Valentine, par G. Sand. 3me. édit. 2 tom.
8vo. Paris, 1834.
3. Lelia, par G. Sand. 2 tom. 8vo. Paris,
1832.
4. Rose et Blanche, par J. Sand. 2 tom. 8vo. Paris,
1833.
5. Le Secretaire Intime, par G. Sand. 2 tom. 8vo. Paris,
1834.
6. Jacques, par George Sand. 2 tom. 8vo.
Paris, 1834.1
The string of novels above enumerated, taken in
combination with their author,
constitute a moral phenomenon, perhaps not one of the least remarkable of these
our phenomenon-teeming days. The points co-operating to the construction of this
phenomenon are of course multifarious. One is, the inconceivable discrepancy,
and that of an unwonted kind, between the earlier and later productions of one
and the same author. The first two
works, but especially the first, of the soi-disant2 George Sand, were so replete with
talent and with knowledge of human nature, so boldly conceived and so
brilliantly executed,—were written in a style so animated, so graphically
delightful, displayed portraits hit off with such admirable power and
spirit,—even if not always wrought out in the conduct of the story in perfect
keeping with the original sketch,—as we have rarely seen surpassed. Gladly did
we hail them, as harbingers of the rising of a new and radiant, if not perfectly
salutiferous star, above the literary horizon. The succeeding works published
under the same name, far from showing the improved mastery of the art usually
acquired by practice,[Page 272]are, as though the mine had been thus quickly
exhausted, so immeasurably inferior to their predecessors in every thing,
(except, perhaps, boldness of conception, which now sometimes increases from
originality to extravagance,) that but for their similarity of tone and temper,
we should hardly know how to credit their fraternal relationship. If we are
indeed to believe that George Sand is
one individual, and not two or more individuals,—we look not upon the J. once
substituted for the G. as any argument, because, to say nothing of public
opinion, Lelia, to which we chiefly allude, bears the G.—we cannot suggest, for the
unriddling of the mystery, a better key than the remark of a shrewd and witty
friend of our own youth, who was wont to say, "It is when a man has got a bad
name that he may go to sleep, since nothing he can do will ever change it; when
he has a good one, he must labor like a horse to keep it." Of a surety George Sand agrees not with our
friend, but having deserved and gained a high—a very high—literary reputation,
fancies he may go to sleep, and fearlessly publish the somnambulic effusions
of
his repose.
The second point is, that even those novels which we rank highest in the scale, Indiana and Valentine, although not actually immoral, certainly not licentious, are often so
daring in situation and in graphic delineation, are so generally deficient in
refined delicacy, in glowing love of, and delight in, virtue, that we should
hesitate about recommending even these to our fair and youthful readers. It may
be thought that in the present state of French literature, at least in the
departments of the drama and of prose fiction, this want of delicacy and of
moral sense rather detracts from than enhances the singularity we have ascribed
to the productions before us; but the reader will possibly abandon that opinion
when informed of our third point, to wit, that George Sand is only a pseudonyme, and that the real author of them is a lady, and a lady
(as we have been informed, but cannot vouch) of unblemished character, whose
name is Madame Dudevant.
The astonishment created by the discovery of the sex and individuality of the
writer augments an hundred, nay, a million-fold, as we peruse the subsequent
writings of the same highly, but perversely endowed authoress, who, in Lelia, seems almost ignorant, and quite reckless, of the difference between
right and wrong. The most favourable hypothesis we can frame respecting our
disguised lady is, that having been harshly treated by society, and especially
unfortunate in the conjugal relation, she has been exasperated into the
determined hostility to both, which, despite her protestations to the contrary,
her publications exhibit, and in the irritation of unhappiness has lost the
sensitive pudicity of her sex.
But we cannot expect our readers to go along with us in these[Page 273]generalities. To enable them to do so, we must enter into particulars, and we
believe the only way of unfolding our phenomenon will be to give short sketches
of, and an extract or two from, all these tales. But in order to give the authoress fair play, we will begin
with extracts from the prefaces. In that to Indiana she says —
The narrator hopes that after hearing his tale to the end, few auditors will
deny the morality which results from his
facts, and there, as in all that is human, is triumphant. As he finished it,
he felt his conscience clear, and judged that the legal code which here upon
earth must regulate the throbbing of man's bosom, ought in fairness to
acquit him. He flatters himself that he has related without rancour the
paltry miseries of society, has described without too much passion the
passions of humanity. . . .
Perhaps you will do him justice if you allow that he has shown you the being
who strives to get rid of a legitimate curb very wretched, the heart that
revolts against the decrees of fate very desolate. If he has not assigned
the fairest part to the one of his personages who represents law, if he has shown under a still less lively
aspect him who represents opinion, you will
see a third who represents illusion, and who
cruelly mocks and disappoints the vain hopes, the wild enterprises of
passion. In short, you will see, that if he has not strewed roses on the
ground where the law pens the wills of men, like the appetites of sheep, he
has thrown nettles upon the path that leads from it.
* * *
Indiana is woman, the feeble being commissioned to represent the passions oppressed, or, if you like it better,
repressed by the laws; here is will struggling with necessity; here is love dashing
his blind brow against all the obstacles of civilization. But the serpent
wears and breaks his teeth in striving to gnaw a file; the soul exhausts its
energies in wrestling with the positive of life.
Against this statement, we must be allowed to set a sort of aphoristic
exclamation in Valentine, which, not being assigned to any personage in the novel, must be taken
as expressing the writer's own opinion.
Poor woman, poor society, where the heart can find no genuine enjoyment, save
in the forgetfulness of all duty, of all reason!
But on the other hand, in the preface to Le Secretaire Intime, Madame Dudevant has again
vindicated or explained her views, and from this vindication or explanation,
likewise, we are bound in justice to offer extracts.
The author deems it his duty to declare, that he never meant to draw up an
indictment against society, against the institutions by which it is
governed, against humanity itself, as has been recently asserted. Intentions
of this sort would ill become him; neither his talent, nor his will, nor yet
his hopes, deserve so serious an impeachment. He well knows that the
majority value highly institutions which they find[Page 274]convenient,
and, thank God, pride and folly have not yet bewildered him so far, as to
induce the belief that a word of his could overthrow what exists. . . .
.
Indiana and Valentine are not then a satire against marriage, but pictures true or false
(that the reader must decide) of the moral sufferings inflicted upon a
delicate and pure soul by imperious brutality and by polished egotism. As
marriage and love may very well exist independently of these two conditions,
the poetical truth of the picture has nothing to do with the institutions
and the passions that serve to frame it.
This last sentence seems to refer to the Secretaire
Intime itself, of which hereafter. We now turn to the earlier novels;
and as Indiana is that in which the ticklish situations are managed with the nearest
approach to delicacy, and is in every respect our favourite, we shall devote
our
principal attention to it.
Indiana is the story of a marriage, unhappy from difference of age, station,
opinions, feelings, disposition, in short, every thing in which contrariety is
most inimical to happiness in the intimate association of wedlock. The husband
is a surly half-pay veteran of the imperial army, low-born, uneducated, violent,
jealous, and infirm; the wife, a noble Creole of Spanish race, lovely and good,
with all the unregulated sensibility, or shall we say susceptibility? of
tropical climates. She deems that she does her duty fully to the disagreeable
partner of her life and master of her destiny, by personal fidelity and coldly
implicit obedience, without an effort either to care for him, or to soothe and
soften him into an object of, at least, respect and kindliness. She, Indiana,
falls in love with a hero, whom, as a somewhat novel character, we must let the
authoress herself paint. Her
portrait of him displays that intermixture of general satirical touches in which
she excels.
M. Raymon de Ramière was neither a coxcomb nor a libertine. . . . He was a
man of principle, when he reasoned with himself. But impetuous passions
often hurried him out of his systems. Then he
was no longer capable of reflexion, or he avoided summoning himself to the
bar of his own conscience; he committed faults, unknown, as it were, to
himself, and the man of yesterday exerted himself to deceive the man of
tomorrow. . . . . Raymon had the art of being often guilty without making
himself hated, often capricious without being offensive. He occasionally
succeeded in obtaining the pity of those who had most cause for being angry
with him.
* * * * *
Raymon was an exception from the rule, that he who speaks eloquently of his
love is little in love. He expressed his passion skilfully, and felt it
fervently. Only it was not his passion that made him eloquent, it was his
eloquence that fired his passion. He took a fancy to a woman; he became
eloquent to seduce her, and, whilst seducing, became desperately enamoured
of her. . . . Raymon had committed for[Page 275]love what are called
follies.3 He had run away with a young lady of condition (and still
is a bachelor); he had compromised women of high rank; he had fought two or
three celebrated duels; he had betrayed the disorder of his heart, the
delirium of his thoughts, to a whole rout, a whole theatre. A man who does
all this without fear of being laughed at or execrated, and who succeeds in
escaping both,4 is
thenceforth invulnerable; he may risk every thing, hope every thing.
* * * * *
Raymon possessed inconceivable power over all that surrounded him, for with
all his faults, he was a superior man in society. . . . . He was one of the
men who have held most empire, most influence over your thoughts, whatever
may be your opinion now. You have devoured his political pamphlets, and
often have you been hurried away, whilst reading the newspapers of those
days, by the irresistible charm of his style, by the graces of his
courteous, his worldly argumentation.
I speak to you of an era already far distant from us, who no longer reckon by
centuries, or even by reigns, but by ministers. I speak to you of the
Martignac year5 . . . . .
Placed by his birth and fortune amongst the partizans of absolute royalty,
Raymon sacrificed to the young ideas of his
day by a devoted attachment to the Charter. At least he thought he did so,
and laboured to prove it. But conventions that have fallen to desuetude are
subject to various interpretations, and this was already the case with Louis XVIII's Charte, as with the Gospel of Christ. . . .
Raymon, like other inexperienced heads, fancied it still possible to be a
conscientious journalist. Error! At a season when deference to the voice of
reason is only pretended, in order the more effectually to stifle it. Free
from political passions, Raymon believed he was disinterested, and deceived
himself; for society, as then organized, was to him favourable and
advantageous; it could not be deranged without lessening the sum of his
enjoyments, and that perfect quietude of situation, which extends to the
thoughts, is a wonderful teacher of moderation.
* * * * *
Preserved by his fortune from the necessity of writing for bread, Raymon used
his pen from inclination, and (as he said and believed) from duty. His rare
power of refuting positive truth by sheer talent rendered him invaluable to
the ministry,—whom he served better by his impartial resistance, than did
its creatures by their blind devotion,—and yet more precious to a young and
elegant world, willing to abjure the ridicule of obsolete privileges, but
not to lose their existing advantages.
The manner of this new-fashioned, liberalized Lovelace's passion for poor Indiana may be easily imagined, even
without the information given upon one occasion.
He had two days good, which he thus allotted. The remainder of[Page 276]the closing day to affect, the morrow to persuade, his intended victim,
and the following day to his triumph.
The reader is accordingly held in constant dread of seeing the impassioned and
confiding Creole fall a victim to the seducer's arts and eloquence. She is
saved, sometimes by fainting fits produced by extraordinary nervous sensibility,
but generally, as well in reputation as in fact, by the intervention of her
cousin, Sir Ralph Brown, who, first introduced as a caricature of all the faults
and dulness ascribed by continental writers to Englishmen, proves in the end
to
be the very prosopopeia of heroic self-immolating
virtue. Passionately in love with Indiana, even from her infancy, he has
uniformly sacrificed his feelings to his duties, and quietly suffers himself,
after Indiana's ill-assorted marriage, to be considered a cold egoist, lest her
sympathy for his real agonies should inflame his passion to such an
ungovernable, unconcealable pitch, as, by arousing her husband's jealousy,
should prevent his incessant care of her.
To return to Raymon and Indiana. We shall give the scene that really decides her
fate, as, of its kind the most possible, from greater delicacy,—or must we say
less indelicacy?—to translate. But some preliminary statements will be
requisite. During an indispensable absence of Delmare, Indiana's husband, the
vigilant guardianship of Sir Ralph foils and irritates Raymon's passion. The
lover secretly gives Indiana a letter complaining of her apparent mistrust, and
urging a thousand sophistical reasons why she should admit him at night to her
chamber, where his respect will be inviolate and inviolable. She answers;
"Who, I fear thee, Raymon! Oh no! not now. I
know too well how thou lovest me; my belief in thy love is too intoxicating.
Come then. Neither do I fear myself; did I love thee less, I might, perhaps,
be less calm, but I love thee as thou thyself dreamest not. Go away early to
prevent Ralph's distrust. Return at midnight; you know the park and the
house: here is the key of the postern gate; fasten it after you."
Such perfect confidence almost subdues the libertine, but further proofs of Sir
Ralph's suspicions dissipate his good intentions, and he arrives, determined
not
to lose the opportunity. Meanwhile Sir Ralph, after Raymon's departure, seeks
to
warn Indiana, without mortifying her by showing his knowledge of her imprudence.
For this purpose he reveals to her his conviction, that Raymon, prior to his
acquaintance with herself, had seduced her foster-sister and attendant, Noun,
and afterwards, by his desertion, driven the wretched girl to suicide. Indiana,
who had once surprised Raymon with Noun in her own chamber, but supposed he came
for herself and had bribed Noun to admit him, now re-[Page 277]solves to
ascertain the truth. She receives her lover more gravely than usual.
Raymon, surprised at this reception, ascribed it to some chaste scruple, some
delicate reserve of youthful womanhood. He fell at her feet, saying,
"My best beloved, can you then fear me?"
But he immediately observed that Madame Delmare held something in her hand,
which she seemed, with a playful affectation of gravity, to spread out
before him. He stooped, and saw a mass of black hair, of unequal lengths,
cut off hastily as it seemed, and which Indiana was smoothing in her
hands.
"Do you recognize this?" she asked, fixing upon him her translucent eyes,
that emitted a penetrating greenish brightness.
Raymon hesitated; he looked at the handkerchief that dressed her head, and
thought he understood.
"Naughty child!" said he, taking the tresses from her. "Why cut them off?
They were so beautiful, and I so loved them."
"You asked me yesterday," said she with a strange smile, "if I would
sacrifice them to you."
"Oh, Indiana!" exclaimed Raymon, "well thou knowest that henceforward thou
must to me be still more beautiful. Give, give; I will not regret the
absence from thy forehead of those tresses I daily admired, but which I may
now daily kiss and caress unquestioned—give them to me that they may never
quit me more."
But as he took them, as he collected in his hand that profusion of locks,
some of which hung down to the floor, Raymon felt in them a something harsh
and dry, which he had never observed in the glossy bands upon Indiana's
brow. He experienced a nervous shiver as he felt them cold and heavy, as
though long cut, as he perceived that they had lost their perfumed moisture,
their vital warmth. . . . .
"This is not your hair," said he, as he untied
the silk handkerchief that concealed Madame Delmare's tresses.
They were uninjured, and fell in all their luxuriance about her shoulders.
But she, with a gesture of repulse, and still showing him the cut hair,
said,
"Know you not these locks? Have you never admired, never caressed them? Has
one wet night" (Noun had drowned herself, and his way this night had led him
past the spot where her body was found) "robbed them of all their perfume?
Have you not one recollection, one tear, for her who wore this ring?"
Raymon sank upon a chair, and Noun's hair dropped from his hand. So many
painful emotions overpowered him. He was a bilious man, whose blood
circulated rapidly, whose nerves were singularly excitable. He shivered from
head to foot, and fell in a swoon upon the floor.
When he recovered, Madame Delmare was on her knees by his side, bathing him
in her tears, and imploring his forgiveness. But Raymon no longer loved
her.
"You have wounded me dreadfully," said he; "wounded me to a degree that you
cannot heal. You can never restore my confidence in
vol. xiv. no. xxviii.u[Page 278]your heart; you have shown me how full of revenge and cruelty
it is. Poor Noun! Unfortunate girl! It was against her I sinned, not against
you! . . . And it is you who upbraid me with her death!—you, whom I have
loved so passionately as to forget her, as to brave these agonies of
remorse!—you, who on the faith of a kiss, have made me cross that river,
that bridge, alone, with terror by my side, pursued by the infernal illusion
of my crime! And when you discover how deliriously I love you, you strike
your woman's nails into my heart, to seek there a little remnant of blood
that may stream for you." . . . .
Madame Delmare made no reply. Motionless, pale, her hair dishevelled, her
lips violet, her eyes glazed, she awakened Raymon's pity. Taking her hand,
he said,
"And yet, so blind is my love for thee that I can still forget—against my
will I feel I can—the past and the present, both the crime that blights my
life, and the atrocity thou has just perpetrated. Love me, and I forgive
thee."
Do you understand? Raymon offered Indiana his compassion, and she was happy
to accept it! . . . .
Madame Delmare's despair rekindled desire together with pride in her lover's
heart. When he saw her so fearful of losing his love, so humble before him,
so resigned to receive his laws for the future, and his justification of the
past, he recollected the purpose for which he had deceived Sir Ralph's
watchfulness; he felt the advantage of his position. . . . . He waited till
Indiana's heart was broken by her own sobs—till she had anticipated the
horrors of desertion—till her distracting terrors had exhausted her
strength. Then, when he saw her exhausted, expiring at his feet, awaiting
her death in a word, he violently caught her in his arms and clasped her to
his breast. She yielded like an infant; she gave up her lips to him
unresistingly; she was almost dead.
But suddenly starting, as from a dream, she broke from his burning caresses,
fled to the end of the room occupied by the picture of Sir Ralph, and as if
placing herself under the protection of that grave personage, with his pure
brow, his calm lips, she pressed herself against the portrait, palpitating,
bewildered, full of strange terrors. Raymon thought she was afraid of
herself and was his.
Authoritatively he snatched her from her asylum, and told her that he had
come determined to keep his promises, but that her cruelty had released him
from his oaths.
The struggle, which we beg to be excused translating, continues, and at length
Indiana seems about to be subdued by the common-place reproach, at which Raymon
almost sneers whilst uttering it, of want of love. But now
A short dry knock at her door stopped the blood in her arteries. Raymon and
she remained motionless, not daring to breathe.
Then a paper was slid under the door—it was a leaf of a pocket-book, upon
which these words were almost illegibly pencilled.
"Your husband is here. Ralph."
* * * * *
[Page 279]
"Well then," said Raymon, enthusiastically catching her in his arms, "since
death environs us, be mine!" Be thy last word one of love; my last breath
happiness!"
"This moment of terror and of courage," she replied, "might have been the
happiest of my life; but you have spoiled it."
Wheels were heard in the farm yard; the castle bell was pulled by a rude and
impatient hand.
"I know that ring," said Indiana, coldly attentive; "Ralph never spoke false.
But you have time to fly. Go."
Raymon now perforce obeys, and scarcely has he passed the postern by which he had
entered, when
Sir Ralph presented himself, and accosting him as coldly as if they had met
at a rout, said,
"Be pleased to give me that key; should it be sought, there is no harm in its
being found in my hands."
Raymon would have preferred the most deadly insult to this ironical
generosity. He said,
"I am not the man to forget a real service, but I am the man to avenge an
affront, to punish treachery."
Sir Ralph, without any change of tone or countenance, rejoined—"I desire not
your gratitude, and shall quietly await your revenge. But this is not the
moment for conversation; there is your road; think of Madame Delmare." And
he disappeared.
Indiana now writes a letter to Raymon, ending thus:—
Not to be more beloved than Noun! Oh if I thought it! Yet she was more
beautiful, far more beautiful, than me! Why then prefer me? You must needs
have loved me otherwise, and better. This is what I wanted to say. Will you
renounce the wish of being my lover in the way you were hers? If you will, I
can still esteem you, can believe in your remorse, your sincerity, your
love. If not, think no more of me; you will never see me again. I may die of
it, but I had rather die than stoop to be merely your
mistress. I.
This pride offends Raymon, and he resolves to humble it by making her his
mistress. He accordingly, professing submission, pursues her with all the arts
of the most consummate seducer; and she at length agrees to elope from her
husband, when he, Delmare, shall embark for the Isle of Bourbon. The moment
arrives.
One morning, on coming home from a ball, Raymon found Madame Delmare in his
chamber. She had come at midnight; during five long hours she had been
waiting his return. . . . .
"I was waiting for you," said she, mildly. "During the days that you have not
come to me, things have occurred that you must know, and I left my home last
night to impart them to you."
"Incredible imprudence!" exclaimed Raymon, carefully shutting the door. "And
my servants, who know that you are here! for they told me so."
u 2[Page 280]
"I did not conceal myself," said she coolly; "and as to the word you use, I
think it ill chosen."
"I said imprudence, I should have said madness."
"I, for my part, should have said courage; but no matter; listen."
She now tell him that M. Delmare sets out in three days for Bordeaux, there to
embark for the Isle of Bourbon; and, what might not have been anticipated from
the manner of the preceding dialogue, that she has eloped, and is to come live
with him. Raymon is by no means delighted with the prospect.
The crisis was urgent. . . . One more effort of imagination, thought Raymon
to himself—one more love scene. And starting up with vivacity, he
exclaimed—
"Never! Never will I accept such sacrifices! When I told thee I would,
Indiana, it was boasting, or rather it was self-calumny; for a poltroon only
would deliberately dishonour the woman he loves. Thou, in thy ignorance of
life, hast not appreciated the importance of the step; and I, in my despair
at the prospect of losing thee, would not reflect."
"Reflection has speedily returned to you!" said she, withdrawing her hand,
which he sought to take.
"Indiana," he resumed, "see you not that you impose dishonour upon me,
reserving the heroism for yourself, and that you condemn me because I would
remain worthy of your love? Couldst thou still love me, say, simple and
ignorant woman, were I to sacrifice thy life to my pleasure, thy reputation
to my interests?"
"You contradict yourself," rejoined Indiana. "If by remaining with you I make
you happy, what should you fear from opinion? Do you care more for it than
for me?"
"Not on my own account do I care for it, Indiana!"
"On mine then? I foresaw your scruples, and to free you from all remorse, I
have taken the active part. I did not wait for you to snatch me from my
home; I did not even consult you previously to quitting it for ever. That
decisive step is taken, and your conscience cannot reproach you with it. At
this moment, Raymon, I am dishonoured. In your absence I counted upon that
clock the hours that consummated my disgrace, and now, although the dawning
day finds my brow as pure as it was yesterday, in public opinion I am a lost
woman."
* * * * *
A sudden thought shot through Raymon's brain. The moment was come to conquer
this woman's pride, or it never would come. She had just offered him every
sacrifice that he did not desire, and there she stood before him, in haughty
confidence that she ran no dangers beyond those she had foreseen. Raymon saw
the mode of freeing himself from her importunate devotion, or of profiting
by it. He was too much Delmare's friend to rob him of his wife; he ought to
content himself with seducing her.
"Thou art right, my Indiana!" he exclaimed with fervour. "Thou recall'st me
to myself, thou awakenest my transports, which the idea of thy perils, the
fear of injuring thee, had frozen. . . . . . Let him come[Page 281]then
to tear thee from my raptures—the stupid husband who locks thee up, and goes
to sleep upon his gross violence. Henceforward thou art no longer his; thou
art my beloved, my companion, my mistress!"
Whilst so speaking, Raymon gradually heated himself, as was his wont, in
pleading his passions. The situation was striking, was romantic; it offered
dangers that seasoned it with all the effect of a fashionable drama. . . .
He acted passion so as to deceive himself, and, shame to the silly woman!
she gave herself up in delight to these illusive demonstrations—she felt
happy, radiant with joy and hope—she forgave everything—she was almost on
the point of granting everything.
But Raymon lost himself by his precipitation. . . . The clock struck seven.
It is time to make an end, thought he; I must get her quietly home before
Delmare comes here. He became more urgent and less tender. . . . . Indiana
was recalled to herself; she repulsed the attacks of cold egotistical
vice.
Raymon now gets into a pet, and drinks a large glass of water.
It calmed his delirium and cooled his love. He looked ironically at Indiana,
and said—"Come, Madam, it is time to go home."
A ray of light dawned upon Indiana, and revealed to her Raymon's soul.
Indiana now falls into a state of stupefaction that alarms Raymon, who seeks his
mother's assistance. The old lady soothes the wretched young woman, and recals
her to herself. But Indiana insists upon going home alone, and on foot.
In vain Madame de Ramière trembled to see her, thus weakened and disordered,
undertake so long a walk.
"I have strength enough," she replied. "A word of Raymon's has given it
me."
As was to be expected, she loses her way, and, absorbed in melancholy reverie,
wanders along the banks of the Seine, beyond the limits of Paris.
Insensibly she found herself on the brink of the water, which drove masses of
ice to her feet, breaking them with a dry, cold sound against the stones
that protected the banks. The greenish, murmuring water exercised an
attractive force over Indiana's senses. One accustoms oneself to dreadful
ideas; once fairly admitted, one comes to take pleasure in them. The example
of Noun's suicide had so long solaced Indiana's hours of despair, that
suicide had gradually become to her mind voluptuously alluring. A single
idea, that of religion, had withheld her from yielding to it. But at this
moment no consistent thought swayed her exhausted brain. She scarcely knew
that there was a God, scarcely recollected that Raymon existed, and walked
on, nearer and nearer to the river, obedient to the instinct of misfortune,
to the magnetism of suffering.
When she felt the piercing cold of the water that now bathed her feet, she
awoke as from somnambulism, and looking around, saw Paris far behind her,
the Seine flying from beneath her feet, hurrying along[Page 282]the white
reflection of the houses, the greyish blue of the sky. This continuous
movement of the water, and the immobility of the ground, became confused in
her disordered perceptions, and she thought that the water slept, that the
earth fled. At this moment of vertigo she leant against a wall, and stooped,
as fascinated, towards what seemed a solid mass. . . . . . But the barking
of a dog that frolicked around her distracted her attention, delaying for an
instant the accomplishment of her purpose. And now a man, who, guided by the
dog's voice, was hurrying forward, seized her by the waist, dragged her
away, and laid her down upon the fragments of a deserted boat. She looked
him in the face, but knew him not. He knelt beside her, wrapped her in his
cloak, took her hands in his own to warm them, and called upon her name. But
her brain was too feeble to make an effort; for eight-and-forty hours she
had forgotten to eat.
When some degree of warmth circulated through her benumbed limbs, she saw
Ralph on his knees before her, holding her hands, watching her eyes for a
gleam of sense.
"Did you meet Noun?" she asked; and bewildered by a degree of monomania, added, "I saw her go this way,"
pointing to the river, "and wanted to follow her; but she went too fast, and
I had not power to walk! 'Twas like a night-mare!"
Even after this bitter lesson, an artfully pathetic letter, written by Raymon
when, after his mother's death, a fit of sickness made him feel the want of a
fond woman's cares, induces Indiana to fly from her husband and her cousin,
secretly quit the Isle of Bourbon, and recross the Atlantic, to give herself
up
to him. Luckily, in the interval, he had recovered, forgotten his letter, and
married a high-spirited heiress, who drives Indiana out of her house within a
very few and safe minutes from her entering it. Again Sir Ralph, who had
immediately followed her back to France, is her guardian angel; but he fails
in
all his endeavours to recover her from the torpor of despair into which she has
now sunk. At length, considering her case as hopeless, he proposes to her that
they should return to the Isle of Bourbon, (Delmare was dead,) and there commit
suicide together. To this sociable felo-de-se6 scheme she
gladly assents, and again they traverse the Atlantic. But before leaping arm
in
arm from the brow of a rock into the foaming cataract, which they have selected
as the scene of their self-slaughter, Sir Ralph wishes that his heart should
at
last be better known to Indiana, and tells her the whole story of his love, his
sufferings, his self-immolation, if not to her happiness, yet to the mitigation
of the evils that oppressed her. The result may be anticipated. They do not kill
themselves; but whether they marry, or dispense with a ceremony which, whatever
she may be pleased to aver, Madame
Dudevant assuredly does not patronize, is not clearly stated.
[Page 283]
Valentine is the next best of these novels, and though, in our opinion, inferior
to Indiana, not much so. Its object, (begging the authoress's pardon,) we cannot help
believing to be an attack upon the existing institutions of society, as well
as
the delineation of the follies and prejudices of the divers classes of society,
including the vices of the higher grades; for the writer's own prepossessions
are all manifestly democratic, and she paints her old Marquise, Valentine's grandmother, such as we can fancy none but the
female partners of the Regent
Orleans's orgies, or the associates of Madame du Barri in the petits appartements of Louis XV.—and to have been
one even of these last would make her very
old,—for without disputing the immorality of the French nobility prior to the
revolution, we must observe that the high polish of their manners sufficed to
insure general external decorum. And yet, to our conservative eyes, even these
sketches establish the necessity, or at least the advantage, of a clear and
marked distinction of ranks.
Valentine de Raimbault herself is the gentlest, purest, calmest of high-born
maidens; she is affianced to an elegant and courtly diplomatist, the Comte de
Lansac, whom she really likes, and believes that she loves as warmly as her
nature is capable of loving; and she seems altogether as happily secured as may
be against the dangers that we have seen besetting the path of poor Indiana.
Moreover, she has a warning example in an elder sister, Louise, who having,
several years before the opening of the tale, fallen a victim to the arts of
man, has been turned out of doors, with the living proof of her shame, whilst
her noble seducer was shot by her father in a duel. Louise is now secreted in
a
farm house upon the Raimbault estate, the mistress of which had been her nurse;
and the secret intercourse between the two fondly attached sisters involves
Valentine in an intimacy with Benedict Lhery, the farmer's over-educated nephew,
whence springs all the mischief, and indeed all the story. Benedict, who is
spoiled for a farmer, without being fitted for a learned profession, or made
quite a gentleman, is the betrothed bridegroom of his equally over-educated
cousin Athénaïs; but regardless of her passionate attachment to him, his
fastidiousness only sees and disdains in her the follies and affectations
engendered by an unsuitable education, and some weeks before our introduction
to
the parties, he had fallen in love with Louise, and been coldly rejected by her,
notwithstanding that she ardently returned his passion. Her motive is neither
pride of rank, nor humility of repentance—of this last sentiment the author seems to have no idea—but
respect for his engagement to Athénaïs, and for the wishes of her own kind
hosts, the Lherys.
[Page 284]
We will give the first meeting of Valentine and Benedict, as a specimen of Madame Dudevant's powers, in a
different style from the disagreeable and difficult scenes that we had to
translate, as best we could, in Indiana. It is May-day, and the village festival assembles the neighbourhood of
all ranks upon the green. Old Lhery takes the arm of his nephew, who is newly
returned from college, to present him to his landlady, the Dowager Comtesse de
Raimbault, a rich plebeian, whose wealth has bought back the Raimbault estates
and castle, (confiscated during the revolution,) which she has now visited to
celebrate her daughter's marriage in feudal style.
Valentine was seated upon the turf between her mother, the Comtesse de
Raimbault, and her grandmother, the Marquise de Raimbault. Benedict knew
none of these three ladies, but he had heard so much of them at the farm,
that he was prepared for the icy, disdainful notice of the one, and the
familiar, chatty reception of the other of the elder ladies. It seemed as if
the old Marquise sought by her talkative
fussiness to compensate her daughter-in-law's contemptuous silence. But even
this affectation of popularity was stamped with the habitual tone of feudal
protection.
"What, is that Benedict?" she exclaimed. "Is that the poppet that I have seen
at his mother's breast? Good morrow, my lad. I am delighted to see thee so
tall, and so well dressed. Thou art so like thy mother that it is awful.
Well, but dost' know that we are old acquaintance? Thou art the godson of my
poor son, the General, who fell at Waterloo. 'Twas I gave thee thy first
frock, but thou dostn't remember much of that. How long is't ago? Thou must
be eighteen."
"I am two and twenty, Madam," returned Benedict.
"The deuce you are!" exclaimed the Marquise,
"How time flies! I thought thee about the age of my granddaughter. . . . .
Valentine, speak to Benedict, 'tis the nephew of our good Lhery, the
intended of thy little playfellow Athénaïs—Speak to him, child."
The democratically haughty Benedict is exasperated by this pompous
affability.
He had fixed a bold and mocking gaze upon Valentine. . . . But the expression
of that beautiful face was so sweet and serene, the sound of that voice so
pure and so soothing, that the young man dropped his eyes and blushed like a
girl.
"Ah Sir," said she, "what I can say to you most sincerely, is, that I love
Athénaïs like a sister. Pray bring her to me, I have been long seeking
without finding her, and would fain embrace her."
Benedict bowed profoundly, and soon returned with his cousin. Athénaïs now
walked about the fête, arm in arm with the
noble daughter of the Counts of Raimbault; and although she affected to take
this as a matter of course, as Valentine really did, she could not disguise
the triumph of her proud joy, as she met the women who envied, and strove to
run her down.
[Page 285]
The fiddle now gave the signal for the Bourrée
(a provincial dance), Athénaïs was engaged to dance it with one of the
youths who had waylaid her, and she requested Mademoiselle de Raimbault to
be her vis-a-vis7 .
"I must wait till I am asked," Valentine answered with a smile.
"Well then, Benedict," exclaimed Athénaïs eagerly, "go and ask
Mademoiselle."
The intimidated Benedict consulted Valentine's eyes. In their soft and candid
expression he read the wish to accept his offer, and took a step towards
her. But the Comtesse suddenly touched her
arm, saying loud enough to be heard by Benedict;
"My child, I forbid your dancing la bourrée
with any one but M. de Lansac."
Benedict now first observed a very handsome young man, upon whose arm the Comtesse leant; and he recollected the name of
Mademoiselle de Raimbault's intended. He understood the mother's motive. At
a certain trill of the fiddle, executed before
beginning la bourrée, every gentleman, by
immemorial custom, salutes his partner. The Comte de Lansac, too well bred
to allow himself such a liberty in public, compromised matters with the laws
of Berry, by respectfully kissing Valentine's hand.
He then tried a few steps, but finding it impossible to catch the measure of
this dance, which no stranger ever could dance well, he stopped and said to
Valentine—
"I have now done my part, and at your mother's command installed you here;
but my awkwardness must not spoil your pleasure. You had a partner waiting
you; allow me to resign my claim to him." And turning to Benedict, he added,
in a tone of exquisite politeness, "Will you, sir, kindly be my substitute?
You will acquit yourself far better than me." . . . .
The Countess was satisfied with the diplomatic manner in which her intended
son-in-law had arranged the affair. But suddenly the fiddler, facetious and
waggish as are all genuine artists, interrupted the air of the dance, and
with a malicious affectation, repeated the imperative trill. The new dancer is bound to salute his
partner. Benedict turns pale, and is out of countenance, Daddy Lhery,
frightened at the anger that he sees in the eyes of the Countess, springs to
the musician and implores him to go on with the dance. The village Orpheus will listen to nothing;
triumphant amidst peals of laughter and of bravos, he persists in not resuming the air until the
indispensable form is gone through. The other dancers grow impatient. Madame
de Raimbault is about to take away her daughter. But M. de Lansac, a
courtier and a man of sense, feeling the ridicule of the scene, again
addresses Benedict:
"Come, sir, must I again authorize you to enforce a right, of which I dared
not avail myself? You spare me nothing of your triumph."
Benedict pressed his quivering lips to the velvet cheek of the young
Countess. A sudden sensation of pride and joy animated him for an instant,
but he observed that Valentine, amidst her blushes, was laughing heartily at
the incident; and he recollected that when M. de Lansac kissed her hand, she
had likewise blushed, but had not laughed.
[Page 286]
That very evening Benedict becomes the agent in the stolen interviews between the
two noble sisters; and, notwithstanding the fair promise of the blush unalloyed
by a laugh, he and Valentine presently fall head over ears in love with each
other. Both are, however, conscious of the insuperable obstacles that sever
them; and although Benedict refuses to fulfil his engagement with Athénaïs,
Valentine so far fulfils hers with M. de Lansac, as to go through the marriage
ceremony: but she excludes him from the bridal chamber upon a plea of illness,
and puts herself to sleep with a good dose of opium. Meanwhile, Benedict, a pair
of loaded pistols in his pocket, has concealed himself in this same bridal
chamber, with the benevolent intention of preserving unsullied the virgin purity
of his beloved, by blowing out either the bridegroom's brains or hers, and then
his own. Of the nocturnal scene that ensues suffice it to say, that the lover,
in point of fact, respects the purity he had come to guard; but despairing of
being able to guard it much longer, upon going away before daylight he executes
so much of his original purpose as to blow out his own brains. He does the job
imperfectly, however, and recovers. But Valentine is made really ill by the
shock of the first report; and ill M. de Lansac leaves her, thus avoiding the
inconvenience of taking a wife with him upon his diplomatic mission to
Petersburg.
Fifteen months of platonic love follow, guarded by the vigilance of poor Louise,
who, though distracted with jealousy, carefully watches over her darling sister.
At the end of this time M. de Lansac returns unexpectedly from Russia; but it
is
the importunity of creditors, not love for the wife whose fortune is to satisfy
them, that brings him back. Without offering to penetrate into her maiden bower,
he desires Valentine to sign papers that enable him to sell her estates, shows
her that he is aware of her connexion with Benedict and believes it to be
criminal, repulses her attempts at confession, refuses her request to save her
from danger by taking her away with him, and departs. And now the virtue of the
lovers is at length exhausted. Madame
Dudevant says:—
It was a fatal moment, that, sooner or later, must arrive. There is too much
temerity in hoping to subdue passion at the age of twenty, and amidst daily
interviews. . . .
When the moment of repentance came, it was terrible. Then bitterly did
Benedict lament a happiness that cost him so dear. His fault was visited
with the severest punishment that could have been inflicted upon him; he saw
Valentine weep, and pine away in sorrow.
But time is not given to see what would have come of this repentance. Valentine
is expelled from the home of her fathers[Page 287]by her base husband's
creditors, and seeks shelter at the farm, which Benedict had ceased to inhabit,
since his rejection of his cousin's hand. There Athénaïs, who had consoled
herself and married, gives up her own room to Valentine, whom Benedict privately
visits, to discuss and arrange their future plans, M. de Lansac having,
meanwhile, obligingly got himself shot in a duel. The husband of Athénaïs, who
had been absent, coming home at night, sees a man in his wife's room, and shoots
him as he goes away. Valentine dies of despair, the remorseful murderer drinks
himself to death, the wealthy Lherys purchase the Raimbault domains and chateau, and the pretty, young and widowed
Athénaïs marries the illegitimate son of Louise.
Of the third of this series of novels, Lelia, we shall speak much more briefly. It is decidedly the worst, and we
strongly suspect that few readers who chanced to begin their acquaintance with
the set by its perusal, would think of opening another of them[sic] To give such an analysis of Lelia as we have given of Valentine is impossible, since much of the detail of the story is such as respect
for our readers and ourselves must prevent our even alluding to. Like Valentine, it is an attack upon the existing laws of society, and to say the
truth, though for the reasons above intimated we cannot explain, its satire
seems to be directed nearly as much against those of nature. But we will
endeavour, by a few brief words concerning the story and its characters, to give
the reader some idea of the nature of this most extraordinary production of a
woman, not belonging to the Harriette
Wilson class, and to show that its popularity in France, and all this
lady's writings are, we are assured, highly popular, is no wise owing to the
usual arts and address of a story teller.
A very young, pure, and enthusiastic poet is in love with a mysterious beauty,
Lelia, a compound of romance, ultra-German
transcendentalism, and the coldest irony. She, who has had one regular intrigue,
and been somewhat disgusted therewith, returns his passion platonically, tricks him into mistaking a
courtezan (her sister) for herself, and laughs at him for being so duped into
illusory happiness. Hereupon our pure enthusiast, in rage, revenge,
mortification, and despair, plunges headlong into an ultra-extravagance of debauchery, of which he is about to die, when he
prevents the catastrophe by suicide. The female character presented to us as
the
most amiable in disposition, the most consistent and rational in conduct, is
the
aforesaid courtezan; and the male preacher and pattern of virtue is a gentleman
who, after running a career of wild libertinism and yet wilder gambling, has
committed forgery, been convicted, branded,[Page 288]and sent to the galleys,
where he has duly served his time, and learned philosophy and morality. We must
add, though the remark be far inferior in importance to the preceding, that the
poet, the ex-galley slave, and Lelia herself, are all so mystically metaphysical
in their conversations and reasonings, as actually to bewilder a plain English
intellect, and make us despair of finding anything at once decent and
intelligible to extract.
But perhaps that obtuseness of perception, which the French deem indigenous to
our foggy isle (isle brumeuse), may have given us
a false view of Lelia; and by good luck we have the means of enabling the reader to balance
our opinion against the fair author's
own. In the already cited preface to Le Secretaire Intime, after the justification of Indiana and Valentine that has been given, she goes on to speak of Lelia:
But may not poesy overstep the bounds of these peaceable felicities, these
persevering credulities? (To wit, those of women who go on loving and
trusting again and again.) Is she not entitled to take for the subject of
her studies those sad exceptions, who, upon being undeceived, pass from
disappointment to despair, from despair to doubt, from doubt to irony, from
irony to pity, and from pity to serene impassive resignation—a religious
disdain of all that is not God or Thought.
* * * *
Sensual happiness, pleasure heedless of yesterday and to-morrow, the triumph
of the body over the soul, may appear to Irony herself, with all her pride
and self-sufficiency, a subject rather of regret than of compassion. The
silent and lonely insulation of thought wrapped up in itself may give
serenity, but not happiness. In presence of those joys to which she cannot
condescend, Reason may be permitted to grieve over the desart atmosphere in
which she has taken refuge. There is nothing in this resigned sadness like
the apology of libertinism. The wise man may envy the courtesan without
ceasing to be wise. Plato may be
jealous of Aspasia, without prizing
less highly the lessons of Socrates.
That Doubt, born of Disappointment, should unreservedly admire Passion
sanctified by trial and pain—should kneel to the man who has traversed vice
and its attendant tortures, in order to rise laboriously to the serenity of
courage and of lucid conceptions,—is that a subject of scandal? . . .
If these three tales' (Indiana, Valentine, and Lelia) 'are to all thinking minds what they are to himself, the author
cannot divine how a portraiture of domestic morals that had seemed correct,
how a detail of the internal conflicts of a woman long hesitating between
duty and passion, that had been thought true to nature, can suddenly lose
all the merit attributed to them, because Thought, after having exposed
Brutality and Egotism, takes a fancy to attack Enthusiasm.
Lelia was speedily followed by Rose et Blanche, in every respect a less objectionable work, and less inferior to Indiana, but[Page 289]another assault upon the existing state of the world,
and amongst other parts thereof, upon that beautifully Christian institution
which might well reconcile the philanthropic mind to all that is censurable in
the Roman Catholic faith—we mean that of les Soeurs de
la Charité (the Sisters of Charity). Madame Dudevant does not, indeed, deny
the merits of these uncloistered locomotive nuns,
their services to suffering humanity, or the superiority of their disinterested
pious zeal, over the mercenary cares of paid hospital servants; but she strips
them altogether of the poetic charm with which the imagination loves to invest
a
delicate, highly educated, highly born and affluent woman, overcoming the
disgust of habitual refinement, the innate repugnance of the senses, in order
to
devote her whole existence to a sad ministering to "all those ills that flesh
is
heir to."8 She presents
us in her Soeur de la Charité with an excellent
but coarse-issima sick nurse, rigidly chaste, but
deriding and despising every species of delicacy and sensibility, as defects
that must unfit their luckless possessor for the discharge of her duties to male
patients, and even suffering her tongue to echo the oaths, slang, and almost
the
more offensive expressions, to which her attendance upon such patients has
inured her ear.
The story is this. Rose is a young strolling actress, born, almost upon the
stage, of the most profligate of affectionate mothers, and brought up behind
the
scenes. From innate purity she resists her mother's exhortations and commands
to
eke out the scanty earnings of her honest art by the ampler gains of that
infamous traffic, which, in France at least, is too often combined with the
profession of a public performer. At length her mother's reproaches and filial
duty wring from her a loathing obedience, when the depth and dignity of her
despair constrain the young profligate to whom she is sold to respect her
innocence. This is a bold, we think a fine conception, and from the pen of a
Scott, we can fancy such an incident as beautiful and sublime as it is
overpowering. But we regret to say, that in the hands of the present writer,
this scene, so difficult to manage, is not as well executed as conceived, nor
yet touched with the nice delicacy requisite to allow of our extracting it. The
conquered libertine places Rose first with his devotee sister, then in a convent
for education, and she resolves to love her deliverer hopelessly and eternally.
Her former profession being discovered, she is expelled the convent, returns
to
the stage, and acquires a high character alike for virtue and for talent. Here
she captivates her original protector, Horace Cazalés, and they are upon the
point of marriage; but the Cazalés family successfully labour to pre-[Page 290]vent so disreputable an alliance, and succeed in estranging him from the
actress.
Meanwhile, Blanche is a novice in the Parisian convent, where Rose was a boarder,
and a romantic friendship has sprung up between the two young girls. Blanche
falls in love with the drawing-master, another libertine, who returns her
passion, but not ardently enough to think of incumbering himself with a
portionless wife. Chance throws in her way, amongst his drawings, a paper,
written by his bosom friend Horace Cazalés, confessing his having, two or three
years since, taken a shameless advantage of the imbecility of a poor idiot girl,
Denise Lazare, bequeathed to his care by her dying father, to whom he, Horace,
owed the preservation of his life, and stating that he had subsequently placed
her in a convent at Bordeaux. This paper strangely disorders Blanche, whose
recollections of anything prior to a recent violent nervous illness are quite
indistinct. She shows the paper to her confessor, and reveals her confused
recollections and fears; but he argues against them as nervous delusions, and
the preparations for her taking the veil proceed. We will extract the scene of
her profession, as again in a different style from those we have already
given.
Upon this day the church, its inlaid floor waxed like that of a salon, and resplendent as a mirror, was
dressed out with flowers, as for the gayest of festivals. The walls were
tapestried with garlands, the pavement of the choir was strewed with
rose-leaves, the vaulted roof impregnated with incense. The great silver
chandeliers, the golden angels of the tabernacle and of the cross, the rosettes of the gothic frame-work, glittered
with light and sunshine; and the metal flowers heaped upon the shrines,
rendered the altar radiant with the splendour reflected from their brilliant
surfaces. The organ poured out floods of its own full and vibratory harmony;
the bell rebounded with joyous cadences in its Italian belfry; the metallic
and penetrating voices of young maidens floated dyingly away, from arcade to
arcade, amidst the clouds of incense and of melody. Whilst gazing upon the
chapel thus dazzling, whilst breathing such perfumes, whilst inhaling the
inebriating mystic humidity that seized the soul at the foot of the columns,
whilst plunging in the extacy which thrilled every fibre, deluged every
recess of that soul, it might have been difficult to guess that a poor girl
in the vigour of her age, in the first bloom of her beauty, was about to be
affianced to eternal seclusion. . . .
The clergy invited to the ceremony adorned the choir with the luxury of their
wealth, with the splendour of their glory. . . . . The galleries were
thronged with the numerous friends of the community, as an author fills the
pit of the theatre with friends to applaud his piece; the back of the chapel
was occupied by the nuns in long black mantles; the pupils and boarders
filled the middle portion, separated by gratings from the other two; and the
crowd that had been unable to make way into the[Page 291]galleries,
pressed into that part of the church whence profane eyes could not pierce
the veil that divided them from the nuns.
But at a given signal, after the customary chaunts and a short address from
the confessor, the Abbé P——, the black curtain glided back upon its rods,
and the whole chapter of the Augustine nuns was seen, ranged in a semicircle
of stalls. Alone, kneeling before a praying desk, the novice, richly
attired, enveloped in a white Indian shawl and a silver lama veil, awaited
her parents, represented, according to custom,
by two kindly disposed individuals. The Abbé Causcalmon, with his dignified
demeanor and venerable countenance, was invariably commissioned to play the
father. He arose gravely, went forward, and offered his hand to a tall Soeur de Charité, (sister Olympie, who had
brought Blanche from a Bordeaux convent to this,) who knelt amongst the
spectators, and together crossing the nave of the church, they approached
the novice. The worthy Abbé, accustomed to
such solemnities, moved with due deliberation. Not so sister Olympie, whose
presence Blanche had solicited, and who, impatient of an idle ceremony,
dragged the Abbé by the arm, and, to his great
discomposure hurried him forwards. . . . . . But despite her air of hurry,
sister Olympie was in tears. She loved not the cloistered life, could not
comprehend its use, and pitied those who were dedicated to it. . . .
The father and mother, each taking a hand of the novice, again crossed the nave,
and led her to the high altar, where Monseigneur the archbishop of V——
awaited her, seated in a magnificent arm chair, and turning his back upon
the Holy of Holies, before which knelt the
multitude.
Attired as for a bridal day, radiant in diamonds, satin, lace, and flowers,
the novice, trembling like a leaf beaten by the winds, advanced with
difficulty to a cushion placed at Monseigneur's feet. The rich dress, taken from the convent
treasury only for such occasions, heightened the elegance of her lofty
stature, now timidly bent, and the dazzling whiteness of her bare arms and
shoulders. Her heart throbbed under the belt of pearls, and when sister
Olympie awkwardly threw back the veil which had concealed that lovely face
from all eyes, she seemed a beautiful alabaster virgin from the chisel of
Canova. A murmur of
admiration, regret, and pity, arose from the throng that pressed forward to
look upon her.
"My dear daughter," said the archbishop, "what do you ask?"
The father and mother answered, "We present our beloved daughter to the minister
of the Lord, that she, now the betrothed of Christ, may become his
bride."
"It is well," returned the prelate, "let her approach, and may the Lord give
ear to her prayers!"
The novice arose.
"You are affianced to the Lord, my dear daughter."
"Yes, father," answered sister Blanche, so softly and timidly, that scarce
could the sound of her voice be heard.
"Since when?"
"More than three years."
[Page 292]
"Have you reached the age at which you can dispose of yourself?"
"I am upwards of twenty-one years old.
"What is your name, my dear sister?"
"Sister Blanche."
"That is your conventual name; but your name amongst men?"
"Blanche.—I never knew" . . . . .
"Denise Lazare," said sister Olympie, in audible accents.
The effect of this name seemed magical upon several persons near the altar.
The Abbé P——, who stood upon its steps, uttered an exclamation of surprise,
and hastened towards the novice with a vivacity not belonging to his age.
Sister Blanche shuddered as though a red-hot iron had touched her; and her
pale face was crimsoned. She half arose, as if to protest against sister
Olympie's sentence. But suddenly, casting her bewildered eyes around, she
grasped the Abbé P——'s arm, and clinging to it with all her strength she
stretched out her other hand towards a man, lividly pale, who had detached
himself from the crowd, and stood before her, motionless, his hair on end,
his lips blue. Then, collecting all the courage inspired by terror and
distraction,
"'Tis he, 'tis he!" she exclaimed, seeking to hide herself under the folds of
her confessor's white official robe, and fell senseless upon the richly
flowered carpet of the altar.
The pale man, in whom the reader will have recognized Horace Cazalés, had
stood petrified from the moment the novice's veil was removed. But when she
recognized him, when she had blasted him with her dreadful gaze, he sprang
towards her, and would have followed sister Olympie, who, in her robust
arms, was carrying Blanche off toward the choir, had not the Abbé P——, with
his air of blended mildness and severity, seized him by the coat.
"No scandal, sir," said he to Horace in an under tone. "I know every thing. I
will have the honour of waiting upon you in the course of the day;
withdraw."
Horace Cazalés is now persuaded by his devout sister, that it is his duty,
forgetting the actress Rose, to marry his former victim; as is Blanche by a
young ascetic Jesuit confessor, substituted for the unmanageably rational
Jesuit, Abbé P——, that it is her's to efface her unconscious pollution by the
Church's sanction, and to save her polluter's soul by accepting his hand. She
dies of agitation and suffering upon the evening of her wedding-day, and Rose
again forsakes the theatre to take the veil in the convent—the superior who had
expelled her being changed,—where she had known and loved Blanche.
The reader will have observed that there is much to dislike as well as to like in
Rose et Blanche. It is less animated and interesting in its progress than Indiana and Valentine; but what we feel most
disposed to censure is, that Rose, who, surrounded by vice, had conceived and
loved virtue as something poetically beautiful and heroic, finds it so dull,
so
prosaically commonplace[Page 293]in the devotee's chateau, and in the convent, during her first residence there, that we
cannot help fearing she should repent her resistance to her mother's will. Nor
is this irksome feeling relieved by representations of her self-satisfaction
in
her own good conduct, during her second theatrical career. Then we see her first
engrossed by her love for Horace, and willing to sacrifice to him her hardly
earned reputation, nay, in her secret heart, even her long high-prized virtue,
and afterwards broken-hearted by his desertion, and the death of Blanche. Has
our authoress no suspicion of the
secret and proud self-enjoyment of arduous virtue?
The next of our authoress's
publications is a collection of tales, to which the longest, Le Secretaire Intime, gives its name: and, as the shorter tales are merely so many, not very
interesting, versions of the authoress's favourite theses, to wit, virtue without absolute
chastity, and the difficulty to the heart of woman of loving a second time after
the disappointment of its first affections, to the Secretaire Intime we shall confine out[sic] attention; the rather that we here find, what we suspect to be
George Sand's or Madame Dudevant's beau ideal of wedded life.
This is the story of a young Frenchman (Count St. Julien,) of a noble but decayed
family, austerely educated by a conscientious Catholic priest, who runs away
from his father's dilapidated ci-devant chateau in
disgust upon learning that his mother had, in the days of her youth, been frail.
On the road he falls in with a beautiful Italian princess, in a rather
theatrical costume, but the actual reigning
sovereign of dominions, some few miles square, in Friuli; he pleases her fancy,
and is engaged as her confidential secretary. Princess Quintilia Cavalcanti
immediately becomes to her new secretary an object of admiration, curiosity,
perplexity and suspicion. She is incomparably beautiful, intellectual, zealous
in her sovereign duties, and learned, and almost equally giddy, coquettish and
frivolous; whilst her frank good humour too often degenerates into a sort of
hail-fellow-well-met manner, into masculine coarseness, for—horresco referens,9 but the truth must be told—the beautiful
princess smokes! St. Julien is immediately assailed with reports of her
licentiousness and cruelty. A French traveller boasts of having had a bal d'opera10 intrigue with her at
Paris. A story is current at her court of a certain Max, the illegitimate son
of
a German prince, and her first love, who had unaccountably disappeared after
a
public quarrel with her, and was believed to be buried in a certain pavilion,
further notorious as the usual scene of her assignations. An equerry intimates
that he has been a favoured lover, and owes his life, as a discarded one, solely
to his extreme dis-
vol. xiv. no. xxviii.x[Page 294]cretion; and a page, whom the princess persists in treating as a
child, and admitting to the familiarity of a child, incessantly rallies St.
Julien upon his stupidity and dulness, in not uniting the post of favourite to
that of confidential secretary. A thousand accidents confirm these degrading
ideas of Quintilia, which are contradicted only by want of actual evidence, and
by her apparent tranquil consciousness of self-approbation. The unhappy
secretary meanwhile is madly in love with his princess, utterly at a loss
whether to think her the first of created beings, or another Catherine II. of
Russia, jealous of every body, and thoroughly miserable. At length he hazards
a
declaration of his passion, which is received with irony, and followed by a
confession of his uncertainties about her character. Some days afterwards, the
princess sends for him, desires him to turn his love into friendship, and, to
prove her value for this last sentiment from him, gives him an explanation,
which, however, explains nothing, except, perhaps, some of the writer's peculiar
notions. The passage that seems to bear this interpretation is as follows:—
Do not take me for a virtuous woman, Julien. I know not what virtue is; I
believe in it as I do in Providence, without defining or comprehending it. I
know not what it is to struggle against oneself; I never had occasion to do
so; I never subjected myself to principles; I have never felt a want of
them; I never was hurried further than I chose to go; I have fully indulged
all my fancies, and never found myself in danger. A man who feels in his
soul no shameful wound requiring concealment may drink to intoxication, and
lay bare to view all the recesses of his conscience. A woman who does not
love vice need not fear it; she may traverse its mire without a single stain
upon her gown;11 she may touch the foulness of soul of
others, as the sister of charity touches the leprosy in the hospital. She
has the privilege of toleration and pardon: if she does not use it she must
be wicked. To be chaste and wicked is to be cold, to be chaste and kind is
to be good. I never thought this difficult for well governed minds.
We will add an extract or two, exhibiting princess Quintilia as she appears to
St. Julien and the reader. She has been for months shut up in her cabinet with
her secretary, studying the philosophy of government, preparing codes of law,
maturing projects for promoting the happiness of her subjects.
Six months had passed thus. One evening the work was finished; the princess
had been more serious and thoughtful than usual; she wrote with her own hand
a last page in the register that Julien offered her. While she wrote,
Ginetta, (a favourite waiting maid,) who had stolen softly into the room,
waited anxiously, her quick eye glancing interrogatively, now at the door
where Julien perceived the skirt of Galeotto (the page), now at the darkened
and knitted brow of the prin-[Page 295]cess. The princess laid down her
pen absently, buried her head in her hands, took the pen up again, played a
moment with a lock of her hair that had broken loose, started, wrote a few
figures, signed the register, closed and pushed it away. Then rising, she
turned to Ginetta, and stuck the pen amidst her black locks. The chambermaid
uttered a cry of joy. "Have you done at last, madam?" she exclaimed. "Will
that beautiful hand quit the pen to resume the scepter and the fan? . . .
May I toss to the winds the ugly pen that you have placed in my hair, and
that feels as heavy as lead?"
"Make an auto-da-fé12
of it an thou wilt," answered Quintilia; "I work no more this year."
She now, to the mortification of St. Julien, gives herself up to mirth with
Ginetta and Galeotto, and devotes her attention as exclusively to inventing
dresses for a fancy ball, as she had previously done to legislation and
political economy.
The ball was magnificent. Thanks to one of the princess's most whimsical
devices, the whole court represented an immense collection of butterflies
and other insects. Variegated tight dresses fitted close to the shape; great
wings of different materials, adjusted by invisible wires, were unfolded
behind the shoulders, or along the back; and no one could sufficiently
admire the correctness of the tints and shades, the cut and position of the
wings; even the countenance of each insect was imitated by the head-dress of
the personifier. . . . .
The princess herself had regulated the choice and the distribution of the
costumes. She had consulted twenty naturalists, and turned over every
entomological work in her library, to obtain a degree of perfection, capable
of maddening with delight all professors of natural history. . . .
The apartments were hung and carpeted with flowers, and amongst garlands of
roses, silken ladders were hidden, fixed to the walls or hanging from the
roof. The boldest insects climbed up these fragile supports, and displayed
themselves and their wings below the ceiling or between the pillars. . . .
Quintilia, surrounded by professions of love and adoration, gave herself up
to the pleasure of being admired, with a youthfulness of intoxication that
distracted St. Julien.
The favourite librarian, a profound naturalist, now affects to take a red
scarabeus or criocère13 for the
ghost of a scarabeus that he had philosophically slain; the princess is amusing
herself with the scene, which seems ending in a joyous recognition, when the
Abbate Scipione, who acts as master of the
ceremonies, leads her aside to the balcony, where St. Julien is lurking angry
and unseen, to tell her that the red scarabeus is masked contrary to order, and
that nobody knows who he is. She indignantly orders him to be turned out after
telling his name.
"Sir," said the abbate to the criocère, with an arrogance assumed for the
first time in his life, "who are you? Her highness insists upon
knowing."
x 2[Page 296]
The stranger whispered his name to the master of the ceremonies, but he was
not affected by it as the librarian had been. "I do not know you," said he,
"and as you are not invited, I am commanded to show you out."
"First tell the princess my name," rejoined the stranger, "and if she then
commands me to withdraw . . . ."
* * * * *
"Rosenheim!" exclaimed the princess violently, "did I hear aright? Speak
louder. Or, no! no! rather speak lower,—Rosenheim?"
"Rosenheim," repeated the abbate, ready to
faint.
But the princess, instead of crushing him with her anger, sprang with a loud
cry of joy to his neck, and forcibly embraced him, ejaculating the while:
"Ah! l'abbate! my dear abbate!"
This mysteriously introduced Rosenheim proves in the end to be the murdered Max
himself, who is privately married to Quintilia, and prefers injuring her
reputation by stolen interviews, to appearing openly as her husband. And this
we
apprehend to be Madame Dudevant's
notion of conjugal felicity; an opinion strongly corroborated by an observation
of the old librarian, the confidant of Max and Quintilia, who is commissioned
to
reveal the state of affairs to St. Julien, prior to his final dismissal from
the
court; a fate which he had justly brought upon himself by a mad attempt upon
the
princess's person, as well as by his impertinent prying into her secrets. The
librarian ends his explanation with these words:—
This union continues so beautiful and so pure, that it proves the excellence
of those laws of Lycurgus which
obliged husbands to visit their wives with all the precautions employed by
lovers, to avoid detection.
The last novel upon our list has made its appearance since our remarks upon the
preceding ones were written; the space which these have already occupied warns
us to be brief in what we have to say of this new production of our prolific
authoress. In powerful writing
and vigorous portraiture, Jacques bears more resemblance to Indiana and Valentine, than to its three immediate predecessors; and one reason of this may
be, that the object of it is the same with those two remarkable productions.
Decidedly, Madame Dudevant is so much
more at home in her delineations of matrimonial miseries, (of which in fact Jacques is but a third picture,) than in any other field, that she would well
deserve to be called the Anti-matrimonial
Novelist, if such a title implied any enviable distinction. Notwithstanding
the repeated disclaimers which we have seen she has made of the imputed (fairly
enough, we think) tendency of her works, she has in this new one put the
following declaration into the mouth of the hero, which[Page 297]must be
received, we suppose, as a proof that her own sentiments on the subject remain
unaltered.
I have not changed my opinion, I have not become reconciled to society, and
marriage I still look upon as one of its most odious institutions. I doubt
not that it will be abolished, if mankind make any progress towards justice
and reason; a more humane and not less sacred tie will replace it, and
secure the existence of the children who shall be born to one man and one
woman, without enchaining for ever the liberty of either. But men are too
coarse (grossiers) and women too cowardly (lâches) to demand a law more noble than the
law of iron which rules them; to beings without conscience and without
virtue, heavy chains are necessary. In this age it is impossible to realise
the ameliorations which a few generous spirits dream of; these spirits
forget that they are a century in advance of their contemporaries, and that
before the law can be changed, man himself must be changed.
His actions, however, are not in unison with his professions; he marries—and is
punished accordingly.
In the present instance, the authoress
has illustrated the impossibility of constant love, and wedded happiness, by
the
fate of a union, the counterpart of which is certainly not of frequent
occurrence in actual life. The husband, Jacques, is a man, who, having lived
through the tempest of Napoleon's
triumphs and fate, and had some score of impassioned intrigues in as many years,
becomes, at the age of thirty-five, tired of active life and turns philosopher,
and fancies it happiness to lie on the sofa and smoke hour after hour by the
side of his wife; and the lady is a pretty, ignorant, romantic school-girl of
seventeen, who has nothing upon earth with which to occupy her solitude except
her love and admiration of her silent, smoking husband. Jacques himself is, we
must confess, a personage the prototype of whom we never had the good luck to
meet with, or hear of. Men there are still, we doubt not, even in these
degenerate days, who can drink a whole company under the table, and walk
steadily away. But that a boy of fifteen, the first time he pollutes his lips
with tobacco or alcohol, should smoke and swill brandy, at the discretion of
a
whole regiment, without perceptible effect upon head, stomach, or nerves, is
a
physiological phenomenon as startling, as his laming, in a previously determined
manner, a professed duellist, the very first time he wields a sabre. One who
begins so is not to be judged by common rules; wherefore we have not a word to
say upon the probability of his committing suicide, to enable his faithless wife
to marry her paramour. The character of this personage, the fickle, impetuous,
selfish Octave, is true to nature; as is, we fear, the passion he inspires in
the tender heart of the sweet but silly heroine, Fernande. Many of the minor
characters are admirable sketches. The rough veterans of the Imperial army are
hit off with a spirited, a masculine hand.