Lost Illusions: A Distinguished Provincial at Paris — Chapter 7

Lucien took d’Arthez’s advice unquestioningly, and followed it out to the letter.

The most magnificent palaces of fancy had been suddenly flung open to him by a nobly-gifted mind, matured already by thought and critical examinations undertaken for their own sake, not for publication, but for the solitary thinker’s own satisfaction.

The burning coal had been laid on the lips of the poet of Angoulême, a word uttered by a hard student in Paris had fallen upon ground prepared to receive it in the provincial.

Lucien set about recasting his work.

In his gladness at finding in the wilderness of Paris a nature abounding in generous and sympathetic feeling, the distinguished provincial did, as all young creatures hungering for affection are wont to do;

he fastened, like a chronic disease, upon this one friend that he had found.

He called for D’Arthez on his way to the Bibliothèque, walked with him on fine days in the Luxembourg Gardens, and went with his friend every evening as far as the door of his lodging-house after sitting next to him at Flicoteaux’s. He pressed close to his friend’s side as a soldier might keep by a comrade on the frozen Russian plains.

During those early days of his acquaintance, he noticed, not without chagrin, that his presence imposed a certain restraint on the circle of Daniel’s intimates.

The talk of those superior beings of whom d’Arthez spoke to him with such concentrated enthusiasm kept within the bounds of a reserve but little in keeping with the evident warmth of their friendships.

At these times Lucien discreetly took his leave, a feeling of curiosity mingling with the sense of something like pain at the ostracism to which he was subjected by these strangers, who all addressed each other by their Christian names.

Each one of them, like d’Arthez, bore the stamp of genius upon his forehead.

After some private opposition, overcome by d’Arthez without Lucien’s knowledge, the newcomer was at length judged worthy to make one of the _cenacle_ of lofty thinkers.

Henceforward he was to be one of a little group of young men who met almost every evening in d’Arthez’s room, united by the keenest sympathies and by the earnestness of their intellectual life.

They all foresaw a great writer in d’Arthez; they looked upon him as their chief since the loss of one of their number, a mystical genius, one of the most extraordinary intellects of the age.

This former leader had gone back to his province for reasons on which it serves no purpose to enter, but Lucien often heard them speak of this absent friend as “Louis.

” Several of the group were destined to fall by the way; but others, like d’Arthez, have since won all the fame that was their due.

A few details as to the circle will readily explain Lucien’s strong feeling of interest and curiosity.

One among those who still survive was Horace Bianchon, then a house-student at the Hôtel-Dieu; later, a shining light at the École de Paris, and now so well known that it is néedless to give any description of his appearance, genius, or character.

Next came Léon Giraud, that profound philosopher and bold theorist, turning all systems inside out, criticising, expressing, and formulating, dragging them all to the feet of his idol—Humanity; great even in his errors, for his honesty ennobled his mistakes.

An intrepid toiler, a conscientious scholar, he became the acknowledged head of a school of moralists and politicians.

Time alone can pronounce upon the merits of his theories; but if his convictions have drawn him into paths in which none of his old comrades tread, none the less he is still their faithful friend.

Art was represented by Joseph Bridau, one of the best painters among the younger men.

But for a too impressionable nature, which made havoc of Joseph’s heart, he might have continued the tradition of the great Italian masters, though, for that matter, the last word has not yet been said concerning him.

He combines Roman outline with Venetian color; but love is fatal to his work, love not merely transfixes his heart, but sends his arrow through the brain, deranges the course of his life, and sets the victim describing the strangest zigzags.

If the mistress of the moment is too kind or too cruel, Joseph will send into the Exhibition sketches where the drawing is clogged with color, or pictures finished under the stress of some imaginary woe, in which he gave his whole attention to the drawing, and left the color to take care of itself.

He is a constant disappointment to his friends and the public; yet Hoffmann would have worshiped him for his daring experiments in the realms of art.

When Bridau is wholly himself he is admirable, and as praise is sweet to him, his disgust is great when one praises the failures in which he alone discovers all that is lacking in the eyes of the public.

He is whimsical to the last degree.

His friends have seen him destroy a finished picture because, in his eyes, it looked too smooth.

“It is overdone,” he would say; “it is niggling work.

” With his eccentric, yet lofty nature, with a nervous organization and all that it entails of torment and delight, the craving for perfection becomes morbid.

Intellectually he is akin to Sterne, though he is not a literary worker.

There is an indescribable piquancy about his epigrams and sallies of thought.

He is eloquent, he knows how to love, but the uncertainty that appears in his execution is a part of the very nature of the man.

The brotherhood loved him for the very qualities which the philistine would style defects.

Last among the living comes Fulgence Ridal.

No writer of our times possesses more of the exuberant spirit of pure comedy than this poet, careless of fame, who will fling his more commonplace productions to theatrical managers, and keep the most charming scenes in the seraglio of his brain for himself and his friends.

Of the public he asks just sufficient to secure his independence, and then declines to do anything more.

Indolent and prolific as Rossini, compelled, like great poet-comedians, like Molière and Rabelais, to see both sides of everything, and all that is to be said both for and against, he is a sceptic, ready to laugh at all things.

Fulgence Ridal is a great practical philosopher.

His worldly wisdom, his genius for observation, his contempt for fame (“fuss,” as he calls it) have not seared a kind heart.

He is as energetic on behalf of another as he is careless where his own interests are concerned; and if he bestirs himself, it is for a friend.

Living up to his Rabelaisian mask, he is no enemy to good cheer, though he never goes out of his way to find it; he is melancholy and gay.

His friends dubbed him the “Dog of the Regiment.

” You could have no better portrait of the man than his nickname.

Three more of the band, at least as remarkable as the friends who have just been sketched in outline, were destined to fall by the way.

Of these, Meyraux was the first.

Meyraux died after stirring up the famous controversy between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a great question which divided the whole scientific world into two opposite camps, with these two men of equal genius as leaders.

This befell some months before the death of the champion of rigorous analytical science as opposed to the pantheism of one who is still living to bear an honored name in Germany.

Meyraux was the friend of that “Louis” of whom death was so soon to rob the intellectual world.

With these two, both marked by death, and unknown to-day in spite of their wide knowledge and their genius, stands a third, Michel Chrestien, the great Republican thinker, who dreamed of European Federation, and had no small share in bringing about the Saint-Simonian movement of 1830. A politician of the calibre of Saint-Just and Danton, but simple, meek as a maid, and brimful of illusions and loving-kindness; the owner of a singing voice which would have sent Mozart, or Weber, or Rossini into ecstasies, for his singing of certain songs of Béranger’s could intoxicate the heart in you with poetry, or hope, or love—Michel Chrestien, poor as Lucien, poor as Daniel d’Arthez, as all the rest of his friends, gained a living with the haphazard indifference of a Diogenes.

He indexed lengthy works, he drew up prospectuses for booksellers, and kept his doctrines to himself, as the grave keeps the secrets of the dead.

Yet the gay bohemian of intellectual life, the great statesman who might have changed the face of the world, fell as a private soldier in the cloister of Saint-Merri; some shopkeeper’s bullet struck down one of the noblest creatures that ever trod French soil, and Michel Chrestien died for other doctrines than his own.

His Federation scheme was more dangerous to the aristocracy of Europe than the Republican propaganda; it was more feasible and less extravagant than the hideous doctrines of indefinite liberty proclaimed by the young madcaps who assume the character of heirs of the Convention.

All who knew the noble plebeian wept for him; there is not one of them but remembers, and often remembers, a great obscure politician.

Esteem and friendship kept the peace between the extremes of hostile opinion and conviction represented in the brotherhood.

Daniel d’Arthez came of a good family in Picardy.

His belief in the Monarchy was quite as strong as Michel Chrestien’s faith in European Federation.

Fulgence Ridal scoffed at Léon Giraud’s philosophical doctrines, while Giraud himself prophesied for d’Arthez’s benefit the approaching end of Christianity and the extinction of the institution of the family.

Michel Chrestien, a believer in the religion of Christ, the divine lawgiver, who taught the equality of men, would defend the immortality of the soul from Bianchon’s scalpel, for Horace Bianchon was before all things an analyst.

There was plenty of discussion, but no bickering.

Vanity was not engaged, for the speakers were also the audience.

They would talk over their work among themselves and take counsel of each other with the delightful openness of youth.

If the matter in hand was serious, the opponent would leave his own position to enter into his friend’s point of view; and being an impartial judge in a matter outside his own sphere, would prove the better helper; envy, the hideous treasure of disappointment, abortive talent, failure, and mortified vanity, was quite unknown among them.

All of them, moreover, were going their separate ways.

For these reasons, Lucien and others admitted to their society felt at their ease in it.

Wherever you find real talent, you will find frank good fellowship and sincerity, and no sort of pretension, the wit that caresses the intellect and never is aimed at self-love.

When the first nervousness, caused by respect, wore off, it was unspeakably pleasant to make one of this elect company of youth.

Familiarity did not exclude in each a consciousness of his own value, nor a profound esteem for his neighbor; and finally, as every member of the circle felt that he could afford to receive or to give, no one made a difficulty of accepting.

Talk was unflagging, full of charm, and ranging over the most varied topics; words light as arrows sped to the mark.

There was a strange contrast between the dire material poverty in which the young men lived and the splendor of their intellectual wealth.

They looked upon the practical problems of existence simply as matter for friendly jokes.

The cold weather happened to set in early that year.

Five of d’Arthez’s friends appeared one day, each concealing firewood under his cloak; the same idea had occurred to the five, as it sometimes happens that all the guests at a picnic are inspired with the notion of bringing a pie as their contribution.

All of them were gifted with the moral beauty which reacts upon the physical form, and, no less than work and vigils, overlays a youthful face with a shade of divine gold; purity of life and the fire of thought had brought refinement and regularity into features somewhat pinched and rugged.

The poet’s amplitude of brow was a striking characteristic common to them all; the bright, sparkling eyes told of cleanliness of life.

The hardships of penury, when they were felt at all, were born so gaily and embraced with such enthusiasm, that they had left no trace to mar the serenity peculiar to the faces of the young who have no grave errors laid to their charge as yet, who have not stooped to any of the base compromises wrung from impatience of poverty by the strong desire to succeed.

The temptation to use any means to this end is the greater since that men of letters are lenient with bad faith and extend an easy indulgence to treachery.

There is an element in friendship which doubles its charm and renders it indissoluble—a sense of certainty which is lacking in love.

These young men were sure of themselves and of each other; the enemy of one was the enemy of all; the most urgent personal considerations would have been shattered if they had clashed with the sacred solidarity of their fellowship.

All alike incapable of disloyalty, they could oppose a formidable No to any accusation brought against the absent and defend them with perfect confidence.

With a like nobility of nature and strength of feeling, it was possible to think and speak freely on all matters of intellectual or scientific interest; hence the honesty of their friendships, the gaiety of their talk, and with this intellectual freedom of the community there was no fear of being misunderstood; they stood upon no ceremony with each other; they shared their troubles and joys, and gave thought and sympathy from full hearts.

The charming delicacy of feeling which makes the tale of _Deux Amis_ a treasury for great souls, was the rule of their daily life.

It may be imagined, therefore, that their standard of requirements was not an easy one; they were too conscious of their worth, too well aware of their happiness, to care to trouble their life with the admixture of a new and unknown element.

This federation of interests and affection lasted for twenty years without a collision or disappointment.

Death alone could thin the numbers of the noble Pleiades, taking first Louis Lambert, later Meyraux and Michel Chrestien.

When Michel Chrestien fell in 1832 his friends went, in spite of the perils of the step, to find his body at Saint-Merri; and Horace Bianchon, Daniel d’Arthez, Léon Giraud, Joseph Bridau, and Fulgence Ridal performed the last duties to the dead, between two political fires.

By night they buried their beloved in the cemetery of Père-Lachaise; Horace Bianchon, undaunted by the difficulties, cleared them away one after another—it was he indeed who besought the authorities for permission to bury the fallen insurgent and confessed to his old friendship with the dead Federalist.

The little group of friends present at the funeral with those five great men will never forget that touching scene.

As you walk in the trim cemetery you will see a grave purchased in perpetuity, a grass-covered mound with a dark wooden cross above it, and the name in large red letters—MICHEL CHRESTIEN.

There is no other monument like it.

The friends thought to pay a tribute to the sternly simple nature of the man by the simplicity of the record of his death.

So, in that chilly garret, the fairest dreams of friendship were realized.

These men were brothers leading lives of intellectual effort, loyally helping each other, making no reservations, not even of their worst thoughts; men of vast acquirements, natures tried in the crucible of poverty.

Once admitted as an equal among such elect souls, Lucien represented beauty and poetry.

They admired the sonnets which he read to them; they would ask him for a sonnet as he would ask Michel Chrestien for a song.

And, in the desert of Paris, Lucien found an oasis in the Rue des Quatre-Vents.

At the beginning of October, Lucien had spent the last of his money on a little firewood; he was half-way through the task of recasting his work, the most strenuous of all toil, and he was penniless.

As for Daniel d’Arthez, burning blocks of spent tan, and facing poverty like a hero, not a word of complaint came from him; he was as sober as any elderly spinster, and methodical as a miser.

This courage called out Lucien’s courage; he had only newly come into the circle, and shrank with invincible repugnance from speaking of his straits.

One morning he went out, manuscript in hand, and reached the Rue du Coq; he would sell _The Archer of Charles IX.

_ to Doguereau; but Doguereau was out.

Lucien little knew how indulgent great natures can be to the weaknesses of others.

Every one of the friends had thought of the peculiar troubles besetting the poetic temperament, of the prostration which follows upon the struggle, when the soul has been overwrought by the contemplation of that nature which it is the task of art to reproduce.

And strong as they were to endure their own ills, they felt keenly for Lucien’s distress;

they guessed that his stock of money was failing; and after all the pleasant evenings spent in friendly talk and deep meditations, after the poetry, the confidences, the bold flights over the fields of thought or into the far future of the nations, yet another trait was to prove how little Lucien had understood these new friends of his.

“Lucien, dear fellow,” said Daniel, “you did not dine at Flicoteaux’s yesterday, and we know why.

” Lucien could not keep back the overflowing tears.

“You showed a want of confidence in us,” said Michel Chrestien; “we shall chalk that up over the chimney, and when we have scored ten we will——” “We have all of us found a bit of extra work,” said Bianchon; “for my own part, I have been looking after a rich patient for Desplein;

d’Arthez has written an article for the _Revue Encyclopédique_;

Chrestien thought of going out to sing in the Champs Élysées of an evening with a pocket-handkerchief and four candles, but he found a pamphlet to write instead for a man who has a mind to go into politics, and gave his employer six hundred francs worth of Machiavelli; Léon Giraud borrowed fifty francs of his publisher, Joseph sold one or two sketches; and Fulgence’s piece was given on Sunday, and there was a full house.

” “Here are two hundred francs,” said Daniel, “and let us say no more about it.

” “Why, if he is not going to hug us all as if we had done something extraordinary!

” cried Chrestien.

Lucien, meanwhile, had written to the home circle.

His letter was a masterpiece of sensibility and goodwill, as well as a sharp cry wrung from him by distress.

The answers which he received the next day will give some idea of the delight that Lucien took in this living encyclopedia of angelic spirits, each of whom bore the stamp of the art or science which he followed:— _David Séchard to Lucien.

_ “MY DEAR LUCIEN,—Enclosed herewith is a bill at ninety days, payable to your order, for two hundred francs.

You can draw on M. Métivier, paper merchant, our Paris correspondent in the Rue Serpente.

My good Lucien, we have absolutely nothing.

Eve has undertaken the charge of the printing-house, and works at her task with such devotion, patience, and industry, that I bless heaven for giving me such an angel for a wife.

She herself says that it is impossible to send you the least help.

But I think, my friend now that you are started in so promising a way, with such great and noble hearts for your companions, that you can hardly fail to reach the greatness to which you were born, aided as you are by intelligence almost divine in Daniel d’Arthez and Michel Chrestien and Léon Giraud, and counseled by Meyraux and Bianchon and Ridal, whom we have come to know through your dear letter.

So I have drawn this bill without Eve’s knowledge, and I will contrive somehow to meet it when the time comes.

Keep on your way, Lucien;

it is rough, but it will be glorious.

I can bear anything but the thought of you sinking into the sloughs of Paris, of which I saw so much.

Have sufficient strength of mind to do as you are doing, and keep out of scrapes and bad company, wild young fellows and men of letters of a certain stamp, whom I learned to take at their just valuation when I lived in Paris.

Be a worthy compeer of the divine spirits whom we have learned to love through you.

Your life will soon meet with its reward.

Farewell, dearest brother; you have sent transports of joy to my heart.

I did not expect such courage of you.

“DAVID.

” _Eve Séchard to Lucien.

_ “DEAR,—your letter made all of us cry.

As for the noble hearts to whom your good angel surely led you, tell them that a mother and a poor young wife will pray for them night and morning; and if the most fervent prayers can reach the Throne of God, surely they will bring blessings upon you all.

Their names are engraved upon my heart.

Ah!

some day I shall see your friends; I will go to Paris, if I have to walk the whole way, to thank them for their friendship for you, for to me the thought has been like balm to smarting wounds.

We are working like day laborers here, dear.

This husband of mine, the unknown great man whom I love more and more every day, as I discover moment by moment the wealth of his nature, leaves the printing-house more and more to me.

Why, I guess.

Our poverty, yours, and ours, and our mother’s, is heartbreaking to him.

Our adored David is a Prometheus gnawed by a vulture, a haggard, sharp-beaked regret.

As for himself, noble fellow, he scarcely thinks of himself; he is hoping to make a fortune for _us_.

He spends his whole time in experiments in paper-making; he begged me to take his place and look after the business, and gives me as much help as his preoccupation allows.

Alas!

I shall be a mother soon.

That should have been a crowning joy; but as things are, it saddens me.

Poor mother!

she has grown young again; she has found strength to go back to her tiring nursing.

We should be happy if it were not for these money cares.

Old Father Séchard will not give his son a farthing.

David went over to see if he could borrow a little for you, for we were in despair over your letter.

‘I know Lucien,’ David said; ‘he will lose his head and do something rash.

’—I gave him a good scolding.

‘My brother disappoint us in any way!

’ I told him, ‘Lucien knows that I should die of sorrow.

’—Mother and I have pawned a few things; David does not know about it, mother will redeem them as soon as she has made a little money.

In this way we have managed to put together a hundred francs, which I am sending you by the coach.

If I did not answer your last letter, do not remember it against me, dear; we were working all night just then.

I have been working like a man.

Oh, I had no idea that I was so strong!

“Mme.

de Bargeton is a heartless woman; she has no soul; even if she cared for you no longer, she owed it to herself to use her influence for you and to help you when she had torn you from us to plunge you into that dreadful sea of Paris.

Only by the special blessing of Heaven could you have met with true friends there among those crowds of men and innumerable interests.

She is not worth a regret.

I used to wish that there might be some devoted woman always with you, a second myself; but now I know that your friends will take my place, and I am happy.

Spread your wings, my dear great genius, you will be our pride as well as our beloved.

“EVE.

” “My darling,” the mother wrote, “I can only add my blessing to all that your sister says, and assure you that you are more in my thoughts and in my prayers (alas!

) than those whom I see daily;

for some hearts, the absent are always in the right, and so it is with the heart of your mother.

”