GEORGE BRANDES (continued 4)

Under Napoleon there is another circumstance to be taken into account, namely, that France had a master. When an author attempted any slight deviation from the beaten track, he was promptly checked. Take Raynouard for an example. His play, Les États de Blois, which had been performed at St. Cloud, was prohibited in Paris by express order of the Emperor. It was the cannon's turn to speak. The great cannon in front of the Invalides, which was constantly thundering out the intelligence of a new victory, drowned every other voice. And all the hearts full of youthful enthusiasm, all the ardent souls that at another time would have vented their ardour in poetry, all those who were most warmly attached to liberty and to the ideas of the Revolution, crowded to the colours, and endeavoured to forget their longing for liberty and poetry in the intoxication of martial glory. Intellectual life was extinguished as a sweet song sung in a room is stopped by the incessant rattling of heavy carts through the street. A couple of anecdotes may serve to illustrate the noisiness and the depression. To the question, "What do you think at this time?" Sièyes replied, "I do not think." To the question, "What have you done under the Empire for your convictions?" General Lafayette replied, "I have remained standing upright."

Two of the arts were susceptible of inspiration by the spirit of the time—the art of the painter and the art of the actor. Gérard painted the battle of Austerlitz, Gros the plague scenes at Jaffa, the battle of Aboukir, and the battle of the Pyramids. Talma, who, as he himself tells, learned for the first time one evening when he was in company with the leaders of the Girondists to understand and to represent Roman Republicans, not as they exist in the imagination of school-boys, but as men—Talma learned from Napoleon to play the parts of Cæsars and of kings. According to the well known story, Bonaparte employed Talma to instruct him in the art of assuming imperial attitudes. The real truth is the reverse of this. It was from Napoleon that Talma learned the authoritative deportment, the short, commanding tone, the imperious gestures which he then reproduced on the stage. When, in 1826, the great actor lay consumed with raging fever, he carefully examined in a mirror the traces of madness and terror on his own face, and, half mad at the time, struck himself on the forehead and cried: "Now I have it! If I ever act again, I shall do exactly this when I play the part of Charles VI." Thus passionately did this man love his art. But from his sick-bed he was not to rise again.

One branch of literature alone acquired an influence which it had not before possessed—the youngest of all the branches, which had hitherto been of no importance, but which soon became a power—the newspaper. The well-known Journal des Débats was started to begin the attack upon Voltaire and to provide the prevailing ideas of the day with an organ. The French clerical press employed every possible means to attain its end. In exactly the same spirit which led it, after the Franco-Prussian war, to dub Voltaire "the miserable Prussian," it now searched his letters for passages which might convict him of treachery to his country. In one of the letters to the King of Prussia the great Frenchman's detractors discovered the offensive phrase: "Every time I write to Your Majesty I tremble as our regiments did at Rossbach;" and they hoped with the aid of quotations such as this to irritate the victor of Jena with the philosophers of the school of Voltaire. They emphasised the fact that, according to the testimony of contemporaries, the principal cause of the faintheartedness shown by the French army in the war with Frederick was the fanatic admiration of its officers for that king, a feeling which actually prevented their believing in the possibility of defeating a general who shared and favoured the convictions by which they themselves were inspired. In place of drawing an inference from this favourable to the convictions or ideas in question, the clerical party drew one unfavourable to the persons who, like Voltaire, had promulgated these ideas in France; they denounced them as traitors to their country. The following utterance of the editor of the Journal des Débats gives us some notion of the general tone of that paper: "When I say the philosophy of the eighteenth century, I mean everything that is false in legislation, morals, and politics." The Neo-Catholics had another newspaper entirely in their hands, the Mercure de France, the most notable contributors to which were Chateaubriand and Bonald. The authors who formed the remnant of the army of the eighteenth century attempted to combat the influence of these powerful journals, but with little success.

In former days the whole energy of the contending parties had been expended in winning over the reading public, or the nation, to their respective sides; now the desire of both was to win the favour of the mighty potentate. The Journal des Débats endeavoured to stir up the Emperor's wrath against "philosophy." "The philosophers" tried to make him angry with the Journal des Débats. The clerical party denounced the philosophers as destroyers by profession, who, as such, must inevitably hate Napoleon, the great master-builder. The philosophers accused the clericals of intending, as soon as the Emperor's building was completed, to hand over the keys of it to another.

The future showed that the philosophers were right. The adherents of the Neo-Catholic school were and remained closely attached to the old royal family. Their mode of procedure was to praise Delille because he was in disgrace, and Chateaubriand because, by resigning his appointment after the execution of the Duke of Enghien, he proved himself to be an enemy of tyranny. They drew men's attention to all the good points of the old régime under pretext of writing history.

Napoleon, who kept a keen eye upon journalistic literature, at last lost patience. A written communication has been preserved which was put into the hands of one of the Emperor's officials, to be by him transmitted to Fiévée, the publisher of the Mercure (a man with whom the Emperor sometimes corresponded privately). Every word in this paper is significant; note particularly the change from the impersonal third to the first person singular. There is no direct indication as to who is the writer of the document; in the beginning it is that indefinite, anonymous being, the Government, that speaks; then all at once we feel who is wielding the pen—the lion shows his claws. "Monsieur de Lavalette will go to Monsieur Fiévée and say to him that in the Journal des Débats, which is read with more attention than the other newspapers, because it has ten times as large a circulation, articles have been found, written in a spirit altogether favourable to the Bourbons, consequently with complete indifference to the welfare of the state; say that it has been determined to suppress any articles in this paper that are too ill-affected; that the system pursued is undoubtedly a system of long-suffering; that it is, however, not enough that they should not be directly hostile; that the Government has the right to demand that they shall be entirely devoted to the reigning house, and that they shall not suffer but oppose everything which can add lustre to the cause of the Bourbons or evoke reminiscences favourable to them; that as yet no decisive step has been determined on; that the inclination is to permit the Journal des Débats to continue to appear if men are presented to me in whom I can have confidence, and to whom I can entrust the editorship of the paper."[1]

We observe the direction which events were taking. During the course of the Emperor's reign Neo-Catholicism lost ever more and more of that favour which it at first enjoyed, and not until the return of the Bourbons did it once more completely triumph. Immediately after the accession of Napoleon, Chateaubriand, Bonald, and De Maistre have full liberty to write, the Journal des Débats is encouraged to undertake its crusade against the philosophy of the eighteenth century, the Pope visits Napoleon in Paris, all honour is shown to the clergy, Frayssinous preaches where and what he pleases. During the last years of the Empire the leaders of the Catholic party are compelled to be silent, the Journal des Débats is suppressed, the Pope is a prisoner, the clergy are in deep disgrace, and Frayssinous may not preach at all.—Not until the monarchy was restored was there a rehabilitation of ecclesiasticism, a confirmation of what had been begun by the Concordat.

It has been said, and said with truth, that no real poetry was written under the rule of Napoleon; nevertheless an attempt, and by no means an insignificant attempt, was made at this time to give to the France of the nineteenth century what Voltaire in his Henriade had attempted to give to the France of the eighteenth—neither more nor less than a great national epic.

It cannot be denied that the task was a tolerably hopeless one. At a time when all Europe was resounding with the names of the heroes of the new empire, and Napoleon was, as has been said, "binding the open wounds of France with the flags of her enemies," when the doings of the day were throwing all the doings of times past into the shade, where was an author to find a hero for an epic or deeds that would enthral the reading world?

The enterprise was undertaken by no less a man than Chateaubriand, the successful initiator of the literary movement of the period, the most admired author of his day. It was not only inclination but also a certain feeling of duty which induced Chateaubriand to undertake a great epic work. In his first work he had maintained that the legends of Christianity infinitely surpassed in beauty those of heathen mythology; that they appealed far more strongly to the poet; that the Christian, as father, husband, lover, bride, was more admirable and of more value to art than the mere natural being. He felt obliged to follow up his rule with an example, his theory with proof; and for this reason, and also to show what he was capable of, he determined to write a Christian epic.

True to the intellectual tendency of which he had been the first distinguished exponent, he did not choose modern or active heroes, in fact did not choose heroes at all, but martyrs as his theme. They also give the name to his work, Les Martyrs ou le Triomphe de la Religion Chrétienne, which, written as it is in prose, produces more the effect of an ordinary two-volume novel than of an epic. To understand this choice of subject we must remember that the point of view of the men of this school was not really that of the Empire at all, but that of the returned émigrés. They had not yet recovered from the horror excited in them by the deeds of the Revolution. In the leaders of the Revolution they saw only men of blood, in the vanquished party only hapless victims. In their eyes the real hero was not the conqueror, not the adventurous soldier, but Louis XVI., the innocent sufferer. What were they if not martyrs, all those Christian priests who in the Days of September were murdered for the sake of their religion, all those men and women who died in La Vendée for their loyalty to the King by the grace of God! Victims as innocent as the Princesse de Lamballe, or the maidens of Verdun, or the lately executed Duke of Enghien, were heroines and heroes a thousand times more worthy to be sung than the men who were defiling themselves with blood on all the battle-fields of Europe.

In 1802 Chateaubriand conceived the idea of his epic; in 1806 the first cantos were ready for publication. But the events of the epic were to happen in all parts of the world known to the Romans. Chateaubriand was not indolent by nature; it was not his aim to finish the work as quickly as possible in order to rest upon his laurels. He stopped short, and in July 1806 went off to travel in Greece, Syria, Egypt, and Carthaginian Africa, returning through Spain. The one object of this tour was, he himself gives us to understand in the prefaces to Les Martyrs and the Notes of Travel (Itinéraire), the perfecting of his work. In the one preface we read: "This journey was undertaken for the sole purpose of seeing and painting those districts in which I intended to lay the scenes of Les Martyrs"; in the other: "I did not undertake this journey in order to describe it. I had a purpose, and that purpose I have accomplished in Les Martyrs; I went in quest of pictures—that was all."

No, that was not all—neither all that Chateaubriand proposed to himself in taking the journey, nor even all that he wished others to see in it. Chateaubriand is Childe Harold before the real Childe Harold; he is a legitimist and Roman Catholic Byron. His René is the forerunner of the Byronic heroes; he himself, in his pilgrimages, is a forerunner of that half-fictitious, half-real Harold whom love of adventure and longing for new impressions drive from land to land. But the Byron of the ecclesiastical revival could not, like the English nobleman who still felt the blood of the Vikings in his veins, rest satisfied with the honest confession of such a simple motive as this for his wanderings. It would not have been at all in the spirit of Chateaubriand's period, nor would it have been in keeping with the part he played in that period, for him to go to Jerusalem to study landscape, to cover his palette with colours, and fill his sketch-book with sketches. When Childe Harold talks of his pilgrimage, he employs the word in its secondary meaning. Chateaubriand uses it in its original meaning. He tells every one that he is going to the Holy Land to strengthen his faith by the sight of all the holy places. He brings back with him water from the Jordan, and when the Comte de Chambord is born it is with this water that the royal infant is baptized. He himself says: "It may seem strange nowadays to speak of sacred vows and pilgrimages, but in this matter, as every one knows, I have no feeling of shame; I long ago took my place in the ranks of the superstitious and weak-minded. I am perhaps the last Frenchman who will set out for the Holy Land with the ideas, aims, and feelings of a medieval pilgrim. And though I do not possess the virtues which so conspicuously distinguished the De Coucys, De Nesles, De Chatillons, and De Montforts, I have at least their faith; by this sign even the old crusaders would recognise me as one of themselves."

There is an awkward discrepancy between this utterance and the words quoted above: "I went in quest of imagery—that was all." And in Chateaubriand's Mémoires d'outre-tombe we find a confession of yet another object in his quest of pictures, which throws a curious light upon the feelings and motives of the would-be pilgrim. He hoped by his efforts after fame, by his studies and his travels, to win the favour of a lady with whom he was in love. Taken in itself this is most natural. Chateaubriand was an ardent lover and frantically ambitious. It is not surprising that he should have said to himself: Fame, greater, more deserved, that I may deserve her better, that I may show her my ardent desire to render myself worthy of her favour! The lady herself appears to have been ambitious for him, and to have allowed him to view the possession of herself as a possible, far-off reward of new efforts. Though we may acknowledge that there is something medieval and chivalrous in such a relationship as this, an extraordinary confusion of ideas is none the less proved in the man who talks of a crusade and a pilgrimage. And yet Chateaubriand was no priestly casuist; he was a haughty, self-important, cynical aristocrat, who defiantly attached the colours of the church to his helmet and wore them not only at every joust but at every rendezvous.

In his Mémoires d'outre-tombe he writes: "But have I in my Itinéraire really told everything about that voyage on which I embarked from the port of Desdemona and Othello? Was it in the spirit of repentance that I sought the sepulchre of Christ? One single thought consumed me; I counted the moments with impatience. Standing on the deck of my ship, with my eyes fixed on the evening star, I prayed for a fair wind to carry me swiftly onwards, for fame—in order that I might be loved. I hoped to win fame in Sparta, at Mount Zion, at Memphis, at Carthage, and to carry it with me to the Alhambra. Would another remember me with as great steadfastness as mine under my probation?... If I secretly enjoy a moment's happiness, it is disturbed by memories of those days of seduction, of enchantment, of madness."

This is the language of a modern Tannhäuser, looking back with longing to his Venusberg. Chateaubriand has evidently forgotten that he had attributed to himself the emotions and aims of a medieval pilgrim. The lady who had given him a rendezvous at the Alhambra was a young Madame de Mouchy, who died insane. Contemporaries represent her as a marvel of beauty, charm, and refinement. Chateaubriand had been married since 1792. His marriage was undoubtedly a rash and foolish one, but, as the ardent champion of Christian morality, he ought to have considered himself bound by it, regardless of circumstances. In his Mémoires he tells how it came about: "The negotiations were entered into without my knowledge. I had not seen Mademoiselle de Lavigne more than three or four times.... I did not feel myself at all fitted to be a husband. All my illusions were still strong; nothing was exhausted in me; the vigour of life had been redoubled in me by my travels. I was constantly tormented by my muse. My sister had a high opinion of Mademoiselle de Lavigne, and saw in this marriage an independent position for me. Arrange it, then, said I. As a public man I am not to be influenced, but in private life I am the prey of any one that chooses to take possession of me; to avoid an hour's annoyance I could let myself be made a slave for half a century." Fortunately, he did not feel himself a slave.

In the rôle of the returned pilgrim, then, he wrote his epic. An epic in the nineteenth century! In our days no one believes in the possibility of such a thing. A clearer comprehension than that possessed by any former age of the historical conditions which went to the production of the great national epics of antiquity has convinced us of the vanity of endeavouring in modern times to rival works of the freshness of the Iliad or the naïveté (in spite of a high degree of culture) of the Odyssey. Just as little as it would occur to any real poet to-day to imitate the Vedas, the Psalms of David, or the Voluspa, would it occur to him to attempt to compete with the immortal works in which, late in the morning of their days, nations, childlike and yet mature, have told the story of their gods and of their heroes—as the Greeks have done in their national epics, the Germans in the Nibelungenlied, and the Finns in Kalevala. The epics which, like Virgil's and Tasso's, Camoens', Klopstock's, and Voltaire's, are conscious, laboured imitations of these old popular works, and which have transformed the miraculous element in them into dead epic machinery, have never taken rank with their models; their comparative value depends upon how close, in time and in spirit, they are to these models. The more naïveté they display, the colder they leave us. The epic poems written in modern times which have not been failures—Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea, or Mickiewicz's Herr (Pan) Tadeusz—ave entirely dispensed with the appurtenances of the old epic. But this Chateaubriand had not the slightest intention of doing. Far from it—he rather meant to add to their number, in order to exhibit the vast superiority of the Christian to the antique apparatus.

As he has no command of verse, he determines to write his epic in prose; but, great master of prose as he is, we know in anticipation how he will grope after a style. And we are sensible, as we read, of a confusion of influences—Homer, the Revelation of St. John, Dante and Milton, the Fathers of the Church and Suetonius. The action takes place in the days of Diocletian; one half of the characters are pagans, the other half Christians. The hero, Eudore, wins the heart of a young pagan girl; he converts her, and they die together as martyrs in the arena of the Colosseum. Her father is a Greek priest of the Homeric gods. Some of the events happen in ancient Gaul.

His imitation of the Homeric style has led the author into much artificiality and exaggeration. In the first place he has made his Greeks too religious. They show the same childlike faith in their gods as do those Homeric heroes from whom they are separated by the space of eleven centuries. The Greeks of the age of Eudore were for the most part confirmed sceptics, and those who still believed in their gods did it in a rationalistic manner. Chateaubriand's Greek maiden comes upon Eudore in the forest, while he is resting under a tree. He is young and handsome. He rises hurriedly when he sees her. "Are not you the hunter Endymion?" she stammers confusedly. "And you," asks the young man in his turn, "are not you an angel?" These are not simply polite speeches; the speakers mean what they say. In Chateaubriand's pages it is the most simple matter possible for two lovers living in the most enlightened country in the world to take each other for legendary characters and supernatural beings. Cymodocée's father says in the same style to the young man: "Prithee, my guest, forgive my frankness; I have ever yielded obedience to truth, the daughter of Saturn and the mother of virtue." Even as far back as the days of Plato a Greek was perfectly capable of naming truth without mentioning either its parents or the grandparents of virtue.

We come upon phrases which might have been translated from Homer. When Cymodocée wants to find out who Eudore is, she says: "In what harbours has your ship cast anchor? Do you come from Tyre, famed for the wealth of its merchants? or from beautiful Corinth, after receiving precious gifts from your hosts?" &c.

This sort of thing is passable in dialogue, but the effect is distressing when the narrator himself either altogether forgets the 1500 years which separate him from the characters of the story, and writes as they speak, or else employs expressions borrowed from the medieval romances of chivalry. He writes, for instance, in Homeric style: Nothing would have disturbed the happiness of Démodocus, if he could only have found a husband for his daughter who would have treated her with proper consideration after leading her home to a house full of treasures. And of Velléda, the Gallican Druidess, we are told, in the true ballad style: Fille de roi a moins de beauté, de noblesse et de grandeur.

And if the author sometimes writes as if he himself were the last of the Homeridæ, his characters in retaliation often talk as if they foresaw the whole course of modern intellectual development. The Christian bishop, Cyrille, speaking of the heathen myths, says: "A time will perhaps come when these falsehoods of the childish days of old will simply be ingenious fables, themes for the song of the poet. But in our days they confuse men's minds." What an enlightened man!

It is unnecessary to pass the whole work in review. The author's great ability is only displayed in details and incidental episodes. One beautiful passage is that in which he describes the arrival of the Greek family to visit the Christian family, who are all in the field, binding sheaves; it has a peculiar, idyllic charm which recalls the Book of Ruth, and yet it breathes the New Testament spirit. The account of Velléda's death is also very fine. There is all the fire and divine frenzy of Chateaubriand, the poet's, genius in his representation of Velléda.

There are longer passages than these well worthy of attention, such as the description of the battle between the Franks and the combined armies of the Romans and the Gauls, which, written as it was a number of years before Sir Walter Scott's historical novels, is significant and novel with its element of national characterisation. As in all Chateaubriand's works, the descriptions of nature are fine.

It ought to be observed that when, in his Memoirs, Chateaubriand himself has occasion to write of Les Martyrs, he does so with proud modesty; he shows that he is conscious of the faultiness of the work in certain respects, and draws particular attention to the small degree of success it has had in comparison with Le Génie du Christianisme. He ascribes the comparatively unfavourable reception which it met with at first principally to outward circumstances; and in this he is right. Napoleon's relations with the Pope were at that moment strained and unfriendly. What Chateaubriand had written of Diocletian as the persecutor of the Christians was applied to the Emperor. There were allusions to the humble circumstances of Napoleon's youth and to his insatiable ambition in the description of Galerius, and allusions to his court in the description of Diocletian's.

Hence Les Martyrs was not supported and circulated by the Government, as Chateaubriand's first work had been. And the clergy, with the Bishop of Chartres at their head, did not consider the book sufficiently orthodox; they discovered heresies in it. But in the end, in spite of everything, it made its way. Four editions were sold in a few years.

What Chateaubriand desired to prove by means of this work was the peculiar adaptability of the Christian legend, of Christian supernaturalism, to the use of the poet. What he succeeded in proving was that in our days orthodox Christian poetry comes centuries too late. The poets who have dealt with supernatural themes have as a rule been more successful in their representations of hell than in their descriptions of the state of the blessed. In Dante a perfect host of bold figures, so powerfully conceived that they dominate the whole poem, emerge from the waters and the flames of perdition. Amongst the damned of the Inferno those whom we remember best are the almost superhumanly defiant and proud Italian nobles of the poet's own day—Farinata, for example. As to Milton, his Satan is universally acknowledged to be his most masterly character; and it has been maintained, not without reason, that the prototype of this character is to be sought among those energetic Puritan rebels who, even when they were overcome, did not cease to defy the royal authority. Each age paints its Lucifer in its own image. Chateaubriand's rebellious spirit is not the traditional devil either, but a devil who has brought about the French Revolution. Every time he and his attendant courtiers open their mouths it is to utter one or other of the watchwords of the revolutionary period. In Satan's speech to his army we are astonished to hear the echo of the oratory of 1792. After a few introductory Biblical phrases he falls into the style of the hymns of the Revolution, which Chateaubriand has amused himself by caricaturing.

Satan says: "Dieux des nations, trônes, ardeurs, guerriers généreux, milices invincibles, magnanimes enfants de cette forte patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé."

French literature had progressed so far that the Marseillaise was put into the mouth of the devil by the country's greatest poet.

And what kind of being is he, this devil? A spark of life is communicated to him by caricaturing Rouget de Lisle. But for this he is a boneless, bloodless allegorical figure. Watch him descending to his kingdom. "Quicker than thought he traverses space, which will one day disappear (a truly marvellous idea, this!); on the farther side of the howling remains of chaos he comes to the boundaries of those regions which are as imperishable as the vengeance which created them—cursed regions, death's grave and cradle, over which time has no power, and which will still exist when the universe has been carried away like a tent that is set up for a day; ... he follows no path through the darkness, but, drawn downwards by the weight of his crimes(!), descends naturally into hell." In his kingdom he is surrounded by figures which are either purely allegorical—in which case they are the funnier the more terrible the author has intended them to be—or else caricatures of Voltairians and Voltaire, which, in the middle of this solemn epic poem, produce the effect of scraps of ill-natured newspaper articles which have found their way in by some mistake.

Death is thus described: "A phantom suddenly appears upon the threshold of the inexorable portals—it is Death. It shows like a dark spot against the flames of the burning prison-cells behind it; its skeleton allows the livid yellow beams of hell-fire to pass through the apertures between its bones.... Satan, seized with horror, turns away his head to avoid the skeleton's kiss." And here are two other demons: "Bound by a hundred knots of adamant (!) to a throne of bronze, the demon of Despair sits ruling the empire of Sorrow.... At the entrance of the first vestibule the Eternity of Sufferings lies stretched upon a bed of iron; he is motionless; his heart does not even beat; in his hand he holds an inexhaustible hour-glass. He knows and says only one word—Never." We are reminded of the automaton upon a clock, which says nothing but Cuc-koo.

These demons are like nothing upon earth, but the prototypes of the demons of false wisdom are unmistakable. We have seen that all the ideas of the day on the subject of religion might be summed up in the one word, order. Hence in hell, as well as in heaven, order is pertinaciously insisted on. Apropos of a quarrel in hell we read: "A terrible conflict would have ensued if God, who is the sole origin of all order, even in hell, had not reduced the brawlers to silence." And we are told of the demon of False Wisdom: "He found fault with the works of the Almighty; he desired in his pride to establish another order amongst the angels and in the kingdom of heavenly wisdom; it was he who became the father of Atheism, that horrible spectre whom Satan himself had not begotten, and who fell in love with Death."

Curiously enough it is precisely a change of order, a change in the order of precedence in the court of heaven itself, which this most hateful of all devils has been attempting to make.

He speaks. "The feigned severity of his voice, his apparent calmness, deceive the blinded crowd: 'Monarchs of hell, ye know that I have always been opposed to violence; we shall only prevail by gentleness, by argument, by persuasion. Let me spread among my worshippers and among the Christians themselves those principles which dissolve the ties of society and undermine the foundations of empires!'"

Compare with this the description of the philosophers of the day: "These disciples of a vain science attack the Christians, praise a life of retirement, live at the feet of the great, and ask for money. Some of them occupy themselves seriously with the idea of forming a sort of Platonic commonwealth, peopled by sages, who will spend their lives together as friends and brothers; others meditate profoundly on the secrets of nature. Some see everything in mind, others seek everything in matter; some, although they live under a monarchy, preach a republic, asserting that society ought to be demolished and rebuilt upon a new plan; others, in imitation of the Christians, attempt to teach the people morality. Divided as regards what is good, of one accord in all that is evil, swollen with vanity, taking themselves for great geniuses, these sophists invent all manner of extraordinary notions and systems. At their head is Hieroclos, a man worthy to be the leader of such a battalion.... There is something cynical and shameless in his face; it is easy to see how unfit his ignoble hands are to wield the sword of the soldier, how fit to handle the pen of the atheist or the sword of the executioner."

These assertions are made of Rome and of Hieroclos, but Paris and Voltaire are so plainly indicated that proof is unnecessary.

French literature had now come the length of representing Voltaire, the man who time after time struck the sword out of the hands of the Catholic executioners and extinguished the flames in which they were preparing to burn innocent victims, as a man specially cut out for the trade of executioner. And so careless had the champions of orthodoxy become that they forgot his obstinate faith in God, and, desiring to paint the devil as black as possible, represented him as an atheist. Now, whatever else Satan and his comrades may be, they neither are nor can be atheists.[1]

Let us turn from Chateaubriand's hell to his Paradise. It is always difficult to describe heaven. We all know what hell is, but when heaven is in question a certain feeling of embarrassment comes over us. Information is scarce, as a French lady said. And to describe it was doubly difficult at the time when Parny, in his Guerre des Dieux, had, so to speak, produced in anticipation a parody of any such attempt that might be made. Fragments of Parny's graceless poem were still in all men's minds. Its best scenes, such as the arrival of the Trinity at Mount Olympus, and the return visit paid in heaven by the gods, are really witty, although the style, instead of corresponding to the imposing title, is as smooth and polished as the paintings of "Velvet" Breughel. Yet even Parny's scurrility did not make the heaven of orthodoxy as comical as it is made by Chateaubriand's enthusiasm.

"In the centre of the created worlds, in the midst of the innumerable stars which serve as ramparts, roads and avenues, is suspended the great city of God, of which no mortal tongue can tell the marvels. The Almighty himself laid its twelve foundation stones, and surrounded it with that wall of jasper which the beloved disciple saw the angel measuring with the golden reed. Clothed with the glory of the Most High, Jerusalem is adorned like a bride for her bridegroom.... Richness of material vies with perfection of form. Here hang in mid-air galleries of sapphires and diamonds, which the genius of man feebly imitated in the gardens of Babylon. There rise triumphal arches, built of dazzling stars. Arcades of suns traverse the endless spaces of the firmament...."

A native of Copenhagen is irresistibly reminded by all this of the glories of "Tivoli" as they revealed themselves to his childish eyes on evenings when the grounds were illuminated.

We are allowed a glimpse of the interior of the holy city. Here the choirs of cherubim and seraphim, angels and archangels, principalities and powers, are perpetually meeting and separating. These beings, who, it would seem, had not been entirely safe from ridicule, seeing that Parny had belaboured them so unmercifully[2], now hold a new triumphal entry. From this time onward they become regular denizens of the realm of poetry; we find the whole host assembled even in De Vigny's Eloa (1823) and in Victor Hugo's Odes (livre i., ode 5, ode 9, ode 10). We learn what their occupations are; "Some are the keepers of the 20,000 war-chariots of Zebaoth and Elohim, others guard the quivers of the Lord, his deadly thunderbolts, and the terrible horses which are the carriers of pestilence, war, famine, and death. One million of these ardent beings order the courses of the stars, relieving each other in this glorious occupation like the vigilant sentinels of a great army." In Parny's poem their occupation is less arduous. The duty he assigns to them, because of their limited intelligence, is principally that of acting as decorations. They stand in rows along the walls and look on.[3]

All the things which Chateaubriand's angels guard lie, as it were, in a great arsenal ready for use on given occasions. In the following description we see them in use. The occasion is the proclamation by the Trinity to the blessed saints of Eudore's approaching martyrdom: "When these vicissitudes of the church had been communicated to the elect by a single word of the Almighty, there was silence in heaven for the space of half-an-hour. All the celestial beings cast their eyes to the ground. From the heights of heaven Mary let a first look of love fall upon the poor victim confided to her tender care. The palms of the confessors grew green again in their hands. The glorious squadron opened its ranks to make room for the new martyrs." Michael, the dragon-slayer, shoulders his redoubtable spear; his deathless comrades don shining cuirasses; diamond and golden shields, the quivers of the Lord, and the flaming swords are taken down from the vaulted roof of heaven; the wheels of the chariot of Immanuel turn upon their axles of fire and lightning; the cherubim spread their rushing wings, "et allument la fureur de leurs yeux." This is half masquerade, half ballet.

But let us pass from these adjuncts to bliss itself. We find it thus described: "The chief happiness of the elect lies in the consciousness that their bliss is boundless; they experience for ever the delectable feelings of the mortal who has just done a virtuous or heroic deed, or of the genius in the act of conceiving a great idea, or of the man enjoying the delights of legitimate (!) love or of a friendship tried by long misfortune. The grandeur and the omnipotence of the Almighty are the constant theme of their discourse. 'O God,' they cry, 'how great Thou art!'"

Chateaubriand has not succeeded in making heavenly bliss particularly attractive. Our first feeling is apt to be one of pity for the unfortunate Deity thus compelled eternally to listen to his own praises. He is thus described: "Far from the eyes of the angels is accomplished the mystery of the Trinity. The Spirit which mounts and descends perpetually from the Son to the Father and from the Father to the Son unites itself with them in these unfathomable depths. A triangle of fire appears at the entrance to the Holy of Holies. The awe-stricken spheres stop in their courses, the hosannas of the angels are silenced.... The fiery triangle disappears, the sanctuary opens, and the three Potentates are seen. The Father sits upon a throne of clouds, a compass in his hands, a sphere beneath his feet; on his right hand sits the Son, armed with lightnings; on the left the Holy Spirit rises like a pillar of fire. Jehovah gives a sign, and time, reassured, continues its course."

We are not informed how many times in the day, week, or month this magnificent ceremony takes place. Possibly it is in the intervals of these accomplishments of the mystery of the Trinity that the Divine Being divides itself, for at times it appears to be divided: "Appealed to by the God of mercy and peace on behalf of the threatened church, the mighty and terrible God made known his plans to the assembled hosts of heaven."[4]

On ordinary occasions the Son sits at a mystic table, and four and twenty elders, clothed in white, with crowns of gold on their heads, sit upon thrones by his side. Close by stands his living chariot, the wheels of which emit fire. When the Expected of the Nations deigns to vouchsafe a perfect vision of himself to the elect, they fall down before him as if dead; but he stretches forth his right hand and says to them: "Rise, ye blessed of my Father! Look upon me. I am the First and the Last!"

We feel as if this performance must lose much of its impressiveness by repetition.

As an example of the supernaturalness of this heaven, it may be mentioned that the raiment of the holy elders is made white in the blood of the Lamb. That it is a modern production we observe from the fact that, in spite of the remarkable arbitrariness which prevails, its author has not escaped the influence of the spirit of his day, for even in this heaven we hear of laws of nature. We are told of the blessed that they desire to comprehend the laws which explain the easy flight of heavy bodies through the ether. This is a sort of anticipation of the standpoint in Byron's Cain.

From the artistic point of view it is interesting to observe the kind of imagery by means of which Chateaubriand, when he is neither borrowing from the Revelation of St. John nor from Milton, attempts to give an idea of the glories of heaven. When Dante makes the same attempt, he has recourse to visions, to the glories of that mystic rose which the Gothic cathedral builders feebly endeavoured to imitate; but Chateaubriand, the man of modern ideas and of much experience as far as the outward world is concerned, has recourse to impressions of travel. The arcades of heaven are compared to the gardens of Babylon, to the pillars of Palmyra in the sands of the desert. When the blessed spirits are hastening through the created world we are told of the scene that displays itself to them: "Thus present themselves to the eye of the traveller the great plains of India, the fertile valleys of Delhi and Kashmir, shores covered with pearls and fragrant with ambergris, where the tranquil waves lay themselves to rest beneath the blossoming cinnamon trees." Such imagery is somewhat too realistic for the spiritual theme. We shrink from representing all these archangels to ourselves in Indian surroundings. But it is in such ways that nature revenges herself upon the man who believes he can set her aside or can produce something superior to her productions. A later author of this same school, De Vigny, who writes as much under the influence of Ossian as of Milton, compares the ether of the firmament to the mists of the Scottish mountains. The indistinct form of Lucifer descried far off in space by the angel Eloa is compared to the waving plaid of some wandering Scotchwoman, seen through the misty clouds falling on the hill-tops. The conjunction of an angel and a plaid strikes us as a curious one.

The scenery which this group of authors considers unquestionably the most beautiful is not the jumbled, potpourri landscape of the German Romanticists; no, what they, in harmony with the spirit of their day, admire is that Paradisaic landscape in which the strictest order prevails—symmetrical, architectural, a sort of dilution of Claude Lorraine. Take, for an example, the commencement of De Vigny's Le Déluge:

La terre était riante et dans sa fleur première; Le jour avait encor cette même lumière Qui du ciel embelli couronna les hauturs Quand Dieu la fit tomber de ses doigts créateurs. Rien n'avait dans sa forme altéré la nature, Et des monts réguliers l'immense architecture S'élevait jusqu' aux cieux par ses degrés égaux Sans que rien de leur chaîne eût brisé les anneaux. * * * * * * * * Et des fleuves aux mers le cours était réglé Dans un ordre parfait qui n'était pas troublé. Jamais un voyageur n'aurait, sous le feuillage Rencontré, loin des flots, l'émail du coquillage, Et la perle habitait son palais de cristal; Chaque trésor restait dans l'élément natal, Sans enfreindre jamais la céleste défense.

This partiality for model, ideal landscape tempts our authors more and more frequently to lay the scenes of their works in heaven.

Chateaubriand continues to be a greater master in the description of earthly than of heavenly surroundings.

The action of De Vigny's earliest poems takes place, in genuine Seraphic style, midway between heaven and earth.

The scene of Victor Hugo's ode, Louis XVII., is the gate of heaven, that of La Vision heaven itself, the heavenly Jerusalem. In La Vision we come upon familiar imagery:

Le char des Séraphins fidèles, Semé d'yeux, brillant d'étincelles, S'arrêta sur son triple essieu; Et la roue aux traces bruyantes, Et les quatres ailes tournoyantes Se turent au souffle de Dieu. * * * * * Adorant l'Essence inconnue Les Saints, les Martyrs glorieux, Contemplaient, sons l'ardente Nue, Le Triangle mystérieux.

Though Lamartine in his first works lingers lovingly over terrestrial scenes, he yet constantly soars in hymns into the celestial ether where, as he tells us, sacred poetry dwells, crowned with palms and stars.

Lord Byron, who, like De Vigny, writes a poem on the Flood (Heaven and Earth), is also partial to ether, though not such theological ether, as a surrounding; but he loves wilder scenery, and it is as the painter of the sea that he finds his true sphere. He lifts poetry out of its ethereal environment and deposits it in the fresh, salt element.

Chateaubriand, then, hardly succeeded in proving what he wished to prove, the superiority of Christianity to the purely human sources of poetic inspiration. Each time he attempts to do so he exposes or condemns himself. I adduce one other striking example of this.

His hero, Eudore, sailing up the Gulf of Megara, with Ægina in front of him, Piræus on the right and Corinth on the left, sees all these towns, which once were so flourishing, lying in ruins. A Greek fellow-passenger is moved to tears by the remembrance of his country's ancient glory, and we are told in touching words how the individual feels as if his individual griefs disappeared when he is brought face to face with the great, overwhelming calamities which crush whole nations. Then Eudore says: "Such an idea seemed to be beyond my youthful grasp, and nevertheless I understood it, whilst the other young men who were on board did not. What caused this difference between us? Our religions. They were pagans, I was a Christian."

Chateaubriand plainly desires to impress upon us that such an appreciation of natural surroundings and the lessons taught by them is a special possession of the Christian, of which the pagan, as pagan, is destitute. But his position is considerably weakened by our knowledge that the utterance referred to by Eudore is nothing more nor less than a translation from a famous letter written by Sulpicius to Cicero,[5] that the sentiments in question are actually the sentiments of a pagan. We can hardly be expected to accept this as a proof of the pagan's want of poetic feeling. But the trait is typical. Throughout all Chateaubriand's writings dogmatic religion is constantly proclaimed to be in possession of certain supernatural beauties and qualities of which nature, as nature, is devoid; and yet everything in that religion which is of poetical or moral value is simply an expression of human nature. As Feuerbach puts it: "Every theory of God is, in its essence, a theory of human nature."

Passing this half audacious, half conventional work, Les Martyrs, once again in review, we cannot deny that the part of it which directly treats of the supernatural world of Christianity is a failure. Indeed, Chateaubriand himself openly confesses as much in his Memoirs. The parts which have any real value are the purely human parts, one of which we shall presently criticise. It was inevitable that the doubt and indifference of the century concerning the supernatural world should set its mark on the work of an author whose own religious enthusiasm was as much a matter of deliberate intention and determination as Chateaubriand's.

Chateaubriand was not a conscious hypocrite, but he deceived himself. Proof of the manner in which he himself was affected by the reading of his Martyrs is to be found in that refined and charming autobiographical work, which all agree in accepting as reliable—Les Enchantements de Prudence, by Madame de Saman, otherwise Madame Allart de Méritens, the last woman whom Chateaubriand loved, and who loved him in return.

This lady tells how, in the summer of 1828, they used to meet at the Pont d'Austerlitz and dine together in the Jardin des Plantes in a private room. "He ordered champagne, to dispel my coldness, as he said; and then I sang to him Béranger's songs—Mon âme, La bonne vieille. Le Dieu des bonnes gens, &c. He listened as if enchanted." She paints these meetings in the warmest colours,[6] and she mentions that it was one of Chateaubriand's greatest pleasures to listen to her reading passages from his works. (Both in this book and elsewhere Madame de Saman shows herself to have been possessed of excellent literary taste.) He especially loved to hear her read his descriptions of landscape. "But sometimes," she says, "to affect him more profoundly, I produced Les Martyrs, and read the speeches and thanksgiving hymns of the confessors, or the thrilling prison and torture-chamber scenes. Then he could not restrain his tears. One day he began to weep; I continued to read; he sobbed convulsively; I still went on, and when I came to the passage which tells how Eudore secretly offered to sacrifice himself in order to win the salvation of his mother, who had been too weak in her love for her children, he could contain himself no longer, and burst into a passion of tears and sobs. It was a case of emotions returning to their source. His highly strung nerves gave way. Completely overcome, exhausted with weeping, he expressed his gratitude to me, said that he had never experienced such rapture, called me by all the sweet names men give to the Muses, told me that I was beautiful, more especially praised my eyes and their expression, imagining in the ardour of his passion that he had never seen anything like them before." The lady was at this time about twenty, Chateaubriand exactly sixty years old.

This quotation shows us that even such frigid passages in Les Martyrs as the speeches of the white-robed elders had really been felt by the author himself. We are touched by this young and noble woman's enthusiastic admiration for an old man, and the man himself rises in the reader's estimation from the fact of his being able, even at that age, to win the love of such a woman. But it is in strange surroundings that we come upon this outburst of strong emotion, a thing so rare with Chateaubriand that it may almost be called unique. Champagne, the songs of his political and religious opponent, Béranger, caresses and declarations of love, fits of weeping and sobbing over Les Martyrs, followed by more love-making! What an environment for the epic of orthodoxy! What an excess of human passion in a Seraphic poet, a former minister of state and pilgrim to Jerusalem![7]

Les Martyrs shows Chateaubriand's weakest side as an author. Such a scene as that described with the best intentions by Madame Allart de Méritens shows his weakest side as a man. And yet this outburst of human passion makes almost a satisfactory impression upon us compared with the artificiality by which he is so often distinguished. God and the king are too constantly in his mouth. We must not, however, allow this artificiality to blind us to what is really great in the talent and in the life of this remarkable personage.

In order to get a complete impression of Chateaubriand it is necessary to read the twelve volumes of Mémoires d'outre-tombe, as also those by which they are supplemented. Just as Rousseau's Confessions form the most interesting of his books, so the Mémoires constitute Chateaubriand's most impressive work. In them we find a complete personality—a whole man, and that a man of mark. This important personage, who possesses no great acuteness of observation as far as humanity in general is concerned, who, in fact, occupies himself very little with humanity in general, has focussed all his acuteness upon the one subject which really interests him, his own ego, and has half consciously, half unconsciously, but in any case very completely, revealed and exhibited it to us. It is an ego proud to the verge of arrogance, melancholy to the verge of despondency, sceptical to the verge of indifference, without faith in progress of any kind, profoundly persuaded of the vanity of even those things which afford it temporary pleasure, such as love, fame, worldly position, and, as time goes on, ever more saturated with ennui and ever more absorbingly occupied with itself. It is an ego which owns a warm, prolific imagination and great artistic talent, and which, at a period (the end of the eighteenth century) when taste was all in favour of the light, the pretty, the small, felt itself solitary in its love of the grand, of the beauty of magnitude.

In a certain sense Chateaubriand was like no other man of his day. He satisfied, as we saw, the requirement of the moment so exactly with his Génie du Christianisme that, as a sort of intellectual standard-bearer, he acquired an importance out of proportion to his character and talent.

In so far the moment at which he made his appearance magnified him.

But, looking at the matter from the other side, it may be maintained with equal certainty that the moment at which he entered upon his career forced on him a part which, for half a century, brought him into conflict with his own inmost nature. That nature was always rebelling against the part; the man's independence and uncontrollableness were in perpetual collision with the politico-religious orthodoxy which it had become his life-task to give expression to and champion. In other words, his position in the world involved him in incurable discord with himself.

In his old age he sometimes plainly confesses this. Towards the conclusion of his work on the congress of Verona he says openly: "As an officer of the regiment of Navarre I had come back from the forests of America to join legitimate monarchy in its exile and to fight under its banner against my own judgment (contre mes propres lumières)—all this without conviction, simply from a soldier's sense of duty, and because I, having had the honour of driving in the royal carriages from and to Versailles, considered myself peculiarly bound to support a prince of the blood royal."[8] We find him, however, only two pages farther on in the same book ascribing the fortunate issue of the war in Spain, which he had forced on against the desire of France, Spain, and England, less to his own ability, which he is not at all given to undervaluing, than to "one of the latest miracles performed by Heaven for the race of St. Louis."

Here, as in all his later works, he makes a marked difference between monarchy as an idea and the person of the monarch. He tries to reconcile avowed, unaltered loyalty to ideas with a frank contempt for the capacities and characters of kings.

There is no doubt that the foolish ingratitude of the Bourbons towards the man to whom they owed so much added largely to this contempt. But in his Memoirs he shows that it began early; he would have us believe that it dated from his earliest acquaintance with Louis XVIII, and his environment. He soon perceived that King Louis did not favour him, and it wounded his pride to find that the King's brother, the future Charles X., had not read one of his books, not even Le Génie du Christianisme. Looking back on his past life he writes: "Louis the Eighteenth and his brother did not understand me at all. The latter said of me: 'Good-hearted and hot-headed!' These hackneyed words ... were completely misapplied. My head is very cool, and my heart has never beat very warmly for kings."

The old monarchy, unless it actually felt itself so self-dependent as to be indebted to no one, was bound to regard itself as under obligation to Chateaubriand, not only because, as an officer in Condé's army, he had fought and suffered in its cause, not only because, under Napoleon, he had stopped midway in his career and defied the mighty potentate by sending in his resignation after the execution of the Duke of Enghien, but also because, in 1814, even before Napoleon's abdication at Versailles, he had influenced public opinion in favour of the Bourbons by means of a pamphlet which Louis XVIII himself declared to have been as useful to him as a hundred thousand soldiers.

The pamphlet in question, Buonaparte et les Bourbons, is perhaps the most passionate, most vindictive, most venomous, and most artificially enthusiastic party work written by Chateaubriand. It is an insane shriek of hatred of the fallen Napoleon, who is stripped of every fragment of his glory, and a hurrah of hollow enthusiasm for sunken-chested Louis XVIII, who is deified. In no other work does Chateaubriand display so much vindictive stupidity. He goes so far as to deny Bonaparte's ability as a general. He describes him as an incompetent officer, who could do nothing but command his troops to go forward, and who gained his victories simply by the excellence of these troops and not by his conduct of them, as a commander who never ensured and never knew when to make a retreat, and who, far from improving the art of war, led it back to its infancy again.[9] The Marquise de Seiglière in Sandeau's famous comedy does not talk greater nonsense about Napoleon.

Louis XVIII, on the other hand, is called a prince famed for his sagacity. We are told that, of all the rulers possible for France at the moment, he is the one most suited to the position of the country and the spirit of the century, whilst Bonaparte is the one of all others least fit to reign.

This is what we find in the official pamphlet. But how differently Chateaubriand thinks and speaks in his Memoirs! In them he does justice to Bonaparte's military skill; he says of him that "he invented war in the grand style;" and he has also suddenly discovered that the winning of one battle after another is no inconsiderable part of the duty of a general. Because they flatter his own vanity, he relates various anecdotes which show how Napoleon, unbiassed by his (Chateaubriand's) hatred, displayed his appreciation of him. After Chateaubriand had turned against him, Napoleon demanded to be informed by the Academy, why a prize had not been awarded to the Génie du Christianisme. And when (at Fontainebleau) he had read with perfect calmness the offensive pamphlet described above, he merely remarked: "This is correct; that is not correct. I do not blame Chateaubriand. He was my enemy in my day of prosperity; but those miscreants," &c., &c. Apropos of this, Chateaubriand makes the amusing and surprising remark: "My admiration of Bonaparte (this time without the u) has always been great and sincere." He is undoubtedly telling the truth. He admired and envied Napoleon. He measured himself with him and felt the disadvantage of having such a contemporary.

In his Memoirs he also tells the truth about those kings for whom he professed such loyalty and reverence.

He tells that in 1814 he dreaded the impression likely to be produced by Louis XVIII's personal appearance, and he gives a copy of the high-flown description which he in consequence circulated of the King's entry into Paris, a description which he wrote, he says, without being asked to do so, and without any taste for such compositions, but beautifying everything with the aid of the Muses. "A man makes his appearance before the officers, who have never seen him, before the grenadiers, who hardly know him by name. Who is this man? He is the King! One and all fall down at his feet."

Then he tells the real facts of the entrance, and calmly remarks: I lied with regard to the soldiers. He gives a fine description of the attitude of the remnant of Napoleon's Old Guard, who were drawn up outside Notre Dame, and through whose ranks the King had to pass. "I do not believe that human countenances ever wore a more terrible and threatening expression." He declares that they looked as if they were on the point of cutting the King to pieces.

And he makes no endeavour to show the baselessness of their contempt. After telling how his plan of defence during the Hundred Days was foiled by the cowardliness of the King and his immediate following, he exclaims: "Why did I come into the world in an age in which I am so out of place? Why have I been a Royalist against my instinct at a time when a miserable tribe of courtiers would not listen to me, could not understand me? Why was my lot cast amongst that crowd of mediocrities who looked on me as a madman when I spoke of courage, as a revolutionist when I spoke of liberty?"[10]

As the Memoirs advance, the champion of monarchy throws ever more light upon the piety, understanding, and character of Louis XVIII. "It is to be feared that to the most Christian King's religion was no more than a medicinal liquor, well adapted to form one of the ingredients of the brew called monarchy." He writes of "the voluptuous imagination which the King had inherited from his father." He remarks that he was fond of praising himself and making fun of himself at the same time; for instance, when speaking of possible heirs to the throne, "he drew himself up with a capable, arch air; but it was not my intention to dispute the King's ability in this or any other matter."[11] When giving a more minute description of Louis's character, he says: "Selfish and devoid of prejudices, it was his aim to preserve his own tranquillity at all costs.... Without being cruel, the King was inhuman." He tells how Louis boasted of being able to raise a favourite so high as to make him the object of universal envy, and thereupon remarks: "To be able to raise others, one must be certain of not falling one's self. But what were kings in the days of Louis XVIII.? Though they could still make a man rich, it was no longer in their power to make him great. They were now nothing but their favourites' bankers."

And not content even with such severe language as this, Chateaubriand at times takes to satire. In his account of the Congress of Verona he tells how it came about that he at one time stood so high in the King's favour that his fellow-ministers were positively jealous of him: "The King often went to sleep in the Cabinet Council; and it was the best thing he could do, for when he was not asleep he told stories. He had a great gift of mimicry. But this did not amuse M. de Villèle, who wished to discuss affairs of state. M. de Corcière put his elbows, his snuffbox, and his blue pocket-handkerchief on the table; the other ministers listened in silence. I alone could not help being amused by His Majesty's anecdotes, and this evidently delighted him. When he was searching for an excuse to tell a story, he would say in his little thin, clear voice: 'I want to make M. de Chateaubriand laugh.'"[12]

It does not surprise us that Chateaubriand, after demonstrating how in a democratic community men make their way by talking volubly of liberty, the progress of humanity, the future, &c., should wind up with the following description of the conditions prevailing in the aristocratic, royalist society, the praises of which he had always sung: "Play whist, bring out with an air of seriousness and profundity the impertinences and witticisms which you have prepared, and the brilliant career of your genius is assured."

Thus completely was the man who inaugurates the half-beliefs, the æsthetic Christianity, and the affected royalism of the nineteenth century cured of all illusions.

He was too proud to wear his mask to the end, and he threw it off completely "beyond the grave."

He himself names as his "chief faults" ennui, disgust with everything, and constant doubt. These faults had their good sides. Profound indifference to all this world has to bestow preserved him from the temptations of base ambition; doubt preserved him from placing implicit confidence in the doctrines which a spirit of aristocratic defiance more than anything else led him to champion; his pride sustained him, and though it did not preserve him from hypocrisy, it kept him from ever committing a mean action. But, until the ingratitude of the authority which he had reinstated roused him to rebellion, there was a hopeless discord between his nature and the part he played.

VIII

MADAME DE KRÜDENER

Amongst the personages of the day we come upon one class peculiarly characteristic of this period, namely, the converts. In an anxiously religious age following upon one of little faith this class was inevitably a numerous one. Laharpe's conversion during the very course of the Revolution had excited much attention. Chateaubriand himself was a convert. It is possibly the converts who help us to the clearest understanding of the nature of the new spirit, for in them we see it striving with and overcoming the old. The convert is, moreover, always ardent; he is full of his new belief, and consequently has, or affects, a peculiarly expressive countenance. The rule that the spirit of a period mirrors itself typically in that period's leading characters holds doubly good in the case of the individual whose character it is to be converted, especially if that individual is a woman. History contains no record of a woman, with her receptive nature, having led her age onward to new development, but some woman generally presents us with a specially marked type of the character of her age. The émigrés group themselves round Madame de Staël, the leaders of Romanticism rally round Caroline Schlegel, and the age of the rehabilitation of religion finds poetically pious expression in Madame de Krüdener.

In Madame de Staël's Delphine there is a scene in which the heroine enchants a large company with her graceful and expressive performance of a certain foreign dance, the shawl-dance. This scene had a foundation of reality. Her beautiful dancing was one of the many things for which the young and charming Baroness de Krüdener was remarkable. In Delphine we read: "Never did grace and beauty produce a more remarkable effect upon a numerous assembly. This foreign dance has a charm of which nothing we are accustomed to see can give any idea. It is an altogether Asiatic mixture of indolence and vivacity, of melancholy and gaiety.... Sometimes when the music became softer Delphine walked a few steps with head bent and arms crossed, as if some memory or some regret had suddenly intermingled itself with the joyousness of a festival; but, soon recommencing her light and lively dance, she enveloped herself in an Indian shawl, which, showing the contours of her figure and falling back with her long hair, made of her a perfectly enchanting picture." The word Asiatic is unmistakably the characterising word. In 1803 Joubert writes of Madame de Krüdener: "She is charming, with something Asiatic about her—nature exaggerated. Such extreme tenderness of feeling can hardly exist without a touch of extravagance."

Julie Barbe (Juliane Barbara) de Vietinghof was born in 1764 at Riga, in Livonia. Her education was conducted half on French, half on German lines. Her father was a distinguished, sagacious man of the world, a philosopher and Freemason, an art-lover and a Mæcenas; her mother, a sensible, conscientious woman, had been brought up on strict, old-fashioned Lutheran principles. Both parents belonged to the highest class of the old German-Russian aristocracy of the Baltic Provinces, and were connected with the Russian court.

The first teacher who made a real impression upon their young daughter, and whose instructions powerfully influenced her future, was the famous Parisian ballet-dancer, Vestris. At the age of eighteen Julie married Baron de Krüdener, a Russian diplomatist, a man fifteen years her senior, who had already been married twice, and had been divorced from both his wives. Her heart had no share in this union; the match was considered an excellent one, her vanity was gratified, and she had no manner of objection to her husband. He seems to have been a sensible, worthy, well-educated man, cultivated and calm, by no means devoid of feeling, but both by nature and from his position wedded to all the conventions of society. The Graces had not stood by his cradle.

It was into the most brilliant society of the eighteenth century that Baron de Krüdener introduced his wife. At the time of his marriage he was Russian envoy in Kurland, and immediately after the honeymoon the couple proceeded to Mitau, where Krüdener negotiated the incorporation of the Duchy with Russia, and where they were honoured with a visit from the Czar (Paul I.). Amateur theatricals provided the young wife with her chief occupation and interest. She went on acting until almost immediately before the birth of her only son. A few weeks after this event the young mother was presented to the Empress Catherine at St. Petersburg. Thence Krüdener was sent as Russian ambassador to Venice; the most dissipated town of the day, where his wife lived in a whirl of gaiety.

In Venice a gifted young enthusiast, Alexander Stakjev, her husband's private secretary, fell violently in love with Madame de Krüdener, but so great was his esteem for Krüdener and for the object of his attachment that not a syllable crossed his lips. So well did he preserve his secret that Krüdener took him with him when he was transferred to Copenhagen in 1784. In the woods of Frederiksborg Juliane and her adorer roved about admiring the beauties of nature in company. It was to the husband that Stakjev at last naïvely confessed his passion. Krüdener was imprudent enough to show the letter to his wife, who now for the first time became certain of the nature of Stakjev's feeling for her, a feeling which she did not return, but which, with innate coquetry, she had encouraged. The knowledge that it was in her power to call forth such a passion had an extraordinary effect upon her. From this moment it was the one dream of her life to be adored. Stakjev took his departure, but all that had been fermenting in Julie's young heart now forced its way to the surface. Possessed by an ardent desire to love and be loved, she had first attempted to find the ideal of her dreams in her husband. When he, more the father than the lover, only tried to keep her extravagant feeling in check, she fell back upon herself, and grieved at being what is now called misunderstood, but what she called "not felt." Stakjev's passion rushed past her like a breath of fire and thawed the inward cold which, as it were, held her emotions ice-bound. They now demanded an outlet. In Copenhagen, which, of all the places she had lived in, seemed to her the most unbearable—it is to be remembered that this was a hundred years ago—she threw herself into a whirl of trivial social amusements, which engrossed her time and mind, and brought in their train much indiscriminate and reckless coquetry. Shattered nerves and an affection of the lungs were the result of all the balls and theatricals, and she was ordered to spend the winter of 1789 in the South.

Instead of making her way to some quiet sunny spot on the shores of the Mediterranean, the lady whose health had completely broken down under the strain of town life hastened to Paris and there revived. In this intellectual city she is suddenly struck by her own ignorance, acquires a taste for reading, or rather for writers, and procures introductions to the great authors of the day—Barthélémy, the author of Le jeune Anarcharse, at whose reception into the Academy she was present, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, for whose Paul et Virginie she had always had the greatest admiration. She makes a cult of Saint-Pierre and nature, witnesses the fall of the Bastille, but at the same time runs up an account of some 20,000 francs at her milliner's. When she is in the south of France, a young officer, M. de Frègeville, falls in love with her. Less inexperienced now than she had been in Copenhagen, she yields, after a struggle, to his persuasions. He induces her to spend another winter in France, in spite of a promise given to her husband, and to return to Paris instead of to Copenhagen in the following year (1791).

After Louis XVI's unsuccessful attempt at flight, Paris was no longer a safe place of residence for Madame de Krüdener. She made her escape from France with M. de Frègeville, who was disguised as her lackey, spent some weeks at Brussels, and then travelled by way of Cassel and Hanover to Hamburg, still accompanied and protected by her lover in his character of lackey. At Hamburg she was met by her husband, but as she even there refused to part from her favourite servant, there was a violent scene. Krüdener advised her to go for a time to her mother at Riga, and thither too she was accompanied by the disguised French officer. Her mother received her most cordially. In 1792, when she and her mother went to St. Petersburg to see her dying father, she again met her husband, who had come there to raise the money he required to procure a divorce. She threw herself at his feet, was forgiven, and made promises which she did not keep. For the next few years she wandered about Europe, separated from her husband and from De Frègeville, but living the life of the dissolute, gay lady of the last decade of the eighteenth century. Even in his most private letters of this year her husband never mentions her name.

After meeting her old adorer, Stakjev, at St. Petersburg, Madame de Krüdener went to Riga, where she remained for some time, then to Berlin, and thence to Leipzig, where she spent great part of 1793. From Leipzig she returned to Riga, but almost at once finding that town unbearable, retired to the family property of Kosse. Here she formed great plans; it was her intention to become the benefactress of her serfs, "to educate the Esthonian people and make them happy." In 1795 she stayed for a few months at Riga, and then went to Berlin. In 1796 she lived first at Lausanne, then at Geneva with her friend, Abbé Becker. She frequented the society of the French émigrés, was perfectly idolised, and went from fête to fête dancing the shawl-dance, which for a time was the great passion of her now mature womanhood. When young girls began to dance the shawl-dance too, she went off with her friend, the émigré De Vallin, to Munich. After De Vallin's compulsory return to France, and Becker's death, Madame de Krüdener suddenly began to long for her husband and her step-child, but all that came of this was a flying visit to Munich, where she had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of this step-child, now a grown woman. After a stay at Teplitz, she returned to Munich, but was presently at Teplitz again, and thence went to Berlin, where, in 1800, M. de Krüdener took up his residence as Russian ambassador. During these years of wandering she had probably changed her lovers even more frequently than her place of residence.

The winter of 1800-1801 she spent in Berlin as Russian ambassadress; but her unpunctuality and general eccentricity made her anything but a favourite at the well-ordered court of William III. Social success being her one desire, she tried, now that she was no longer young, to attract attention by the audacity of her toilettes. She had never been a beauty, but her expressive features and her gracefulness had always been much admired. The simplicity which had made her so irresistible ten years earlier, had now given place to a desire to create a sensation by a daring style of dress, or rather undress. She covered her still beautiful hair with a wig, according to the fashion of the day. Her features and complexion had lost the freshness of youth.

It was at this time that her restless heart, which still craved for strong emotions, began to open itself to the influence of religious fanaticism. In a letter to her most intimate friend she writes: "Shall I confess something to you? It is in all humility of heart I write it. You know that I am not arrogant—how can a Christian be? But I believe that God has deigned to bless my husband ever since my return. There is no imaginable benefit or favour that is not bestowed on him. Why should I not believe that the prayer of a pious heart which simply and trustingly beseeches God to help it to contribute to another's happiness is certain to be answered?"

Why not, indeed? We should willingly believe that it was the presence of Madame de Krüdener which induced Providence to shower orders and distinctions upon the Baron if we did not happen to know for a fact that it was another, less romantic reason which led the Emperor Paul thus to favour him. The facts of the case are as follows: In the middle of an entertainment which the Baron was giving in Berlin to the Prussian royal family and the Grand Duchess Helena, a despatch arrived from the autocrat of all the Russias, commanding Krüdener instantly to declare war with Prussia. Their Majesties were still in the house. Instead of breaking up the fête by displaying this Gorgon's head to his guests, the Russian ambassador calmly let them dance on; and knowing, like the sagacious politician he was, how imprudent and how fatal for Russia such a war would be, he wrote a dissuasive letter to his Emperor, though well aware that, in all human probability, life-long exile in Siberia would be his reward. Naturally he mentioned nothing of all this to his wife. The improbable happened. Paul allowed himself to be dissuaded, and, full of admiration for his minister's courage and wisdom, overwhelmed him with proofs of his favour.—So we see there is a different explanation from Madame de Krüdener's.

From this time onwards her letters become ever more pious and edifying. She now writes of religion as her panacea against melancholy, and tells of the thousand sources of happiness which it offers.

In the midst of all this comes a new love affair and another separation from her husband. In the summer of 1801 we find her at Teplitz. Then she pays a long visit to Madame de Staël at Coppet, where the desire to make a sensation as an authoress is aroused in her, and she dashes off three short stories and the beginning of a novel. To make this last as perfect as possible, she goes to Paris to seek advice from Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and make Chateaubriand's acquaintance. Chateaubriand gives her a copy of his Génie du Christianisme before he has even distributed his presentation copies, and she is not a little proud when Madame de Staël finds this book upon her table. But she makes such indiscreet, unscrupulous use of Chateaubriand's confidences that he is estranged from her for years, a complete breach being only with difficulty avoided.

She is surprised in Paris by the news of Krüdener's death. She shuts herself up, full of grief and remorse. It had been "her dream to return to him once more, ease the burden of years for him, and requite his unending generosity." It was not long, however, before Madame de Krüdener issued from her retirement. In her first short stories she had imitated Saint-Pierre's style. Now her novel was ready. She called it Valérie; her own youthful love affair with Alexander Stakjev had furnished her with the plot. It is a well-written, sympathetic story, perceptibly influenced by Werther. But Madame de Krüdener was not satisfied with writing a novel; she wished her novel to be read and talked of. The manner in which she set herself to ensure that it should be, shows that at this period she had not, in spite of her attempts to do so, altogether renounced the world. She was not contented with the usual stratagems, such as getting one critic after another to look through the story in manuscript, reading the whole or parts to select companies of friends, &c., &c.,; no—she prepared its success in a more determined and thorough manner. Her first step was to write as follows to a friend in Paris, Dr. Gay, an unknown and vain member of the medical profession, in whose career she had promised to interest herself:—

"... I have another favour to ask of you. Will you get some clever verse-writer to address a little poem to our friend Sidonie (Sidonie is the heroine in Madame de Krüdener's first short story). I need hardly ask you to be sure to see that this poem is in as good taste as possible. The heading is simply to be À Sidonie. Sidonie is to be asked: 'Why do you live in the country, depriving us by this retired life of your charm and your wit? Does the sensation you have created not call you to Paris? Only there will your charms and your talents be admired as they deserve. Your fascinating dancing has been described, but who is capable of describing all your attractions?' My friend, it is to your friendship I confide all this; I feel quite ashamed on Sidonie's behalf, for I know her modesty. You, too, know that she is not vain. I have more serious reasons than the gratification of petty vanity for asking you to have these verses written, and for my other actions. Be sure to say that she lives in great retirement, and that only in Paris is it possible to meet with appreciation. Take care to conceal that you have anything to do with this matter. Have the verses printed in the evening newspaper. It is quite true that Sidonie's dancing is described in Delphine. Read the book; it will interest you. But remember, it is not to be mentioned in the verses that it is in Delphine she is described. It is only the heading, À Sidonie, that is to give any clue to the person to whom they are addressed. Be so kind as to pay the newspaper. I hope to be able to explain my reasons to you. Send me the number containing the verses as soon as it comes out. If the paper will not accept the verses, or if there is to be too long a delay in their appearance, send me the manuscript and I shall have them inserted in a newspaper here. You will be doing a great favour to your friend, and she will explain to you by word of mouth why she has asked it. You know her timidity, her love of solitude, and her dislike of praise; but it is an important service you are doing her."

A fortnight later we have another letter on the same subject, another request to know if Dr. Gay has read Delphine: "Madame de Staël told Sidonie that she would describe her dancing, and you will find the description in the first volume. Many people think that she has described Sidonie's face, way of speaking, and lively imagination, and mixed up with this her own religious and political opinions; for Sidonie is profoundly religious, and takes very little interest in politics." On this follow more directions with regard to the poem: "It must tell that her beautiful dancing has been described, without intimating by whom—must simply say: 'An able pen has depicted your dancing; the success you have met with everywhere is well known; your charms have been sung as well as your wit, and yet you persistently conceal them from the world. A solitary life in your home is your choice. There you seek happiness in religion, in nature, in study, &c., &c., &c.' This, dear friend, is what I want; I shall give you my reasons by-and-by."

The address to Sidonie arrives; Madame de Krüdener acknowledges its reception: "It is only fair, dear friend, that you should have a copy of the charming elegy you have written for me, so I herewith send you one; I wish to keep yours myself."

The elegy runs: "What is it you seek in your solitude? Paris, bewitched by the magic emanating from you, by your grace, by the brilliant talents with which Heaven has gifted you, surely offers you hearts enough, hearts which your gentle spirit has enchained. We saw you, we flocked round you on that day when you exercised the seductive power of grace and the constraining power of beauty, the day when, assured of the palm of genius, you did not despise the praises offered to talent. You even smiled upon a certain ingenious versifier who ventured to blend his weak voice with the chorus of the sages and to sketch your magic dance in words. But the memory of those festive days has been effaced by the thunderbolt which has fallen from heaven upon you! Do not our hearts share in your melancholy reflections? Have they not, devoutly silent, sighed with you in your sorrow? We would not offend you with impotent consolation, that paraded offering to a paraded sorrow—we heard you sigh, and we sighed with you. We sighed with you, and you flee from us! Why do you flee? We are decked in mourning weeds; the arts keep silence; love hides itself, and with it hide all its attendant gaieties, that of yore were your joy and your glory."

There is as much again, but this is enough. Madame de Krüdener's letter ends: "I send you this elegy, the antique colouring (!) and beauty of which I admire. I appropriate nothing in it except the sorrow, which you have correctly observed in me and have desired to alleviate. I have much more than this to say to you, dear Dr. Gay, much that is more flattering for you, but I cannot find room for it here, can only with a grateful heart offer my thanks to your art, your noble art, so beneficial to humanity (!)."

Dr. Gay then proceeded to rhyme his prose. Madame de Krüdener writes to him: "Sidonie has requested me to convey her heartfelt thanks to the kindest of friends. The verses are charming. They are already in print. What an enviably gifted man he is who wrote them! How easy it is to see that he is Sidonie's friend! How well he paints what he desires us to see! In every stroke one feels that it is the soul which has wielded the brush—and what a noble soul!... Sidonie has also received an elegy in prose, which you must see, and which she considers exceedingly beautiful. What talent is displayed in the noble, simple style, and how one is drawn to the mind which speaks such a language! A few alterations have been made, very few; you have been most successful in doing what was desired!"

We observe that Sidonie was not content with writing out a rough draft of her own encomiums, but that she also corrected the fair copy. Such proceedings require no comment. The indefatigable doctor composes more poems, and receives requests to plague this, that, and the other critic. No importuning was required in the case of the pious historian, Michaud, who spent thirty years of his life in writing the history of the Crusades; it was rendered superfluous by the intimacy of his relations with the authoress; his criticism was an enthusiastic one. At last Madame de Krüdener is able to write to a friend: "My health is much improved; I have been at balls eight nights running without being the worse for it. What happiness! I cannot tell you, my friend, how much I am made of; poems are showered on me, I am overwhelmed with attentions, people dispute the privilege of a word with me. It is a thousand times more than I deserve; but Providence loves to overwhelm its children with benefits, even when they do not deserve them.... I should look upon it as cowardice not to publish a work which in my opinion is a useful one; therefore I regard the journey to Paris in the light of a duty; for my heart, my imagination, everything, draws me to the Lake of Geneva."

She went to Paris, and Valérie was published in December 1803. All Madame de Krüdener's guns were primed, ready to salute the book. Not one missed fire. All the bells of criticism tolled. Like a good general, she was on the field of battle herself. She drove incognito from one fashionable shop to another, asking for hats, or scarfs, or feathers, or wreaths, or ribbons à la Valérie. When this elegant and still beautiful lady drove up in her carriage and asked with such assurance for these articles of her own invention, the shopkeepers did their utmost to come to an understanding of what she wanted and to provide it. And when astonished shop-girls denied the existence of such wares, Madame de Krüdener smiled so kindly and pitied them so much because they did not know Valérie that she quickly transformed them into eager canvassers of readers for her book. She drove on with her purchases to other shops, and in a few days had produced amongst the shopkeepers such a furious competition in articles à la Valérie that her friends, when they went at her instigation to ask for these wares, became innocent accomplices in her stratagem, and were constrained to bear witness to her triumph.

Now Madame de Krüdener writes to her friend: "The success of Valérie is complete and unprecedented. An acquaintance said to me the other day: 'There is something supernatural about such success.' Yes, my friend, it is the will of Heaven that this purer morality should be diffused throughout France, where as yet it is not so well understood."

Hardly had this feverish craving for celebrity been satisfied, this refinement of hypocrisy been brought to perfection, when Madame de Krüdener's genuine conversion took place. It came about in this wise. Sitting at the window of her house in Riga one day in 1805, she was in the act of bowing to one of the most favoured of her numerous admirers when the unfortunate man was seized with a fit of apoplexy and fell down dead. This incident preyed on her mind. Her melancholy, however, did not render her independent of earthly requirements, and she sent one day for a shoemaker to measure her for a pair of shoes. The man came. At first she hardly noticed him, but while he was kneeling in front of her she was struck by his happy expression. "Are you happy?" she asked him. "I am the happiest man in the world," was the reply. This shoemaker was one of the "awakened," a member of the community of Moravian Brethren. He had an aversion to work, and lived at home with his mother, Frau Blau, one of the worst religious hypocrites in Riga, who gained her livelihood by imposing upon the rich members of her sect. The sight of the shoemaker's happiness made such an impression on Madame de Krüdener's susceptible soul that she again and again visited his mother and him. At their house she made acquaintance with many more of the Moravian Brethren, and was soon as enthusiastic a Christian believer as any one of them. A gradual, slow training in Christianity would not have been possible in her case, but the doctrine of sudden conversion and entire change of life was one well calculated to have a strong effect upon her, now that she was over forty.

The same ardour which she had exhibited in the passions of her youth she now expended on the passion of her maturer years. Both her words and actions are henceforth inspired by religious enthusiasm. She divides her time between devotional exercises and charitable deeds. Her whole previous life seems to her to have been nothing but error and foolishness. Her whole life now is but one feeling, love to her Saviour. "I have not a thought except to please, to serve, to sacrifice everything to Him through whose grace I desire nothing except to be allowed to love all my fellow-men, and who shows me nothing in the future but glimpses of bliss. Oh, if men but knew the happiness of religion, how they would shun every care except care for their souls!"

Such was Madame de Krüdener's state of mind when, travelling once more in the autumn of 1806, she met and became intimate with Queen Louisa of Prussia. It was not long after the battle of Jena. The Queen, in her deep dejection, was peculiarly open to the persuasion of Madame de Krüdener's glowing religious eloquence, and Madame de Krüdener gained great influence over her, and through her over the King. We have proof of this in a letter from the Queen written some time afterwards. "I owe to your kind heart a confession which I am certain will cause you to shed tears of joy. It is that you have made me better than I was. Your straightforward words when we talked together on the subject of religion and Christianity have made the deepest impression upon me."

Madame de Krüdener went to Karlsruhe on purpose to see Jung-Stilling. Jung-Stilling had made a literary reputation for himself by the book in which he gave an account of his early life as a pious journeyman tailor. As a medical student at Strasburg he had associated with Goethe and won his favour. After practising successfully as an oculist, and holding a professorship of political economy, he had become a kind of prophet among the Pietists of South Germany, and was honoured as a saint by the pious court-circle and nobility of Baden. His character was not strong enough to stand such adulation, and he had degenerated into a vain and unreliable old twaddler, who boasted of his knowledge of the other world and revealed the hidden mysteries and designs of God by means of interpretations of the Revelation of St. John. To Jung-Stilling Madame de Krüdener now did homage as her master and guide. He had a weakness for the admiration of great ladies, and a close friendship sprang up between them. The venerable ghost-seer was at this time writing his Theorie der Geisterkunde (Theory of Spirits). Madame de Krüdener was firmly persuaded of the truth of one of his wise predictions, namely, that the millennium was to begin in the year 1816, or 1819 at latest.