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I quitted him without revealing who I really was, and I told no one of my visit. In fact, the Principal was right (added my master) as a question of morality; falsehood is much more amusing than truth, and has sometimes a greater probability. I had had a vision like Musset's, and had made acquaintance with the young man dressed in black, who was as like me as a brother.

Gautier's school friendship with Gérard de Nerval, his initiation in the "Petit cénacle," his presence in the red waistcoat at the first representation of "Hernani," and all the rest of it, are well known from his own account. But as he has sometimes been accused of remaining silent when he should have praised the god of his former and constant idolatry under the empire, it is fair to give the following story, to which it need only be added that M. Victor Hugo's own words sufficiently refute the slander. "Votre main n'a pas quitté ma main," he writes to Gautier :

On the 21st of June, 1867, the Comédie Française reproduced "Hernani." Théophile Gautier was the principal attraction in this reproduction. He was seen in his box smiling, grown young again, without his red waistcoat, but still with his long lion's mane of hair, giving the signal, and, as it were, the tradition of the applause. But it was asked how the critic of the "Moniteur," in his position of official writer, would manage to speak of the author of the

"Châtiments" in the Journal of the Imperial Government. The next day Théophile Gautier himself brought his article to the "Moniteur." They begged him to moderate the eulogy, and to soften its enthusiastic tone. Without making the slightest objection, he took up a sheet of blank paper, and wrote on it his resignation. Then, having made them take him to the Minister of the Interior, he laid before M. de Lavalette his article and resignation. 'Choose," said he. The Minister ordered the article to be in

serted without altering a word of it.

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The next thing that I shall extract ought to amuse the most ferocious decriers of his tabooed book:

It would be a mistake to believe that the romantic outpourings of Théophile and the boldness of his pen displeased his family. Pierre Gautier was, as I have already said, a great admirer of the literary and artistic ideas of his son. As for the mother, it is needless to say that she lived in a continual state of dumb ecstasy, in the contemplation of this handsome young man with waving hair, who was gaining in the world every imaginable success. Never was child more spoiled, more petted, more admired by his family. Paternal authority never interfered except to remind the idle writer of the page begun and the end to be attained. Théophile Gautier wrote "Mademoiselle de Maupin" in the room which he occupied in his parents' house in the Place Royale. This work, full of spirit and animation, and which appears

to have been written as it were at one breath, so that many people regard it as his masterpiece, wearied him extremely in the composing. The poet, who lived as a lion and a man of fashion, much preferred writing love-sonnets, and displaying his gorgeous waistcoats and marvelous pantaloons on the boulevards, to shutting himself up before a lamp and blackening fair sheets of paper. Besides, in his character of romanticist he detested prose, and regarded it as in the last degree Philistine. When he came in, therefore, his father used to turn the key on him while he set him his task. "You will not come out," cried he through the closed door, “until you have written ten pages of 'Maupin.'" Sometimes Théophile resigned himself, sometimes he got through the window. At other times it was his mother who let him out by stealth, always anxious and fearing lest her son should be fatigued by so much work.

Here again is a curiously characteristic reminiscence of the connection which existed between

Gautier and Balzac :

When Curmer was thinking of his publication, Balzac for a contribution. The great novelist agreed "Les Français peints par eux-mêmes," he applied to that the work should contain a study on himself, and to give his assistance on one condition-namely, Was not this condition included in the spirit of the that this study should be written by Théophile. title, "Les Français peints par eux-mêmes"? Cur

mer agreed. Balzac instantly hurried to the Rue de the order. It came like a lark from the sky ready Navarin, where Gautier lived, and informed him of Balzac, "for this study on myself." Théophile had roasted. "I will pay you five hundred francs," said with his usual timidity did not dare to ask for the soon furnished it and carried it to the publisher, but money due to him. A week, then a fortnight passed,

still no news of Balzac. At last one morning he

appeared. "I do not know how to thank you," he

said to his friend; "your study is a masterpiece. As I think you may be in want of money, I have brought you the sum agreed upon," and he laid down two hundred and fifty francs.

"But," Gautier ventured to say, "I thought you told me five hundred. I must have misunderstood you."

"Not the least in the world; I did tell you five hundred. But consider a moment. If I had not existed, you could never have said all the good of me which you have said; that is clear. Then, had there been no article of yours, there would have been no money. I take half of the sum as the subject treated, and I give you the rest as the author treating. Is not that just ?”

"As Solomon himself," replied Gautier, who many years after, in telling me the story, declared that Balzac was perfectly right.

Besides innumerable personal anecdotes of this kind, the book contains many illustrations,

even more interesting, of literary idiosyncrasy. One of M. Bergerat's notes is that Gautier, who scarcely ever altered a phrase in his manuscript, never would insert any punctuation in it. He held stops and accents as a detail of the printer's business. Unfortunately, printers-may I add editors?—can not be induced to take this admirably reasonable point of view. Another interesting detail is Gautier's idea of a style-school, which seems to have been quite serious, and not to have resembled Baudelaire's possibly borrowed theory of "poetry in twenty lessons." Gautier had a perfectly just idea of the services he had rendered to French, and the following passages, allowance being made for his lively and picturesque language, do not exaggerate these services one whit:

My own part in this literary revolution was very plainly marked out. I was to be the painter of the

company. I threw myself vigorously into the quest for adjectives; I dug up charming and even admirable ones, which it would be impossible to do without any longer. I foraged in the sixteenth century, to the great scandal of the subscribers of the Théâtre Français, the academicians, and the closeshaven bourgeois, as Petrus calls them. I came back with my basket laden. I laid on the palette all the tints of dawn and the shades of sunset; I gave back to you red, dishonored by politicians; I composed poems in white major, and when I saw that the result was good, that the best writers followed my lead, and that the professors basked in their chairs, I delivered my famous axiom, "He whom any thought, however complex, any vision, even were it the most apocalyptic, surprises, without words to express it, is not a writer." And the goats have been separated from the sheep, the supporters of Scribe from the disciples of Hugo, in whom dwells all genius. Such is my part in the quest.

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"I know not," said my master one day to me, "what posterity will think of me, but I fancy that I shall at least have been useful to the language of my own country. It would be positive ingratitude to refuse to me, after death, the modest merit of a philologist. Ah, my dear child," he added, smiling, "if we only had as many piasters or rubles as the words I have rescued from Malherbe! You young people will thank me some day when you see what an instrument I have left in your hands, and you will defend my memory against those literary diplomatists who, having no ideas to express, and no wit to make the most of, wish to reduce us to the hundred words of the language of Racine. Attend to this, that you may remember it at a future day; the day that I am acknowledged as a classic, thought will be very near attaining its full freedom in France!"

In another place I find a curious account of Gautier's belief in his powers of writing the roman-feuilleton, the one lucrative branch of the

literary profession in France. In a single instance, as students of his works know, he put his theory into practice, and the result was "La Belle Jenny"—a remarkable book, for which I am glad to see that M. Bergerat, with all his hero-worship, has little more affection than I have myself. The criticism of M. Emile de Girardin, for whom it was written, is charming. He had allowed Gautier to write it as a tour de force, and the author, if not the editor, was fully satisfied with the result. In the pride of his heart Gautier wanted to go on ad infinitum, after the fashion of the kind of author whose work he was imitating. "Est-ce que l'abonné ne trouve pas qu'il en ait pour son argent?" he asked of the editor of the Presse." "Mon ami," replied that experienced person, "c'est ça, et ce n'est pas ça. L'abonné ne s'amuse pas franchement: il est géné par le style."

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M. Bergerat has inserted in his volume not a

few poetical waifs and strays, which have not as yet found their way into collections of Gautier's

works. The best of these is not suitable for quotation here, though some day or other it will doubtless take its place among the other jewels of the "Emaux et Camées." There is, however, one piece which must be quoted:

"Sur un coin d'infini traînant son voile d'ombre La terre obscure allume à l'éternel cadran, Sirius, Orion, Persée, Aldébaran,

Et fait le ciel splendide en le rendant plus sombre. "On voit briller parmi les étoiles sans nombre

L'énorme Jupiter dont un mois vaut notre an, Et Vénus toute d'or, et Mars peint de safran, Et Saturne alourdi par l'anneau qui l'encombre. "A ces astres divers se rattache un destin : Jupiter est heureux, Mars hargneux et mutin, Vénus voluptueuse et Saturne morose.

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Moi, mon étoile est bleue et luit même en plein jour

Près d'une oreille sourde à mes soupirs d'amour

Sur le ciel d'une joue adorablement rose !" *

* Mr. Edgar Fawcett has furnished us with a translation of this sonnet.-EDITOR APPLETONS' JOURNAL. Above the vague earth, set in darkening skies, Eternal constellations gaze toward man, Sirius, Orion, Perseus, Aldebaran, And heaven more splendid beams while shadows rise. Amid the unnumbered star-throngs one espies

Great Jupiter, with his month our year in span, The all-golden Venus, Mars, deep-red to scan, Or Saturn, ringed with weighty and cumbrous guise. These differing stars by fate are each controlled : Happy is Jupiter, Mars fierce and bold,

Venus voluptuous, Saturn grim and bleak. For me, my star is blue, and shines by day Beside an ear deaf to the love I pay,

And on the adored heaven of a rosy cheek!

I can not help remembering, as I read over this splendid sonnet, with its majestic alexandrines, so full of color, of varied harmony, of stately grace, of fervent passion, that we have just been told that French has no adequate form for high poetry. A dissertation on this thesis is, perhaps fortunately, not called for here. Nor would it be in place even to examine the characteristics of Gautier himself as a poet. I could wish for nothing better than an opportunity of so doing. But I shall be perfectly content to rest upon the fourteen lines of this sonnet-a mere waif, be it repeated, casually written and casually preservedthe capacities of the alexandrine for high poetry. In a formal defense of that magnificent metre (none the less magnificent because it has accidentally failed to be much cultivated in English), scores and thousands of examples might be produced far more convincing. In a formal discussion of Gautier's own poetry, the " Comédie de la Mort" and "Le Thermodon," the lines on Corneille, and many of the "Emaux et Camées," the "Elegy on Clémence," and many another early lyric must rank above and before it. But as it is to my hand here, I am content with it as a vindication of Gautier and of the alexandrine.

If the comparison of the lives of two men of such different talents as Lever and Gautier has any lessons for us, it seems to be this, that devotion to art has its rewards. There is the secret of a whole life's consolations in Gautier's boast -a boast perfectly justified" I defy you to write the feuilleton I shall write to-morrow in the language of Racine and Boileau." He knew that he had added to the accomplishments of his own language, and, what is more, that he had added to its capabilities. Perhaps it would be impossible to name any one in this century who has done this to such an extent as Gautier. From very early days his works have always been the special delight of men of letters in his own country. He has, in a different sense, occupied the position of " poet's poet" which has been assigned in our own language to Spenser, and thus his influence has been multiplied and strengthened almost indefinitely. To those who read the preface of " Mademoiselle de Maupin" now, forgetting its date, admiration of it may not be mixed with a feeling of surprise at the extraordinary novelty and originality of the style. But to capable readers in 1836, it must have been simply a revelation. It was as entirely new as the manner with which a few years before Macaulay had surprised Jeffrey, and it had few or none of the drawbacks from which Macaulay's brilliant argot suffered. But if we skip thirty years, and turn to the "Capitaine Fracasse," we shall find a style of equal or greater brilliancy, which yet is not in the least mannered or copied from the writer's

earlier work. Throughout his life Gautier was literally what he has been called, a “parfait magicien ès lettres françaises." Yet the magic was, after all, like most of such magic, the result of continual work. Unlike many other men of letters, Gautier was constantly reading. M. Bergerat tells us that when he was not talking, eating, or writing, he was always reading, and that nothing came amiss to him down to mere scraps and waifs of printed waste-paper. The progress of his fatal illness was marked by nothing so much as by the cessation of this inveterate habit. These miscellaneous readings were undoubtedly part of the great "adjective-hunt," as he was wont to phrase it. His copia verborum was thus constantly fed and increased, while at the same time his unceasing practice in writing made the store one of constantly circulating capital, and not a mere useless accumulation. There never seems to have been a time when even the most minute question of literary practice, a rhymehunt or the like, had not a vivid interest for him. Thus his occupation, however he might occasionally groan at and complain of it, was in practice an unfailing source of pleasure, of relief from ennui, of alternatives from self-regarding cares. It was a strong tower which successfully kept out the enemy, until sheer physical collapse ceased to make it any longer defensible. On the other hand, it would be difficult to find in Lever any trace of love for or interest in his art as an art. It seems to have been always a means to an end, or rather to half a hundred different ends, pursued with less or more zest for the time, but rarely falling in with any possible or coherent plan of life. Though he was a man of letters, his interests were nothing so little as literary. The wildest absurdities of the "Jeunes-France" and the "Bousingots" were somehow or other connected with literary questions. Lever's youthful escapades and later dissipation had nothing to do with literature at all, and might have been and were shared in by persons of no taste or interest in literature whatever. There is a famous sentence of Thackeray's which has sometimes excited a good deal of surprise: "No class of men talk of books or, as a rule read, books so little as literary men." It is not true of England now perhaps, but it certainly was true of England then. It has never since France possessed a literature been true of France, and the difference is strikingly illustrated in comparing these two volumes. M. Bergerat's book is almost composed of literary conversations, souvenirs, jests. Here the hero is defending a thesis against M. Taine or M. Renan, there expounding another for the benefit of M. Bergerat, everywhere talking of books, the way to write books, and the merits of books when written. In Dr. Fitzpat

rick's volumes, on the other hand, there is hardly a single literary opinion cited of Lever's, and, except the obligatory notice of his own books, scarcely anything that can be said to possess literary interest. It might as well be the life of a politician or a man of business, for any interest that its subject seems to have taken in things literary. It is quite possible that there may be something to be said in favor of this. The concentration of men of letters and art in literary and artistic sets and cliques has obvious disadvantages, of which the talking of "shop" is not the worst. It tends, no doubt, to promote a severance between the different lines of thought and intellectual occupation in the nation. The eternal hatred sworn to the bourgeois is not a necessary or a beneficial phenomenon either to the bourgeois himself or the man of letters. Although the tendency of French politics since the Revolution to open political positions to literary men of distinction may have made some compensation, it is still probable that the divorce between the Philistine and the anti-Philistine there is wider than with us. This divorce is at any rate not good for the Philistine himself, while it may tend to force his opponent into Bohemian ways and habits which he might very well avoid. But that it has done good to literature there can be no doubt. With very few exceptions, the service of the English literary man is rendered more or less half-heartedly. He is a journalist, a politician, a man of the world, an historian, a dramatist first, and a man of letters afterward. He wants to influence public opinion, to get into good society, to establish his family comfortably, to do everything, in short, rather than live in companionship with the Muses, and with a few of the elect of their worshipers. Sometimes, no doubt, he achieves all these ends more or less completely; sometimes he fails very completely indeed. In the latter case the art which he has cultivated only with a half devotion naturally does not do much for him at the last. There is a story of a French man of letters who expired, and had

apparently deliberately purposed to expire, while correcting a proof. The person concerned was something of a coxcomb, and his taste in selecting that particular branch of literary employment was certainly peculiar. But there was something not altogether inappropriate in the assertion of devotion to the employment to which he had given himself up.

The spirit of Congreve's famous speech to Voltaire has never, at least since Voltaire's time, commended itself to men of letters across the Channel. With us literature has, until very recently, hardly been even a profession, still less an art having a recognized guild and brotherhood of cultivators. It would be considered an affectation, and a hardly pardonable affectation in any one who had not produced capital works in some popular department of literature, to take the name of a man of letters at all. There may, I have said, be a good many reasons against, as well as for, the definite constitution and herding together of a body of gens de lettres. But it certainly has one result which can not be denied. It leads to the display of much greater merit of the purely literary kind in the discharge of merely miscellaneous literary work. The French journalist, novelist, dramatist, may be and often is a man of far less education and information than his English compeer, but at least he does not often produce such slovenly and formless work. Also it has another good result which has been sufficiently indicated already in this review of the memorials of a great man of letters. It gives the littérateur all the essentials of a religion, the fellow-feeling, the cardinal doctrines, the prescribed hatreds which go to make up a regular cult. It is an excellent thing to have a religion of any kind, and particularly excellent when the relish of miscellaneous good things is fading, and pleasure, if it has to be found at all, must be sought in quiet occupations and in the performance of daily tasks. The game of the hunter of adjectives never becomes scarce, and his interest and energy in the quest never desert him.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY (Fortnightly Review).

ST;

VIVIAN THE BEAUTY.

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BY MRS. EDWARDES,

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AUTHOR OF ARCHIE LOVELL," OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER?" ETC.

CHAPTER X.

HERE, OR ELSEWHERE.

T. ULRICH'S clock has struck twelve ere Jeanne and the housekeeper start on their nocturnal mission of seeing that "all is safe": an empty form, gone through by Ange at every season of the year with stoic, albeit fruitless, punctuality. They try kitchen-windows, faithfully barred hours ago by Hans and Elspeth; they shake casement-windows, which opened at their widest could not admit a child of six; they look behind impossible screens, they set in order wires that, in case of burglarious attack, would, it is supposed by the faithful, communicate with a bell in Ange's chamber. And then they turn their attention to the front door, left wide open at the time of Wolfgang's arrival, and through which a dozen robbers abreast might at any moment of the evening have invaded Schloss Egmont, had they listed.

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'Yes, yes,” says Ange, giving abrupt utterance to some distant train of mental speculation, 'there is a screw loose about that master of yours, child. He has not the manners of his station, or the modesty either-the modesty, that is to say, that once belonged to the lower classes; and, if this kind of thing goes on much longer, I shall think it right . . . Heaven save and protect us, Jeanne-a man!”

Ange sinks shivering and panting against the first support that presents itself (Ange, who has always declared herself to be, on an emergency, worth a regiment of soldiers, who has a hundred stories to tell of her own presence of mind, her own desperate valor at different past crises of life). That support is—Mr. Wolfgang's arms.

"I was just smoking my last cigar in the dark," he remarks, quietly depositing Ange and her emotions on a bench that stands outside the door." Have you noticed the summer lightnings, Fräulein Jeanne? Watch them for a minute, here with me. Even for the Black Forest the effects of sudden silver and purple are something magic."

During the last couple of hours heaven's face has grown overclouded. It is warm as noon; intensely dark, save where, ever and anon, a firefly's transitory metallic radiance flashes through

the gloom. Not a vibration of sound is there in air or on earth. Not a fir-needle throughout the vast expanse of neighboring forests seems to stir.

As Wolfgang speaks, comes a sudden pulsating flood of white light, enabling him and his companion to discern every familiar object around the stiff juniper-hedges of the garden, the moat, the bridge, far away, the granite, fir-girt summits of the Blauen Mountains-with dazzling clearness. Then again sinks down a darkness that can be felt, the sickly ray from Ange's lantern alone enabling them to discern each other's faces; and then, after a pause, during which neither master nor pupil speaks, comes another break of light, longer, more exquisitely heaven-clear, than the last.

"It is a night when one should be abroad in the forest," says Wolfgang, inhaling a mighty draught of air-cool, sparkling air, freshly drawn from the cisterns of midnight. "Often, as a boy, have I spent the hours, from midnight to sunrise, watching such lightnings as these."

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Here, in the valley of the Höllenthal?" Jeanne asks him, startled.

"Here or elsewhere. What matter longitude and latitude? Nature is the same, whether you look at her among Black Forest firs or the olive and ilex groves of the Alban Hills."

"It is a great deal too late for honest folk to be out of their beds," remarks Ange, establishing herself well within the door. You have a long walk still before you, Mr. Wolfgang, and, if you take my advice, will lose no time in starting. -Jeanne, my dear, come in. We wish Mr. Wolfgang, do we not, a very good night?"

Ange's figure is looking more grotesquely rebellious to the laws of gravitation than usual. It is said that M. Doré gets suggestions for outlines from the shadows cast by morsels of crumpled paper on a sunlit floor. The profile of Ange's figure at this moment might, assuredly, hint forth any number of weird combinations to an imaginative mind. Her cap, her curls, have suffered during her quasi-faint; the flounces of her company silk bristle forth, fantastically irregular.

Little Jeanne notes a quick smile cross Wolfgang's face.

"What! Do you consider this a fitting hour for me to start across the mountains?" he begins good-humoredly.

"I consider nothing at all about fitting or

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