"Triboulet," says the author, in the preface of the drama entitled Le Roi S'amuse, "is deformed, Triboulet is ill, Triboulet is the buffoon of the court; a threefold misery which makes him bad. He hates the king because he is king, the lords because they are lords, men because they have not all of them humps on their backs. . . . He depraves the king and corrupts him; he urges him on to tyranny, ignorance, and vice; he lets him go to all the families of the gentlemen, pointing out with his finger the wife to seduce, the sister to ravish, the daughter to dishonor." But this Triboulet, ugly and deformed, has a daughter. This daughter is his only love, his only joy, and his only virtue. The more he hates the world, the more he loves his daughter. The author wished, as he said in the preface of Lucrece Borgia, to show, in Triboulet, how paternal love sanctifies physical deformity, and, in Lucrece Borgia, how maternal love purifies moral deformity. It is, then, curious to observe how Victor Hugo has described paternal love in Triboulet, since he wished to make him the type of this love. We take pleasure in saying, in beginning these remarks, that no writer in our day has painted with more beauty than Victor Hugo the joy which the child creates in a family, and the love which it inspires. See these charming lines in The Leaves of Autumn: The infant, with his sweet smile, is so beautiful; His charming frankness, his voice which wishes to say every thing, Permitting his astonished and delighted eyes to wander, And his mouth to kisses! Lord, preserve to me, preserve those whom I love, May I never see, Lord, the summer without vermeil flowers, The house without children! Feuilles d'Automne, xix. Paternal love breathes in these verses, but paternal love which has more sweetness than grandeur; in the joy which this charming smile gives, this look at once full of naïvete and seriousness, and this air of frank good-nature, which con stitute the charms of infancy; paternal love, in its first and most natural enjoyment, when the child is as yet only a subject of pleasure and not a subject of reflection. But is it thus that we love a son, when this word has acquired, in the course of years, a graver and more serious signification? Is the love of children altogether paternal love, or is it not the first and sweetest part of it? When the child, becoming advanced, begins to have passions and desires which distinguish and separate him from us; when we feel that we have to do with one who is no longer a part of ourselves, although he is still united to us by strong and intimate ties; then paternal love ought to assume another character and expression; then, in devoting himself for his son, the father does truly an act of virtue rather than of instinct; then, also, on the other hand, when the father wishes that the son should live only for him, and should love only him, his paternal egotism becomes more apparent and offensive. Let us now come to Triboulet, and see how he loves his daughter. Does he love her as a child, or as his daughter? Does he love her for himself or for herself? My daughter! Sole happiness which heaven has given me! Others have parents, brothers, friends, a wife, a husband, a train Of ancestors and allies, and many children! But me! I have only you! Another is rich! Well! You are my only treasure and my only good! Others believe in God, I believe only in your soul; Others have youth and woman's love, They have pride, magnificence, grace, and health, My wife, my mother, my sister, and my daughter, Act ii. scene 3. We do not know, but it seems to us that this ardor of passion does not express paternal love; it belongs to another kind of love. Triboulet loves his daughter as we love a woman; he loves her with an egotistic and jealous passion; he loves her for himself, and not for herself. It is not in this way that fathers love. They love with less ardor, if we take the word love in its most passionate sense, but they love with a purer love. Victor Hugo has wished, as to the rest, that we should be deceived with regard to the love for his daughter which he has attributed to Triboulet; an egotistic and personal love, which relates entirely to himself. Say? Triboulet (to Blanche). . . You are in want of nothing. Triboulet. Act iii. scene 3. The replies of Blanche are charming and natural. The child takes kindly the love of his father as proceeding from goodness, because he feels himself distinct from her father, and understands that man is good when he loves another than himself. But Triboulet, who feels that he loves his daughter as part of himself, is not good. He is amorous; and that is a very different thing. We do not desire to blame the effusions of paternal love! We believe that nothing is better calculated to move the heart, and that nothing is better adapted to poetry. Homer has not feared to show us Hector, armed for the battle and ready to go, taking his son in his arms; and when the child, frightened by the brightness of the armor of his father, and the waving of the horse-hair which floats from his helmet, throws himself crying into the arms of his nurse, Hector smiles, and taking off his helmet, places it on the ground. Then embracing his son, and raising him in his arms: "Jupiter, and all you immortal gods, cause this child to be honored by the Trojans, as I am to-day, and may he be brave in battle and powerful among his people;-in seeing him return from the battle, covered with bleeding spoils after having killed some illustrious enemy, may the people say of him-'He is still braver than his father, and this voice of the multitude will rejoice the heart of his mother.' * Iliad, b. vi., ver. 476. Virgil has imitated these verses; but they are much below his model. Eneas, before going to battle, also embraces his son: Postquam habilis lateri clypeus lorica que tergo est, This is a true and touching effusion of paternal love. Hector unites to the idea of his glory, the glory of his son, which he desires may be greater than his own; he mingles self-love with devotedness. This is paternal love in its most perfect state.* The paternal tenderness of Triboulet, on the contrary, is entirely personal and egotistical. See, when the courtiers have seized his daughter to carry her to the King, see what predominates in his anger. He demands his daughter with a kind of madness, but with the madness of a man from whom they have robbed his property; with the fury of a miser who demands his strong-box, or rather that of a mother from whom the Gipsies have taken her child. But he does not even seem to think of the dangers to which the virtue of Blanche is exposed; he thinks of himself, rather than of the misfortunes of his daughter. My lords! I must have my daughter! Go and bring her to me immediately! O, see this hand which has nothing illustrious, The hand of a man of the people, of a serf and a rustic, And which has no sword, has yet nails, Sirs! " Act iii. scene 3. Certainly, we would not wish that Triboulet should be calm and resigned in this terrible moment. We do not censure either his grief, or his anger. But in art, all the passions have a limit which must be preserved. Grief must not be pushed to convulsions, nor anger to fury; because, having reached this excess, they cease to be sentiments, they become instincts, and have their violence and brutality; they have Summa que per galeam delibans oscula, fatur: [ENIAD, b. xii. * Ulysses, in his descent to Hades, relates to Achilles the valor and the glory of his son Pyrrhus; and Achilles, who regrets life and who would rather prefer to be the slave of a poor laborer than to command the dead, Achilles, notwithstanding his sadness, experiences an emotion of joy," and retires, happy to know that his son is an illustrious warrior." especially their blindness and giddiness: we mean to say, that man in this condition has no longer even the idea of what causes his grief, his fear, or his anger; he is struck dumb and stupefied by the effect of his passion. Such is Triboulet in his grief and in his anger; he is blind. He ought only to think of the dishonor of his daughter, he ought to mourn over her injured virtue; instead of which, he insults the lords of the court. He is more irritated than afflicted; more abusive than sad. That is not all. When his daughter rushes out of the chamber of the king, distracted, bewildered, and in disorder, the first impulse of Triboulet is the joy of finding her again, a joy altogether instinctive; and in order to think of the misfortune of his daughter, this expression of Blanche is necessary: Shame. Miserable that we are! Act iii. scene 3. If Triboulet could have believed for a moment that his daughter had perished, we might understand that in seeing her again, that his first exclamation would have been a cry of joy; but he knows that she is in the chamber of the king. How then is his first thought, in finding her pale and distracted, not a thought full of grief and shame ? This law of instinct, all material as it is, is so much the law of all the dramatic characters of Victor Hugo, that when Blanche confesses to her father that she loves the king, it is still by instinct that she explains her love; and this answer satisfies her father. Triboulet. And you love him? Blanche. Always! Trib. I have nevertheless given abundant time to remedy this foolish love! Bla. I love him. Trib. O, poor heart of woman!-But explain your reasons for loving him. Bla. I do not know! Trib. It is singular! It is strange! I pardon you, child! Act iv. scene 1. Triboulet, however, does not abandon his revenge on that account. |