Sylvie: souvenirs du Valois Part 5

"Father Dodu, you know very well that men become corrupt everywhere."

"Father Dodu began to roar out a drinking song, and it was impossible to stop him at a questionable couplet that everyone knew by heart. Sylvie would not sing, in spite of our entreaties, on the plea that it was no longer customary to sing at table. I bad already noticed the lover of the ball, seated at her left, and his round face and tumbled hair seemed familiar. He rose and stood behind me, saying, "Have you forgotten me, Parisian?" A good woman who came back to dessert after serving us, whispered in my ear: "Do you not recognize your foster-brother?" Without this warning, I should have made myself ridiculous. "Ah, it is _Big Curly-head_!" I cried; "the very same who pulled me out of the water."

Sylvie burst out laughing at the recollection.

"Without considering," said the youth em-bracing me, "that you had a fine silver watch and on the way home you were more concerned about it than yourself, because it had stopped. You said, 'the _creature is drowned_ does not go tick-tack; what will Uncle say?'" "A watch is a creature," said Father Dodu; "that is what they tell children in Paris!"

Sylvie was sleepy, and I fancied there was no hope for me. She went upstairs, and as I kissed her, said: "Come again to-morrow." Father Dodu remained at table with Sylvain and my foster-brother, and we talked a long time over a bottle of Louvres ratafia.

"All men are equal," said Father Dodu between gla.s.ses; "I drink with a pastry-cook as readily as with a prince."

"Where is the pastry-cook?" I asked.

"By your side! There you see a young man who is ambitious to get on in life."

My foster-brother appeared embarra.s.sed and I understood the situation.

Fate had reserved for me a foster-brother in the very country made famous by Rousseau, who opposed putting children out to nurse! I learned from Father Dodu that there was much talk of a marriage between Sylvie and Big Curly-head, who wished to open a pastry-shop at Dammartin. I asked no more. Next morning the coach from Nanteuil-le-Haudouin took me back to Paris.

XIII

AUReLIE.

To Paris, a journey of five hours! I was impatient for evening, and eight o'clock found me in my accustomed seat Aurelie infused her own spirit and grace into the lines of the play, the work of a contemporary author evidently inspired by Schiller. In the garden scene she was sublime. During the fourth act, when she did not appear, I went out to purchase a bouquet of Madame Prevost, slipping into it a tender effusion signed _An Unknown_, "There," thought I, "is something definite for the future," but on the morrow I was on my way to Germany.

Why did I go there? In the hope of com-posing my disordered fancy. If I were to write a book, I could never gain credence for the story of a heart torn by these two conflicting loves. I had lost Sylvie through my own fault, but to see her for a day, sufficed to restore my soul. A glance from her had arrested me on the verge of the abyss, and henceforth I enshrined her as a smiling G.o.ddess in the Temple of Wisdom.

I felt more than ever reluctant to present myself before Aurelie among the throng of vulgar suitors who shone in the light of her favour for an instant only to fall blinded.

"Some day," said I, "we shall see whether this woman has a heart."

One morning I learned from a newspaper that Aurelie was ill, and I wrote to her from the mountains of Salzburg, a letter so filled with German mysticism that I could hardly hope for a reply, indeed I expected none.

I left it to chance or ... the _unknown._

Months pa.s.sed, and in the leisure intervals of travel I undertook to embody in poetic action the life-long devotion of the painter Colonna to the fair Laura who was constrained by her relatives to take the veil.

Something in the subject lent itself to my habitual train of thought, and as soon as the last verse of the drama was written, I hastened back to France.

Can I avoid repeating in my own history, that of many others? I pa.s.sed through all the ordeals of the theatre. I "ate the drum and drank the cymbal," according to the apparently meaningless phrase of the initiates at Eleusis, which probably signifies that upon occasion we must stand ready to pa.s.s the bounds of reason and absurdity; for me it meant to win and possess my ideal.

Aurelie accepted the leading part in the play which I brought back from Germany. I shall never forget the day she allowed me to read it to her.

The love scenes had been arranged expressly for her, and I am positive that I rendered them with feeling. In the conversation that followed I revealed myself as the "Unknown" of the two letters. She said: "You are mad, but come again; I have never found anyone who knew how to love me."

Oh, woman! you seek for love ... but what of me?

In the days which followed I wrote probably the most eloquent and touching letters that she ever received. Her answers were full of good sense. Once she was moved, sent for me and confessed that it was hard for her to break an attachment of long standing. "If you love me for myself alone, then you will understand that I can belong to but one."

Two months later, I received an effusive letter which brought me to her feet--in the meantime, someone volunteered an important piece of information. The handsome young man whom I had met one night at the club had just enlisted in the Turkish cavalry.

Races were held at Chantilly the next season, and the theatre troupe to which Aurelie belonged gave a performance. Once in the country, the company was for three days subject to the orders of the director. I had made friends with this worthy man, formerly the Dorante of the comedies of Marivaux and for a long time successful in lovers' parts. His latest triumph was achieved in the play imitated from Schiller, when my opera-gla.s.s had discovered all his wrinkles. He had fire, however, and being thin, produced a good effect in the provinces. I accompanied the troupe in the quality of poet, and persuaded the manager to give performances at Senlis and Dammartin. He inclined to Compiegne at first, but Aurelie was of my opinion. Next day, while arrangements with the local authorities were in progress, I ordered horses and we set out on the road to Commelle to breakfast at the castle of Queen Blanche.

Aurelie, on horseback, with her blonde hair floating in the wind, rode through the forest like some queen of olden times, and the peasants were dazzled by her appearance. Madame de _F_-----was the only woman they had ever seen so imposing and so graceful. After breakfast we rode down to the villages like Swiss hamlets where the waters of the Nonette turn the busy saw-mills. These scenes, which my remembrance cherished, interested Aurelie, but did not move her to delay. I had planned to conduct her to the castle near Orry, where I had first seen Adrienne on the green. She manifested no emotion. Then I told her all; I revealed the hidden spring of that love which haunted my dreams by night and was realized in her.

She listened with attention and said: "You do not love me! You expect me to say 'the actress and the nun are the same'; you are merely arranging a drama and the issue of the plot is lacking. Go! I no longer believe in you."

Her words were an illumination. The unnatural enthusiasm which had possessed me for so long, my dreams, my tears, my despair and my tenderness,--could they mean aught but love? What then is love?

Aurelie played that night at Senlis, and I thought she displayed a weakness for the director, the wrinkled "young lover" of the stage. His character was exemplary, and he had already shown her much kindness.

One day, Aurelie said to me: "There is the man who loves me!"

XIV.

THE LAST LEAF.

Such are the fancies that charm and beguile us in the morning of life! I have tried to set them down here, in a disconnected fas.h.i.+on, but many hearts will understand me. One by one our illusions fall like husks, and the kernel thus laid bare is experience. Its taste is bitter, but it yields an acrid flavour that invigorates,--to use an old-fas.h.i.+oned simile. Rousseau says that the aspect of nature is a universal consolation. Sometimes I seek again my groves of Clarens lost in the fog to the north of Paris, but now, all is changed! Hermenonville, the spot where the ancient idyl blossomed again, transplanted by Gessner, thy star has set, the star that glowed for me with two-fold l.u.s.tre. Blue and rose by turns, like the changeful Aldebaran, it was formed by Adrienne and Sylvie, the two halves of my love. One was the sublime ideal, the other, the sweet reality. What are thy groves and lakes and thy desert to me now? Othys, Montagny, Loiseaux, poor neighbouring hamlets, and Chaalis now to be restored, you guard for me no treasures of the past.

Occasionally, I feel a desire to return to those scenes of lonely musing, where I sadly mark the fleeting traces of a period when affectation invaded nature; sometimes I smile as I read upon the granite rocks certain lines from Boucher, which I once thought sublime, or virtuous maxims inscribed above a fountain or a grotto dedicated to Pan.

The swans disdain the stagnant waters of the little lakes excavated at such an expense. The time is no more when the hunt of Conde swept by with its proud riders, and the forest-echoes rang with answering horns!

There is to-day no direct route to Hermenonville, and sometimes I go by Creil and Senlis, sometimes by Dammartin.

It is impossible to reach Dammartin before night, so I lodge at the Image of Saint John. They usually give me a neat room hung with old tapestry, with a gla.s.s between the windows. This room shows a return to the fas.h.i.+on for bric-a-brac which I renounced long ago. I sleep comfortably under the eider-down covering used there. In the morning, when I throw open the cas.e.m.e.nt wreathed with vines and roses, I gaze with rapture upon a wide green landscape stretching away to the horizon, where a line of poplars stand like sentinels. Here and there the villages nestle guarded by their protecting church-spires. First Othys, then Eve and Ver; Hermenonville would be visible beyond the wood, if it had a belfry, but in that philosophic spot the church has been neglected. Having filled my lungs with the pure air of these uplands, I go down stairs in good humour and start for the pastry-cook's. "h.e.l.loa, big Curly-head!" "h.e.l.loa, little Parisian!" We greet each other with sly punches in the ribs as we did in childhood, then I climb a certain stair where two children welcome my coming. Sylvie's Athenian smile lights up her cla.s.sic features, and I say to myself: "Here, perhaps, is the happiness I have missed, and yet...."

Sometimes I call her Lotty, and she sees in me some resemblance to Werther without the pistols, which are out of fas.h.i.+on now. While Big Curly-head is busy with the breakfast, we take the children for a walk through the avenues of limes that border the ruins of the old brick towers of the castle. While the little ones practise with their bows and arrows, we read some poem or a few pages from one of those old books all too short, and long forgotten by the world.

I forgot to say that when Aurelie's troupe gave a performance at Dammartin, I took Sylvie to the play and asked her if she did not think the actress resembled someone she knew.

"Whom, pray?"

"Do you remember Adrienne?"

She laughed merrily, in reply. "What an idea!"

Then, as if in self-reproach, she added with a sigh: "Poor Adrienne! she died at the convent of Saint S---- about 1832."

APPENDIX.

'_EL DESDICHADO._'

_Gerard DE NERVAL._

_I am that dark, that disinherited._ _That all dishonoured Prince of Aquitaine,_ _The Star upon my scutcheon long hath fled;_ _A black sun on my lute doth yet remain!_ _Oh, thou that didst console me not in vain,_ _Within the tomb, among the midnight dead,_ _Show me Italian seas, and blossoms wed,_ _The rose, the vine-leaf, and the golden grain._

_Say, am I Love or Phoebus? have I been_ _Or Lusignan or Biron? By a Queen_ _Caressed within the Mermaid's haunt I lay,_ _And twice I crossed the unpermitted stream,_ _And touched on Orpheus' lute as in a dream,_ _Sighs of a Saint, and laughter of a Fay!_