Modeste Mignon, Honoré de Balzac [booksvooks txt] 📗

satellites perceive the ingratitude of their great man; others feel that they are simply made tools of; many weary of the life; very few remain contented with that sweet equality of feeling and sentiment which is the only reward that should be looked for in an intimacy with a superior man,--a reward that contented Ali when Mohammed raised him to himself.

Many of these men, misled by vanity, think themselves quite as capable as their patron. Pure devotion, such as Modeste conceived it, without money and without price, and more especially without hope, is rare. Nevertheless there are Mennevals to be found, more perhaps in Paris than elsewhere, men who value a life in the background with its peaceful toil; these are the wandering Benedictines of our social world, which offers them no other monastery. These brave, meek hearts live, by their actions and in their hidden lives, the poetry that poets utter. They are poets themselves in soul, in tenderness, in their lonely vigils and meditations,--as truly poets as others of the name on paper, who fatten in the fields of literature at so much a verse; like Lord Byron, like all who live, alas, by ink, the Hippocrene water of to-day, for want of a better.

Attracted by the fame of Canalis, also by the prospect of political interest, and advised thereto by Madame d'Espard, who acted in the matter for the Duchesse de Chaulieu, a young lawyer of the court of Claims became secretary and confidential friend of the poet, who welcomed and petted him very much as a broker caresses his first dabbler in the funds. The beginning of this companionship bore a very fair resemblance to friendship. The young man had already held the same relation to a minister, who went out of office in 1827, taking care before he did so to appoint his young secretary to a place in the foreign office. Ernest de La Briere, then about twenty-seven years of age, was decorated with the Legion of honor but was without other means than his salary; he was accustomed to the management of business and had learned a good deal of life during his four years in a minister's cabinet. Kindly, amiable, and over-modest, with a heart full of pure and sound feelings, he was averse to putting himself in the foreground. He loved his country, and wished to serve her, but notoriety abashed him. To him the place of secretary to a Napoleon was far more desirable than that of the minister himself. As soon as he became the friend and secretary of Canalis he did a great amount of labor for him, but by the end of eighteen months he had learned to understand the barrenness of a nature that was poetic through literary expression only. The truth of the old proverb, "The cowl doesn't make the monk," is eminently shown in literature. It is extremely rare to find among literary men a nature and a talent that are in perfect accord. The faculties are not the man himself. This disconnection, whose phenomena are amazing, proceeds from an unexplored, possibly an unexplorable mystery. The brain and its products of all kinds (for in art the hand of man is a continuation of his brain) are a world apart, which flourishes beneath the cranium in absolute independence of sentiments, feelings, and all that is called virtue, the virtue of citizens, fathers, and private life. This, however true, is not absolutely so; nothing is absolutely true of man. It is certain that a debauched man will dissipate his talent, that a drunkard will waste it in libations; while, on the other hand, no man can give himself talent by wholesome living: nevertheless, it is all but proved that Virgil, the painter of love, never loved a Dido, and that Rousseau, the model citizen, had enough pride to had furnished forth an aristocracy. On the other hand Raphael and Michael Angelo do present the glorious conjunction of genius with the lines of character. Talent in men is therefore, in all moral points, very much what beauty is in women,--simply a promise. Let us, therefore, doubly admire the man in whom both heart and character equal the perfection of his genius.

When Ernest discovered within his poet an ambitious egoist, the worst species of egoist (for there are some amiable forms of the vice), he felt a delicacy in leaving him. Honest natures cannot easily break the ties that bind them, especially if they have tied them voluntarily. The secretary was therefore still living in domestic relations with the poet when Modeste's letter arrived,--in such relations, be it said, as involved a perpetual sacrifice of his feelings. La Briere admitted the frankness with which Canalis had laid himself bare before him. Moreover, the defects of the man, who will always be considered a great poet during his lifetime and flattered as Martmontel was flattered, were only the wrong side of his brilliant qualities. Without his vanity and his magniloquence it is possible that he might never have acquired the sonorous elocution which is so useful and even necessary an instrument in political life. His cold-bloodedness touched at certain points on rectitude and loyalty; his ostentation had a lining of generosity. Results, we must remember, are to the profit of society; motives concern God.

But after the arrival of Modeste's letter Ernest deceived himself no longer as to Canalis. The pair had just finished breakfast and were talking together in the poet's study, which was on the ground-floor of a house standing back in a court-yard, and looked into a garden.

"There!" exclaimed Canalis, "I was telling Madame de Chaulieu the other day that I ought to bring out another poem; I knew admiration was running short, for I have had no anonymous letters for a long time."

"Is it from an unknown woman?"

"Unknown? yes!--a D'Este, in Havre; evidently a feigned name."

Canalis passed the letter to La Briere. The little poem, with all its hidden enthusiasms, in short, poor Modeste's heart, was disdainfully handed over, with the gesture of a spoiled dandy.

"It is a fine thing," said the lawyer, "to have the power to attract such feelings; to force a poor woman to step out of the habits which nature, education, and the world dictate to her, to break through conventions. What privileges genius wins! A letter such as this, written by a young girl--a genuine young girl--without hidden meanings, with real enthusiasm--"

"Well, what?" said Canalis.

"Why, a man might suffer as much as Tasso and yet feel recompensed," cried La Briere.

"So he might, my dear fellow, by a first letter of that kind, and even a second; but how about the thirtieth? And suppose you find out that these young enthusiasts are little jades? Or imagine a poet rushing along the brilliant path in search of her, and finding at the end of it an old Englishwoman sitting on a mile-stone and offering you her hand! Or suppose this post-office angel should really be a rather ugly girl in quest of a husband? Ah, my boy! the effervescence then goes down."

"I begin to perceive," said La Briere, smiling, "that there is something poisonous in glory, as there is in certain dazzling flowers."

"And then," resumed Canalis, "all these women, even when they are simple-minded, have ideals, and you can't satisfy them. They never say to themselves that a poet is a vain man, as I am accused of being; they can't conceive what it is for an author to be at the mercy of a feverish excitement, which makes him disagreeable and capricious; they want him always grand, noble; it never occurs to them that genius is a disease, or that Nathan lives with Florine; that D'Arthez is too fat, and Joseph Bridau is too thin; that Beranger limps, and that their own particular deity may have the snuffles! A Lucien de Rubempre, poet and cupid, is a phoenix. And why should I go in search of compliments only to pull the string of a shower-bath of horrid looks from some disillusioned female?"

"Then the true poet," said La Briere, "ought to remain hidden, like God, in the centre of his worlds, and be only seen in his own creations."

"Glory would cost too dear in that case," answered Canalis. "There is some good in life. As for that letter," he added, taking a cup of tea, "I assure you that when a noble and beautiful woman loves a poet she does not hide in the corner boxes, like a duchess in love with an actor; she feels that her beauty, her fortune, her name are protection enough, and she dares to say openly, like an epic poem: 'I am the nymph Calypso, enamored of Telemachus.' Mystery and feigned names are the resources of little minds. For my part I no longer answer masks--"

"I should love a woman who came to seek me," cried La Briere. "To all you say I reply, my dear Canalis, that it cannot be an ordinary girl who aspires to a distinguished man; such a girl has too little trust, too much vanity; she is too faint-hearted. Only a star, a--"

"--princess!" cried Canalis, bursting into a shout of laughter; "only a princess can descend to him. My dear fellow, that doesn't happen once in a hundred years. Such a love is like that flower that blossoms every century. Princesses, let me tell you, if they are young, rich, and beautiful, have something else to think of; they are surrounded like rare plants by a hedge of fools, well-bred idiots as hollow as elder-bushes! My dream, alas! the crystal of my dream, garlanded from hence to the Correze with roses--ah! I cannot speak of it--it is in fragments at my feet, and has long been so. No, no, all anonymous letters are begging letters; and what sort of begging? Write yourself to that young woman, if you suppose her young and pretty, and you'll find out. There is nothing like experience. As for me, I can't reasonably be expected to love every woman; Apollo, at any rate he of Belvedere, is a delicate consumptive who must take care of his health."

"But when a woman writes to you in this way her excuse must certainly be in her consciousness that she is able to eclipse in tenderness and beauty every other woman," said Ernest, "and I should think you might feel some curiosity--"

"Ah," said Canalis, "permit me, my juvenile friend, to abide by the beautiful duchess who is all my joy."

"You are right, you are right!" cried Ernest. However, the young secretary read and re-read Modeste's letter, striving to guess the mind of its hidden writer.

"There is not the least fine-writing here," he said, "she does not even talk of your genius; she speaks to your heart. In your place I should feel tempted by this fragrance of modesty,--this proposed agreement--"

"Then, sign it!" cried Canalis, laughing; "answer the letter and go to the end of the adventure yourself. You shall tell me the results three months hence--if the affair lasts so long."

Four days later Modeste received the following letter, written on extremely fine paper, protected by two envelopes, and sealed with the arms of Canalis.

Mademoiselle,--The admiration for fine works (allowing that my
books are such) implies something so lofty and sincere as to
protect you from all light jesting, and to justify before the
sternest judge the step you have taken in writing to me.

But first I must thank you for the pleasure which such proofs of
sympathy afford, even though we may not merit them,--for the maker
of verses and the true poet are