Modeste Mignon, Honoré de Balzac [booksvooks txt] 📗

the theatre; and you don't prefer a windmill to the church of Saint-Ouen, do you? Well then, nations are imbued with the same feelings as the individual man, and the man's cherished desire is to survive himself morally just as he propagates himself physically. The survival of a people is the work of its men of genius. At this very moment France is proving, energetically, the truth of that theory. She is, undoubtedly, excelled by England in commerce, industry, and navigation, and yet she is, I believe, at the head of the world,--by reason of her artists, her men of talent, and the good taste of her products. There is no artist and no superior intellect that does not come to Paris for a diploma. There is no school of painting at this moment but that of France; and we shall reign far longer and perhaps more securely by our books than by our swords. In La Briere's system, on the other hand, all that is glorious and lovely must be suppressed,--woman's beauty, music, painting, poetry. Society will not be overthrown, that is true, but, I ask you, who would willingly accept such a life? All useful things are ugly and forbidding. A kitchen is indispensable, but you take care not to sit there; you live in the salon, which you adorn, like this, with superfluous things. Of what _use_, let me ask you, are these charming wall-paintings, this carved wood-work? There is nothing beautiful but that which seems to us useless. We called the sixteenth century the Renascence with admirable truth of language. That century was the dawn of a new era. Men will continue to speak of it when all remembrance of anterior centuries had passed away,--their only merit being that they once existed, like the million beings who count as the rubbish of a generation."

"Rubbish! yes, that may be, but my rubbish is dear to me," said the Duc d'Herouville, laughing, during the silent pause which followed the poet's pompous oration.

"Let me ask," said Butscha, attacking Canalis, "does art, the sphere in which, according to you, genius is required to evolve itself, exist at all? Is it not a splendid lie, a delusion, of the social man? Do I want a landscape scene of Normandy in my bedroom when I can look out and see a better one done by God himself? Our dreams make poems more glorious than Iliads. For an insignificant sum of money I can find at Valogne, at Carentan, in Provence, at Arles, many a Venus as beautiful as those of Titian. The police gazette publishes tales, differing somewhat from those of Walter Scott, but ending tragically with blood, not ink. Happiness and virtue exist above and beyond both art and genius."

"Bravo, Butscha!" cried Madame Latournelle.

"What did he say?" asked Canalis of La Briere, failing to gather from the eyes and attitude of Mademoiselle Mignon the usual signs of artless admiration.

The contemptuous indifference which Modeste had exhibited toward La Briere, and above all, her disrespectful speeches to her father, so depressed the young man that he made no answer to Canalis; his eyes, fixed sorrowfully on Modeste, were full of deep meditation. The Duc d'Herouville took up Butscha's argument and reproduced it with much intelligence, saying finally that the ecstasies of Saint-Theresa were far superior to the creations of Lord Byron.

"Oh, Monsieur le duc," exclaimed Modeste, "hers was a purely personal poetry, whereas the genius of Lord Byron and Moliere benefit the world."

"How do you square that opinion with those of Monsieur le baron?" cried Charles Mignon, quickly. "Now you are insisting that genius must be useful, and benefit the world as though it were cotton,--but perhaps you think logic as antediluvian as your poor old father."

Butscha, La Briere, and Madame Latournelle exchanged glances that were more than half derisive, and drove Modeste to a pitch of irritation that kept her silent for a moment.

"Mademoiselle, do not mind them," said Canalis, smiling upon her, "we are neither beaten, nor caught in a contradiction. Every work of art, let it be in literature, music, painting, sculpture, or architecture, implies a positive social utility, equal to that of all other commercial products. Art is pre-eminently commerce; presupposes it, in short. An author pockets ten thousand francs for his book; the making of books means the manufactory of paper, a foundry, a printing-office, a bookseller,--in other words, the employment of thousands of men. The execution of a symphony of Beethoven or an opera by Rossini requires human arms and machinery and manufactures. The cost of a monument is an almost brutal case in point. In short, I may say that the works of genius have an extremely costly basis and are, necessarily, useful to the workingman."

Astride of that theme, Canalis spoke for some minutes with a fine luxury of metaphor, and much inward complacency as to his phrases; but it happened with him, as with many another great speaker, that he found himself at last at the point from which the conversation started, and in full agreement with La Briere without perceiving it.

"I see with much pleasure, my dear baron," said the little duke, slyly, "that you will make an admirable constitutional minister."

"Oh!" said Canalis, with the gesture of a great man, "what is the use of all these discussions? What do they prove?--the eternal verity of one axiom: All things are true, all things are false. Moral truths as well as human beings change their aspect according to their surroundings, to the point of being actually unrecognizable."

"Society exists through settled opinions," said the Duc d'Herouville.

"What laxity!" whispered Madame Latournelle to her husband.

"He is a poet," said Gobenheim, who overheard her.

Canalis, who was ten leagues above the heads of his audience, and who may have been right in his last philosophical remark, took the sort of coldness which now overspread the surrounding faces of a symptom of provincial ignorance; but seeing that Modeste understood him, he was content, being wholly unaware that monologue is particularly disagreeable to country-folk, whose principal desire it is to exhibit the manner of life and the wit and wisdom of the provinces to Parisians.

"It is long since you have seen the Duchesse de Chaulieu?" asked the duke, addressing Canalis, as if to change the conversation.

"I left her about six days ago."

"Is she well?" persisted the duke.

"Perfectly well."

"Have the kindness to remember me to her when you write."

"They say she is charming," remarked Modeste, addressing the duke.

"Monsieur le baron can speak more confidently than I," replied the grand equerry.

"More than charming," said Canalis, making the best of the duke's perfidy; "but I am partial, mademoiselle; she has been a friend to me for the last ten years; I owe all that is good in me to her; she has saved me from the dangers of the world. Moreover, Monsieur le Duc de Chaulieu launched me in my present career. Without the influence of that family the king and the princesses would have forgotten a poor poet like me; therefore my affection for the duchess must always be full of gratitude."

His voice quivered.

"We ought to love the woman who has led you to write those sublime poems, and who inspires you with such noble feelings," said Modeste, quite affected. "Who can think of a poet without a muse!"

"He would be without a heart," replied Canalis. "He would write barren verses like Voltaire, who never loved any one but Voltaire."

"I thought you did me the honor to say, in Paris," interrupted Dumay, "that you never felt the sentiments you expressed."

"The shoe fits, my soldier," replied the poet, smiling; "but let me tell you that it is quite possible to have a great deal of feeling both in the intellectual life and in real life. My good friend here, La Briere, is madly in love," continued Canalis, with a fine show of generosity, looking at Modeste. "I, who certainly love as much as he,--that is, I think so unless I delude myself,--well, I can give to my love a literary form in harmony with its character. But I dare not say, mademoiselle," he added, turning to Modeste with too studied a grace, "that to-morrow I may not be without inspiration."

Thus the poet triumphed over all obstacles. In honor of his love he rode a-tilt at the hindrances that were thrown in his way, and Modeste remained wonder-struck at the Parisian wit that scintillated in his declamatory discourse, of which she had hitherto known little or nothing.

"What an acrobat!" whispered Butscha to Latournelle, after listening to a magnificent tirade on the Catholic religion and the happiness of having a pious wife,--served up in response to a remark by Madame Mignon.

Modeste's eyes were blindfolded as it were; Canalis's elocution and the close attention which she was predetermined to pay to him prevented her from seeing that Butscha was carefully noting the declamation, the want of simplicity, the emphasis that took the place of feeling, and the curious incoherencies in the poet's speech which led the dwarf to make his rather cruel comment. At certain points of Canalis's discourse, when Monsieur Mignon, Dumay, Butscha, and Latournelle wondered at the man's utter want of logic, Modeste admired his suppleness, and said to herself, as she dragged him after her through the labyrinth of fancy, "He loves me!" Butscha, in common with the other spectators of what we must call a stage scene, was struck with the radiant defect of all egoists, which Canalis, like many men accustomed to perorate, allowed to be too plainly seen. Whether he understood beforehand what the person he was speaking to meant to say, whether he was not listening, or whether he had the faculty of listening when he was thinking of something else, it is certain that Melchior's face wore an absent-minded look in conversation, which disconcerted the ideas of others and wounded their vanity. Not to listen is not merely a want of politeness, it is a mark of disrespect. Canalis pushed this habit too far; for he often forgot to answer a speech which required an answer, and passed, without the ordinary transitions of courtesy, to the subject, whatever it was, that preoccupied him. Though such impertinence is accepted without protest from a man of marked distinction, it stirs a leaven of hatred and vengeance in many hearts; in those of equals it even goes so far as to destroy a friendship. If by chance Melchior was forced to listen, he fell into another fault; he merely lent his attention, and never gave it. Though this may not be so mortifying, it shows a kind of semi-concession which is almost as unsatisfactory to the hearer and leaves him dissatisfied. Nothing brings more profit in the commerce of society than the small change of attention. He that heareth let him hear, is not only a gospel precept, it is an excellent speculation; follow it, and all will be forgiven you, even vice. Canalis took a great deal of trouble in his anxiety to please Modeste; but though he was compliant enough with her, he fell back into his natural self with the others.

Modeste, pitiless for the ten martyrs she was making, begged Canalis to read some of his poems; she wanted, she said, a specimen of his gift for reading, of which she had heard so much. Canalis took the volume which she gave him, and cooed (for that is the proper word) a poem which is generally considered his finest,--an imitation of Moore's "Loves of the Angels," entitled "Vitalis," which Monsieur and Madame Dumay, Madame Latournelle, and Gobenheim welcomed with a few yawns.

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