In the Days of My Youth Part 74

"And yet you labor zealously to acquire it--how is that?"

"How is it with hundreds of others? My profession was chosen for me. I am not my own master."

"But are you sure you would be happier in some other pursuit? Supposing, for instance, that you were free to begin again, what career do you think you would prefer?"

"I scarcely know, and I should scarcely care, so long as there was freedom of thought and speculation in it."

"Geology, perhaps--or astronomy," she suggested, laughingly.

"Merci! The bowels of the earth are too profound, and the heavens too lofty for me. I should choose some pursuit that would set the Ariel of the imagination free. That is to say, I could be very happy if my life were devoted to Science, but my soul echoes to the name of Art."

"'The artist creates--the man of science discovers," said Hortense.

"Beware lest you fancy you would prefer the work of creation only because you lack patience to pursue the work of discovery. Pardon me, if I suggest that you may, perhaps, be fitted for neither. Your sphere, I fancy, is reflection--comparison--criticism. You are not made for action, or work. Your taste is higher than your ambition, and you love learning better than fame. Am I right?"

"So right that I regret I can be read so easily."

"And therefore, it may be that you would find yourself no happier with Art than with Science. You might even fall into deeper discouragement; for in Science every onward step is at least certain gain, but in Art every step is groping, and success is only another form of effort. Art, in so far as it is more divine, is more unattainable, more evanescent, more unsubstantial. It needs as much patience as Science, and the pa.s.sionate devotion of an entire life is as nothing in comparison with the magnitude of the work. Self-sacrifice, self-distrust, infinite patience, infinite disappointment--such is the lot of the artist, such the law of aspiration."

"A melancholy creed."

"But a true one. The divine is doomed to suffering, and under the hays of the poet lurk ever the thorns of the self-immolator."

"But, amid all this record of his pains, do you render no account of his pleasures?" I asked. "You forget that he has moments of enjoyment lofty as his aims, and deep as his devotion.

"I do not forget it," she said. "I know it but too well. Alas! is not the catalogue of his pleasures the more melancholy record of the two?

Hopes which sharpen disappointment; visions which cheat while they enrapture; dreams that embitter his waking hours--fellow-student, do you envy him these?"

"I do; believing that he would not forego them for a life of common-place annoyances and placid pleasures."

"Forego them! Never. Who that had once been the guest of the G.o.ds would forego the Divine for the Human? No--it is better to suffer than to stagnate. The artist and poet is overpaid in his brief s.n.a.t.c.hes of joy.

While they last, his soul sings 'at heaven's gate,' and his forehead strikes the stars."

She spoke with a rare and pa.s.sionate enthusiasm; sometimes pacing to and fro; sometimes pausing with upturned face--

"A dauntless muse who eyes a dreadful fate!"

There was a long, long silence--she looking at the stars, I upon her face.

By-and-by she came over to where I stood, and leaned upon the railing that divided our separate territories.

"Friend," said she, gravely, "be content. Art is the Sphinx, and to question her is destruction. Enjoy books, pictures, music, statues--rifle the world of beauty to satiety, if satiety be possible--but there pause Drink the wine; seek not to crush the grape.

Be happy, be useful, labor honestly upon the task that is thine, and be a.s.sured that the work will itself achieve its reward. Is it nothing to relieve pain--to prolong the days of the sickly--to restore health to the suffering--to soothe the last pangs of the dying? Is it nothing to be followed by the prayers and blessing of those whom you have restored to love, to fame, to the world's service? To my thinking, the physician's trade hath something G.o.d-like in it. Be content. Harvey's discovery was as sublime as Newton's, and it were hard to say which did G.o.d's work best--Shakespeare or Jenner."

"And you," I said, the pa.s.sion that I could not conceal trembling in my voice; "and you--what are you, poet, or painter, or musician, that you know and reason of all these things?"

She laughed with a sudden change of mood, and shook her head.

"I am a woman," said she. "Simply a woman--no more. One of the inferior s.e.x; and, as I told you long ago, only half civilized."

"You are unlike every other woman!"

"Possibly, because I am more useless. Strange as it may seem, do you know I love art better than sewing, or gossip, or dress; and hold my liberty to be a dower more precious than either beauty or riches? And yet--I am a woman!"

"The wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best!"

"By no means. You are comparing me with Eve; but I am not in the least like Eve, I a.s.sure you. She was an excellent housewife, and, if we may believe Milton, knew how to prepare 'dulcet creams,' and all sorts of Paradisaical dainties for her husband's dinner. I, on the contrary, could not make a cream if Adam's life depended on it."

"_Eh bien!_ of the theology of creams I know nothing. I only know that Eve was the first and fairest of her s.e.x, and that you are as wise as you are beautiful."

"Nay, that is what t.i.tania said to the a.s.s," laughed Hortense. "Your compliments become equivocal, fellow-student. But hus.h.!.+ what hour is that?"

She stood with uplifted finger. The air was keen, and over the silence of the house-tops chimed the church-clocks--Two.

"It is late, and cold," said she, drawing her cloak more closely round her.

"Not later than you usually sit up," I replied. "Don't go yet. 'Tis now the very witching hour of night, when churchyards yawn--"

"I beg your pardon," she interrupted. "The churchyards have done yawning by this time, and, like other respectable citizens, are sound asleep.

Let us follow their example. Good-night."

"Good-night," I replied, reluctantly; but almost before I had said it, she was gone.

After this, as the winter wore away, and spring drew on, Hortense's balcony became once more a garden, and she used to attend to her flowers every evening. She always found me on my balcony when she came out, and soon our open-air meetings became such an established fact that, instead of parting with "good-night," we said "_au revoir_--till to-morrow." At these times we talked of many things; sometimes of subjects abstract and mystical--of futurity, of death, of the spiritual life--but oftenest of Art in its manifold developments. And sometimes our speculations wandered on into the late hours of the night.

And yet, for all our talking and all our community of tastes, we became not one jot more intimate. I still loved in silence--she still lived in a world apart.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THERMOPYLae.

How dreary 'tis for women to sit still On winter nights by solitary fires, And hear the nations praising them far off.

AURORA LEIGH.

Abolished by the National Convention of 1793, re-established in 1795, reformed by the first Napoleon in 1803, and remodelled in 1816 on the restoration of the Bourbons, the Academie Francaise, despite its changes of fortune, name, and government, is a liberal and splendid inst.i.tution.

It consists of forty members, whose office it is to compile the great dictionary, and to enrich, purify, and preserve the language. It a.s.sists authors in distress. It awards prizes for poetry, eloquence, and virtue; and it bestows those honors with a n.o.ble impartiality that observes no distinction of s.e.x, rank, or party. To fill one of the forty fauteuils of the Academie Francaise is the darling ambition of every eminent Frenchman of letters. There the poet, the philosopher, the historian, the man of science, sit side by side, and meet on equal ground. When a seat falls vacant, when a prize is to be awarded, when an anniversary is to be celebrated, the interest and excitement become intense. To the political, the fas.h.i.+onable, or the commercial world, these events are perhaps of little moment. They affect neither the Bourse nor the Budget.

They exercise no perceptible influence on the Longchamps toilettes. But to the striving author, to the rising orator, to all earnest workers in the broad fields of literature, they are serious and significant circ.u.mstances.

Living out of society as I now did, I knew little and cared less for these academic crises. The success of one candidate was as unimportant to me as the failure of another; and I had more than once read the crowned poem of the prize essay without even glancing at the name or the fortunate author.

Now it happened that, pacing to and fro under the budding acacias of the Palais Royal garden one sunny spring-like morning, some three or four weeks after the conversation last recorded, I was pursued by a persecuting newsvender with a hungry eye, mittened fingers, and a shrill voice, who persisted in reiterating close against my ear:--

"News of the day, M'sieur!--news of the day. Frightful murder in the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine--state of the Bourse--latest despatches from the seat of war--prize poem crowned by the Academie Francaise--news of the day, M'sieur! Only forty centimes! News of the day!"

I refused, however, to be interested in any of those topics, turned a deaf ear to his allurements, and peremptorily dismissed him. I then continued my walk in solitary silence.

At the further extremity of the square, near the _Galerie Vitree_ and close beside the little newspaper kiosk, stood a large tree since cut down, which at that time served as an advertising medium, and was daily decorated with a written placard, descriptive of the contents of the _Moniteur_, the _Presse_, and other leading papers. This placard was generally surrounded by a crowd of readers, and to-day the crowd of readers was more than usually dense.