In the Days of My Youth Part 77

"I don't fancy so. Power is the first requisite of genius. Give power in equal quant.i.ty to your Columbus and your Raffaelle, and circ.u.mstance shall decide which will achieve the New World, and which the Transfiguration."

"Circ.u.mstance!" cried the painter, impatiently. "Good heavens! do you make no account of the spontaneous tendencies of genius? Is Nature a mere vulgar cook, turning out men, like soups, from one common stock, with only a dash of flavoring here and there to give them variety?

No--Nature is a subtle chemist, and her workshop, depend on it, is stored with delicate elixirs, volatile spirits, and precious fires of genius. Certain of these are kneaded with the clay of the poet, others with the clay of the painter, the astronomer, the mathematician, the legislator, the soldier. Raffaelle had in him some of 'the stuff that dreams are made of.' Never tell me that that same stuff, differently treated, would equally well have furnished forth an Archimedes or a Napoleon!"

"Men are what their age calls upon them to be," I replied, after a moment's consideration. "Be that demand what it may, the supply is ever equal to it. Centre of the most pompous and fascinating of religions, Rome demanded Madonnas and Transfigurations, and straightway Raffaelle answered to the call. The Old World, overstocked with men, gold, and aristocracies, asked wider fields of enterprise, and Columbus added America to the map. What is this but circ.u.mstance? Had Italy needed colonies, would not her men of genius have turned sailors and discoverers? Had Madrid been the residence of the Popes, might not Columbus have painted altar-pieces or designed churches?"

Muller, still sitting on the floor, shook his head despondingly.

"I don't think it," he replied; "and I don't wish to think it. It is too material a view of genius to satisfy my imagination. I love to believe that gifts are special. I love to believe that the poet is born a poet, and the artist an artist."

"Hold! I believe that the poet is born a poet, and the artist an artist; but I also believe the poetry of the one and the art of the other to be only diverse manifestations of a power that is universal in its application. The artist whose lot in life it is to be a builder is none the less an artist. The poet, though engineer or soldier, is none the less a poet. There is the poetry of language, and there is also the poetry of action. So also there is the art which expresses itself by means of marble or canvas, and the art which designs a capitol, tapers a spire, or plants a pleasure-ground. Nay, is not this very interfusion of gifts, this universality of uses, in itself the bond of beauty which girdles the world like a cestus? If poetry were only rhyme, and art only painting, to what an outer darkness of matter-of-fact should we be condemning nine-tenths of the creation!"

Muller yawned, as if he would have swallowed me and my argument together.

"You are getting transcendental," said he. "I dare say your theories are all very fine and all very true; but I confess that I don't understand them. I never could find out all this poetry of bricks and mortar, railroads and cotton-factories, that people talk about so fluently now-a-days. We Germans take the dreamy side of life, and are seldom at home in the practical, be it ever so highly colored and highly flavored.

In our parlance, an artist is an artist, and neither a bagman nor an engine-driver."

His professional pride was touched, and he said this with somewhat less than his usual _bonhomie_--almost with a shade of irritability.

"Come," said I, smiling, "we will not discuss a topic which we can never see from the same point of view. Doing art is better than talking art; and your business now is to find a fresh subject and prepare another canvas. Meanwhile cheer up, and forget all about Louis XI. and the Hanging Committee. What say you to dining with me at the Trois Freres?

It will do you good."

"Good!" cried he, springing to his feet and shaking his fist at the picture. "More good, by Jupiter, than all the paint and megilp that ever was wasted! Not all the fine arts of Europe are worth a _poulet a la Marengo_ and a bottle of old _Romanee_!"

So saying, he turned his picture to the wall, seized his cap, locked his door, scrawled outside with a piece of chalk,--"_Summoned to the Tuileries on state affairs_," and followed me, whistling, down the six flights of gloomy, ricketty, Quartier-Latin lodging-house stairs up which he lived and had his being.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

I MAKE MYSELF ACQUAINTED WITH THE IMPOLITE WORLD AND ITS PLACES OP UNFAs.h.i.+ONABLE RESORT.

Muller and I dined merrily at the Cafe of the Trois Freres Provencaux, discussed our coffee and cigars outside the Rotonde in the Palais Royal, and then started off in search of adventures. Striking up in a north-easterly direction through a labyrinth of narrow streets, we emerged at the Rue des Fontaines, just in front of that famous second-hand market yclept the Temple. It was Sat.u.r.day night, and the business of the place was at its height. We went in, and turning aside from the broad thoroughfares which intersect the market at right angles, plunged at once into a net-work of crowded side-alleys, noisy and populous as a cl.u.s.ter of beehives. Here were bargainings, hagglings, quarrellings, elbowings, slang, low wit, laughter, abuse, cheating, and chattering enough to turn the head of a neophyte like myself. Muller, however, was in his element. He took me up one row and down another, pointed out all that was curious, had a nod for every grisette, and an answer for every touter, and enjoyed the Babel like one to the manner born.

"Buy, messieurs, buy! What will you buy?" was the question that a.s.sailed us on both sides, wherever we went.

"What do you sell, _mon ami ?_" was Muller's invariable reply.

"What do you want, m'sieur?"

"Twenty thousand francs per annum, and the prettiest wife in Paris,"

says my friend; a reply which is sure to evoke something _spirituel_, after the manner of the locality.

"This is the most amusing place in Paris," observes he. "Like the Alsatia of old London, it has its own peculiar _argot,_ and its own peculiar privileges. The activity of its commerce is amazing. If you buy a pocket-handkerchief at the first stall you come to, and leave it unprotected in your coat-pocket for five minutes, you may purchase it again at the other end of the alley before you leave. As for the resources of the market, they are inexhaustible. You may buy anything you please here, from a Court suit to a cargo of old rags. In this alley (which is the aristocratic quarter), are sold old jewelry, old china, old furniture, silks that have rustled at the Tuileries; fans that may have fluttered at the opera; gloves once fitted to tiny hands, and yet bearing a light soil where the rings were worn beneath; laces that may have been the property of Countesses or Cardinals; masquerade suits, epaulets, uniforms, furs, perfumes, artificial flowers, and all sorts of elegant superfluities, most of which have descended to the merchants of the Temple through the hands of ladies-maids and valets. Yonder lies the district called the 'Foret Noire'--a land of unpleasing atmosphere inhabited by cobblers and clothes-menders. Down to the left you see nothing but rag and bottle-shops, old iron stores, and lumber of every kind. Here you find chiefly household articles, bedding, upholstery, crockery, and so forth."

"What will you buy, Messieurs?" continued to be the cry, as we moved along arm-in-arm, elbowing our way through the crowd, and exploring this singular scene in all directions.

"What will you buy, messieurs?" shouts one salesman. "A carpet? A capital carpet, neither too large nor too small. Just the size you want!"

"A hat, m'sieur, better than new," cries another; "just aired by the last owner."

"A coat that will fit you better than if it had been made for you?"

"A pair of boots? Dress-boots, dancing-boots, walking-boots, morning-boots, evening-boots, riding-boots, fis.h.i.+ng-boots, hunting-boots. All sorts, m'sieur--all sorts!"

"A cloak, m'sieur?"

"A lace shawl to take home to Madame?"

"An umbrella, m'sieur?"

"A reading lamp?"

"A warming-pan?"

"A pair of gloves?"

"A shower bath?"

"A hand organ?"

"What! m'sieurs, do you buy nothing this evening? Hola, Antoine!

monsieur keeps his hands in his pockets, for fear his money should fall out!"

"Bah! They've not a centime between them!"

"Go down the next turning and have the hole in your coat mended!"

"Make way there for monsieur the millionaire!"

"They are amba.s.sadors on their way to the Court of Persia."

"_Ohe! Pane! pane! pane!_"

Thus we run the gauntlet of all the tongues in the Temple, sometimes retorting, sometimes laughing and pa.s.sing on, sometimes stopping to watch the issue of a dispute or the clinching of a bargain.

"_Dame_, now! if it were only ten francs cheaper," says a voice that strikes my ear with a sudden sense of familiarity. Turning, I discover that the voice belongs to a young woman close at my elbow, and that the remark is addressed to a good-looking workman upon whose arm she is leaning.

"What, Josephine!" I exclaim.

"_Comment_! Monsieur Basil!"

And I find myself kissed on both cheeks before I even guess what is going to happen to me.

"Have I not also the honor of being remembered by Mademoiselle?" says Muller, taking off his hat with all the politeness possible; whereupon Josephine, in an ecstasy of recognition, embraces him likewise.