Pelham Part 14

"Carry my luggage forthwith," said I, "to the Hotel de Mirabeau:" and that very evening I changed my abode.

I am happy in the opportunity this incident affords me of especially recommending the Hotel de Mirabeau, Rue de la Paix, to any of my countrymen who are really gentlemen, and will not disgrace my recommendation. It is certainly the best caravansera in the English quartier.

I was engaged that day to a literary dinner at the Marquis D'Al--; and as I knew I should meet Vincent, I felt some pleasure in repairing to my entertainer's hotel. They were just going to dinner as I entered. A good many English were of the party. The good natured (in all senses of the word) Lady--, who always affected to pet me, cried aloud, "Pelham, mon joli pet.i.t mignon, I have not seen you for an age--do give me your arm."

Madame D'Anville was just before me, and, as I looked at her, I saw that her eyes were full of tears; my heart smote me for my late inattention, and going up to her, I only nodded to Lady--, and said, in reply to her invitation, "Non, perfide, it is my turn to be cruel now. Remember your flirtation with Mr. Howard de Howard."

"Pooh!" said Lady--, taking Lord Vincent's arm, "your jealousy does indeed rest upon 'a trifle light as air.'"

"Do you forgive me?" whispered I to Madame D'Anville, as I handed her to the salle a manger. "Does not love forgive every thing?" was her answer.

"At least," thought I, "it never talks in those pretty phrases."

The conversation soon turned upon books. As for me, I never at that time took a share in those discussions; indeed, I have long laid it down as a rule, that a man never gains by talking to more than one person at a time. If you don't s.h.i.+ne, you are a fool--if you do, you are a bore.

You must become either ridiculous or unpopular--either hurt your own self-love by stupidity, or that of others by wit. I therefore sat in silence, looking exceedingly edified, and now and then muttering "good!"

"true!" Thank heaven, however, the suspension of one faculty only increases the vivacity of the others; my eyes and ears always watch like sentinels over the repose of my lips. Careless and indifferent as I seem to all things, nothing ever escapes me: the minutest erreur in a dish or a domestic, the most trifling peculiarity in a criticism or a coat, my glance detects in an instant, and transmits for ever to my recollection.

"You have seen Jouy's 'Hermite de la Chaussee D'Antin?'" said our host to Lord Vincent.

"I have, and think meanly of it. There is a perpetual aim at something pointed, which as perpetually merges into something dull. He is like a bad swimmer, strikes out with great force, makes a confounded splash, and never gets a yard the further for it. It is a great effort not to sink. Indeed, Monsieur D'A--, your literature is at a very reduced ebb; bombastic in the drama--shallow in philosophy--mawkish in poetry, your writers of the present day seem to think, with Boileau--

"'Souvent de tous nos maux la raison est le pire.'"

"Surely," cried Madame D'Anville, "you will allow De la Martine's poetry to be beautiful?"

"I allow it," said he, "to be among the best you have; and I know very few lines in your language equal to the two first stanzas in his 'Meditation on Napoleon,' or to those exquisite verses called 'Le Lac;' but you will allow also that he wants originality and nerve. His thoughts are pathetic, but not deep; he whines, but sheds no tears. He has, in his imitation of Lord Byron, reversed the great miracle; instead of turning water into wine, he has turned wine into water. Besides, he is so unpardonably obscure. He thinks, with Bacchus--(you remember, D'A--, the line in Euripides, which I will not quote), that 'there is something august in the shades;' but he has applied this thought wrongly--in his obscurity there is nothing sublime--it is the back ground of a Dutch picture. It is only a red herring, or an old hat, which he has invested with such pomposity of shadow and darkness."

"But his verses are so smooth," said Lady--.

"Ah!" answered Vincent.

"'Quand la rime enfin se trouve au bout des vers, Qu'importe que le reste y soit mis des travers.'"

"Helas" said the Viscount D'A--t, an author of no small celebrity himself; "I agree with you--we shall never again see a Voltaire or a Rousseau."

"There is but little justice in those complaints, often as they are made," replied Vincent. "You may not, it is true, see a Voltaire or a Rousseau, but you will see their equals. Genius can never be exhausted by one individual. In our country, the poets after Chaucer in the fifteenth century complained of the decay of their art--they did not antic.i.p.ate Shakspeare. In Hayley's time, who ever dreamt of the ascension of Byron? Yet Shakspeare and Byron came like the bridegroom 'in the dead of night;' and you have the same probability of producing--not, indeed, another Rousseau, but a writer to do equal honour to your literature."

"I think," said Lady--, "that Rousseau's 'Julie' is over-rated. I had heard so much of 'La Nouvelle Heloise' when I was a girl, and been so often told that it was destruction to read it, that I bought the book the very day after I was married. I own to you that I could not get through it."

"I am not surprised at it," answered Vincent; "but Rousseau is not the less a genius for all that: there is no story to bear out the style, and he himself is right when he says 'ce livre convient a tres peu de lecteurs.' One letter would delight every one--four volumes of them are a surfeit--it is the toujours perdrix. But the chief beauty of that wonderful conception of an empa.s.sioned and meditative mind is to be found in the inimitable manner in which the thoughts are embodied, and in the tenderness, the truth, the profundity of the thoughts themselves: when Lord Edouard says, 'c'est le chemin des pa.s.sions qui m'a conduit a la philosophie,' he inculcates, in one simple phrase, a profound and unanswerable truth. It is in these remarks that nature is chiefly found in the writings of Rousseau: too much engrossed in himself to be deeply skilled in the characters of others, that very self-study had yet given him a knowledge of the more hidden recesses of the heart. He could perceive at once the motive and the cause of actions, but he wanted the patience to trace the elaborate and winding progress of their effects.

He saw the pa.s.sions in their home, but he could not follow them abroad.

He knew mankind in the general, but not men in the detail. Thus, when he makes an aphorism or reflection, it comes home at once to you as true; but when he would a.n.a.lyze that reflection, when he argues, reasons, and attempts to prove, you reject him as unnatural, or you refute him as false. It is then that he partakes of that manie commune which he imputes to other philosophers, 'de nier ce qui est, et d'expliquer ce qui n'est pas.'"

There was a short pause. "I think," said Madame D'Anville, "that it is in those pensees which you admire so much in Rousseau, that our authors in general excel."

"You are right," said Vincent, "and for this reason--with you les gens de letters are always les gens du monde. Hence their quick perceptions are devoted to men as well as to books. They make observations acutely, and embody them with grace; but it is worth remarking, that the same cause which produced the aphorism, frequently prevents its being profound. These literary gens du monde have the tact to observe, but not the patience, perhaps not the time, to investigate. They make the maxim, but they never explain to you the train of reasoning which led to it.

Hence they are more brilliant than true. An English writer would not dare to make a maxim, involving, perhaps, in two lines, one of the most important of moral truths, without bringing pages to support his dictum.

A French essayist leaves it wholly to itself. He tells you neither how he came by his reasons, nor their conclusion, 'le plus fou souvent est le plus satisfait.' Consequently, if less tedious than the English, your reasoners are more dangerous, and ought rather to be considered as models of terseness than of reflection. A man might learn to think sooner from your writers, but he will learn to think justly sooner from ours. Many observations of La Bruyere and Rochefoucault--the latter especially--have obtained credit for truth solely from their point.

They possess exactly the same merit as the very sensible--permit me to add--very French line in Corneille:--

"'Ma plus douce esperance est de perdre l'espoir.'"

The Maquis took advantage of the silence which followed Vincent's criticism to rise from table. We all (except Vincent, who took leave) adjourned to the salon. "Qui est cet homme la?" said one, "comme il est epris de lui-meme." "How silly he is," cried another--"how ugly," said a third. What a taste in literature--such a talker--such shallowness, and such a.s.surance--not worth the answering--could not slip in a word--disagreeable, revolting, awkward, slovenly, were the most complimentary opinions bestowed upon the unfortunate Vincent. The women called him un horreur, and the men un bete. The old railed at his mauvais gout, and the young at his mauvais coeur, for the former always attribute whatever does not correspond with their sentiments, to a perversion of taste, and the latter whatever does not come up to their enthusiasm, to a depravity of heart.

As for me, I went home, enriched with two new observations; first, that one may not speak of any thing relative to a foreign country, as one would if one was a native. National censures become particular affronts.

Secondly, that those who know mankind in theory, seldom know it in practice; the very wisdom that conceives a rule, is accompanied with the abstraction, or the vanity, which destroys it. I mean that the philosopher of the cabinet is often too diffident to put into action his observations, or too eager for display to conceal their design. Lord Vincent values himself upon his science du monde. He has read much upon men, he has reflected more; he lays down aphorisms to govern or to please them. He goes into society; he is cheated by the one half, and the other half he offends. The sage in the cabinet is but a fool in the salon; and the most consummate men of the world are those who have considered the least on it.

CHAPTER XXV.

Falstaff. What money is in my purse? Page. Seven groats and two-pence.

--Second Part of Henry IV.

En iterum Crispinus.

The next day a note was brought me, which had been sent to my former lodgings in the Hotel de Paris: it was from Thornton.

"My dear Sir," (it began)

"I am very sorry that particular business will prevent me the pleasure of seeing you at my rooms on Sunday. I hope to be more fortunate some other day. I should like much to introduce you, the first opportunity, to my friends in the Rue Gretry, for I like obliging my countrymen. I am sure, if you were to go there, you would cut and come again--one shoulder of mutton drives down another.

"I beg you to accept my repeated excuses, and remain,

"Dear Sir,

"Your very obedient servant,

"Thomas Thornton.

"Rue St. Dominique,

"Friday Morning."

This letter produced in me many and manifold cogitations. What could possibly have induced Mr. Tom Thornton, rogue as he was, to postpone thus of his own accord, the plucking of a pigeon, which he had such good reason to believe he had entrapped? There was evidently no longer the same avidity to cultivate my acquaintance as before; in putting off our appointment with so little ceremony, he did not even fix a day for another. What had altered his original designs towards me? for if Vincent's account was true, it was natural to suppose that he wished to profit by any acquaintance he might form with me, and therefore such an acquaintance his own interests would induce him to continue and confirm.

Either, then, he no longer had the same necessity for a dupe, or he no longer imagined I should become one. Yet neither of these suppositions was probable. It was not likely that he should grow suddenly honest, or suddenly rich: nor had I, on the other hand, given him any reason to suppose I was a jot more wary than any other individual he might have imposed upon. On the contrary, I had appeared to seek his acquaintance with an eagerness which said but little for my knowledge of the world.

The more I reflected, the more I should have been puzzled, had I not connected his present backwardness with his acquaintance with the stranger, whom he termed Warburton. It is true, that I had no reason to suppose so: it was a conjecture wholly unsupported, and, indeed, against my better sense; yet, from some una.n.a.lysed a.s.sociations, I could not divest myself of the supposition.

"I will soon see," thought I; and wrapping myself in my cloak, for the day was bitterly cold, I bent my way to Thornton's lodgings. I could not explain to myself the deep interest I took in whatever was connected with (the so-called) Warburton, or whatever promised to discover more clearly any particulars respecting him. His behaviour in the gambling house; his conversation with the woman in the Jardin des Plantes; and the singular circ.u.mstance, that a man of so very aristocratic an appearance, should be connected with Thornton, and only seen in such low scenes, and with such low society, would not have been sufficient so strongly to occupy my mind, had it not been for certain dim recollections, and undefinable a.s.sociations, that his appearance when present, and my thoughts of him when absent, perpetually recalled.

As, engrossed with meditations of this nature, I was pa.s.sing over the Pont Neuf, I perceived the man Warburton had so earnestly watched in the gambling house, and whom I identified with the "Tyrrell," who had formed the subject of conversation in the Jardin des Plantes, pa.s.s slowly before me. There was an appearance of great exhaustion in his swarthy and strongly marked countenance. He walked carelessly on, neither looking to the right nor the left, with that air of thought and abstraction which I have remarked as common to all men in the habit of indulging any engrossing and exciting pa.s.sion.

We were just on the other side of the Seine, when I perceived the woman of the Jardin des Plantes approach. Tyrrell (for that, I afterwards discovered, was really his name) started as she came near, and asked her, in a tone of some asperity, where she had been? As I was but a few paces behind, I had a clear, full view of the woman's countenance.

She was about twenty-eight or thirty years of age. Her features were decidedly handsome, though somewhat too sharp and aquiline for my individual taste. Her eyes were light and rather sunken; and her complexion bespoke somewhat of the paleness and languor of ill-health.

On the whole, the expression of her face, though decided, was not unpleasing, and when she returned Tyrrell's rather rude salutation, it was with a smile, which made her, for the moment, absolutely beautiful.