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The Parisians, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Book 10 - Chapter 3 |
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_ BOOK X CHAPTER III "Mr. Vane, I feel as if I had many apologies to make for the interest in your life which my letter to you so indiscreetly betrayed." "Oh, Mrs. Morley! you cannot guess how deeply that interest touched me." "I should not have presumed so far," continued Mrs. Morley, unheeding the interruption, "if I had not been altogether in error as to the nature of your sentiments in a certain quarter. In this you must blame my American rearing. With us there are many flirtations between boys and girls which come to nothing; but when in my country a man like you meets with a woman like Mademoiselle Cicogna, there cannot be flirtation. His attentions, his looks, his manner, reveal to the eyes of those who care enough for him to watch, one of two things--either he coldly admires and esteems, or he loves with his whole heart and soul a woman worthy to inspire such a love. Well, I did watch, and I was absurdly mistaken. I imagined that I saw love, and rejoiced for the sake of both of you to think so. I know that in all countries, our own as well as yours, love is so morbidly sensitive and jealous that it is always apt to invent imaginary foes to itself. Esteem and admiration never do that. I thought that some misunderstanding, easily removed by the intervention of a third person, might have impeded the impulse of two hearts towards each other--and so I wrote. I had assumed that you loved--I am humbled to the last degree--you only admired and esteemed." "Your irony is very keen, Mrs. Morley, and to you it may seem very just." "Don't call me Mrs. Morley in that haughty tone of voice,--can't you talk to me as you would talk to a friend? You only esteemed and admired--there is an end of it." "No, there is not an end of it," cried Graham, giving way to an impetuosity of passion, which rarely, indeed, before another, escaped his self-control; "the end of it to me is a life out of which is ever stricken such love as I could feel for woman. To me true love can only come once. It came with my first look on that fatal face--it has never left me in thought by day, in dreams by night. The end of it to me is farewell to all such happiness as the one love of a life can promise--but--" "But what?" asked Mrs. Morley, softly, and very much moved by the passionate earnestness of Graham's voice and words. "But," he continued with a forced smile, "we Englishmen are trained to the resistance of absolute authority; we cannot submit all the elements that make up our being to the sway of a single despot. Love is the painter of existence, it should not be its sculptor." "I do not understand the metaphor." "Love colours our life, it should not chisel its form." "My dear Mr. Vane, that is very cleverly said, but the human heart is too large and too restless to be quietly packed up in an aphorism. Do you mean to tell me that if you found you had destroyed Isaura Cicogna's happiness as well as resigned your own, that thought would not somewhat deform the very shape you would give to your life? Is it colour alone that your life would lose?" "Ah, Mrs. Morley, do not lower your friend into an ordinary girl in whom idleness exaggerates the strength of any fancy over which it dreamily broods. Isaura Cicogna has her occupations--her genius--her fame--her career. Honestly speaking, I think that in these she will find a happiness that no quiet hearth could bestow. I will say no more. I feel persuaded that were we two united I could not make her happy. With the irresistible impulse that urges the genius of the writer towards its vent in public sympathy and applause, she would chafe if I said, 'Be contented to be wholly mine.' And if I said it not, and felt I had no right to say it, and allowed the full scope to her natural ambition, what then? She would chafe yet more to find that I had no fellowship in her aims and ends--that where I should feel pride, I felt humiliation. It would be so; I cannot help it, 'tis my nature." "So be it then. When, next year perhaps, you visit Paris, you will be safe from my officious interference! Isaura will be the wife of another." Graham pressed his hand to his heart with the sudden movement of one who feels there an agonising spasm--his cheek, his very lips were bloodless. "I told you," he said bitterly, "that your fears of my influence over the happiness of one so gifted, and so strong in such gifts, were groundless; you allow that I should be very soon forgotten?" "I allow no such thing--I wish I could. But do you know so little of a woman's heart (and in matters of heart, I never yet heard that genius had a talisman against emotion),--do you know so little of a woman's heart as not to know that the very moment in which she may accept a marriage the least fitted to render her happy, is that in which she has lost all hope of happiness in another?" "Is it indeed so?" murmured Graham--"Ay, I can conceive it." "And have you so little comprehension of the necessities which that fame, that career to which you allow she is impelled by the instincts of genius, impose on this girl, young, beautiful, fatherless, motherless? No matter how pure her life, can she guard it from the slander of envious tongues? Will not all her truest friends--would not you, if you were her brother--press upon her by all the arguments that have most weight with the woman who asserts independence in her modes of life, and yet is wise enough to know that the world can only judge of virtue by its shadow--reputation, not to dispense with the protection which a husband can alone secure? And that is why I warn you, if it be yet time, that in resigning your own happiness you may destroy Isaura's. She will wed another, but she will not be happy. What a chimera or dread your egotism as man conjures up! Oh! forsooth, the qualities that charm and delight a world are to unfit a woman to be helpmate to a man. Fie on you!--fie!" Whatever answer Graham might have made to these impassioned reproaches was here checked. Two men on horseback stopped the carriage. One was Enguerrand de Vandemar, the other was the Algerine Colonel whom we met at the supper given at the Maison Doree by Frederic Lemercier. "Pardon, Madame Morley," said Enguerrand; "but there are symptoms of a mob-epidemic a little further up the fever began at Belleville, and is threatening the health of the Champs Elysees. Don't be alarmed--it may be nothing, though it may be much. In Paris, one can never calculate an hour beforehand the exact progress of a politico-epidemic fever. At present I say, 'Bah! a pack of ragged boys, gamins de Paris;' but my friend the Colonel, twisting his moustache en souriant amerement, says, 'It is the indignation of Paris at the apathy of the Government under insult to the honour of France;' and Heaven only knows how rapidly French gamins grow into giants when Colonels talk about the indignation of Paris and the honour of France!" "But what has happened?" asked Mrs. Morley, turning to the Colonel. "Madame," replied the warrior, "it is rumoured that the King of Prussia has turned his back upon the ambassador of France; and that the pekin who is for peace at any price--M. Ollivier--will say tomorrow in the Chamber, that France submits to a slap in the face." "Please, Monsieur de Vandemar, to tell my coachman to drive home," said Mrs. Morley. The carriage turned and went homeward. The Colonel lifted his hat, and rode back to see what the gamins were about. Enguerrand, who had no interest in the gamins, and who looked on the Colonel as a bore, rode by the side of the carriage. "Is there anything serious in this?" asked Mrs. Morley. "At this moment, nothing. What it may be this hour to-morrow I cannot say. Ah! Monsieur Vane, bon jour I did not recognise you at first. Once, in a visit at the chateau of one of your distinguished countrymen, I saw two game-cocks turned out facing each other: they needed no pretext for quarrelling--neither do France and Prussia--no matter which game-cock gave the last offence, the two game-cocks must have it out. All that Ollivier can do, if he be wise, is to see that the French cock has his steel spurs as long as the Prussians. But this I do say, that if Ollivier attempts to put the French cock back into its bag, the Empire is gone in forty-eight hours. That to me is a trifle--I care nothing for the Empire; but that which is not a trifle is anarchy and chaos. Better war and the Empire than peace and Jules Favre. But let us seize the present hour, Mr. Vane; whatever happens to-morrow, shall we dine together to-day? Name your restaurant." "I am so grieved," answered Graham, rousing himself, "I am here only on business, and engaged all the evening." "What a wonderful thing is this life of ours!" said Enguerrand. "The destiny of France at this moment hangs on a thread--I, a Frenchman, say to an English friend, 'Let us dine--a cutlet to-day and a fig for to-morrow;' and my English friend, distinguished native of a country with which we have the closest alliance, tells me that in this crisis of France he has business to attend to! My father is quite right; he accepts the Voltairean philosophy, and cries, Vivent les indifferents!" "My dear M. de Vandemar," said Graham, "in every country you will find the same thing. All individuals massed together constitute public life. Each individual has a life of his own, the claims and the habits and the needs of which do not suppress his sympathies with public life, but imperiously overrule them. Mrs. Morley, permit me to pull the check-string--I get out here." "I like that man," said Enguerrand, as he continued to ride by the fair American, "in language and esprit he is so French." "I use to like him better than you can," answered Mrs. Morley, "but in prejudice and stupidity he is so English. As it seems you are disengaged, come and partake, pot au feu, with Frank and me." "Charmed to do so," answered the cleverest and best bred of all Parisian beaux garcons, "but forgive me if I quit you soon. This poor France! Entre nous, I am very uneasy about the Parisian fever. I must run away after dinner to clubs and cafes to learn the last bulletins." "We have nothing like that French Legitimist in the States," said the fair American to herself, "unless we should ever be so silly as to make Legitimists of the ruined gentlemen of the South." Meanwhile Graham Vane went slowly back to his apartment. No false excuse had he made to Enguerrand; this evening was devoted to M. Renard, who told him little he had not known before; but his private life overruled his public, and all that night he, professed politician, thought sleeplessly, not over the crisis to France, which might alter the conditions of Europe, but the talk on his private life of that intermeddling American woman. _ |
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