The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864

I gratefully accepted the invitation, and at the appointed time I joined Monsieur Jules Sandeau. We left Paris by the Barrière des Martyrs, climbed Montmartre hill, and entered "Uncle" Moulinon's dining-saloon when it was full of its usual frequenters. I had never seen such a sight before. Imagine a gourmand obliged to witness with gaping mouth all, even the most prosaic details of the culinary preparations for a grand dinner. The dining-saloon was a long, narrow room, low-pitched and sombre; it was filled with small tables, where in unequal groups were seated young men between eighteen and fifty-five, anticipating glory by tobacco-smoke. Here were beardless chins accompanied by long locks; there were bushy beards which covered three-quarters of the owners' cadaverous, wasted faces; yonder were premature bald heads, leaden eyes, feverish glances: look where you would, you saw everywhere that uneasy, startled air which bore witness to a disordered life. To the sharp aroma of tobacco were joined the stale and rancid odors peculiar to fifth-rate eating-houses. I sought in vain upon all those faces youth's gentle and poetical gayety, the exuberance of gifted natures, the amiable cordiality of travelling-companions pressing on together in different paths. The most salient characteristics of this bizarre assembly were sickly smiles, an incredible mixture of triviality and affectation, motions of wild beasts trying their teeth and claws, starving attitudes, words tortured to make them look like ideas, a brutal familiarity, and the evident desire to devour all their superiors that they might next crush all their equals. I was glad when dinner was over, for I felt ill at ease,—the sight before me differed so much from that I had dreamed.

Monsieur Jules Sandeau gave me his arm, and we walked towards the Avenue des Champs Elysées. It was nine o'clock when we reached the Rue de Chaillot, where Madame Émile de Girardin resided. She lived in a sort of Greek temple, built about thirty feet below the level of the street, and down to which we had to go as if we were entering a cellar. The house was full of columns, statues, flowers, paintings, candelabra, and servants in black dress-coats and short breeches; but everything about the place looked so accidental and ephemeral that the Comte de Saint-Brice, a very witty frequenter of the house, used to say,—"Whenever I visit the place, I am always afraid of finding the horses sold, the servants dismissed, the husband run away, the drawing-room closed, and the house razed." The Comte de Saint-Brice's fears must have been allayed on this evening. Everything was in its place,—horses, servants, husband, drawing-room, house. Madame Émile de Girardin was in full dress; the manuscript tragedy was in her lap. I found in the drawing-room Monsieur Victor Hugo, Monsieur de Lamartine, Monsieur Alfred de Musset, the three stars of our poetical heavens; Monsieur Théophile Gautier, Monsieur Méry, Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, the secondary planets; Madame George Sand, the great Amazon novelist; some doctors, some artists, two or three actors from the French Comedy, and some other gentlemen. At this period of time Madame Émile de Girardin was forty-five years old. Her flatterers still spoke of her beauty. Her conversation was dazzling, but it lacked charm: her talents forced themselves upon one; her bons mots took you by storm. Strength had overcome everything like grace, and two hours' conversation with Madame Émile de Girardin left one with a sick-headache or exhausted by fatigue. Nevertheless, one of her most fervent admirers has uttered this singular paradox about her: "She would be the first woman of the age, if she had always talked and never written a line."

Her husband, Monsieur Émile de Girardin, was present, with his pale face, lymphatic complexion, glassy eye, and forehead checkered with a Napoleon-like lock. He was then, and has remained ever since, the most exact personification of a pasteboard man of genius lighted by histrionic foot-lights. He was a compound of the dandy, the sophist, and the agitator. His talents lay in making people believe him in possession of ideas, when he had none,—just as speculators disseminate the illusion of their capital, when in reality they are worse than bankrupt. He began what others have since completed,—that is, he made trade and advertisements the sovereign masters of literature and newspapers. Abetted by the spirit of the age, he introduced into the intellectual world the risks and unexpected hazards of stock-jobbing circles. He made a great deal of money in this trade, and, besides, it gave him the pleasure of making a great deal of noise in the world, of overturning governments, of dreaming of being minister, nay, prime-minister, when the day may come in which good, sense is to be challenged and France made bankrupt. Everybody around him, even his wife, seemed to accept his superiority for something unquestionable. Their union was not one of those affectionate, faithful, and tender marriages, such as commonplace folk hope to enjoy, but it was a copartnership of two smart people, aided by two bunches of quills. Each pretended to admire the other with an extravagance of show which made it hard for the bystander to repress doubts and smiles.

Monsieur Jules Sandeau had informed Madame Émile de Girardin that he intended to bring me with him. I do not know how she found out that I had, in the very heart of the Faubourg Saint Germain, an old aunt, a real duchess, who was recognized as an authority whose dicta could not be disputed by any noble family to be found from the Quai Voltaire to the Rue de Babylone, which, as all the world knows, are the frontiers of that, the most aristocratic quarter of Paris. Madame de Girardin knew that my aunt was in a position to open to vanity the portals of some noble houses which talents and fame alone could not open. Now Madame Émile de Girardin's monomania was to be received in the noble faubourg,—to live there perfectly at home, as if it were her native sphere,—to be able to say, "My friend, the little Marchioness," or, "I have just come from our dear Jeanne's house, my charming Countess, you know: she is suffering dreadfully from her neuralgia." She reckoned a triumph of this sort a thousand times preferable to the applause of her readers and her friends. All the dull pleasantries with which she adorned her over-praised "Letters" owed their origin solely to the unequivocal veto placed by two or three courageous noble ladies on the attempts made by Madame Émile de Girardin to force her entrance vi et armis into their mansions. For my aunt's sake, she received me with especial courtesy, which I was ingenuous enough to attribute to my own personal merit. However, I had not time to indulge in analysis: she was about to begin to read her tragedy.

The tragedy was that "Cléopâtre" in which Mademoiselle Rachel appeared, after wrangling for some time with the authoress to induce the latter to give Antony some other name, vowing that Antoine was entirely too vulgar to be uttered on the stage. The great tragic actress had never heard of the illustrious Roman, and knew no other Antony but the Antoine who scrubbed her floors and brought her water. It was a woman's tragedy, but written by a woman in man's attire, determined to write a very masculine, vigorous work, but succeeding in producing only a plated piece, in which everything was puerile, artificial, and conventional, from the first word to the last line. It was an olla podrida, in which Shakspeare hobnobbed with Campistron, Théophile Gautier locked arms with Dorat, Plutarch was dovetailed with the Mantua-Makers' Journal of Fashions. Cleopatra spouted long speeches upon archæology, hieroglyphics, the sun, climate, and virtue; Antony was guilty of concetti in the style of Seneca; Octavia prattled like a respectable Parisian lady, who takes care of her children when they have the measles, and hides from them their father's bad habits. It was neither antique nor Roman, nor classic nor romantic, nor good nor bad nor indifferent; it was a tragical wager won by a smart woman at the expense of her audience. The latter, nevertheless, bravely did their duty. Neither "Le Cid," nor "Polyeucte," nor "Andromaque," nor "Athalie"—Corneille and Racine's masterpieces—ever produced such rapturous enthusiasm. Monsieur Méry dashed off extemporaneously, in Marseillais accent, admiring paradoxes which lacked nothing but splendid rhyme. Monsieur Théophile Gautier, who looked like an obese Turk habited in European clothes, laid aside his Moslem placidity to cry that the tragedy was marvellous. Monsieur Alfred de Musset, lolling in his arm-chair in an attitude which seemed a compromise between sleep and Kief, smiled beatifically. Monsieur Victor Hugo vowed that nothing half so fine had ever before been written in any age or in any country or in any language—except (aside) "my own 'Burgraves'"! Monsieur de Lamartine, like a god descended upon earth and astounded to find himself at home, let fall from his divine lips compliments perfumed with ambrosia, sparkling with poetry, and glittering with indifference. Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, that little bit of a fellow, the fly of the political and literary coach, went first to one and then to another, his eye-glass incrusted in his eyebrow, stiffening his wee form as long as he could make it, rattling his high-heeled boots as loudly as he could contrive, stretching out his round, dogmatic face, puffing and blowing to give himself importance, dying to be the Coryphæus of the company, and mortified to see himself reduced to sing his enthusiasm in the chorus; he frisked about the room, and seemed to be handing around his rapture on a waiter, as domestics hand around cake and ices at parties.

The tragedy fatigued me. This comedy of adulation disgusted me. My very humble and obscure position in the midst of all these illustrious shareholders of the Mutual-Admiration Society, organized by the vanity of all to the profit of the vanity of each, kindled in me a desire to show myself frank and independent. I murmured, loud enough to be heard by all my neighbors,—"Of a truth, the Country's Muse is not Melpomene!" Madame Émile de Girardin, when Mademoiselle Delphine Gay and in the most brilliant period of her poetical youth, had styled herself "the Country's Muse"; her admirers had adopted the title, and it had remained her poetical alias. The exclamation was, therefore, if not very brilliant, at least very plain and quite just. It soon went around the room as rapidly as every ill-natured phrase will go; for everybody is glad to borrow such remarks from his neighbor without paying the price of them himself. I soon saw one of Madame Émile de Girardin's intimate friends whisper something into her ear. She blushed. Her thin lips became thinner. Her nose and her chin, which always seemed as if about to wage war on each other, became more menacing than ever; her bright, clear eyes turned from her friend and gave me a glance ten times more tragic than the five acts of her tragedy. I saw that my exclamation had been repeated to her, and that a universal anathema was thundered at the rustic boor, at the barbarian impudent enough to dare to be witty by Monsieur Méry's side, and to affect to be insensible to the sublime beauties of "Cléopâtre." However, all was not yet lost; I had unconsciously another way of conquering Madame de Girardin's favor. Her countenance became wreathed in smiles, she advanced towards me, and said, in a honeyed tone,—"Well, Count, give me some tidings of our excellent Duchess de –, your aunt, I believe?"

In the mood of mind I was then in, nothing could have been more disagreeable to me than this way of recalling my aristocratic titles at the very moment when I sought to be nothing but a literary man. I replied with a careless, indifferent, plebeian air, as if noble titles were nothing in my opinion,—"The Duchess de –! Gracious me! I never see her, and I could not tell you for the life of me whether she is my aunt or my cousin. Her drawing-room is the stupidest place on earth. They played whist there at two cents a point. Every door was wadded to keep draughts and ideas out. I long ago ceased to go there, and now I would not dare show my face again."

"Admirable! The Provinces are not devoid of sprightliness!" dryly replied Madame Émile de Girardin.

That was enough. I was weighed in the balance and found sadly wanting by an ill-natured remark plus and a duchess minus. Fifteen minutes afterwards we took leave of Madame de Girardin. She gave Monsieur Jules Sandeau a fraternal and virile shake of the hand in the English style; I received only a very cold and very dry nod, which was as much as to say,—"You are an ill-bred fellow and a fool; I have no fancy for you; return here as rarely as possible."

Soon after this memorable evening, Monsieur Jules Sandeau's friendly offices acquainted literary circles that a young man of the best society, devoted to literature, the author of some remarkable sketches in the newspapers and reviews, was about to appear as the literary critic of "L'Assemblée Nationale," the well-known dally newspaper, which has been since suppressed by the government. A month afterwards my signature might have been read at the foot of a feuilleton of fifteen columns. About the same period of time a fashionable publisher brought out a volume of tales by me. This was my literary honey-moon. I was astonished at the number of friends and admirers that rose on every side of me. I could scarcely restrain myself from parodying Alceste's phrase,—"Really, Gentlemen, I did not think myself the fellow of talents I find I am!" But, of all surprises, the human heart finds this the easiest to grow accustomed to. I soon found it perfectly natural that people should look upon me as a genius, and I ingenuously reproached myself for not having sooner made the discovery. Everybody praised my little book as if it were a masterpiece. I might have made a volume with the packets of praises sent to me; but I must add, for truth's sake, that most of my panegyrists took care to slip under the envelope which covered their letter of praise a volume of their works. I have kept several of these letters. Here are copies of three of them.

"Sir,—Your appearance among us is an honor in which every literary man feels he has a share. You will regenerate criticism, as you have purified novel-writing. One becomes better as he reads your works, and feels an irresistible desire to do better that he may be more worthy of your esteem. The days your criticisms appear are our red-letter days, and every line you give our poor little books is worth to them the sale of a hundred copies. I take the liberty to send you herewith a humble volume. You may, perhaps, find in it some over-crude tones, some raw shades; but do not forbear to exercise your critical perspicuity. I submit myself in advance to your reproaches and to your reservations; to be censured by you is even a piece of good fortune, as your reprimands themselves are adorned with courtesy and grace."

"Sir,—I admire you the more because our opinions are not the same; they may be said to be contrary; but extremes meet, and we join hands on a great many points: are we not both of us vanquished? Châteaubriand sympathized, nay, more, fraternized, with Armand Carrel. I am not Carrel, but you may be Châteaubriand before a very long while. I would beg to lay before you the book which goes with this note; some passages of it may, perhaps, wound your honorable regrets, your chivalrous respects, but they are sincere; and this sincerity I have never better understood and practised than when I assure you that I am your most assiduous reader and most fervent admirer."

"Sir,—Do not judge me, I pray you, from the newspapers in which, to my great regret, I write: imperious circumstances, old acquaintance, and—why shall I not confess it?—the necessities of Parisian life, have driven me to appear to have enlisted on the side of the most numerous battalions. But I have in the Provinces a good old mother who reads no newspaper but yours; one of my uncles is a Chevalier de Saint Louis; another served in Condé's army; my Aunt Veronica is a pious woman, who would forever look kindly upon me, if she should ever perceive through her spectacles her nephew's name followed by praise from your pen. For I need not say that you are her favorite author, as, of a truth, you are of everybody; for who can remain insensible to those treasures of.... [Here my modesty refuses to copy the text before me]. There is but one opinion upon this subject. Royalists and democrats, disciples of tradition or fanatics of fancy, voltigeurs of the old monarchy or reformers of the future, are all unanimous in saluting, as a rising glory of our literature, the pure and noble talent which.... [Here my modesty again refuses to copy the text before me].

"P.S. I send you herewith two copies of my works, which I submit to your able and kind criticism."

Nor were appeals like these the only sort of seduction to which I was exposed when I became the literary critic of "L'Assemblée Nationale." The eminent men, sublime philosophers like Monsieur Victor Cousin and Monsieur de Rémusat, incomparable historians like Monsieur Guizot, Monsieur Thiers, Monsieur de Barante, admirable literary men like Monsieur Villemain and Monsieur de Salvandy, (all of whom had spent their lives in laying down political maxims, and in expressing their astonishment that French heads were too hard or French nature too fickle to conform French life to the profound maxims which they, the former, had weighed and meditated in the silence of their study,) who had for eighteen years ruled France, found themselves, one February morning in 1848, stripped of power and of place. They returned to their favorite studies, and produced new works, to the delight of lettered men everywhere. But, as the human heart, even in the beat of men, has its weaknesses, these eminent men, who could not for a single instant doubt either their talents or their success or the universal admiration in which they were held, were a little too fond of hearing these agreeable truths told them in articles devoted especially to their works. Now to heighten the zeal of the authors of these articles, the eminent retired statesmen held in their hands an infallible method: They would take these trumpeters of fame aside, and, without contracting any positive engagement, would distinctly hint to these critics, (a word to the wise is sufficient!) that, after a few years of these excellent and useful services in the daily press or in the periodicals, they, the former, would elect the latter members of the French Academy. A seat in the French Academy was the object of the most ardent ambition. No sooner was the breath out of the body of one of the forty members of the French Academy than twenty candidates entered the lists, and canvassed, canvassed, canvassed the nine-and-thirty living Academicians, without losing a minute in eating, drinking, or sleeping, until the election took place.

You may now see the various sorts of seductions which assailed me during this short and brilliant period of my literary life. The world lay smiling before me, and I felt quite happy,—when I met Monsieur Louis Veuillot, the eminent editor of "L'Univers," which the government has since suppressed.

We had exchanged visiting-cards several times, and a few letters, but I did not as yet know him. I was attracted to him by the very contrasts which existed between us. My elegant and delicate nature (as the newspapers then styled it: they now call it my weak and morbid nature) seemed in absolute contradiction to that robust frame, that oaken solidity, which revealed beneath its rugged bark its virile juices. His masculine and potent ugliness reminded me of Mirabeau, of a plebeian Mirabeau with straight black hair, of a Mirabeau who had found at the foot of the altar calmness for his tempest-tossed soul. His conversation delighted and fascinated me. One felt (despite some coarseness in minor details, and which almost seemed to be assumed) that there glowed within him the energetic convictions of an honest man and a Christian, who had at command the most stinging language that ever wrung the withers of Voltaire's pale successors. No man among our contemporaries has been more hated than Monsieur Louis Veuillot. He has flagellated, kicked, cuffed, jeered, mocked, humiliated, exasperated, better than anybody else, the writers I most detest. He has given them wounds which will forever rankle. He has indelibly branded these miserable actors who play upon the theatre of their vices the comedy of their vanity. We together examined the pages where I had expressed my opinion upon contemporary authors.

"Are these," said Monsieur Louis Veuillot, speaking severely to me, "are these all your sacrifices to the truth? Praises to that one, flattery to this one, soft words to him, compliments to another? You blame them just enough to incite people to buy their books. Is that what you call serving our noble and austere cause? Oh, Sir! Sir!" …

He lectured me long and well. He spoke with the edification of a sermon and the brilliancy of a satire. At last, ashamed of my weakness, electrified by his language, burning to repair lost time, I said to him, pressing his hands in mine,—

"I am dwelling amid the luxuries of Capua; when next you hear from me, I shall be in the midst of the field of battle."

I at once began my campaign. I made war upon Voltaire, Béranger, Eugene Sue, De Balzac, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Michelet, Quinet; and as for the small fry of literature, I showed them no mercy. War was soon declared on me,—war without quarter.

My first adversary was little Monsieur Paulin Limayrac. He has become the most accomplished specimen of the job-editor. As firmly convinced of the supremacy of the Articles of War as the best disciplined private soldier who ever showed how perfect an automaton man may become by thorough discipline, his political opinions are something more than a creed: they are a watchword which be observes with a most supple obstinacy. The cabinet-minister he calls master is a corporal who has the right to think for him; and were the corporal to contradict himself ten times in the course of a single day, imperturbable little Paulin Limayrac would demonstrate to him that he was ten times in the right. But then (that is, in 1855) Monsieur Paulin Limayrac was a Republican, a Socialist; and his weakness lay in imagining not only that people read his articles in "La Presse," but that they remembered them for a whole sennight after reading them. When you met him, he always commenced conversation:—

"Ah, ha! what did I tell you? Am I not an excellent prophet? You remember the prophecy I made the other day? It has come to pass just as I predicted it!"

Poor Paulin Limayrac really thought himself a prophet, when in good truth he was not even a conjurer. Stiffening himself up on his stumpy legs, he stared as hard as he could through his eye-glass, and from his giant's height of four feet ten, at everybody who pretended to believe there was a God in heaven. His occupation just at that time was to toss the incense-burning censer in honor of Madame, Émile de Girardin under her aquiline nose. He had become the page, the groom, the dwarf of this celebrated woman, who had, alas! only a few months more to live. He opened the fire against me. To gratify Madame Émile de Girardin, he one day wrote on the corner of her table twenty harsh lines against me, (he took good care not to sign them,) in which he said of me exactly the contrary of what he had written to me. As these lines were anonymous, I did not care to pretend to recognize the author; besides, can you feel anger towards such a whipper-snapper? I met him a short time afterwards, and he gave me a more cordial shake-hands than ever. Now comes the cream of the fellow's conduct: for all this that I have mentioned is as nothing, so common of occurrence is it in Paris. Note that Madame Émile de Girardin was dying: I was ignorant of it, but Monsieur Paulin Limayrac knew it well. Note further, that for weeks before this he had celebrated in the tenderest sentimental strains the loving friendship which existed between Madame George Sand and Madame Émile de Girardin. Note lastly, that Monsieur Paulin Limayrac had good reason to think that I knew perfectly well who was really the author of the malicious attack on me in "La Presse," which was his paper. Remember all this while I repeat to you the dialogue which took place between us under an arcade of the Rue Castiglione. I said to him,—

"Ah! my dear Sir, Madame George Sand must be gratified this time! Your article this morning upon her autobiography really did hit the bull's-eye, plumb! What fire! what enthusiasm! what lyric strains!"

"I could not help myself," replied he. "It is one of the fatigues of my place, I was obliged to write it."

"Well, between you and me, the truth is that your admiration is a little exaggerated. The work is less dull since Madame George Sand has reached the really interesting periods of her life; but how fatiguing the first part of it was! What stuff she thrust into it! What particulars relating to her family and her mother, which were, to say the least of it, useless!"

"Why, my dear fellow," replied Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, with a knowing look, "don't you know the secret?"

"What secret?"

"Ah! you have not yet shaken off provincial dust! Madame George Sand, with that carelessness one almost always finds in great artists, sent to Monsieur Émile de Girardin that enormous packet of four-and-twenty volumes, at the same time authorizing him to retrench at least one-third of the manuscript, if he thought fit. But Madame de Girardin (who is extremely astute) thought, that, if the work were published without the numerous dull chapters of the first part, it would command too brilliant a success; and Her Most Gracious Majesty determined that the whole four-and-twenty volumes should appear without the omission of a single line,—which is all the more noble, grand, and generous, as we pay a high price for the 'copy,' and it has curtailed our subscription-list a good deal."

"I thought Madame George Sand and Madame Émile de Girardin were upon the footing of a most affectionate friendship."

"'Tis a woman's friendship. 'Tis a poet's love for a poet. Each adores the other; but then what is more vulgar than to love one's friends when they are successful? Every hind can do that; while none but delicate and sensitive souls can shed torrents of tears over a friend's reverses."

A fortnight after this conversation took place, Madame Émile de Girardin died. There was a flood of panegyrics and of tears. Monsieur Paulin Limayrac was chief pall-bearer, and demonstrated in the columns of "La Presse" that Madame Émile de Girardin had herself alone more genius than Sappho, Corinne, Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Staël, and Madame George Sand, all put together.