Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

“ Then she turned away with a restless sigh; her eyes fell on the manuscript, but the charm of it was gone. A sentiment of distrust in its worth had crept into her thoughts, unconsciously to herself, and the page open before her at an uncompleted sentence seemed unwelcome and wearisome as a copy-book is to a child condemned to relinquish a fairy tale half told, and apply himself to a task half done. She fell again into a revery, when, starting as from a dream, she heard herself addressed by name, and turning round saw Savarin and Gustave Rameau in the room. ”

“ In his stormy youth there had been lightning- like flashes of good instincts, of irregular honour, of inconsistent generosity,—a puissant wild nature, with strong passions of love and of hate, without fear, but not without shame. In other forms of society that love of applause which had made him seek and exult in the notoriety which he mistook for fame might have settled down into some solid and useful ambition. He might have become great in the world's eye, for at the service of his desires there were no ordinary talents. ”

“ Lebeau fascinated him, and took colossal proportions in his intoxicated vision,—vision indeed intoxicated at this moment, for before it floated the realized image of his aspirations,—a journal of which he was to be the editor-in-chief; in which his poetry, his prose, should occupy space as large as he pleased; through which his name, hitherto scarce known beyond a literary clique, would resound in salon and club and cafe, and become a familiar music on the lips of fashion. ”

“ But do you, or does any man in his senses believe that if you upset the Empire you could get back the Bourbons; that you would not be in imminent danger of a Government infinitely more opposed to the theories on which rests the creed of Legitimists than that of Louis Napoleon? After all, what is there in the loyalty of you Bourbonites that has in it the solid worth of an argument which can appeal to the comprehension of mankind, except it be the principle of a hereditary monarchy? Nobody nowadays can maintain the right divine of a single regal family to impose itself upon a nation. ”

“ His ministers will be but weathercocks, turned hither and thither according as the wind chops at Paris; and Paris is the temple of the winds. The new revolution is almost at hand. [Murmurs of applause.] It would move the laughter of the Tuileries and its ministers, of the Bourse and of its gamblers, of every dainty salon of this silken city of would-be philosophers and wits, if they were told that here within this mouldering baraque, eight men, so little blessed by fortune, so little known to fame as ourselves, met to concert the fall of an empire. ”

“ But that charming girl, Isaura! What an enigma the gift of the pen is! No one can ever guess who has it until tried."
"The young lady's manuscript, then, really merits the praise you bestowed on it?"
"Much more praise, though a great deal of blame, which I did not bestow, —for in a first work faults insure success as much as beauties. Anything better than tame correctness. Yes, her first work, to judge by what is written, must make a hit,—a great hit. And that will decide her career. A singer, an actress, may retire,—often does when she marries an author; but once an author always an author." ”

“ Her glow of sentiment, her play of fancy, her artistic yearnings for truths remote, for the invisible fairyland of beautiful romance, receded into the background of the picture. It was all these, no doubt, that had so strengthened and enriched the love at first sight, which had shaken the equilibrium of his positive existence; and yet he now viewed all these as subordinate to the one image of mild decorous matronage into which wedlock was to transform the child of genius, longing for angel wings and unlimited space. ”

“ Nominally you will be editor-in-chief: that station, if the journal succeeds, will secure you position and fortune; if it fail, you fail with it. But we will not speak of failure; I must have it succeed. Our interest, then, is the same. Before that interest all puerile vanities fade away. Nominally, I say, you are editor-in- chief; but all the real work of editing will, at first, be done by others."
"Ah!" exclaimed Rameau, aghast and stunned. Lebeau resumed,
"To establish the journal I propose needs more than the genius of youth; it needs the tact and experience of mature years." ”

“ You, Armand Monnier, simple ouvrier, but of illustrious parentage, for your grandsire was the beloved friend of the virtuous Robespierre, your father perished a hero and a martyr in the massacre of the coup d'etat; you, cultured in the eloquence of Robespierre himself, and in the persuasive philosophy of Robespierre's teacher, Rousseau; you, the idolized orator of the Red Republicans,—you will be indeed a chief of dauntless bands when the trumpet sounds for battle. ”

“ Practical man as he was, he knew so well all the dangers, all the snares, all the sorrows, all the scandals menacing name and fame, that in the world of Paris must beset the fatherless girl who, not less in authorship than on the stage, leaves the safeguard of private life forever behind her, who becomes a prey to the tongues of the public. ”

“ To you I need not enlarge upon the fact that, at Paris, a combination of men, though immeasurably superior to us in status or influence, without a journal at command is nowhere; with such a journal, written not to alarm but to seduce fluctuating opinions, a combination of men immeasurably inferior to us may be anywhere.
"Confreres, this affair settled, I proceed to distribute amongst you sums of which each who receives will render me an account, except our valued confrere the Pole. All that we can subscribe to the cause of humanity a representative of Poland requires for himself." ”

“ With all the efforts of the democrats to establish equality and fraternity, it is among the aristocrats that equality and fraternity are most to be found. All gentilshommes in the best society are equals; and whether they embrace or fight each other, they embrace or fight as brothers of the same family. But with the tone of manners Alain de Rochebriant imbibed still more insensibly the lore of that philosophy which young idlers in pursuit of pleasure teach to each other. ”

“ Certainly Victor de Mauleon was not, at the date of his fall, a man to whom the thought of accepting, much less of stealing, the jewels of a woman who loved him could have occurred as a possible question of casuistry between honour and temptation. Nor could that sort of question have, throughout the sternest trials or the humblest callings to which his after-life had been subjected, forced admission into his brain. He was one of those men, perhaps the most terrible though unconscious criminals, who are the offsprings produced by intellectual power and egotistical ambition. ”

“ I say monarchy gains much by the loyal adhesion of any man of courage, ability, and honour. Every new monarchy gains much by conversions from the ranks by which the older monarchies were strengthened and adorned. But I do not here invoke your aid merely to this monarchy, my cousin; I demand your devotion to the interests of France; I demand that you should not rest an outlaw from her service. Ah, you think that France is in no danger, that you may desert or oppose the Empire as you list, and that society will remain safe! You are mistaken. Ask Enguerrand. ”

“ I am, indeed, an impostor to myself till it be fulfilled. I will go to Aix, and take Renard with me. I am impatient till I set out, but I cannot quit Paris without once more seeing Isaura. She consents to relinquish the stage; surely I could wean her too from intimate friendship with a woman whose genius has so fatal an effect upon enthusiastic minds. ”

“ It is not a philosophy that flowers richly in the reek of fogs and in the teeth of east winds; it wants for full development the light atmosphere of Paris. Now this philosophy began rapidly to exercise its charms upon Alain de Rochebriant. Even in the society of professed Legitimists, he felt that faith had deserted the Legitimist creed or taken refuge only as a companion of religion in the hearts of high-born women and a small minority of priests. ”

“ Rameau approached, half incredulous, half envious.
"My dear child," resumed Savarin, drawing away the manuscript from Isaura's coy, reluctant clasp, "do permit me to cast a glance over these papers. For what I yet know, there may be here more promise of fame than even you could gain as a singer."
The electric chord in Isaura's heart was touched. Who cannot conceive what the young writer feels, especially the young woman-writer, when hearing the first cheery note of praise from the lips of a writer of established fame? ”

“ And therefore, as you say, war is in the atmosphere; and we may also hear, in the clouds that give no sign of dispersion, the growl of the gathering thunder. War may come any day; and if France be not at once the victor—"
"France not at once the victor?" interrupted Alain, passionately; "and against a Prussian! Permit me to say no Frenchman can believe that."
"Let no man despise a foe," said Graham, smiling half sadly. ”

“ Between the age of sixteen and the date of marriage, six well-educated clever girls out of ten keep a journal; not one well-educated man in ten thousand does. So, without serious and settled intention of becoming an author, how naturally a girl of ardent feeling and vivid fancy seeks in poetry or romance a confessional,—an outpouring of thought and sentiment, which are mysteries to herself till she has given them words, and which, frankly revealed on the page, she would not, perhaps could not, utter orally to a living ear. ”

“ Rameau is not worthless; he has beauty and youth and talent. My wife thinks more highly of him than I do; but I must respect a man who has found admirers so sincere as to set him up in a journal, and give him carte blanche for terms to contributors. I know of no man in Paris more valuable to me. His worth to me this morning is thirty thousand francs. I own I do not think him likely to be a very safe husband; but then French female authors and artists seldom take any husbands except upon short leases. There are no vulgar connubial prejudices in the pure atmosphere of art. ”

“ But when something incalculably worse for the interests of society than picking a pocket or cheating at cards was concerned; when for the sake either of private ambition or political experiment hitherto untested, and therefore very doubtful, the peace and order and happiness of millions might be exposed to the release of the most savage passions, rushing on revolutionary madness or civil massacre, then this French dare-devil would have been just as unscrupulous as any English philosopher whom a metropolitan borough might elect as its representative. ”

“ And in the first stage of popular revolution the mob has no greater darling than the noble who deserts his order, though in the second stage it may guillotine him at the denunciation of his cobbler. A mind so sanguine and so audacious as that of Victor de Mauleon never thinks of the second step if it sees a way to the first. ”

“ You are too skilled a man of the world, Monsieur Enguerrand, not to know that it is not only legislators and ministers that are necessary to the support of a throne, and the safeguard of a nation. Do you not see how great a help it is to both throne and nation when that section of public opinion which is represented by names illustrious in history, identified with records of chivalrous deeds and loyal devotion, rallies round the order established? ”

“ On the contrary, even subordinate to her joy at the thought that she had not mistaken the instincts which led her to a nobler vocation than that of the singer, that the cage-bar was opened, and space bathed in sunshine was inviting the new-felt wings,—subordinate even to that joy was a joy more wholly, more simply woman's. "If," thought she, in this joy, "if this be true, my proud ambition is realized; all disparities of worth and fortune are annulled between me and him to whom I would bring no shame of mesalliance!" Poor dreamer, poor child! ”

“ The heart has no history which philosophers can recognize. An ordinary political observer, contemplating the condition of a nation, may very safely tell us what effects must follow the causes patent to his eyes; but the wisest and most far-seeing sage, looking at a man at one o'clock, cannot tell us what revulsions of his whole being may be made ere the clock strike two.
As Isaura rose to greet her visitor, Savarin came from the window-niche, the manuscript in his hand. ”

“ My vindicator must be a man of whom the vulgar cannot say, 'Oh, he is a relation,—a fellow-noble; those aristocrats whitewash each other.' It must be an authority with the public at large,—a bourgeois, a millionaire, a roi de la Bourse. I choose you, and that ends the discussion."
Louvier could not help laughing good-humouredly at the sang froid of the Vicomte. He was once more under the domination of a man who had for a time dominated all with whom he lived.
De Mauleon continued: "Your task will be easy enough. Society changes rapidly at Paris. ”

“ According to that conception, while the council may communicate as it will with all societies, secret or open, having revolution for their object, the council refuses to merge itself in any other confederation; it stands aloof and independent; it declines to admit into its code any special articles of faith in a future beyond the bounds to which it limits its design and its force. That design unites us; to go beyond would divide. We all agree to destroy the Napoleonic dynasty; none of us might agree as to what we should place in its stead. ”

“ In a word, if you prefer monarchy to the hazard of republicanism for such a country as France, accept the monarchy you find, since it is quite clear you cannot rebuild the monarchy you would prefer. Does it not embrace all the great objects for which you call yourself Legitimist? Under it religion is honoured, a national Church secured, in reality if not in name; under it you have united the votes of millions to the establishment of the throne; under it all the material interests of the country, commercial, agricultural, have advanced with an unequalled rapidity of progress ”

“ He remained silent, leaving it to Enguerrand to answer.
"Dear Madame," said the latter, "I do not see how either myself or our kinsman can merit your reproach. We are not legislators. I doubt if there is a single department in France that would elect us, if we offered ourselves. It is not our fault if the various floods of revolution leave men of our birth and opinions stranded wrecks of a perished world. The emperor chooses his own advisers, and if they are bad ones, his Majesty certainly will not ask Alain and me to replace them." ”