George Du Maurier

“ My life is so full of Barty Josselin that I can hardly be said to have ever had an existence apart from his; and I can think of no easier or better way to tell Barty's history than just telling my own—from the days I first knew him—and in my own way; that is, in the best telegraphese I can manage—picking each precious word with care, just as though I were going to cable it, as soon as written, to Boston or New York, where the love of Barty Josselin shines with even a brighter and warmer glow than here, or even in France ”

“ So much for Barty Josselin's school life and mine. I fear I may have dwelt on them at too great a length. No period of time has ever been for me so bright and happy as those seven years I spent at the Institution F. Brossard—especially the four years I spent there with Barty Josselin. The older I get, the more I love to recall the trivial little incidents that made for us both the sum of existence in those happy days.
La chasse aux souvenirs d'enfance! what better sport can there be, or more bloodless, at my time of life? ”

“ I am conscious that all this is rather dull reading. Alas! Merry England is a devilish dull place compared to foreign parts—and success, respectability, and domestic bliss are the dullest things to write—or read—about that I know—and with middle age to follow too!
It was during that first summer at Marsfield that Barty told me the extraordinary story of Martia, and I really thought he had gone mad. For I knew him to be the most truthful person alive.
Even now I hardly know what to think, nor did Leah—nor did Barty himself up to the day of his death. ”

“ Indeed, it was a lively party that journeyed to Düsseldorf that afternoon in that gorgeously gilded compartment, though three out of the six were in deep mourning; the only person not quite happy being Lady Jane, who, in addition to her trouble about her eyes (which was really nothing to speak of) , began to fidget herself miserably about Barty Josselin; for that wretched young detrimental was evidently beginning to ingratiate himself with the divine Julia as no young man had ever been known to do before, keeping her in fits of laughter, and also laughing at everything she said herself. ”

“ Next day the Gibsons started for their little trip up the Rhine, and Barty was left to his own reflections, and he reflected a great deal; not about what he meant to do himself, but about how he should tell Martia what he meant to do.
As for himself, his mind was thoroughly made up: he would break at once and forever with a world he did not properly belong to, and fight his own little battle unaided, and be a painter—a good one, if he could. If not, so much the worse for him. Life is short. ”

“ Barty's dead, and I've got so much more than I need, who am of a frugal mind—and what I've got is all going to little Josselins, who have already got so much more than they need, what with their late father and me; and my sister, who is a widow and childless, and "riche à millions" too! and cares for nobody in all this wide world but little Josselins, who don't care for money in the least, and would sooner work for their living—even break stones on the road—anything sooner than loaf and laze and loll through life. ”

“ The only event of any importance in Barty's life that year was his first communion, which he took with several others of about his own age. An event that did not seem to make much impression on him—nothing seemed to make much impression on Barty Josselin when he was very young. He was just a lively, irresponsible, irrepressible human animal—always in perfect health and exuberant spirits, with an immense appetite for food and fun and frolic; like a squirrel, a collie pup, or a kitten. ”

“ I'm afraid it is not in me to love a very good wife of my own as much as I really ought!
And I love her children as well as if they'd been mine, and her grandchildren even better. They are irresistible, these grandchildren of Barty's and Leah's—mine wouldn't have been a patch on them; besides, I get all the fun and none of the bother and anxiety. Evidently it was my true vocation to remain single—and be a tame cat in a large, warm house, where there are lots of nice children. ”

“ She had lived so long in France that she was Frencher than the French themselves.
And they both loved good music—Mozart, Bach, Beethoven—and were almost priggish in their contempt for anything of a lighter kind; especially with a lightness English or French! It was only the musical lightness of Germany they could endure at all! But whether in Paris or London, enter Barty Josselin, idle school-boy, or dandy dissipated guardsman, and fashionable man about town, or bohemian art student; and Bach, lebewohl! good‐bye, Beethoven! bonsoir le bon Mozart! ”

“ I fear her ladyship would not have appreciated very keenly the rising splendor of a certain not altogether unimportant modern house in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury—and here she would have been wrong. The time has come when we throw the handkerchief at female Rohans, we Maurices and our like. I have not done so myself, it is true; but not from any rooted antipathy to any daughter of a hundred earls—nor yet from any particular diffidence on my own part.
Anyhow, Lady Caroline loved to hear all Barty had to say of his gay life among the beauty, rank, and fashion of Blankenberghe. ”

“ Barty, I will never doubt you again, and we will do great things together. They will not be quite what I used to hope, but they will be worth doing, and all the doing will be yours. All I can do is to set your brains in motion—those innocent brains that don't know their own strength any more than a herd of bullocks which any little butcher boy can drive to the slaughter-house. ”

“ The immense fame and success that Barty Josselin achieved were to him a source of constant disquiet. He could take neither pride nor pleasure in what seemed to him not his; he thought himself a fraud.
Yet only the mere skeleton of his work was built up for him by his demon; all the beauty of form and color, all the grace of movement and outer garb, are absolutely his own. ”

“ Julia Royce, and no other woman in the world.
"It is in you to become so great when you are ripe that she will worship the ground you walk upon; but you can only become as great as that through her and through me, who have a message to deliver to mankind here on earth, and none but you to give it a voice—not one. But I must have my reward, and that can only come through your marriage with Julia.
"When you have read this, Barty, go straight to Riffrath, and see Julia if you can, and be to her as you have so often been to any women you wished to please, and who were not worth pleasing. ”

“ Then home to supper at the Gibsons' lodgings, and Barty sat opposite Leah, and drank in the beauty of her face, which had so wonderfully ripened and accentuated and individualized itself since he had seen her last, three years before.
As he discreetly gazed, whenever she was not looking his way, saying to himself, like Geraint: "'Here by God's rood is the one maid for me,'" he suddenly felt the north, and started with a kind of terror as he remembered Martia. He bade the company a hasty good-night, and went for a long walk by the Rhine, and had a long talk with his Egeria. ”

“ She's just fit to be some pious Quaker's wife, or a Sister of Charity, or a governess, or a hospital nurse, or a nun—no companion for a man destined to move the world!
"Barty, you don't know what you are; you have never thought; you have never yet looked within!
"Barty, with Julia by your side and me at your back, you will be a leader of men, and sway the destinies of your country, and raise it above all other nations, and make it the arbiter of Europe—of the whole world—and your seed will ever be first among the foremost of the earth. ”

“ Gibson, whose fondness for Barty soon grew into absolute worship!
And Leah, so reserved and self‐contained in general company, would laugh till the tears ran down her cheeks; and the music of her laughter, which was deep and low, rang more agreeably to Barty's ear than even the ravishing strains of Adelina Patti—the last of the great prime donne of our time, I think—whose voice still stirs me to the depths, with vague remembrance of fresh girlish innocence turned into sound.
Long life to her and to her voice! Lovely voices should never fade, nor pretty faces either! ”

“ She became especially fond of the ill-fated but amiable Lord Runswick—Barty's father. Then through him she knew Antoinette, and loved her so well that she determined to incarnate herself at last as their child; but she had become very cautious and worldly during her wandering life on earth, and felt that she would not be quite happy either as a man or a woman in Western Europe unless she were reborn in holy wedlock—a concession she made to our British prejudices in favor of respectability; she describes herself as the only Martian Philistine and snob. ”

“ Martia, I have done my best. I would make any sacrifice to obey you, but I cannot give up my freedom to love the woman that attracts me as I have never been attracted before. I would sooner live a poor and unsuccessful straggler in the art I have chosen, with her to help me live, than be the mightiest man in England without her—even with Julia, whom I admire as much, and even more! ”

“ Oh, help me to that!
"Barty, when I am a splendid son of yours or a sweet and lovely daughter, all remembrance of what I was before will have been wiped out of me until I die. But you will remember, and so will Leah, and both will love me with such a love as no earthly parents have ever felt for any child of theirs yet.
"Think of the poor loving soul, lone, wandering, but not lost, that will so trustfully look up at you out of those gleeful innocent eyes! ”

“ Barty dreamt of this adventure, and woke up laughing at it in the small hours of that night. Then, suddenly, in the dark, he remembered the horror of what had happened. It overwhelmed him. He realized, as in a sudden illuminating flash, what life meant for him hence‐forward—life that might last for so many years.
Vitality is at its lowest ebb at that time of night; though the brain is quick to perceive, and so clear that its logic seems inexorable. ”