Barrois

“ Back to Zaragoza sped the gay troubadour, and in a trice a noble embassy was on its way to the Barrois Court to claim the hand of the fascinating Princess and to exchange the heavy ring of State for the lighter jewelled hoop of espousal.
The entry of Queen Yolanda (Violante) into Zaragoza was a resplendent function, and, despite their habitual taciturnity, the citizens hailed the lovely consort of their King with heartiest acclamations. In her train came minstrels and glee-maidens from Champagne and Burgundy, from Provence and the Valley of the Rhine and Languedoc. ”

“ Contes populaires lorrains recueillis dans un village du Barrois, à Montiers-sur-Baulx (Meuse) , Romania, V. 83, 133; VI. 212, 529; VII. 527; VIII. 545; IX. 377; X. 117, 543.
Cox: The Mythology of the Aryan Nations. By G. W. Cox. 2 vols. London, 1870. 8°. ”

“ Ligny-en-Barrois (pop. 4879) manufactures scientific instruments. There are cotton-spinning, wool-weaving, and hemp, flax and jute factories, saw-mills, carriage works, leather manufactures, glassworks, paper-mills, distilleries and flour-mills. The department is served by the Eastern railway, the principal lines being that from Paris to Strassburg through Bar-le-Duc and Commercy, that from Paris to Metz through Verdun, and the branch line of the Meuse valley. The chief waterways are the canal connecting the Marne with the Rhine and the Eastern canal along the Meuse valley ”

“ Paris, Baudry. 1832. [8o.
[Katalog der Bucher, von Eduard Grisebach, 1894, p. 127.]
Note.—The Front. is "Lord Byron," from a portrait by Hopwood. Quérard, 1846, gives the names of the publishers of this edition as Baudry, Barrois, Amyot.
XLVIII.
The Works, etc., In Verse and Prose. Including his Letters, Journals, etc. With a sketch of his Life. New York: George Dearborn, Publisher. 1833. 4o. pp. xxviii., 203, 619. ["... The first complete edition of the Poetical and Prose Works of Lord Byron."—Publisher's Advt.] ”

“ Bar was, so to speak, the golden hub of the great humming wheel of Franco-Flemish arts and crafts. Bordered by Luxembourg, Lorraine, Champagne, and [33] Burgundy, the fountain-heads of rich and generous vintages, she took toll of all, and the Barroisiens were the healthiest, wealthiest, and the merriest folk in the French borderland.
The influence of the bewitching and accomplished Princess-Countess Iolande was paramount, and she was ever adding to her fame by making royal progresses throughout her husband’s domains. ”

“ For my present purpose—which is to examine the progress of Barrès, and especially his influence on recent literature, it is enough to say that these first volumes were the work of a man for whom the inner world alone exists. He, who was to become the voice of his province and his race, makes his first appearance as a being released from all ties and all traditions. The hero of Sous l’œil des Barbares has no country, no profession, no family, no local habitation, and no name. The one existence and the one reality are, in his eyes, the Ego,—in other words, his own mind. ”

“ In a phrase which only a French mind, perhaps, can understand, he says, 'Be skeptical - and ardent!' That cause which is to excite his ardor is to be the life of Lorraine with its quiet beauty, its recovered peace, its procession of passing generations; and through Lorraine, the national collectivity of France. With that precise and beautiful social intuition of the French genius, this 'moi' of Barres, unsatisfied with itself, reaches out and finds itself not an individual in a fortuitous collection, but a link in a great chain, a focus of innumerable rays of culture, tradition, and race. ”

“ I would also point out to your Majesty that my comrades would not have been here if, because of my fault, I had not trusted the Master of Ballengeich, and, through him, the King; therefore I ask you to let me alone pay the penalty of my error, and allow my friends to go scatheless from the grim walls of Stirling."
"There is reason in what you say," replied the King. "Are you all agreed to that?" he asked of the others.
"No, by Heaven!" cried the leader, springing to his feet and smiting the table with his fist as lustily as the King had done. "We stand together or fall together. ”

“ MAURICE BARRÈS I Maurice Barrès is the oldest of all the personages of this little book, which deals emphatically with the young—with the writers of the Twentieth Century, and not with those already famous fifteen years ago. Still, every rule has its exceptions; and it is impossible to imagine the young literature of our days without this man of fifty. Time flies, and never did it seem to me to fly more swiftly than in this moment, when I realise that Barrès must be ranked among the middle-aged. ”

“ Martin, I want a long talk with you about Mr. Barrie. I know that you are very intimate with him. I need not tell you that I esteem him very highly. As a minister he has few equals, that we all feel; he is, besides, a gentleman in every sense of the word—a scholar, a man of culture, quite an acquisition to the district. Then Mrs. Barrie is a most delightful creature,—I do not know a more thorough lady than she is; and they have a very nice family—very nice children indeed—good-looking;—so they may well be, considering their parents—the handsomest couple in the parish, I may say in the county. ”

“ The pest of 1530 drove him from Lisbon to his country house near Pombal, and there he finished a moral dialogue, Rhopica Pneuma, which met with the applause of the learned Juan Luis Vives. On his return to Lisbon in 1532 the king appointed Barros factor of the India and Mina House—positions of great responsibility and importance at a time when Lisbon was the European emporium for the trade of the East. Barros proved a good administrator, displaying great industry and a disinterestedness rare in that age, with the result that he made but little money where his predecessors had amassed fortunes. ”

“ All these tendencies seem to mark the reappearance of a fusion of thought and action, of intelligence and feeling, which is the characteristic charm of the French genius. In the midst of what seems like reaction, this new spirit is searching for a national self-consciousness which shall clearly see, strongly feel, and sanely act. In the search for the naiionalisme integrale of Barres, the youth of to-day, one feels, are seeking the nourishing qualities of the traditional trait, the richness of a common culture which, has a right to make traditionalism seem seductive and beautiful. ”

“ But such individualism in a soul which was searching for the French genius, always incorrigibly social, could only be unstable and ephemeral, and it is because Barres's thought felt the wider appeal of the nation's soul that he is the most eagerly read French writer to-day, while the symbolist contemporaries of his youth have passed like their own fleeting sensations. Already in Le Culte du Moi, with its pictures of his native Lorraine countryside into which he withdraws with his friend to meditate, one feels the suggestion of the larger collective life to which he must soon be sensitive. ”

“ Down the wide stairs from the Rittersaal came the clank of armour and rude shouts of laughter. Newly lighted torches flared up here and there, illuminating the courtyard, and showing, dangling against the northern wall a score of ropes with nooses at the end of each. Into the courtyard clattered the Baron and his followers. The Abbot stood with arms folded, pressing a gilded cross across his breast. He was a head taller than any of his frightened, cowering brethren, and his noble emaciated face was thin with fasting caused by his never-ending conflict with the world that was within himself. ”

“ Barrie, like the rest of them, was apparently smitten with 'the last infirmity of noble mind,' as that infirmity takes shape before the lower type of literary purveyor, and decided to write a full-blown novel. The Little Minister is that full-blown novel, and it is an effort over which any true friend of Mr. Barrie's should weep. What a perfect, what a grotesque mishap it is! The book is an irremediable failure because it is utterly wrong as a whole. What a mere circus caricature is the central personage, that inhuman 'Egyptian woman'! ”

“ You see, Ballengeich, in this matter I'm between the cart-wheel and the hard road. My head's off if this plot miscarries, as you've just told me, and my throat's cut if I withdraw from the secret conclave. It's but a choice between two bashings. There's a dead cobbler in any event."
"I see your difficulty," said the Laird; "do you want to be helped out of it." ”

“ The ex-chancellor sat down again, and drew his hand across his damp forehead.
"Your Majesty," spoke up the baron, a ring of defiance in his voice, "I speak not for my comrades, but for myself. I begin no game I am afraid to finish. We were about to dice in order to discover whether your Majesty should live or die."
A simultaneous moan seemed to rise from the assembled traitors. The smile returned to the king's lips.
"Baron," he said, "I have ever chided myself for loving you, for you were always a bad example to weak and impressionable natures. ”

“ They felt no more hatred to him than they felt to the horses which dragged the cannon of the Duke of Brunswick and of the Prince of Saxe-Coburg. The horses had only done according to their kind, and would, if they fell into the hands of the French, drag with equal vigour and equal docility the guns of the republic, and therefore ought not merely to be spared, but to be well fed and curried. So was it with Barère. He was of a nature so low, that it might be doubted whether he could properly be an object of the hostility of reasonable beings. ”

“ A man of lofty character, he preferred leaving his children an example of good morals and learning to bequeathing them a large pecuniary inheritance, and, though he received many royal benefactions, they were volunteered, never asked for. As an historian and a stylist Barros deserves the high fame he has always enjoyed. ”

“ But in these ideas, 'les plus hautes et les plus desolees,' the youth of Barres's day found no fortification of soul. The atmosphere of detached rationalism, the divorce of pure reason and pure sensibility, so uncongenial to the personal and artistic French spirit, could only tear up the youth from their French soil, without transplanting them into the rich German ground. Such philosophy could only make those who absorbed it candidates for nihilism. ”

“ I suppose the poor man thought that black doom had fallen upon him from the sky. He gave a great howl as he, Forister, the cloaks, cushions, and rugs spread out grandly in one sublime confusion.
Some ladies screamed, and a bold commanding voice said: "In the devil's name what have we here?" Behind the unhappy servant had been coming two ladies and a very tall gentleman in a black cloak that reached to his heels. What have we here?" again cried this tall man, who looked like an old eagle. He stepped up to me haughtily. I knew that I was face to face with the Earl of Westport. ”

“ The heavy curtains parted and the king entered the room, clad in the imposing robes of his high state. A frown was on his brow, and he advanced straight from the doorway to the throne at the head of the table, without speaking or casting a glance at any one of the eleven. When he had seated himself he said gruffly,—
“There is a chair for each of you; sit down.”
It is doubtful if any of the company, except the cobbler, at first recognised their ruler as the alleged Laird of Ballengeich; but at the sound of the monarch’s voice several started and looked anxiously one at another. ”

“ He recognizes that he 'represents a moment in the development of a race, an instant in a long culture, a gesture among a thousand gestures, of a force which preceded him and will survive him.' And with Lorraine as the text, a theme which at once calls to his own mind a rich treasury of tradition and stirs in the mind of the French reader the feelings of assertion and revenge, Barres proceeds, after the insufficiency of the 'cult of himself has been established in Le Jardin de Berenice, and Sur l'CEil des Barbares, to a reconstruction of French nationalism. ”

“ Perhaps; but Barrès (whose singular temperament appears to combine the sense of order with a contempt for law) has always sought an axiom, a religion, a discipline, which would satisfy an ardent sensibility, and unite the individual with the brothers of his race and faith, while yet leaving free that inner Ego which, after all, has nothing to do with our organisations and arrangements, which transcends reason and order, being (if indeed anything is) in direct communication with the Infinite. ”

“ A writer who cannot find readers generally attributes the public neglect to any cause rather than to the true one; and Barère was no exception to the general rule. His old hatred to Paris revived in all its fury. That city, he says, has no sympathy with France. No Parisian cares to subscribe to a journal which dwells on the real [Pg 577] wants and interests of the country. To a Parisian nothing is so ridiculous as patriotism. The higher classes of the capital have always been devoted to England. A corporal from London is better received among them than a French general. ”

“ Barrie has accomplished has not been due to the repression of himself to meet the measure of English classical tradition, on the one hand; nor, on the other, has he extended himself in order to catch the popular fancy—and he has got them both. He is pronounced literature by those who know it when they see it, and he would be pronounced a successful man even by those to whom money is the measure of success. ”

“ The headsman whipped off the black cloth and displayed underneath it a box containing a large jug surrounded by eleven drinking-horns. Those present, all now on their feet, glanced with amazement from the masked man to the king. The sternness had vanished from his majesty’s face, as if a dark cloud had passed from the sun and allowed it to shine again. There sparkled in the king’s eye all the jubilant mischief of the incorrigible boy, and his laughter rang to the ceiling. Somewhat recovering his gravity he stretched out his hand and pointed a finger at the cobbler. ”