Bois-Guilbert

“ Templar, thou wilt not fail me?"
"Hand and glove, I will not!" said Bois-Guilbert. "But haste thee, in the name of God!"
De Bracy hastily drew his men together, and rushed down to the postern gate, which he caused instantly to be thrown open. But scarce was this done ere the portentous strength of the Black Knight forced his way inward in despite of De Bracy and his followers. Two of the foremost instantly fell, and the rest gave way notwithstanding all their leader's efforts to stop them.
"Dogs!" said De Bracy, "will ye let two men win our only pass for safety?"
"He is the devil!" ”

“ I lose fame, I lose honour, I lose the prospect of such greatness as scarce emperors attain to—I sacrifice mighty ambition, I destroy schemes built as high as the mountains with which heathens say their heaven was once nearly scaled—and yet, Rebecca," he added, throwing himself at her feet, "this greatness will I sacrifice, this fame will I renounce, this power will I forego, even now when it is half within my grasp, if thou wilt say, Bois-Guilbert, I receive thee for my lover." ”

“ May not his absence from literature be owing as much to the limitations as to the disregard of modern realists? Is he, in truth, so easily drawn as to be unworthy of their subtle and discriminating pens? Is Sir Giles Overreach a mere child's toy in comparison with Consul Bernick, and is Brian de Bois-Guilbert unworthy to rank with Johann Tönnesen and Oswald Alving? A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. ”

“ The trumpets sounded, and the knights charged each other in full career. The wearied horse of Ivanhoe, and its no less exhausted rider, went down, as all had expected, before the well-aimed lance and vigorous steed of the Templar. This issue of the combat all had foreseen; but although the spear of Ivanhoe did but, in comparison, touch the shield of Bois-Guilbert, that champion, to the astonishment of all who beheld it reeled in his saddle, lost his stirrups, and fell in the lists. ”

“ Hear me, Rebecca,” he said, proceeding with animation; “a better chance hast thou for life and liberty than yonder knaves and dotard dream of. Mount thee behind me on my steed—on Zamor, the gallant horse that never failed his rider. I won him in single fight from the Soldan of Trebizond—mount, I say, behind me—in one short hour is pursuit and enquiry far behind—a new world of pleasure opens to thee—to me a new career of fame. Let them speak the doom which I despise, and erase the name of Bois-Guilbert from their list of monastic slaves! ”

“ Brian de Bois-Guilbert?"---muttered Cedric; "Normans both;---but Norman or Saxon, the hospitality of Rotherwood must not be impeached; they are welcome, since they have chosen to halt---more welcome would they have been to have ridden further on their way---But it were unworthy to murmur for a night's lodging and a night's food; in the quality of guests, at least, even Normans must suppress their insolence.---Go, Hundebert," he added, to a sort of major-domo who stood behind him with a white wand; "take six of the attendants, and introduce the strangers to the guests' lodging. ”

“ You men, so rash and so stupid, you do not understand how infinitely precious to us poor women is the spotless bloom of our reputation." Rust protested that the bloom upon the unplucked peach was not, in his eyes, more stainless than the reputation of Madame. How she must have grinned! He made plans, rude, coarse plans, for the shielding of the so precious reputation of dear Madame Guilbert, but she gently put them aside. "In my hands," she declared grandly, "le Capitaine Guilbert has left his honour, and I will guard it with my life. ”

“ Now she is raucous, now tender; have you ever seen so sweet a smile; have you ever observed so coarse a mien? She can run the gamut from a sleek priest to a child (as in C'est le Mai) , from a jealous husband to a guilty wife (Le Jaloux et la Menteuse) , from an apache (Ma Tête) to a charming old lady (Lisette) .
YVETTE GUILBERT
from a photograph by Alice Boughton
It is easy to liken the art of this marvellous woman to something concrete, to the drawings of Toulouse-Lautrec or Steinlen, the posters of Chéret ... and there is indeed a suggestion of these men in the work of Yvette Guilbert. ”

“ And every day Burchard grew worse, and watched his end approaching.
VI
Moved by pity for her husband, the Countess at last found out the cause of his illness, and entreated him to allow himself to be cured. But the Count in his pride refused more than ever to give his consent to the marriage.
So the lady resolved to go without his knowledge to pray for mercy from the spinner, and in the name of Renelde's dead mother she besought her to spin no more. Renelde gave her promise, but in the evening Guilbert arrived at the cottage. ”

“ It seems ungracious to speak of Yvette Guilbert as a great artist. She is so much less than that and so much more. She has dedicated her autobiography to God and it is certain that she believes her genius to be a holy thing. No one else on the stage to-day has worked so faithfully, or so long, no one else has so completely fulfilled her obligations to her art, and certainly no one else is so nearly human. She compasses the chasm between the artist and the public with ease. ”

“ Only great actresses can fail. A really bad actress always fails and consequently cannot be considered at all. A mediocre or conventional actress is neither very good nor very bad in any rôle, but a great actress, when she fails, fails magnificently, because she plays with such precision and authority that she is worse than a lesser person possibly could be.
Certainly Yvette Guilbert failed magnificently in Guibour. I have been told that her infrequent performances in comedy in Paris have been equally unsuccessful. ”

“ True artists, indeed, have a habit of accomplishing this feat. I may call to your attention the careers of Olive Fremstad, Yvette Guilbert, and Marie Tempest. Later I learned that this first impression might be relied on. Nijinsky, in sooth, has now no rivals upon the stage. One can only compare him with himself!
The Weber-Gautier dance-poem, from the very beginning until the end, when he leaps out of the window of the girl's chamber into the night, affords this great actor-dancer one of his most grateful opportunities. ”

“ No matter how trivial your profession may be, if you are an artist in your particular line, you may be sure of an admiring audience. To-day you are a performer in the cafés; to-morrow you tread the boards of some minor theater, and the journals duly chronicle your début, sometimes with as much elaborateness as they would “write up” that of a new singer at the Grand Opera. Two of the greatest entertainers in Paris to-day are Yvette Guilbert, chanteuse eccentrique, and M. Félicien Trewey—fantaisiste, mimic, shadowgraphist, and juggler. ”

“ All her rulers, kings, cardinals, and ladies have had time to spare for collecting. Without going too far back, to the time when Bertha span and Charlemagne was an amateur, we may give a few specimens of an anecdotical history of French bibliolatry, beginning, as is courteous, with a lady. “Can a woman be a bibliophile?” is a question which was once discussed at the weekly breakfast party of Guilbert de Pixérécourt, the famous book-lover and playwright, the “Corneille of the Boulevards.” ”

“ Let me mount you, Gabrielle," said Albert, and in the twinkling of an eye his sister was in the saddle.
The gentlemen then duly mounted in turn, and having saluted Madame Verdon they rode out of the yard. To reach the Boulevard St. Germain, the best road to the Bois, they had to cross the Rue de Medicis, where George resided, and scarcely were they in sight of that thoroughfare than the lieutenant turned to Caumont, exclaiming: "Why, what a crowd there is about your door! Can the house be on fire?" ”

“ Monsieur de Boisguilbault, seeing that the carpenter was lost in thought, began to scrutinize Gilberte's features more closely than he had as yet dared to do, and a sort of shudder passed over him when he saw, beneath the black lace which had partly fallen from her head, the luxuriant dazzling masses of golden hair. But he was roused from his contemplation by the carpenter, who said to him in an undertone:
"Monsieur de Boisguilbault, I'll bet that you haven't a suspicion of what I am going to tell you. Look carefully at this pretty little lady, and then I will tell you who she is." ”

“ She had satisfied herself of the truth of Jean Berber’s words. Young Captain Guibert’s career, she found, [Pg 42] had been most brilliant. His resolution and bravery were greatly responsible for the success of the expedition. Honorable mention for gallantry, the Legion of Honour, another stripe, all bore witness to his deserts. He was a lion to be proud of. And celebrity of this kind was more alluring to the militant Madame Dulaurens than that of literary men or scientists. Besides, was not a spur wanted to encourage the languid pretensions of the Count de Marthenay to Alice’s hand? ”

“ Even if I should sit down now and spend a whole day trying to explain why I adored Guildford and why I am so upset over its loss, at the end of the time you would only shake your head and say, 'Poor Carolina,' without in the least understanding me. No one ever did understand about Guildford except dear Daddy, and since he died, I've been afraid to let even God know how much I wanted it, because I knew if He did, He would take it away from me! He takes everything away from me that I love! ”

“ The same thing day after day, year after year; nothing new happens. Why did M. Bois-le-Duc teach me of an outer world beyond the bleak Gulf of St. Lawrence? Why did he teach me to read Virgil and Plato? He did it for the best, no doubt; but I think he did wrong. He has stirred up within me a restless evil spirit of discontent. Oh! Marie, to think I am doomed to be a fisherman here all my life. It is hard."
"Yes, Noël, it is hard. It has always seemed to me that you with your talents, your learning, are thrown away here. But why not go to Quebec or Montreal? ”

“ You understand me perfectly. M. Guibert here has beaten you! We applaud him because, as you know, he is our hero. Now you are anything but a hero. When your uniform gets wet you talk about it for a week! Besides, when one really wants to fight, one doesn’t go into the cavalry!”
Now for a man to extricate himself wittily from the embarrassment caused by a pretty woman’s jokes is no easy matter, and Lieutenant de Marthenay was far from being witty. He attacked Marcel Guibert once more.
“The ladies are your protection, sir!”
But Isabelle Orlandi did not let him go. ”

“ There is a touch of dislike in all the allusions which Boswell makes to Gibbon—often without even mentioning his name—and one cannot read the great historian's life without understanding why.
I should think that few men have been born with the material for self-sufficient contentment more completely within himself than Edward Gibbon. ”

“ In quarter of an hour you'll be at home, instead of splashing through the mud and stones for an hour."
Monsieur de Boisguilbault thanked the lovely widow warmly but would not accept; but Gilberte herself insisted, with irresistible grace.
"I implore you, monsieur le marquis," she said, turning upon him her beautiful eyes, still frightened like those of a half-tamed dove, "do not pain me by refusing; my carriage is ugly, shabby and muddy, and so is my horse; but they are both strong. I know how to drive and Jean will take me home." ”

“ She thought of her husband’s splendid courage and her little Paule’s lost dowry. In what had all these sacrifices ended? And was money to be henceforth the only thing that could command respect and esteem?
But her sufferings were not yet at an end. Madame Dulaurens, with that ease which society life supplies, went on boldly, with a smile on her lips:
“Captain Guibert has had a magnificent career. Decorated so young! You know that nobody appreciates his worth more than I. How you must have suffered through this long, long Madagascar campaign! ”

“ I told him very seriously what I had heard and gave besides my impression of Queensberry's character, and his insane pugnacity.
"What can I do, Frank?" said Oscar, showing distress and apprehension. "It's all Bosie."
"Who is Bosie?" I asked.
"That is Lord Alfred Douglas' pet name. It's all Bosie's fault. He has quarrelled with his father, or rather his father has quarrelled with him. He quarrels with everyone; with Lady Queensberry, with Percy Douglas, with Bosie, everyone. He's impossible. What can I do?"
"Avoid him," I said. "Don't go about with Lord Alfred Douglas. ”

“ She lay back in her chair and rested her hands on its arms. From the garden below the night wind brought soft fragrance of lilacs and crepe-myrtle, of bleeding-heart and wall-flower, of cow-slips and candy-tuft, and as they blew in and out, like the touch of unseen hands, they stirred old memories—made that which was dead, alive again.
"You're a fool, Gibbie Gault—a fool! You are too old to care as you care; too old to take up what you've turned your back on all these years. You are too old—too old!" ”

“ There was something at once ghastly and heartrending in Monsieur de Boisguilbault's strange leave-taking, and Gilberte was so affected by it that she began to weep again herself.
"Well, what's the matter?" said Jean when they were on the road to Châteaubrun; "are you going to lose your eyes this evening. You are about as mad as yonder old man, my Gilberte; for sometimes you are reasonable and talk pure gold, and then suddenly you are as weak and whining as a baby. Let me tell you this: Monsieur de Boisguilbault has a kind heart ”