Fromental Halévy

“ Only—and he was quite right—Paul wished one evening to reap the benefit of his chivalrous conduct. He had just been talking for a quarter of an hour with Bettina. The conversation finished, he went to look for Jean at the other end of the drawing-room, and said to him:
“You left the field open to me, and I have made a bold stroke for Miss Percival.”
“Well, you have no reason to be discontented with the result of the enterprise. You are the best friends in the world.” ”

“ A day's march for the artillery is twenty or thirty miles, with an hour's halt for luncheon. It was the Abbe Constantin who had taught her that; when going their rounds in the morning among the poor, Bettina overwhelmed the Cure with questions on military affairs, and particularly on the artillery.
Twenty or thirty miles under this pouring rain! Poor Jean! Bettina thought of young Turner, young Norton, of Paul de Lavardens, who would sleep calmly till ten in the morning, while Jean was exposed to this deluge. ”

“ The question was not answered until the connexion was finally severed and they stood before the public, each to answer for his own work. It was then apparent that they had many gifts in common. Both had wit, humour, observation of character. Meilhac had a ready imagination, a rich and whimsical fancy; Halévy had taste, refinement and pathos of a certain kind. Not less clever than his brilliant comrade, he was more human. ”

“ And who was the brother-lawyer, the good brother-lawyer, who had taken pleasure in coming to show him the hateful article?
"M. Renaud."
"Oh, it was M. Renaud—dear M. Renaud!"
Thereupon Mme. Derline was seized with a hearty fit of laughter; so much so that the blond hair, which had been loosely done up, came down and framed the pretty face from which gleamed the dark eyes which could also, when they gave themselves the trouble, look very gentle, very caressing, very loving. ”

“ There, again, the Cure was at home. Bernard, the farmer of the Marquise, was his friend; and when the old priest was delayed in his visits to the poor and sick, when the sun was sinking below the horizon, and the Abbe began to feel a little fatigued in his limbs, and a sensation of exhaustion in his stomach, he stopped and supped with Bernard, regaled himself with a savory stew and potatoes, and emptied his pitcher of cider; then, after supper, the farmer harnessed his old black mare to his cart, and took the vicar back to Longueval. ”

“ No, Richard; no, Susie; I will be neither princess, nor marchioness, nor countess. My wish is to be Madame Jean Reynaud; if, however, Monsieur Jean Reynaud will agree to it, and that is by no means certain."
The regiment entered the village, and suddenly military music burst martial and joyous across the space. All three remained silent, it was the regiment, it was Jean who passed; the sound became fainter, died away, and Bettina continued:
"No, that is not certain. He loves me, however, and much, but without knowing well what I am; I think that I deserve to be loved differently ”

“ If I had lost myself on a mountain, I would obey the man who knew that mountain; sick, I would obey a doctor; and if I should meet a man capable of enlightening me on moral ideas, I would listen to him, I would follow him; but I find no one, no disciples and fewer masters. "... I am alone." His sister repeated the advice which she had constantly given: that Friedrich should return to some University; young men had always listened to him, they would listen to him, they would understand him. "Young men are so stupid!" answered Nietzsche, "and professors still more stupid! ”

“ Nietzsche said to Rée:
[Pg 243]
"There's an admirable woman, marry her." "No," answered Rée; "I am a pessimist, and the idea of propagating human life is odious to me. Marry her yourself; she is the companion that you want...." Nietzsche dismissed this idea. Perhaps he said to his friend, as he had said to his sister: "I marry! Never, I would have to be a bar somewhere or other." Miss Salomé's mother examined these two men who were so attentive to her child; Friedrich Nietzsche perplexed her; she preferred Paul Rée.
The two friends and the two philosophers stopped at Lucerne. ”

“ She is energetic, is Lisbeth, and valiantly risks her life. Nietzsche admired in her the virtues which he esteemed above all virtues, and which are, he thinks, the virtues of his race, the noble race of the Counts Nietzki. "How strongly I feel," he wrote her, "in all you do and say, that the same blood runs in our veins." He hearkened to her, but she did not cease to offer him overwise advice. As he complains of being alone, why does he not get made a professor, why does he not marry? Nietzsche answered too easily: "Where would I find a wife? ”

“ No doubt, Nietzsche alarmed Lou Salomé by the violence of his passions and by the loftiness of his demands. She had not foreseen, in offering to be his friend, the crises of a friendship ruder than a stormy love. He demanded an absolute assent to each of his thoughts. The young girl refused such assent: may the intellect, like the heart, be given? Nietzsche could not brook her proud reserve, and reproached her, as though it were a fault, for the independence which she wished to preserve. A letter to Peter Gast gives us a glimpse into these disputes. ”

“ Criquette is Halévy’s longest tale, and shows the sketch-artist and raconteur at his best.
But American readers doubtless know Ludovic Halévy most affectionately by his “Abbé Constantin,” which has gone through more than one hundred and fifty editions in France, besides numberless printings in other lands. In its first year of issue, 1882, at least thirty-five editions were required to meet the demand. It is a novelette in length, and a simple story in plot. Charming, ingenuous, idyllic, popular with all classes, [Pg 64] it is a refreshing breath from rural France. ”

“ His hours at Triebschen had been so fine, hours of repose and meditation, hours of work and silence. A man, a woman of genius; a nest of children; an infinity of happy conversations, of beauty—Triebschen had given all that. What would Bayreuth give? The crowd would come there, and what would it bring with it? Friedrich Nietzsche left the books which he was engaged in packing. The grand piano had remained in the middle of the salon. He opened it, preluded, then improvised. Richard and Cosima Wagner, leaving aside all their affairs, listened. ”

“ So much money for the land threw them into a sort of respectful stupor. However, Monsieur Gallard, bending toward Sandrier, the solicitor who had bid for him, whispered something in his ear. The struggle began between Gibert and Sandrier. The bids rose to 2,500,000 francs. Monsieur Gallard hesitated for a moment—decided—continued up to 3,000,000. Then he stopped and the whole went to Gibert. Every one rushed on him, they surrounded—they crushed him: 'The name, the name of the purchaser?' 'It is an American,' replied Gibert, 'Mrs. Scott.'"
"Mrs. Scott!" cried Paul de Lavardens. ”

“ Is this force and spontaneity of the individual to flow out towards others through the channel of domination or through that of love?
Zarathustra had marched with the Germans over prostrate France, he had said in his Gargantuan egoism: "If there were Gods, how could I bear not to be a God? Consequently there are no Gods." If the Goths and the Vandals had read Hegelian metaphysics, observes Fouillée, they would have answered this question as Nietzsche answered it. The living unit accumulates a superabundance of force in order to impose its power on others ... an andern Macht auslassen. ”

“ A Rector harangued the students and told them that on that same date a hundred years before Goethe had come to inscribe himself among their elders. "Genius has its own ways," the prudent official was quick to add, "and it is dangerous to follow them. Goethe was not a good student; do not take him for model during your years of study." "Hou, hou!" roared the laughing young men; and Friedrich Nietzsche, lost in the crowd, was glad at the chance that had brought him thither at the moment of such an anniversary. ”

“ And whenever I look around me there is something new and great to see. No sign of life except when the diligence arrives and stops for relays. I take my meals with the men, our one contact. They pass like the Platonic shadows before my cave."
Until now Nietzsche had not cared much for high mountains; he preferred the moderate valleys and woods of the Jura, which reminded him of his native country, the hills of the Saale and Bohemia. At Splügen a new joy was revealed to him; the joy of solitude and of meditation in the mountain air. ”

“ My dear Herr Schmeitzner, let us all, for this once, do our best. The contents of my book are so important! It is a matter involving our honour that it be faulty in nothing, that it come into the world worthy and stainless. I conjure you, do that for me; no advertising. I could tell you a great deal more about it, but you will be able to understand it all by yourself when you have read my book."
The publisher read the manuscript, but understood it ill; he displayed no enthusiasm. In April, Nietzsche, still at Genoa, was still waiting for his proofs. ”

“ Four years earlier a similar difficulty had prevented him from completing his Zarathustra. It was no longer a question of the Superman, of an Eternal Return. These naïve formulæ were abandoned, but the tendencies which they cloaked—the one, lyrical, avid of construction and of order, even though illusory; the other, avid of destruction and of lucidity—these unvarying tendencies again exercised their influence at this point. Nietzsche hesitated: should he finally listen to these Brahmins, these priests, these crafty leaders of men. No; loyalty is the virtue upon which he can never compound. ”

“ Instead of going to Corsica he returned to the Genoese coast, to Ruta, not far from Rapallo, above Portofino, which thrusts its wooded crest out into the sea. Again he found the walks and familiar places in which Zarathustra had spoken to him. How sad he had then been! He had just lost his two last friends, Lou Salomé and Paul Rée. Nevertheless he had continued his task and, indeed, created, at the moment of his profoundest sorrow, his bravest book. Friedrich Nietzsche let himself be stirred by these memories of the past. ”

“ He arranged his life in a manner as simple as his domicile, and thus realised one of his many dreams. Often he used to say to his mother: "How do the common people live? I would like to live like them." His mother would laugh. "They eat potatoes and greasy meat; they drink bad coffee and alcohol...." Nietzsche sighed: "Oh, those Germans!" In his Genoese house, with its poor inmates, customs were different. ”

“ Friedrich Nietzsche gave up his professorship; he sent in his resignation, which was accepted. In recompense for his services he was to receive a pension of three thousand francs.
Lisbeth took him away. He thought himself a lost [Pg 213] man, and expressed his last wishes. "Make me a promise, Lisbeth; let my friends only accompany my corpse; let none who are merely indifferent or curious be present. I shall no longer be able to defend myself, and you must do it. ”

“ Friedrich Nietzsche, greedy to possess, longing to act, had to look forward to five years of waiting, of arid work, of criticism. "Thirty years," he put down in a note-book. "Life becomes a difficult affair. I see no motive to be gay; but there ought always to be a motive to be gay."
He returned to Basle and recommenced his course. This duty, which had always been a burden, became heavier still: he was entrusted with the charge of a Greek class for quite young men. ”

“ Perhaps the present writer will be forgiven if he wishes to record here that In the Express (Par le Rapide) was published in Paris only towards the end of 1892, while a tale not wholly unlike it, In the Vestibule Limited, was published in New York in the spring of 1891.
There is no trace or taint of snobbery in M. Halévy's treatment of all this magnificence; there is none of the vulgarity which marks the pages of Lothair, for example; there is no mean admiration of mean things. There is, on the other hand, no bitterness of scourging satire. ”

“ Yes, it is you, my dearest, and it is perhaps you, naughty sister, who makes me so insensible and cruel on this point. I love you too much; you fill my heart; you have occupied it entirely; there is no room for any one else. Prefer any one to you! Love any one more than you! ”

“ This is why, in proportion as Bettina showed herself more tender, and abandoned herself with more frankness to the first call of love—this is why Jean became, day by day, more gloomy and more restless. He was not only afraid of loving; he was afraid of being loved.
He ought to have remained away; he should not have come near her. He had tried; he could not; the temptation was too strong; it carried him away; so he came. She would come to him, her hands extended, a smile on her lips, and her heart in her eyes. Everything in her said:
"Let us try to love each other, and if we can love, we will!" ”

“ Nevertheless the old house of Naumburg was the only place in the world where there was, so long as he stayed there for a short time only, some sweetness of life for him.
Mother and daughter were quarrelling. Lisbeth loved a certain Förster, an agitator, an idealogue of Germanist and anti-Semitic views, who was organising a colonial [Pg 270] enterprise in Paraguay. She wished to marry him and to follow him; her despairing mother wished to retain her. Madame Nietzsche welcomed her son as a saviour and related to him the mad projects which Lisbeth was forming. ”