Georges Bizet

“ But Faure was not at all in touch with it. The rôle of Brutus—fawning Judas that he is—revolted him. He had no fancy to distort as menteur à triple étage; so the subject was put by. Then came Bizet one morning with an old issue of Le Journal pour tous in his pocket. Here is the very thing for us: 'Le Jeunesse du Cid' of Guilhem de Castro; not, mark you, the Cid of Corneille alone, but the inceptive Cid in all the glory of its pristine colour—the Cid, Don Rodrigue de Bivar, in the words of Sainte-Beuve 'the immortal flower of honour and of love.' The scène du mendiant held Bizet completely. ”

“ Yet it is difficult to picture Bizet bellicose. "Dear friend," he writes to Guiraud, who was stationed at some outpost, "the description you give of the palace you are living in makes us all believe that luck is with you. But every day we think of the cold, the damp, the ice, the Prussians, and all the other horrors that surround you. As for me, I continue to reproach myself with my inaction, for in truth my conscience is anything but at rest; but you know well what keeps me here. We really cannot be said to eat any longer. ”

“ I feel sure that if M. Bizet knows that his work has been [Pg 77] appreciated by a small number of musicians—being cognoscenti—he will be more proud of that fact than he would be of a popular success. 'Djamileh,' whatever be its fortunes, heralds a new epoch in the career of this young master.
Then came L'Arlésienne, as all the world knows, a dismal failure enough. It was to Bizet a true labour of love. From the day that Carvalho came to him proposing that he should add des mélodrames to this tale of fair Provence, to the day of its production some four months later, he was absorbed in it. ”

“ Cross the Cloth Market, then follow the tram-lines along Rue de Flandre and Rue Bizet. Follow the Lys Canal, then cross the new bridge. Go through Bizet Village (badly damaged houses) . Leaving the ruins of the church on the right, turn first to the right, then to the left (the photograph shows an army hut on the left, now temporarily used as the office of the Receiver of French Customs) . Cross the frontier a few yards further on, then at the fork just outside the village, take the road on the right opposite the Villa des Roses (photo below) . ”

“ Just eighteen years before it was that Bizet had written from Rome: "We are indeed sad, for there come to us the tidings of the death of Ldon Benouville. Really, one works oneself half crazy to gain this Prix de Rome; then comes the huge struggle for position; and after all, perchance to end by dying at thirty-eight! Truly, the picture is the reverse of encouraging." Here was his own destiny, nu comme la main, save that the fates be grudged him even the thirty-eight years of his brother artist—called him when he could not but ”

“ Let it be remembered that there is scarcely a composer of eminence who has not been subjected to the same reproach. To take a few of the most notable instances, it is only necessary to mention the cases of Schumann, Wagner, Berlioz, and Bizet. A name that may carry conviction even further is that of Beethoven. Is it not a fact that within the memory of some who are still amongst us, the "Choral Symphony" was stigmatised as the work of a genius whose powers were on the wane, and this mighty work was pronounced dull and incoherent? ”

“ These juvenile works, which consisted of sacred pieces, were of such interest to the composer Bizet that when he heard them he advised her parents to give her a complete musical training, and175 predicted a brilliant future for her. In spite of their fondness for the art, the parents had no inclination to see their child upon the thorny and toilsome path of a musical career. Meanwhile the young girl devoted herself to the piano with utmost ardour, and continued her efforts at composing. ”

“ Only a man of the highest courage would have made such an attempt: only a man of the strongest will would have persevered.
Now Bisset had both courage and strength of will, and in spite of all the chances against him, he did reach the orange grove, and making his way through it as well as he could, found himself in the verge of a wood of palms and sycamores. ”

“ Turning around, Biscuit beheld Seth Bissett, the terror of the town, who had received his preliminary training in a reform school and had afterwards finished in the penitentiary. The other boys dived into the pool and swam to safety on the farther side of the creek; but Biscuit, forgetting for the moment his theoretical mastery of the deep, attempted to effect his escape by land, and ran into the arms [Pg 199] of Warren Sours, the ally and familiar friend of Seth Bissett. ”

“ Bixby—
“‘Ever laughing, ever young.’
“He will be young as long as he lives, but I am afraid that won’t be long. If ever there was a man in immediate danger of apoplexy, Bangs is that man.”
It was after dinner when Mr. Bixby lighted his drop-light and sat down before the fire. He [Pg 47] pushed an ottoman in front of him, on which to rest his feet, which he had comfortably encased in his slippers. But the shadows in his new room did not please him. He could hardly see the clock on the mantel. The Madonna above was completely in the shade. ”

“ For the rest, he is the apostle of logic and discipline, and so finds plenty to approve in the Cubist doctrine and the French tradition from Poussin to David. I do not know whether Bissière is to be ranked amongst his disciples—I should think not—but Bissière, a most attractive artist, is perhaps significant of the new tendency in that he has chosen to express a whimsical temperament in terms of prim science. About the science of picture-making, as the director of the National Gallery calls it, he has little to learn. ”

“ I'd rather be a pilot than anything else I've ever been in my life. How do you run Plum Point?
He met Bixby at New Orleans. Bixby was a captain now, on the splendid new Anchor Line steamer City of Baton Rouge, one of the last of the fine river boats. Clemens made the return trip to St. Louis with Bixby on the Baton Rouge—almost exactly twenty-five years from their first trip together. To Bixby it seemed wonderfully like those old days back in the fifties.
"Sam was making notes in his memorandum-book, just as he always did," said Bixby, long after, to the writer of this history. ”

“ Bixby’s testimony places the apprenticeship at eighteen months
He was a pilot at last. In eighteen months he had packed away in his head all the multitude of volatile statistics and acquired that confidence and courage which made him one of the elect, a river sovereign. He knew every snag and bank and dead tree and reef in all those endless miles between St. Louis and New Orleans, every cut-off and current, every depth of water—the whole story—by night and by day. He could smell danger in the dark ”

“ Shouts of ‘Hurrah for the Army!’ resounded from the Bastille to the Madeleine. Smiling and amused, the passers-by were on our side. Bissolo stretched out his long hunchback’s arm like a scythe in the direction of the crowd and remarked: ‘I know the jade. Mount her, and she’ll break your back by suddenly lying down when you aren’t expecting it.’ Those were the words of Citizen Bissolo as we stood at the corner of the Rue Drouot on the day when Paris offered herself to us.”
“But this Bissolo of yours is a rogue,” cried Joseph Lacrisse. “He insults the people.” ”

“ For the first time in his life Bissy enjoyed the gratification of realising handsomely on his own native shrewdness. Grandfather, always preoccupied and unsuspecting, was content to laugh, to shrug his shoulders, and secretly to admire the elfish self-importance which had so much worldly foresight in it. He had the same clues to identification as the limb himself, but they lay unnoticed by him. Men and women always passed him by like shadows. ”

“ He held out the green intaglio. “I fling it from me as I do your unpardonable innuendo”—and he spun the accursed thing from him into the middle of the pool.
Isabella, paralysed an instant, the next turned her back on him.
“Come, Bissy,” she said, “I need a gentleman escort, and you shall be mine to the carriage.”
But Bissy hung back. His eyes were fixed on the pool, his thoughts on the covetable plunder so wantonly—or happily—committed to it. Was it conceivable a man might dare for profit what he had refused to gallantry? The ring had shone and looked heavy ”

“ In the present circumstances it should have been evident to him and to every other statesman who regarded the matter from an impartial standpoint, that the right course was to take the shortest and straightest route to his new post, and rather to avoid such meetings as Count Beust had sought. Only the desire to get himself talked of and to pose before the world even in the smallest personal concerns could have misled an otherwise intelligent man to attract so much attention, and secure so much publicity to his movements. ”

“ She held up a thick, square, brownish cracker, and said: "Look well at that. You have never seen anything more important to human lives. That is the free American biscuit. It is distributed at ten every morning to every school-child, to every teacher, in the region under German rule. None have had enough to eat. There are no biscuits distributed on Sundays and vacation days. Those are hard days for the children to live through. They beg desperately to go to school, even when they are sick, so they may not miss their biscuit. ”

“ John brought [Pg 89] the bone back to its wonted place. Berty had been too much taken by surprise to cry out at first, and when it was over she felt too faint even to groan.
“You are a brave little girl,” said the Doctor, wiping the pale face tenderly and holding a glass of water to Berty’s lips. “The worst is over; it is only to dress the arm now and attend to one or two other little matters. My boy,” turning to Tim, “you may go down to the carriage,—I think Tom is back by this time,—and tell him to drive home with you, and ask Mrs. Grey to put up a good basket of provisions. ”

“ BISSELL, GEORGE EDWIN (1839– ) , American sculptor, son of a quarryman and marble-cutter, was born at New Preston, Connecticut, on the 16th of February 1839. During the Civil War he served as a private in the 23rd Connecticut volunteers in the Department of the Gulf (1862–1863) , and on being mustered out became acting assistant paymaster in the South Atlantic squadron. At the close of the war he joined his father in business. ”

“ The races mingle and confront each other at every turn, and not the races only, but the different types of each race, seen in strangely new guise by sheer force of contrast under the brilliant African sun; for Biskra is the gathering ground of a curious cosmopolitan crowd, an assemblage so varied that it would be hard to name a nation, however insignificant, without its representative. It is the nameless spell cast by the desert on her sons, and on those who move within her borders, that draws hither this motley multitude. ”

“ Bissy put out his underlip with polite incredulity.
“If anybody knows, anybody can have it.”
“Ah!” said Isabella; “you are a very clever Bissy; but there is something more. One must not take life in recovering the stone, since it contains the principle of all life; and therefore, if you kill the toad, as you must do to gain the stone, you will find nothing for your pains.” ”

“ He'd face a tree and go into a crouch, and I'd know he was pretending the tree was Billy the Kid or somebody, and then he'd slap leather—and his clumsy hand would wallop his gunbutt, he'd yank like hell, his old Peacemaker would come staggering out of his holster like a bear in heat, and finally he'd line on his target and plug it dead center. But the whole business took about a second and a half, and by the time he'd ever finished his fumbling in a real fight, Billy the Kid or Sheriff Ben Randolph over in town or even me, Joe Doolin, could have cut him in half. ”

“ He faded as the Southern Cross rose higher in the sky, till even Balatta knew that he would be dead ere the nuptial date determined by his taboo. Ngurn made pilgrimage personally and gathered the smoke materials for the curing of Bassett's head, and to him made proud announcement and exhibition of the artistic perfectness of his intention when Bassett should be dead. As for himself, Bassett was not shocked. Too long and too deeply had life ebbed down in him to bite him with fear of its impending extinction. ”

“ Bīsex′ual, of both sexes: (bot.) applied to flowers which contain both stamens and pistils within the same envelope.
Biscayan, bis′kā-an, adj. and n. of or pertaining to the Basque province of Biscay in Spain, or its people: Basque generally: a long heavy musket, or the bullet fired by such.
Biscuit, bis′kit, n. hard dry bread in small cakes: a kind of unglazed earthenware. [O. Fr. bescoit (mod. biscuit) —L. bis, twice, coquĕre, coctum, to cook or bake.]
Bise, bēz, n. a cold north or north-east wind prevalent at certain seasons in Switzerland and neighbouring parts of France and Italy. [Fr.] ”

“ She tried to put the pocket-book out of her head, but it lay there like a leaden weight in her bosom, and would not be forgotten; she tried to think of her Christmas tree, but the shining tapers were all gone out and would not be relighted. The face of the strange gentleman would come up in their stead; but the cheery smile which had warmed her heart so, burned into it now like a red-hot iron. And Tim’s [Pg 71] words, too,—those bad, cruel words, “It’s no better than stealing, not a bit; and you would not be a thief, Berty,”—came back again and again. ”