René

“ René's great longing is for the peace of the cloister; but he is changeable in his longings; they presently take the form of a desire to travel. This desire he gratifies. He finds food for his melancholy among the ruins of Greece and Rome, and discovers as much forgetfulness of the dead among living peoples as upon the soil of past nations; the workmen whom he questions in the streets of London know nothing of that Charles the Second at the foot of whose statue they stand. What, then, is the value of fame? ”

“ This insouciant, light-tempered, gay, and thoughtless disposition, conducted René, free from all the passions which embitter life, and often shorten it, to a hale and mirthful old age. Even domestic losses, which often affect those who are proof against mere reverses of fortune, made no deep impression on the feelings of this cheerful old monarch. Most of his children had died young; René took it not to heart. His daughter Margaret's marriage with the powerful Henry of England was considered a connexion much above the fortunes of the King of the Troubadours. ”

“ René, according to Sir Adrian, is everything and everywhere; a perfect familiar genius; he is counsellor as well as valet, plays his master's game of chess as well as shaves him, can tune his organ, and manage his boat, and cast his nets, for he is fisherman as well as gardener; he is the steward of this wonderful little estate, and its stock of one pony, one cow, and twelve hens; he tends the light, and can cook a dinner a great deal better than his great rival, old Margery. ”

“ René was a prince of very moderate parts, endowed with a love of the fine arts, which he carried to extremity, and with a degree of good humour, which never permitted him to repine at fortune, but rendered its possessor happy, when a prince of keener feelings would have died of despair. ”

“ In due course René came up and reported himself in person, and as he stopped on the threshold the dark doorway framed a not unstriking presentment; a young-looking man for his years (he was a trifle junior to his master) , short and sturdy in build, on whose very broad shoulders sat a phenomenally fair head—the hair short, crisp, and curly, in colour like faded tow—and who, in smilingly [9] respectful silence, gazed into the room out of small, light-blue eyes, brimful of alertness and intelligence, waiting to be addressed. ”

“ Why this honest man seems to have relations among all the 'birds of the air and fishes of the sea,'" uttered Jean René in a voice of mirthful irony, giving his neighbour rather a vigorous poke with his elbow. "Funny, isn't it, Claudine?"
"Oh, you great unfeeling calf! How can you make a joke on these poor creatures?" replied the tender-hearted dairy-maid, returning Jean René's thrust with sufficient interest to compromise the safety of his ribs.
"Is Madame la Chouette a relation of yours?" inquired the old labourer of the Schoolmaster. ”

“ A genius of René's type may employ religious phraseology, but he never truly merges himself in a higher being; his melancholy in its inmost essence is only the egoist's unsatisfied craving for enjoyment. As a genius René knows that the Deity is with and within him, and he can scarcely distinguish between himself and the Deity. ”

“ The melancholy of the early nineteenth century partakes of the nature of a disease; and it is not a disease which attacks a single individual or a single nation only, it is an epidemic which spreads from people to people, in the manner of those religious manias which so often spread over Europe in the Middle Ages. René's is merely the first and most marked case of the disease in the form in which it attacked the most gifted intellects.
René bears that mark of Cain already alluded to, which is, withal, the mark of the ruler. The seal of genius, invisible to himself, has been set on his brow. ”

“ In all the lands except where King René lived, when the people desired entertainment, they used to gather together to see contests called tournaments, in which noble lords tried to overthrow one another with real lances on which were no garlands. [22] But King René could not endure such barbarous displays, and so in his palace no one fought another except with pretty verses, and the best poet was champion.
When all the usual ceremonies had been gone through, the king called Count William to step forth first and sing his song. ”

“ René, whose memory never dies in Nancy, though his body died 500 years ago.
What if he should rise from his tomb in the church of the Cordeliers, or come down off his little bronze horse in the Place St. Epvre as ghosts may by moonlight, to walk with his fair wife Isabella through the huddled streets of the old town, gazing at the wreckage made by the greatest war of history? What would he think of civilization, he who held his dukedom against the star warrior of the century, Charles the Bold? War was lawless enough in his day. ”

“ Then there were evenings of talk with Kilner, René hardly listening to him but rejoicing in the vigor of his words. He was painting in his spare time and on Saturdays and Sundays, and through his pictures and the painter’s enthusiasm for things seen René learned to use his eyes. That was a slow process, too. Often he saw beautiful things and creatures that so moved him that he lost sight of them, and dwelt only in the emotion they had roused, falsifying his vision. ”

“ The “René” is a romantic and sentimental tale, the main interest of which, where it possessed interest, lay in the seductive style of the composition, the idealizing descriptions occurring in it of American landscape, and the tone of melancholy reflection that pervaded it. The “noble red man” is made in it to talk like a Socrates come again, or like a French Christian philosopher born “the heir of all the ages.” ”

“ The old man paused to take snuff and receive an answer.
René stood motionless.
Lili had sunk into a seat, and was gazing at the tempter with wide-open, puzzled, startled eyes. Both were silent.
"It is a bargain?" said the old man again. "Understand me, M. René Claude. You have no risk, absolutely none, and you have the certainty of fair fame and fine fortune in the space of a few years. You will be a great man before you have a gray hair: that comes to very few. ”

“ René is this first stage, the stage of unrest, of election. The chosen waits to see another follow the call; he looks around but sees none arise, and the voice continues to call. He sees all that he loathes and scorns triumph, and all that worsted for which he would so willingly sacrifice everything if another would but lead the way. With amazement and dread he realises that there is not one who feels as he does ”

“ If we read Chateaubriand's Mémoires attentively, we cannot resist the impression that the fiction of Amélie's love for René veils a kind of confession, an admission of the passionate love his sister Lucile cherished for her remarkable brother. How much in the way of confession may not the remainder of the book contain?
René's sufferings are the birth-throes of genius in the modern soul. He is the moment in which the chosen spirit, like the Hebrew prophet of old, hears the voice that calls him, and timidly draws back, shrinking despairingly from the task, and saying: "Choose not me, O Lord ”

“ Even in this hour of mortification, and with the memory of Randolph's doubt in mind, René had some delightful sense of being taken in hand and disciplined. He had not said again that the tie which bound them together must be broken. He had tacitly accepted the joy of defeat, a little ashamed, perhaps.
Every minute of this talk had been a revelation to the man who had lived near Margaret for years. An older man could have told him that no length of life will reveal to the most observant love all the possibilities of thought or action in the woman who may for years have been his wife. ”

“ Here my first day in an auto comes to an end, and rising, I shake myself, and, rubbing my eyes, [11] step out, and instantly the auto, Jean, and Yama vanish, and I stand,—almost wondering whether they have ever been—gazing up at the statue of King René who died four hundred years ago, and who seems to smile and hold out his bunch of grapes as he welcomes me to Aix in his fair kingdom of Provence. ”

“ Were I younger, I should be less brave; but my years will defend me against solitude, without taking anything from the passionate admiration which I profess for your talent and which I hide from nobody. You have attached a new enchantment, madame, to that city of dreams whence I set out, in former days, for Greece with a whole world of illusions: returning to his starting-point, René lately aired his memories and his regrets on the Lido, between Childe-Harold, who had vanished, and Lelia about to appear. ”

“ But René's countenance, as he entered, betrayed news of such import that Sir Adrian instantly adjourned the matter on hand, and, when the bailiff had retired, anxiously turned to the new-comer, who stood in the doorway mopping his steaming brow.
"Well, Renny," said he, "what is wrong? Nothing about your wife—?"
"No, your honour," answered the man, "your honour is very good. ”

“ Henri called. "The brave are those who live to fight again, not—"
But René's figure against the moonlight was gone. Henri ran to the doorway then and found him lying, his head on the little step where he had been wont to sit and whittle and sing his Tipperaree. He was dead. Henri carried him in and laid him in the little passage, very reverently. Then he went below.
"Where is René?" Sara Lee asked from the darkness.
"A foolish boy," said Henri, a catch in his throat. "He is, I think, watching these fiends of the air, from some shelter."
"There is no shelter," shivered the girl. ”

“ René's eyes passionately sought those of Amélie, which, dilated with terror, could not unfasten themselves from his face.
The host insisted: "It is too late to go to the Hotel. The streets, as we have seen, are dangerous. Accept, then, for a little while the clothes of a humble artisan, Monsieur—?"
"René de Giac, Marquis de Brezé."
"Charles Louis Naundorff," said the host introducing himself. "And these are my wife and daughter. Will you believe me when I say that I knew you were a Frenchman when you sprang to my defense?" ”

“ But René's melancholy is too innate and profound to be caused by Amélie's unhappy passion alone. The reader feels all the time that this passion only provides an occasion for the outburst of the melancholy. René's despondency, his egotism, his outward coldness and suppressed inward fire, are to be found independently of this external cause in many of the gifted authors of that period, and in a number of their best-known characters—Tieck's William Lovell, Frederick Schlegel's Julius, Byron's Corsair, Kierkegaard's Johannes Forföreren, and Lermontov's Hero of our Own Time. ”

“ Then the great silence of the house below seemed to creep up the narrow stairs and lay cold hands on Claire René. Oh, why was it all so lonely! Where were her three brothers? Why must the telegrams make so great a trembling in her heart for them, make her kneel and pray that the Holy Mother would hold them in her arms forever?
Her knees were stiff when she arose; her eyes were bright, but not with tears; her back was very straight, her head held high, for was she not a grandchild of Madame Populet? A sister to Clément and Fernand and Alphonse, and through them, a child of France! ”

“ Can it not have been an attempt of the master to seize the unseizable—the play of a face, and to paint the fleeting expression on the lips as they pass from repose to a smile? In his poem René, who took a childish pride in the fact that his family name resembled that of the village which lends its appellation to the most subtle master of the Renaissance, had condensed into thirty verses an entire system of natural and historical philosophy. ”

“ In René I had laid bare one of the infirmities of my century; but it was a different madness in the novelists to try to make universal such transcendental afflictions. The general sentiments which compose the basis of humanity, paternal and maternal affection, filial piety, friendship, love, are inexhaustible; but particular ways of feeling, idiosyncrasies of mind and character, cannot be spread out and multiplied over wide and numerous scenes. The small undiscovered corners of the human heart are a narrow field ”

“ John’s son and successor, Nicholas (d. 1473) , who supported the duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, against the king of France, died without children, and his heir was René, son of Frederick of Vaudemont. The duke of Burgundy, 11 however, disputed this inheritance, and carried off the young René and his mother, but on the intervention of Louis XI. had to set them at liberty. René helped the Swiss during their wars with Charles the Bold, who invaded Lorraine and was killed under the walls of Nancy (1477) . René’s last years were mainly spent in expeditions in Provence and Italy. ”

“ I have been through more of it, my good Renny."
René's brain was never equal to coping with his master's periodic fits of pessimism, though he well knew their first and ever-present cause. In a troubled way he looked about the room, so peaceful, so retired and studious; and Sir Adrian understood.
"Yes, yes, you are right; I have cut off the old life," he made answer to the unspoken expostulation, "and [14] that I can live in my own small world without foregoing all my duties, I owe to you, my good friend; but startling news like this brings back the past very livingly, dead though it be—dead." ”