LES TROIS CCEURS.*
PERHAPS if the same self-restraint we acknowledge to be necessary in governing our physical passions were regarded as equally necessary in directing our intellectual faculties, Art would produce more that is worthy and stimulating. But self-indulgence is as common in thoughts as in actions, and too often, to the man of talent, his gift is merely a means of indulging his temperament. All writers cannot be intellectual physicians, but those who have connected with their profession some conscientious sense of helping us out of our perplexities, instead of steeping us more inextricably therein, will always remain the heroes of literature.
It is much the fashion among modern French writers to preface one or more of their works with a kind of credo or professional faith, which is usually the only part of the volume that can lay claim to any individuality. For the result seems much the same in every case. To the ordinary reader who has studied some scores of their works it appears that they are all (more or less) moving in one dreary circle,— mechanically, as the blindfolded horse drags round its train of wooden horses, to the grinding, groaning sounds of some once popular, aye, spirited air. The horses vary in colour and form ; the air is ever the same. Are they the weary echoes of Flaubert's, of Zola's sonorous tones, with all sonorous- ness faded out of them, that modern literature seems to be eternally repeating ? Or rather, is not this literature the only possible brain-produce of a number of men who are incapable of originating, men of a real or imaginary literary turn of mind, who are merely "indulging their temperaments," and trying to spoil other people's ? If it be true that le roman est la vie vue a travers un temperament, then we could wish that a kind of temperament examination might be imposed upon those entering on the literary profession, just as a physical examination is undergone by those about to embrace a military career. For is this Life, that these men, each armed with a different literary theory and an equivalent result, show to us.—this poor, base, morbid existence, stripped of all heroic possibilities, of all joyful instincts P And is it Art they employ as a medium,—this kind of clammy monster trailing its unwholesome, paralysing influence over our blessed human sentiments, choosing in preference to blight those most dear and sacred to us P Let us, then, flee from Art and turn to Nature, learning from her unaided whatever of sad or hopeful she may choose to reveal to us. These, we repeat, are the impressions of an ordinary reader of modern French fiction, not of a literary epicure. For the former resents being for ever taught that his body is irremediably base, his soul but a troublesome appendage. According to all scientific rules, he is healthfully consti- tuted both mentally and physically. He glories in his soul, and does not despise his body, and even in his igno- rance is at certain moments led to imagine some possible harmony between the two. He would be a " ruler of life, not a slave." " To meet life as a powerful conqueror ; no fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms. To these proud laws of the air, the water, and the ground, proving his interior soul impregnable," &c. And Edouard Rod's hero, Richard Noral, appears to him a very oppressive egotist, of whom it might be asked, in Carlyle's words : " Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after scmewhat to eat ; and shrieking dole- fully because carrion enough is not given thee P" It matters little that the carrion he is ever in vain search of is happiness of a psychical rather than a sensual order. The greed to obtain it is just as hurtful in its consequences as destructive to the well-being of those connected with him, as the most vulgar of ordinary desires could be. The best years of his life are spent in striving to attain a degree of felicity such as his imagination is capable of creating, but such as is incompatible with a human organisation. He has, in fact,
• Les Trois Centre. Par Edonard Rod. Perrin et Cie., Ecliteure, SS Quai des. Grande Augustine, Paris.
that moral disease which George Sand has so aptly defined, in Elle et I,ui, as remota de ce qui n'est pas, a disease common
to many artistic temperaments. He is married to a charming wife, whose physical and intellectual attributes would seem sufficient to satisfy a more than ordinarily exacting nature- His marriage is his first serious experiment, and for a time he appears to find its results satisfactory, after which he suddenly becomes aware that his apparent state of contentment is a mistake, and that all the intensity of his nature has not yet been called into play.
Thereupon he recalls the image of an American woman, Rose Mary, whom he met shortly after his marriage. The acquaintance was merely a pleasant one until during their last hour, spent together in waiting for the train which was to carry her away from France. Then the spark of passion, from which their friendship had so far been free, was suddenly ignited, and Richard had only time to realise with poignant regret the " might have been," as the train rushed off. Naturally, Rose Mary becomes to him the woman he should have possessed, the one being who would have been the means of realising his ideal state of happiness. Shortly after the story opens, Rose Mary returns to Paris, and sends for Richard.
After a few scruples as to the wife he is going to deceive, easily overruled by the supreme importance of the end (satisfying his nature in full), he obeys her summons. But this second
experiment is even a greater deception than the first, as we may easily judge from his own subsequent reflections :—" En
effet, it ne devait ii Rose Mary aucune joie egale ii celles connaissait des longtemps, aucune augmentation de sa puissance d'aimer, aucun elargissement de son etre." So he breaks off with the second unsuccessful aspirant, and Rose Mary leaves him broken-hearted, and on the first night of her journey from Havre to America, glides unnoticed with her sorrow over the boat into the water, and is never heard of again.
A platonic friendship with a charming and intellectual Frenchwoman comes to a sudden termination. He insists on
taking his wife one evening to her house, when their little child of five is ill. The mother with great reluctance obeys his wish, leaving the servant in charge, and on their return home, they
find little Jeanne worse. The child dies a day or two later. Besides feeling that he was perhaps the immediate cause of this misfortune, Richard recollects that his constant apathy and indifference towards Jeanne, who worshipped him with an intensity beyond her years, had blighted the child's life morally and physically. Her death leads him to abandon his new friendship, which he already foresaw would bring him no nearer his ever-present object, and at the same time, all farther efforts to attain it. And the fruits he reaps from his experiences are the following conclusions :-
" Passion, fantaisie, extase ; mots trompeurs, mots vides de sena qu'a creves mon effort pour leer en dormer un. Pow la passion notre sang est trop pauvre ; pour la fantaisie nos raves n'ont plus d'ailes ; pour l'extase nos esprits Boat trop clairvoyants."
There are natures (more limited perhaps), however, to whom these things are not merely words void of sense. Madame Noral's was of this order, but in her case reality, not imagina- tion, destroyed their realisation. But scientific and philo- sophical discoveries cannot be made without some sacrifice. Every day animals are slowly tortured to death in order to ascertain the exact toxic properties of some medical substance.
Madame Noral's happiness was sacrificed to make the discovery that certain temperaments contain at once the creative and destructive germs of their own happiness.
Previous page
