MR. STEVENSON'S STORIES.* THE first thing that strikes the reader
of Mr. Stevenson's New Arabian Nights, is that he is tasting two pleasures at once. Every great novelist has a style of his own, and we soon learn to think each appropriate to the use to which it is turned. But Mr. Stevenson tells a story in a style so finished and so admir- able, that it constitutes a distinct enjoyment in itself. So told, we seem to feel, any story would be worth reading. There is no need to give ourselves this assurance, because the matter of the stories here collected is singularly original and effective. But though original and effective stories are sufficiently un- common, they are less uncommon than the excellent Eng- lish in which these are conveyed. The title properly belongs to the first volume only. In this, the form of the Arabian Nights is fairly preserved. The Caliph Haroun Alraschid has his representative in Prince Florizel of Bohemia, and in the first story the very cream tarts of the original are reproduced in the copy. But the resemblance goes no farther. The New Arabian Nights deal with adventures, wild enough, in- deed, for the farthest East and a distant century, but supposed to take place in London and Paris, amidst the most modern sur- roundings. The incidents are as strange and startling as in the
• Ihno Arabian Nights: By Robert Louis Stevenson. London: Matte and Windua.
best of Mr. Wilkie Collins's stories, but improbable or impossible as they are, they do not seem so, because the actors in them behave with perfect consistency. The draft on our credulity is made once for all, and when it has been duly honoured, we are never reminded how large it was in the first instance.
In the first, or Arabian, volume, the most telling story is the " Suicide Club." Prince Plorizel, of Bohemia, and his attendant, Colonel Geraldine—who represent, for Mr. Steven- son's purpose, the Caliph and the Grand Vizier—aro introduced by a young man, whom they find selling cream tarts in Leicester Square, into the secrets of a society organised for the easy accomplishment of suicide by means of mutual murder. All that is demanded of the neophyte is weariness of life, and £40 in money. The Prince and the Colonel profess the one and pro- duce the other, and they promptly find themselves in a room, of which the "single tall window looked out upon the River and the Embankment ; and by the disposition of the lights, they judged themselves not far from Charing Cross Station." Here assemble each night a little band of members pledged to decide, by the fall of the cards, which shall kill and which be killed. The Club exists for the benefit of a president, who pockets the money and provides the entertainment. Various members of the Club are drawn with great spirit, and the excitement attaching to the fatal deal which conveys the signal of death and murder is fully shared by the reader. The succeeding chapters, although complete tales in themselves, link themselves on to the first story ; while the adventures of Prince Florizel are brought to a close in another series of tales, called "The Rajah's Diamond." If one or two of these hang fire a little, the interest revives again in " The House with the Green Blinds ;" and the closing chapter of the volume is a particularly happy specrinen of the author's grace of style and expression. When the diamond finds its final resting- place, we can wish for no better conclusion to a series of adven- tures which have kept our interest alive to the last.
In the second volume, the tales are less distinctive, and in becoming less fanciful they lose, perhaps, a little of their charm. But in one, at least, of them, if the originality is not so striking, the word-painting can hardly be surpassed. The story of a night in the life of Francis Villon is a drama of remarkable power. The very atmosphere itself bespeaks the story. "It was late in November, 1456. The snow fell over Paris with rigorous, relentless persistence ; sometimes, the wind made a sally, and scattered it in flying vortices ; sometimes, there was a lull, and flake after flake descended out of the black night air, silent, circuitous, interininable." What night could be more fitted as a background to the scene svhere Villon and his thievish companions are gambling, and preparing the way for the murder which was to send the poet out on his quest for "A Lodging for the Night." "A great pile of living embers diffused a strong and ruddy glow from the arched chimney. Before this straddled Dom Nicolas, the Picardy monk, with his skirts picked up and . his fat legs bared to the comfortable warmth. His dilated shadow cut the room in half On the right, Villon and Guy Tabery were huddled together over a scrap of parchment, Villon making a ballade, which he was to call the Ballade of Roast Fish,' and Tabery spluttering admiration at his shoulder- The poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean, with hollow cheeks and thin, black, locks Greed had made folds
about his eyes, evil smiles had puckered his mouth • It was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. His hands were small and prehensile, with fingers knotted like a cord; and they were continually flickering in front of him, in violent and expressive pantomime." Thia was Villon, at the age of twenty-four. As the scene is described, the reader seems to be watching the various players in that far-off tragedy—each absorbed in his own mean interest, but all united in a confra- ternity of evil. Two of the party, Mantigny and Thevenin Pelmet°, are playing a game of chance ; while Villon is stringing rhymes together, and picturing the storm without, after his own wild fashion :— Thevenin was just opening his mouth to claim another victory when Moutigny leaped up, swift as an adder, and stabbed him to the heart The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashlon, the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer. My God!. said Tabary, and he began to pray in Latin. Villon broke out into hysterical laughter. He came a step forward, and clacked a ridiculons bow at Thevenin and laughed still louder. Then he sat down suddenly, all of a heap upon a stool, and continaed laughing bitterly, M though lie would shake himself to pieces. Montigny recovered his composer() first. ' Lot's see what he has upon him, he remarked, and be picked the dead man's pocket
with a practical hand, and divided the money into four equal portions on the table."
The spoil divided, and Villor unwittingly robbed of his share by the Picardy monk, the party slip out oue by one, to try and lose their identity until the affair should be blown over. After all, a dead man was not such an unusual customer in a Paris tavern of the fifteenth century. The snow made the city light through its whiteness. Where are the guilty spirits to hide themselves ? Villon is the first to depart, and try his fortune in the great city that lies asleep before him. His own vivid pictures arise before.
him. He sees the gallows of M.ontfaucon, upon which he had so lightly rallied his companion but a short half-hour before.. His nervous memories quicken his steps. Along the deserted street comes the patrol, and Villon, stumbling under a ruined hotel to keep himself from their notice, finds himself once more in the presence of death. This time it is a woman frozen to death in the pitiless snow of that November night, with her whole substance summed up in two small coins, which she had not lived long enough to spend. The poet's heart can still be touched by the sense of pathos which the woman's hard fide awakes in him. But the softened mood gives way to mad rage,.
when he discovers that he has been robbed of his own ill gotten- gains :—
" Suddenly, his heart stopped beating ; a feeling of cold scales passed up the back of his legs, and a cold blow seemed to fall upon his scalp. He stood petrified for a moment ; then he felt again, with one feverish movement ; and then Ifs less burst upon him,. and he was covered at once with perspiration. To spendthrifts,. money is so living and actual,—it is such a thin veil between them and their pleasures. There is only one limit to their fortune,—that of time ; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns, is the Emperor. of Rome until they are spent."
Driven to despair, where is he to turn for the night's lodging. which stands between him and a possible death through starving cold? His adopted father, the Chaplain of St. Benoit, drives him from his door, well knowing his applicant, and deaf to his entreaty for help. Once more Villon turned into the inhospitable streets, to break, if need be, into a lodging, if none offered itself peaceably to him. The freezing cold began to play its part,. and the pictures of inviting food and warmth that his artistic imagination conjured up did not add comfort to the desperate man. A glimmer of light at last announced that in one house its inhabitants wore on the move. Villon knocked boldly at the door, and, to his own surprise, met with a courteous reception at the last from a perfect stranger. In the person of the old French knight, Mr. Stevenson catches the spirit of the- century. The large apartment was lighted "by a great lamp, hanging from the roof, it was very bare of furniture, only some gold plate on a sideboard, some folios, and a stand of armour between the windows." "I am alone in my house,' said the old man, "and if you are to eat, I must forage for you myself." His host gone to find him food, the Devil once more awakes in Villon. The furniture, if scanty, was rich in quality. The gold plate on the sideboard might help to supply the puree- which his companion of the evening had robbed him of. How subtly Mr. Stevenson draws the calculating spirit of the poet- thief. " Seven pieces of plate," he said. "If there had been ten, I would have risked it." These words give us the key to the whole situation,—the patrician host, calm in his dignified courtesy ; the poet himself calculating closely the chances of success, if he made a daring robery. At one mo- ment, his courage seems equal to his avarice ; at the next, he quails before the question the blood upon his shoulder gives rise. to. This strange medley of conflicting purposes runs through the conversation which follows. Both saw life from their own point of view, and no sympathy could spring up between them. Then, as now, the contest was unequal. The pillage which the old man called honourable in war, the poet justified in himself when be practised it for a livelihood in times of peace. Such reasoning is always ready, when the discussion is between two fearless spirits of unequal rank. Mr. Stevenson, however, has- managed to make it fresh to his readers, from the originality of the surroundings, but it adds, possibly, a little too much weight to an otherwise perfect work of art. Stories like those which Mr. Stevenson has written naturally suggest the question as to what place such writing holds in litera- ture. They are not novels, and they hardly pretend to describe real life. Strictly speaking, they are grotesque romances, in which the author has allowed himself a considerable licence as to prob- ability of incident. To compare him with another writer of some- thing of the same kind, Mr. Stevenson's treatment of the impos. Bible is bolder than that of Bulwer Lytton, who shelters him. self behind the supernatural as soon as probability ceases. He bears more resemblance to the elder Dumas, than to any Eng- lish author ; but in Dumas, the intensity of writing is stronger, and the excitement of the reader far more stimulated, than in the slighter sketches of the New Arabian Nights. We can imagine Dumas losing himself in his characters, and believing in his stories, while Mr. Stevenson gives us the impression of being outside both. He is the stage manager skilfully directing his actors, while he never ceases to regard them from the point of view of pure art. He has the advantage, however, of Dumas in the subtle humour which pervades everything he writes. As a collection of grotesque romances, the New Arabian Nights are perfect in form and finish ; and such an aim is not only legitimate in itself, but constitutes a fresh departure in romance- writing.
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