There,on a bench beneath the lime-trees,Etienne Lousteau sat and listened to sample-sonnets from the Marguerites.
Etienne Lousteau,after a two-years'apprenticeship,was on the staff of a newspaper;he had his foot in the stirrup;he reckoned some of the celebrities of the day among his friends;altogether,he was an imposing personage in Lucien's eyes.Wherefore,while Lucien untied the string about the Marguerites,he judged it necessary to make some sort of preface.
"The sonnet,monsieur,"said he,"is one of the most difficult forms of poetry.It has fallen almost entirely into disuse.No Frenchman can hope to rival Petrarch;for the language in which the Italian wrote,being so infinitely more pliant than French,lends itself to play of thought which our positivism (pardon the use of the expression)rejects.So it seemed to me that a volume of sonnets would be something quite new.Victor Hugo has appropriated the old,Canalis writes lighter verse,Beranger has monopolized songs,Casimir Delavigne has taken tragedy,and Lamartine the poetry of meditation.""Are you a 'Classic'or a 'Romantic'?"inquired Lousteau.
Lucien's astonishment betrayed such complete ignorance of the state of affairs in the republic of letters,that Lousteau thought it necessary to enlighten him.
"You have come up in the middle of a pitched battle,my dear fellow;you must make your decision at once.Literature is divided,in the first place,into several zones,but our great men are ranged in two hostile camps.The Royalists are 'Romantics,'the Liberals are 'Classics.'The divergence of taste in matters literary and divergence of political opinion coincide;and the result is a war with weapons of every sort,double-edged witticisms,subtle calumnies and nicknames a outrance,between the rising and the waning glory,and ink is shed in torrents.The odd part of it is that the Royalist-Romantics are all for liberty in literature,and for repealing laws and conventions;while the Liberal-Classics are for maintaining the unities,the Alexandrine,and the classical theme.So opinions in politics on either side are directly at variance with literary taste.If you are eclectic,you will have no one for you.Which side do you take?""Which is the winning side?"
"The Liberal newspapers have far more subscribers than the Royalist and Ministerial journals;still,though Canalis is for Church and King,and patronized by the Court and the clergy,he reaches other readers.--Pshaw!sonnets date back to an epoch before Boileau's time,"said Etienne,seeing Lucien's dismay at the prospect of choosing between two banners."Be a Romantic.The Romantics are young men,and the Classics are pedants;the Romantics will gain the day."The word "pedant"was the latest epithet taken up by Romantic journalism to heap confusion on the Classical faction.
Lucien began to read,choosing first of all the title-sonnets.
EASTER DAISIES.
The daisies in the meadows,not in vain,In red and white and gold before our eyes,Have written an idyll for man's sympathies,And set his heart's desire in language plain.
Gold stamens set in silver filigrane Reveal the treasures which we idolize;And all the cost of struggle for the prize Is symboled by a secret blood-red stain.
Was it because your petals once uncurled When Jesus rose upon a fairer world,And from wings shaken for a heav'nward flight Shed grace,that still as autumn reappears You bloom again to tell of dead delight,To bring us back the flower of twenty years?
Lucien felt piqued by Lousteau's complete indifference during the reading of the sonnet;he was unfamiliar as yet with the disconcerting impassibility of the professional critic,wearied by much reading of poetry,prose,and plays.Lucien was accustomed to applause.He choked down his disappointment and read another,a favorite with Mme.de Bargeton and with some of his friends in the Rue des Quatre-Vents.
"This one,perhaps,will draw a word from him,"he thought.
THE MARGUERITE.
I am the Marguerite,fair and tall I grew In velvet meadows,'mid the flowers a star.
They sought me for my beauty near and far;My dawn,I thought,should be for ever new.
But now an all unwished-for gift I rue,A fatal ray of knowledge shed to mar My radiant star-crown grown oracular,For I must speak and give an answer true.
An end of silence and of quiet days,The Lover with two words my counsel prays;And when my secret from my heart is reft,When all my silver petals scattered lie,I am the only flower neglected left,Cast down and trodden under foot to die.
At the end,the poet looked up at his Aristarchus.Etienne Lousteau was gazing at the trees in the Pepiniere.
"Well?"asked Lucien.
"Well,my dear fellow,go on!I am listening to you,am I not?That fact in itself is as good as praise in Paris.""Have you had enough?"Lucien asked.
"Go on,"the other answered abruptly enough.
Lucien proceeded to read the following sonnet,but his heart was dead within him;Lousteau's inscrutable composure froze his utterance.If he had come a little further upon the road,he would have known that between writer and writer silence or abrupt speech,under such circumstances,is a betrayal of jealousy,and outspoken admiration means a sense of relief over the discovery that the work is not above the average after all.
THE CAMELLIA.
In Nature's book,if rightly understood,The rose means love,and red for beauty glows;A pure,sweet spirit in the violet blows,And bright the lily gleams in lowlihood.
But this strange bloom,by sun and wind unwooed,Seems to expand and blossom 'mid the snows,A lily sceptreless,a scentless rose,For dainty listlessness of maidenhood.
Yet at the opera house the petals trace For modesty a fitting aureole;An alabaster wreath to lay,methought,In dusky hair o'er some fair woman's face Which kindles ev'n such love within the soul As sculptured marble forms by Phidias wrought.
