Art. II. Madame Dudevant's Novels. by Busk, M. M.

Mary Margaret BuskArt. II—1. Indiana, par G. Sand. 4me. édit. 2 tom. 8vo. Paris, 1834.
2. Valentine, par G. Sand. 3me. édit. 2 tom. 8vo. Paris, 1834.
3. Lelia, par G. Sand. 2 tom. 8vo. Paris, 1832.
4. Rose et Blanche, par J. Sand. 2 tom. 8vo. Paris, 1833.
5. Le Secretaire Intime, par G. Sand. 2 tom. 8vo. Paris, 1834.
6. Jacques, par George Sand. 2 tom. 8vo. Paris, 1834.¹

The string of novels above enumerated, taken in combination with their author, constitute a moral phenomenon, perhaps not one of the least remarkable of these our phenomenon-teeming days. The points co-operating to the construction of this phenomenon are of course multifarious. One is, the inconceivable discrepancy, and that of an unwonted kind, between the earlier and later productions of one and the same author. The first two works, but especially the first, of the soi-disant² George Sand, were so replete with talent and with knowledge of human nature, so boldly conceived and so brilliantly executed,—were written in a style so animated, so graphically delightful, displayed portraits hit off with such admirable power and spirit,—even if not always wrought out in the conduct of the story in perfect keeping with the original sketch,—as we have rarely seen surpassed. Gladly did we hail them, as harbingers of the rising of a new and radiant, if not perfectly salutiferous star, above the literary horizon. The succeeding works published under the same name, far from showing the improved mastery of the art usually acquired by practice,[Page 272]are, as though the mine had been thus quickly exhausted, so immeasurably inferior to their predecessors in every thing, (except, perhaps, boldness of conception, which now sometimes increases from originality to extravagance,) that but for their similarity of tone and temper, we should hardly know how to credit their fraternal relationship. If we are indeed to believe that George Sand is one individual, and not two or more individuals,—we look not upon the J. once substituted for the G. as any argument, because, to say nothing of public opinion, Lelia, to which we chiefly allude, bears the G.—we cannot suggest, for the unriddling of the mystery, a better key than the remark of a shrewd and witty friend of our own youth, who was wont to say, "It is when a man has got a bad name that he may go to sleep, since nothing he can do will ever change it; when he has a good one, he must labor like a horse to keep it." Of a surety George Sand agrees not with our friend, but having deserved and gained a high—a very high—literary reputation, fancies he may go to sleep, and fearlessly publish the somnambulic effusions of his repose.

The second point is, that even those novels which we rank highest in the scale, Indiana and Valentine, although not actually immoral, certainly not licentious, are often so daring in situation and in graphic delineation, are so generally deficient in refined delicacy, in glowing love of, and delight in, virtue, that we should hesitate about recommending even these to our fair and youthful readers. It may be thought that in the present state of French literature, at least in the departments of the drama and of prose fiction, this want of delicacy and of moral sense rather detracts from than enhances the singularity we have ascribed to the productions before us; but the reader will possibly abandon that opinion when informed of our third point, to wit, that George Sand is only a pseudonyme, and that the real author of them is a lady, and a lady (as we have been informed, but cannot vouch) of unblemished character, whose name is Madame Dudevant.

The astonishment created by the discovery of the sex and individuality of the writer augments an hundred, nay, a million-fold, as we peruse the subsequent writings of the same highly, but perversely endowed authoress, who, in Lelia, seems almost ignorant, and quite reckless, of the difference between right and wrong. The most favourable hypothesis we can frame respecting our disguised lady is, that having been harshly treated by society, and especially unfortunate in the conjugal relation, she has been exasperated into the determined hostility to both, which, despite her protestations to the contrary, her publications exhibit, and in the irritation of unhappiness has lost the sensitive pudicity of her sex.

But we cannot expect our readers to go along with us in these[Page 273]generalities. To enable them to do so, we must enter into particulars, and we believe the only way of unfolding our phenomenon will be to give short sketches of, and an extract or two from, all these tales. But in order to give the authoress fair play, we will begin with extracts from the prefaces. In that to Indiana she says —

The narrator hopes that after hearing his tale to the end, few auditors will deny the morality which results from his facts, and there, as in all that is human, is triumphant. As he finished it, he felt his conscience clear, and judged that the legal code which here upon earth must regulate the throbbing of man's bosom, ought in fairness to acquit him. He flatters himself that he has related without rancour the paltry miseries of society, has described without too much passion the passions of humanity. . . .

Perhaps you will do him justice if you allow that he has shown you the being who strives to get rid of a legitimate curb very wretched, the heart that revolts against the decrees of fate very desolate. If he has not assigned the fairest part to the one of his personages who represents law, if he has shown under a still less lively aspect him who represents opinion, you will see a third who represents illusion, and who cruelly mocks and disappoints the vain hopes, the wild enterprises of passion. In short, you will see, that if he has not strewed roses on the ground where the law pens the wills of men, like the appetites of sheep, he has thrown nettles upon the path that leads from it.

* * *

Indiana is woman, the feeble being commissioned to represent the passions oppressed, or, if you like it better, repressed by the laws; here is will struggling with necessity; here is love dashing his blind brow against all the obstacles of civilization. But the serpent wears and breaks his teeth in striving to gnaw a file; the soul exhausts its energies in wrestling with the positive of life.

Against this statement, we must be allowed to set a sort of aphoristic exclamation in Valentine, which, not being assigned to any personage in the novel, must be taken as expressing the writer's own opinion.

Poor woman, poor society, where the heart can find no genuine enjoyment, save in the forgetfulness of all duty, of all reason!

But on the other hand, in the preface to Le Secretaire Intime, Madame Dudevant has again vindicated or explained her views, and from this vindication or explanation, likewise, we are bound in justice to offer extracts.

The author deems it his duty to declare, that he never meant to draw up an indictment against society, against the institutions by which it is governed, against humanity itself, as has been recently asserted. Intentions of this sort would ill become him; neither his talent, nor his will, nor yet his hopes, deserve so serious an impeachment. He well knows that the majority value highly institutions which they find[Page 274]convenient, and, thank God, pride and folly have not yet bewildered him so far, as to induce the belief that a word of his could overthrow what exists. . . . .

Indiana and Valentine are not then a satire against marriage, but pictures true or false (that the reader must decide) of the moral sufferings inflicted upon a delicate and pure soul by imperious brutality and by polished egotism. As marriage and love may very well exist independently of these two conditions, the poetical truth of the picture has nothing to do with the institutions and the passions that serve to frame it.

This last sentence seems to refer to the Secretaire Intime itself, of which hereafter. We now turn to the earlier novels; and as Indiana is that in which the ticklish situations are managed with the nearest approach to delicacy, and is in every respect our favourite, we shall devote our principal attention to it.

Indiana is the story of a marriage, unhappy from difference of age, station, opinions, feelings, disposition, in short, every thing in which contrariety is most inimical to happiness in the intimate association of wedlock. The husband is a surly half-pay veteran of the imperial army, low-born, uneducated, violent, jealous, and infirm; the wife, a noble Creole of Spanish race, lovely and good, with all the unregulated sensibility, or shall we say susceptibility? of tropical climates. She deems that she does her duty fully to the disagreeable partner of her life and master of her destiny, by personal fidelity and coldly implicit obedience, without an effort either to care for him, or to soothe and soften him into an object of, at least, respect and kindliness. She, Indiana, falls in love with a hero, whom, as a somewhat novel character, we must let the authoress herself paint. Her portrait of him displays that intermixture of general satirical touches in which she excels.

M. Raymon de Ramière was neither a coxcomb nor a libertine. . . . He was a man of principle, when he reasoned with himself. But impetuous passions often hurried him out of his systems. Then he was no longer capable of reflexion, or he avoided summoning himself to the bar of his own conscience; he committed faults, unknown, as it were, to himself, and the man of yesterday exerted himself to deceive the man of tomorrow. . . . . Raymon had the art of being often guilty without making himself hated, often capricious without being offensive. He occasionally succeeded in obtaining the pity of those who had most cause for being angry with him.

* * * * *

Raymon was an exception from the rule, that he who speaks eloquently of his love is little in love. He expressed his passion skilfully, and felt it fervently. Only it was not his passion that made him eloquent, it was his eloquence that fired his passion. He took a fancy to a woman; he became eloquent to seduce her, and, whilst seducing, became desperately enamoured of her. . . . Raymon had committed for[Page 275]love what are called follies.³ He had run away with a young lady of condition (and still is a bachelor); he had compromised women of high rank; he had fought two or three celebrated duels; he had betrayed the disorder of his heart, the delirium of his thoughts, to a whole rout, a whole theatre. A man who does all this without fear of being laughed at or execrated, and who succeeds in escaping both,⁴ is thenceforth invulnerable; he may risk every thing, hope every thing.

* * * * *

Raymon possessed inconceivable power over all that surrounded him, for with all his faults, he was a superior man in society. . . . . He was one of the men who have held most empire, most influence over your thoughts, whatever may be your opinion now. You have devoured his political pamphlets, and often have you been hurried away, whilst reading the newspapers of those days, by the irresistible charm of his style, by the graces of his courteous, his worldly argumentation.

I speak to you of an era already far distant from us, who no longer reckon by centuries, or even by reigns, but by ministers. I speak to you of the Martignac year⁵ . . . . .

Placed by his birth and fortune amongst the partizans of absolute royalty, Raymon sacrificed to the young ideas of his day by a devoted attachment to the Charter. At least he thought he did so, and laboured to prove it. But conventions that have fallen to desuetude are subject to various interpretations, and this was already the case with Louis XVIII's Charte, as with the Gospel of Christ. . . . Raymon, like other inexperienced heads, fancied it still possible to be a conscientious journalist. Error! At a season when deference to the voice of reason is only pretended, in order the more effectually to stifle it. Free from political passions, Raymon believed he was disinterested, and deceived himself; for society, as then organized, was to him favourable and advantageous; it could not be deranged without lessening the sum of his enjoyments, and that perfect quietude of situation, which extends to the thoughts, is a wonderful teacher of moderation.

* * * * *

Preserved by his fortune from the necessity of writing for bread, Raymon used his pen from inclination, and (as he said and believed) from duty. His rare power of refuting positive truth by sheer talent rendered him invaluable to the ministry,—whom he served better by his impartial resistance, than did its creatures by their blind devotion,—and yet more precious to a young and elegant world, willing to abjure the ridicule of obsolete privileges, but not to lose their existing advantages.

The manner of this new-fashioned, liberalized Lovelace's passion for poor Indiana may be easily imagined, even without the information given upon one occasion.

He had two days good, which he thus allotted. The remainder of[Page 276]the closing day to affect, the morrow to persuade, his intended victim, and the following day to his triumph.

The reader is accordingly held in constant dread of seeing the impassioned and confiding Creole fall a victim to the seducer's arts and eloquence. She is saved, sometimes by fainting fits produced by extraordinary nervous sensibility, but generally, as well in reputation as in fact, by the intervention of her cousin, Sir Ralph Brown, who, first introduced as a caricature of all the faults and dulness ascribed by continental writers to Englishmen, proves in the end to be the very prosopopeia of heroic self-immolating virtue. Passionately in love with Indiana, even from her infancy, he has uniformly sacrificed his feelings to his duties, and quietly suffers himself, after Indiana's ill-assorted marriage, to be considered a cold egoist, lest her sympathy for his real agonies should inflame his passion to such an ungovernable, unconcealable pitch, as, by arousing her husband's jealousy, should prevent his incessant care of her.

To return to Raymon and Indiana. We shall give the scene that really decides her fate, as, of its kind the most possible, from greater delicacy,—or must we say less indelicacy?—to translate. But some preliminary statements will be requisite. During an indispensable absence of Delmare, Indiana's husband, the vigilant guardianship of Sir Ralph foils and irritates Raymon's passion. The lover secretly gives Indiana a letter complaining of her apparent mistrust, and urging a thousand sophistical reasons why she should admit him at night to her chamber, where his respect will be inviolate and inviolable. She answers;

"Who, I fear thee, Raymon! Oh no! not now. I know too well how thou lovest me; my belief in thy love is too intoxicating. Come then. Neither do I fear myself; did I love thee less, I might, perhaps, be less calm, but I love thee as thou thyself dreamest not. Go away early to prevent Ralph's distrust. Return at midnight; you know the park and the house: here is the key of the postern gate; fasten it after you."

Such perfect confidence almost subdues the libertine, but further proofs of Sir Ralph's suspicions dissipate his good intentions, and he arrives, determined not to lose the opportunity. Meanwhile Sir Ralph, after Raymon's departure, seeks to warn Indiana, without mortifying her by showing his knowledge of her imprudence. For this purpose he reveals to her his conviction, that Raymon, prior to his acquaintance with herself, had seduced her foster-sister and attendant, Noun, and afterwards, by his desertion, driven the wretched girl to suicide. Indiana, who had once surprised Raymon with Noun in her own chamber, but supposed he came for herself and had bribed Noun to admit him, now re-[Page 277]solves to ascertain the truth. She receives her lover more gravely than usual.

Raymon, surprised at this reception, ascribed it to some chaste scruple, some delicate reserve of youthful womanhood. He fell at her feet, saying,

"My best beloved, can you then fear me?"

But he immediately observed that Madame Delmare held something in her hand, which she seemed, with a playful affectation of gravity, to spread out before him. He stooped, and saw a mass of black hair, of unequal lengths, cut off hastily as it seemed, and which Indiana was smoothing in her hands.

"Do you recognize this?" she asked, fixing upon him her translucent eyes, that emitted a penetrating greenish brightness.

Raymon hesitated; he looked at the handkerchief that dressed her head, and thought he understood.

"Naughty child!" said he, taking the tresses from her. "Why cut them off? They were so beautiful, and I so loved them."

"You asked me yesterday," said she with a strange smile, "if I would sacrifice them to you."

"Oh, Indiana!" exclaimed Raymon, "well thou knowest that henceforward thou must to me be still more beautiful. Give, give; I will not regret the absence from thy forehead of those tresses I daily admired, but which I may now daily kiss and caress unquestioned—give them to me that they may never quit me more."

But as he took them, as he collected in his hand that profusion of locks, some of which hung down to the floor, Raymon felt in them a something harsh and dry, which he had never observed in the glossy bands upon Indiana's brow. He experienced a nervous shiver as he felt them cold and heavy, as though long cut, as he perceived that they had lost their perfumed moisture, their vital warmth. . . . .

"This is not your hair," said he, as he untied the silk handkerchief that concealed Madame Delmare's tresses.

They were uninjured, and fell in all their luxuriance about her shoulders. But she, with a gesture of repulse, and still showing him the cut hair, said,

"Know you not these locks? Have you never admired, never caressed them? Has one wet night" (Noun had drowned herself, and his way this night had led him past the spot where her body was found) "robbed them of all their perfume? Have you not one recollection, one tear, for her who wore this ring?"

Raymon sank upon a chair, and Noun's hair dropped from his hand. So many painful emotions overpowered him. He was a bilious man, whose blood circulated rapidly, whose nerves were singularly excitable. He shivered from head to foot, and fell in a swoon upon the floor.

When he recovered, Madame Delmare was on her knees by his side, bathing him in her tears, and imploring his forgiveness. But Raymon no longer loved her.

"You have wounded me dreadfully," said he; "wounded me to a degree that you cannot heal. You can never restore my confidence in
vol. xiv. no. xxviii.u[Page 278]your heart; you have shown me how full of revenge and cruelty it is. Poor Noun! Unfortunate girl! It was against her I sinned, not against you! . . . And it is you who upbraid me with her death!—you, whom I have loved so passionately as to forget her, as to brave these agonies of remorse!—you, who on the faith of a kiss, have made me cross that river, that bridge, alone, with terror by my side, pursued by the infernal illusion of my crime! And when you discover how deliriously I love you, you strike your woman's nails into my heart, to seek there a little remnant of blood that may stream for you." . . . .

Madame Delmare made no reply. Motionless, pale, her hair dishevelled, her lips violet, her eyes glazed, she awakened Raymon's pity. Taking her hand, he said,

"And yet, so blind is my love for thee that I can still forget—against my will I feel I can—the past and the present, both the crime that blights my life, and the atrocity thou has just perpetrated. Love me, and I forgive thee."

Do you understand? Raymon offered Indiana his compassion, and she was happy to accept it! . . . .

Madame Delmare's despair rekindled desire together with pride in her lover's heart. When he saw her so fearful of losing his love, so humble before him, so resigned to receive his laws for the future, and his justification of the past, he recollected the purpose for which he had deceived Sir Ralph's watchfulness; he felt the advantage of his position. . . . . He waited till Indiana's heart was broken by her own sobs—till she had anticipated the horrors of desertion—till her distracting terrors had exhausted her strength. Then, when he saw her exhausted, expiring at his feet, awaiting her death in a word, he violently caught her in his arms and clasped her to his breast. She yielded like an infant; she gave up her lips to him unresistingly; she was almost dead.

But suddenly starting, as from a dream, she broke from his burning caresses, fled to the end of the room occupied by the picture of Sir Ralph, and as if placing herself under the protection of that grave personage, with his pure brow, his calm lips, she pressed herself against the portrait, palpitating, bewildered, full of strange terrors. Raymon thought she was afraid of herself and was his.

Authoritatively he snatched her from her asylum, and told her that he had come determined to keep his promises, but that her cruelty had released him from his oaths.

The struggle, which we beg to be excused translating, continues, and at length Indiana seems about to be subdued by the common-place reproach, at which Raymon almost sneers whilst uttering it, of want of love. But now

A short dry knock at her door stopped the blood in her arteries. Raymon and she remained motionless, not daring to breathe.

Then a paper was slid under the door—it was a leaf of a pocket-book, upon which these words were almost illegibly pencilled.

"Your husband is here. Ralph."

* * * * *

[Page 279]

"Well then," said Raymon, enthusiastically catching her in his arms, "since death environs us, be mine!" Be thy last word one of love; my last breath happiness!"

"This moment of terror and of courage," she replied, "might have been the happiest of my life; but you have spoiled it."

Wheels were heard in the farm yard; the castle bell was pulled by a rude and impatient hand.

"I know that ring," said Indiana, coldly attentive; "Ralph never spoke false. But you have time to fly. Go."

Raymon now perforce obeys, and scarcely has he passed the postern by which he had entered, when

Sir Ralph presented himself, and accosting him as coldly as if they had met at a rout, said,

"Be pleased to give me that key; should it be sought, there is no harm in its being found in my hands."

Raymon would have preferred the most deadly insult to this ironical generosity. He said,

"I am not the man to forget a real service, but I am the man to avenge an affront, to punish treachery."

Sir Ralph, without any change of tone or countenance, rejoined—"I desire not your gratitude, and shall quietly await your revenge. But this is not the moment for conversation; there is your road; think of Madame Delmare." And he disappeared.

Indiana now writes a letter to Raymon, ending thus:—

Not to be more beloved than Noun! Oh if I thought it! Yet she was more beautiful, far more beautiful, than me! Why then prefer me? You must needs have loved me otherwise, and better. This is what I wanted to say. Will you renounce the wish of being my lover in the way you were hers? If you will, I can still esteem you, can believe in your remorse, your sincerity, your love. If not, think no more of me; you will never see me again. I may die of it, but I had rather die than stoop to be merely your mistress. I.

This pride offends Raymon, and he resolves to humble it by making her his mistress. He accordingly, professing submission, pursues her with all the arts of the most consummate seducer; and she at length agrees to elope from her husband, when he, Delmare, shall embark for the Isle of Bourbon. The moment arrives.

One morning, on coming home from a ball, Raymon found Madame Delmare in his chamber. She had come at midnight; during five long hours she had been waiting his return. . . . .

"I was waiting for you," said she, mildly. "During the days that you have not come to me, things have occurred that you must know, and I left my home last night to impart them to you."

"Incredible imprudence!" exclaimed Raymon, carefully shutting the door. "And my servants, who know that you are here! for they told me so."

u 2[Page 280]

"I did not conceal myself," said she coolly; "and as to the word you use, I think it ill chosen."

"I said imprudence, I should have said madness."

"I, for my part, should have said courage; but no matter; listen."

She now tell him that M. Delmare sets out in three days for Bordeaux, there to embark for the Isle of Bourbon; and, what might not have been anticipated from the manner of the preceding dialogue, that she has eloped, and is to come live with him. Raymon is by no means delighted with the prospect.

The crisis was urgent. . . . One more effort of imagination, thought Raymon to himself—one more love scene. And starting up with vivacity, he exclaimed—

"Never! Never will I accept such sacrifices! When I told thee I would, Indiana, it was boasting, or rather it was self-calumny; for a poltroon only would deliberately dishonour the woman he loves. Thou, in thy ignorance of life, hast not appreciated the importance of the step; and I, in my despair at the prospect of losing thee, would not reflect."

"Reflection has speedily returned to you!" said she, withdrawing her hand, which he sought to take.

"Indiana," he resumed, "see you not that you impose dishonour upon me, reserving the heroism for yourself, and that you condemn me because I would remain worthy of your love? Couldst thou still love me, say, simple and ignorant woman, were I to sacrifice thy life to my pleasure, thy reputation to my interests?"

"You contradict yourself," rejoined Indiana. "If by remaining with you I make you happy, what should you fear from opinion? Do you care more for it than for me?"

"Not on my own account do I care for it, Indiana!"

"On mine then? I foresaw your scruples, and to free you from all remorse, I have taken the active part. I did not wait for you to snatch me from my home; I did not even consult you previously to quitting it for ever. That decisive step is taken, and your conscience cannot reproach you with it. At this moment, Raymon, I am dishonoured. In your absence I counted upon that clock the hours that consummated my disgrace, and now, although the dawning day finds my brow as pure as it was yesterday, in public opinion I am a lost woman."

* * * * *

A sudden thought shot through Raymon's brain. The moment was come to conquer this woman's pride, or it never would come. She had just offered him every sacrifice that he did not desire, and there she stood before him, in haughty confidence that she ran no dangers beyond those she had foreseen. Raymon saw the mode of freeing himself from her importunate devotion, or of profiting by it. He was too much Delmare's friend to rob him of his wife; he ought to content himself with seducing her.

"Thou art right, my Indiana!" he exclaimed with fervour. "Thou recall'st me to myself, thou awakenest my transports, which the idea of thy perils, the fear of injuring thee, had frozen. . . . . . Let him come[Page 281]then to tear thee from my raptures—the stupid husband who locks thee up, and goes to sleep upon his gross violence. Henceforward thou art no longer his; thou art my beloved, my companion, my mistress!"

Whilst so speaking, Raymon gradually heated himself, as was his wont, in pleading his passions. The situation was striking, was romantic; it offered dangers that seasoned it with all the effect of a fashionable drama. . . . He acted passion so as to deceive himself, and, shame to the silly woman! she gave herself up in delight to these illusive demonstrations—she felt happy, radiant with joy and hope—she forgave everything—she was almost on the point of granting everything.

But Raymon lost himself by his precipitation. . . . The clock struck seven. It is time to make an end, thought he; I must get her quietly home before Delmare comes here. He became more urgent and less tender. . . . . Indiana was recalled to herself; she repulsed the attacks of cold egotistical vice.

Raymon now gets into a pet, and drinks a large glass of water.

It calmed his delirium and cooled his love. He looked ironically at Indiana, and said—"Come, Madam, it is time to go home."

A ray of light dawned upon Indiana, and revealed to her Raymon's soul.

Indiana now falls into a state of stupefaction that alarms Raymon, who seeks his mother's assistance. The old lady soothes the wretched young woman, and recals her to herself. But Indiana insists upon going home alone, and on foot.

In vain Madame de Ramière trembled to see her, thus weakened and disordered, undertake so long a walk.

"I have strength enough," she replied. "A word of Raymon's has given it me."

As was to be expected, she loses her way, and, absorbed in melancholy reverie, wanders along the banks of the Seine, beyond the limits of Paris.

Insensibly she found herself on the brink of the water, which drove masses of ice to her feet, breaking them with a dry, cold sound against the stones that protected the banks. The greenish, murmuring water exercised an attractive force over Indiana's senses. One accustoms oneself to dreadful ideas; once fairly admitted, one comes to take pleasure in them. The example of Noun's suicide had so long solaced Indiana's hours of despair, that suicide had gradually become to her mind voluptuously alluring. A single idea, that of religion, had withheld her from yielding to it. But at this moment no consistent thought swayed her exhausted brain. She scarcely knew that there was a God, scarcely recollected that Raymon existed, and walked on, nearer and nearer to the river, obedient to the instinct of misfortune, to the magnetism of suffering.

When she felt the piercing cold of the water that now bathed her feet, she awoke as from somnambulism, and looking around, saw Paris far behind her, the Seine flying from beneath her feet, hurrying along[Page 282]the white reflection of the houses, the greyish blue of the sky. This continuous movement of the water, and the immobility of the ground, became confused in her disordered perceptions, and she thought that the water slept, that the earth fled. At this moment of vertigo she leant against a wall, and stooped, as fascinated, towards what seemed a solid mass. . . . . . But the barking of a dog that frolicked around her distracted her attention, delaying for an instant the accomplishment of her purpose. And now a man, who, guided by the dog's voice, was hurrying forward, seized her by the waist, dragged her away, and laid her down upon the fragments of a deserted boat. She looked him in the face, but knew him not. He knelt beside her, wrapped her in his cloak, took her hands in his own to warm them, and called upon her name. But her brain was too feeble to make an effort; for eight-and-forty hours she had forgotten to eat.

When some degree of warmth circulated through her benumbed limbs, she saw Ralph on his knees before her, holding her hands, watching her eyes for a gleam of sense.

"Did you meet Noun?" she asked; and bewildered by a degree of monomania, added, "I saw her go this way," pointing to the river, "and wanted to follow her; but she went too fast, and I had not power to walk! 'Twas like a night-mare!"

Even after this bitter lesson, an artfully pathetic letter, written by Raymon when, after his mother's death, a fit of sickness made him feel the want of a fond woman's cares, induces Indiana to fly from her husband and her cousin, secretly quit the Isle of Bourbon, and recross the Atlantic, to give herself up to him. Luckily, in the interval, he had recovered, forgotten his letter, and married a high-spirited heiress, who drives Indiana out of her house within a very few and safe minutes from her entering it. Again Sir Ralph, who had immediately followed her back to France, is her guardian angel; but he fails in all his endeavours to recover her from the torpor of despair into which she has now sunk. At length, considering her case as hopeless, he proposes to her that they should return to the Isle of Bourbon, (Delmare was dead,) and there commit suicide together. To this sociable felo-de-se⁶ scheme she gladly assents, and again they traverse the Atlantic. But before leaping arm in arm from the brow of a rock into the foaming cataract, which they have selected as the scene of their self-slaughter, Sir Ralph wishes that his heart should at last be better known to Indiana, and tells her the whole story of his love, his sufferings, his self-immolation, if not to her happiness, yet to the mitigation of the evils that oppressed her. The result may be anticipated. They do not kill themselves; but whether they marry, or dispense with a ceremony which, whatever she may be pleased to aver, Madame Dudevant assuredly does not patronize, is not clearly stated.

[Page 283]

Valentine is the next best of these novels, and though, in our opinion, inferior to Indiana, not much so. Its object, (begging the authoress's pardon,) we cannot help believing to be an attack upon the existing institutions of society, as well as the delineation of the follies and prejudices of the divers classes of society, including the vices of the higher grades; for the writer's own prepossessions are all manifestly democratic, and she paints her old Marquise, Valentine's grandmother, such as we can fancy none but the female partners of the Regent Orleans's orgies, or the associates of Madame du Barri in the petits appartements of Louis XV.—and to have been one even of these last would make her very old,—for without disputing the immorality of the French nobility prior to the revolution, we must observe that the high polish of their manners sufficed to insure general external decorum. And yet, to our conservative eyes, even these sketches establish the necessity, or at least the advantage, of a clear and marked distinction of ranks.

Valentine de Raimbault herself is the gentlest, purest, calmest of high-born maidens; she is affianced to an elegant and courtly diplomatist, the Comte de Lansac, whom she really likes, and believes that she loves as warmly as her nature is capable of loving; and she seems altogether as happily secured as may be against the dangers that we have seen besetting the path of poor Indiana. Moreover, she has a warning example in an elder sister, Louise, who having, several years before the opening of the tale, fallen a victim to the arts of man, has been turned out of doors, with the living proof of her shame, whilst her noble seducer was shot by her father in a duel. Louise is now secreted in a farm house upon the Raimbault estate, the mistress of which had been her nurse; and the secret intercourse between the two fondly attached sisters involves Valentine in an intimacy with Benedict Lhery, the farmer's over-educated nephew, whence springs all the mischief, and indeed all the story. Benedict, who is spoiled for a farmer, without being fitted for a learned profession, or made quite a gentleman, is the betrothed bridegroom of his equally over-educated cousin Athénaïs; but regardless of her passionate attachment to him, his fastidiousness only sees and disdains in her the follies and affectations engendered by an unsuitable education, and some weeks before our introduction to the parties, he had fallen in love with Louise, and been coldly rejected by her, notwithstanding that she ardently returned his passion. Her motive is neither pride of rank, nor humility of repentance—of this last sentiment the author seems to have no idea—but respect for his engagement to Athénaïs, and for the wishes of her own kind hosts, the Lherys.

[Page 284]

We will give the first meeting of Valentine and Benedict, as a specimen of Madame Dudevant's powers, in a different style from the disagreeable and difficult scenes that we had to translate, as best we could, in Indiana. It is May-day, and the village festival assembles the neighbourhood of all ranks upon the green. Old Lhery takes the arm of his nephew, who is newly returned from college, to present him to his landlady, the Dowager Comtesse de Raimbault, a rich plebeian, whose wealth has bought back the Raimbault estates and castle, (confiscated during the revolution,) which she has now visited to celebrate her daughter's marriage in feudal style.

Valentine was seated upon the turf between her mother, the Comtesse de Raimbault, and her grandmother, the Marquise de Raimbault. Benedict knew none of these three ladies, but he had heard so much of them at the farm, that he was prepared for the icy, disdainful notice of the one, and the familiar, chatty reception of the other of the elder ladies. It seemed as if the old Marquise sought by her talkative fussiness to compensate her daughter-in-law's contemptuous silence. But even this affectation of popularity was stamped with the habitual tone of feudal protection.

"What, is that Benedict?" she exclaimed. "Is that the poppet that I have seen at his mother's breast? Good morrow, my lad. I am delighted to see thee so tall, and so well dressed. Thou art so like thy mother that it is awful. Well, but dost' know that we are old acquaintance? Thou art the godson of my poor son, the General, who fell at Waterloo. 'Twas I gave thee thy first frock, but thou dostn't remember much of that. How long is't ago? Thou must be eighteen."

"I am two and twenty, Madam," returned Benedict.

"The deuce you are!" exclaimed the Marquise, "How time flies! I thought thee about the age of my granddaughter. . . . . Valentine, speak to Benedict, 'tis the nephew of our good Lhery, the intended of thy little playfellow Athénaïs—Speak to him, child."

The democratically haughty Benedict is exasperated by this pompous affability.

He had fixed a bold and mocking gaze upon Valentine. . . . But the expression of that beautiful face was so sweet and serene, the sound of that voice so pure and so soothing, that the young man dropped his eyes and blushed like a girl.

"Ah Sir," said she, "what I can say to you most sincerely, is, that I love Athénaïs like a sister. Pray bring her to me, I have been long seeking without finding her, and would fain embrace her."

Benedict bowed profoundly, and soon returned with his cousin. Athénaïs now walked about the fête, arm in arm with the noble daughter of the Counts of Raimbault; and although she affected to take this as a matter of course, as Valentine really did, she could not disguise the triumph of her proud joy, as she met the women who envied, and strove to run her down.

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The fiddle now gave the signal for the Bourrée (a provincial dance), Athénaïs was engaged to dance it with one of the youths who had waylaid her, and she requested Mademoiselle de Raimbault to be her vis-a-vis⁷ .

"I must wait till I am asked," Valentine answered with a smile.

"Well then, Benedict," exclaimed Athénaïs eagerly, "go and ask Mademoiselle."

The intimidated Benedict consulted Valentine's eyes. In their soft and candid expression he read the wish to accept his offer, and took a step towards her. But the Comtesse suddenly touched her arm, saying loud enough to be heard by Benedict;

"My child, I forbid your dancing la bourrée with any one but M. de Lansac."

Benedict now first observed a very handsome young man, upon whose arm the Comtesse leant; and he recollected the name of Mademoiselle de Raimbault's intended. He understood the mother's motive. At a certain trill of the fiddle, executed before beginning la bourrée, every gentleman, by immemorial custom, salutes his partner. The Comte de Lansac, too well bred to allow himself such a liberty in public, compromised matters with the laws of Berry, by respectfully kissing Valentine's hand.

He then tried a few steps, but finding it impossible to catch the measure of this dance, which no stranger ever could dance well, he stopped and said to Valentine—

"I have now done my part, and at your mother's command installed you here; but my awkwardness must not spoil your pleasure. You had a partner waiting you; allow me to resign my claim to him." And turning to Benedict, he added, in a tone of exquisite politeness, "Will you, sir, kindly be my substitute? You will acquit yourself far better than me." . . . .

The Countess was satisfied with the diplomatic manner in which her intended son-in-law had arranged the affair. But suddenly the fiddler, facetious and waggish as are all genuine artists, interrupted the air of the dance, and with a malicious affectation, repeated the imperative trill. The new dancer is bound to salute his partner. Benedict turns pale, and is out of countenance, Daddy Lhery, frightened at the anger that he sees in the eyes of the Countess, springs to the musician and implores him to go on with the dance. The village Orpheus will listen to nothing; triumphant amidst peals of laughter and of bravos, he persists in not resuming the air until the indispensable form is gone through. The other dancers grow impatient. Madame de Raimbault is about to take away her daughter. But M. de Lansac, a courtier and a man of sense, feeling the ridicule of the scene, again addresses Benedict:

"Come, sir, must I again authorize you to enforce a right, of which I dared not avail myself? You spare me nothing of your triumph."

Benedict pressed his quivering lips to the velvet cheek of the young Countess. A sudden sensation of pride and joy animated him for an instant, but he observed that Valentine, amidst her blushes, was laughing heartily at the incident; and he recollected that when M. de Lansac kissed her hand, she had likewise blushed, but had not laughed.

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That very evening Benedict becomes the agent in the stolen interviews between the two noble sisters; and, notwithstanding the fair promise of the blush unalloyed by a laugh, he and Valentine presently fall head over ears in love with each other. Both are, however, conscious of the insuperable obstacles that sever them; and although Benedict refuses to fulfil his engagement with Athénaïs, Valentine so far fulfils hers with M. de Lansac, as to go through the marriage ceremony: but she excludes him from the bridal chamber upon a plea of illness, and puts herself to sleep with a good dose of opium. Meanwhile, Benedict, a pair of loaded pistols in his pocket, has concealed himself in this same bridal chamber, with the benevolent intention of preserving unsullied the virgin purity of his beloved, by blowing out either the bridegroom's brains or hers, and then his own. Of the nocturnal scene that ensues suffice it to say, that the lover, in point of fact, respects the purity he had come to guard; but despairing of being able to guard it much longer, upon going away before daylight he executes so much of his original purpose as to blow out his own brains. He does the job imperfectly, however, and recovers. But Valentine is made really ill by the shock of the first report; and ill M. de Lansac leaves her, thus avoiding the inconvenience of taking a wife with him upon his diplomatic mission to Petersburg.

Fifteen months of platonic love follow, guarded by the vigilance of poor Louise, who, though distracted with jealousy, carefully watches over her darling sister. At the end of this time M. de Lansac returns unexpectedly from Russia; but it is the importunity of creditors, not love for the wife whose fortune is to satisfy them, that brings him back. Without offering to penetrate into her maiden bower, he desires Valentine to sign papers that enable him to sell her estates, shows her that he is aware of her connexion with Benedict and believes it to be criminal, repulses her attempts at confession, refuses her request to save her from danger by taking her away with him, and departs. And now the virtue of the lovers is at length exhausted. Madame Dudevant says:—

It was a fatal moment, that, sooner or later, must arrive. There is too much temerity in hoping to subdue passion at the age of twenty, and amidst daily interviews. . . .

When the moment of repentance came, it was terrible. Then bitterly did Benedict lament a happiness that cost him so dear. His fault was visited with the severest punishment that could have been inflicted upon him; he saw Valentine weep, and pine away in sorrow.

But time is not given to see what would have come of this repentance. Valentine is expelled from the home of her fathers[Page 287]by her base husband's creditors, and seeks shelter at the farm, which Benedict had ceased to inhabit, since his rejection of his cousin's hand. There Athénaïs, who had consoled herself and married, gives up her own room to Valentine, whom Benedict privately visits, to discuss and arrange their future plans, M. de Lansac having, meanwhile, obligingly got himself shot in a duel. The husband of Athénaïs, who had been absent, coming home at night, sees a man in his wife's room, and shoots him as he goes away. Valentine dies of despair, the remorseful murderer drinks himself to death, the wealthy Lherys purchase the Raimbault domains and chateau, and the pretty, young and widowed Athénaïs marries the illegitimate son of Louise.

Of the third of this series of novels, Lelia, we shall speak much more briefly. It is decidedly the worst, and we strongly suspect that few readers who chanced to begin their acquaintance with the set by its perusal, would think of opening another of them[sic] To give such an analysis of Lelia as we have given of Valentine is impossible, since much of the detail of the story is such as respect for our readers and ourselves must prevent our even alluding to. Like Valentine, it is an attack upon the existing laws of society, and to say the truth, though for the reasons above intimated we cannot explain, its satire seems to be directed nearly as much against those of nature. But we will endeavour, by a few brief words concerning the story and its characters, to give the reader some idea of the nature of this most extraordinary production of a woman, not belonging to the Harriette Wilson class, and to show that its popularity in France, and all this lady's writings are, we are assured, highly popular, is no wise owing to the usual arts and address of a story teller.

A very young, pure, and enthusiastic poet is in love with a mysterious beauty, Lelia, a compound of romance, ultra-German transcendentalism, and the coldest irony. She, who has had one regular intrigue, and been somewhat disgusted therewith, returns his passion platonically, tricks him into mistaking a courtezan (her sister) for herself, and laughs at him for being so duped into illusory happiness. Hereupon our pure enthusiast, in rage, revenge, mortification, and despair, plunges headlong into an ultra-extravagance of debauchery, of which he is about to die, when he prevents the catastrophe by suicide. The female character presented to us as the most amiable in disposition, the most consistent and rational in conduct, is the aforesaid courtezan; and the male preacher and pattern of virtue is a gentleman who, after running a career of wild libertinism and yet wilder gambling, has committed forgery, been convicted, branded,[Page 288]and sent to the galleys, where he has duly served his time, and learned philosophy and morality. We must add, though the remark be far inferior in importance to the preceding, that the poet, the ex-galley slave, and Lelia herself, are all so mystically metaphysical in their conversations and reasonings, as actually to bewilder a plain English intellect, and make us despair of finding anything at once decent and intelligible to extract.

But perhaps that obtuseness of perception, which the French deem indigenous to our foggy isle (isle brumeuse), may have given us a false view of Lelia; and by good luck we have the means of enabling the reader to balance our opinion against the fair author's own. In the already cited preface to Le Secretaire Intime, after the justification of Indiana and Valentine that has been given, she goes on to speak of Lelia:

But may not poesy overstep the bounds of these peaceable felicities, these persevering credulities? (To wit, those of women who go on loving and trusting again and again.) Is she not entitled to take for the subject of her studies those sad exceptions, who, upon being undeceived, pass from disappointment to despair, from despair to doubt, from doubt to irony, from irony to pity, and from pity to serene impassive resignation—a religious disdain of all that is not God or Thought.

* * * *

Sensual happiness, pleasure heedless of yesterday and to-morrow, the triumph of the body over the soul, may appear to Irony herself, with all her pride and self-sufficiency, a subject rather of regret than of compassion. The silent and lonely insulation of thought wrapped up in itself may give serenity, but not happiness. In presence of those joys to which she cannot condescend, Reason may be permitted to grieve over the desart atmosphere in which she has taken refuge. There is nothing in this resigned sadness like the apology of libertinism. The wise man may envy the courtesan without ceasing to be wise. Plato may be jealous of Aspasia, without prizing less highly the lessons of Socrates.

That Doubt, born of Disappointment, should unreservedly admire Passion sanctified by trial and pain—should kneel to the man who has traversed vice and its attendant tortures, in order to rise laboriously to the serenity of courage and of lucid conceptions,—is that a subject of scandal? . . .

If these three tales' (Indiana, Valentine, and Lelia) 'are to all thinking minds what they are to himself, the author cannot divine how a portraiture of domestic morals that had seemed correct, how a detail of the internal conflicts of a woman long hesitating between duty and passion, that had been thought true to nature, can suddenly lose all the merit attributed to them, because Thought, after having exposed Brutality and Egotism, takes a fancy to attack Enthusiasm.

Lelia was speedily followed by Rose et Blanche, in every respect a less objectionable work, and less inferior to Indiana, but[Page 289]another assault upon the existing state of the world, and amongst other parts thereof, upon that beautifully Christian institution which might well reconcile the philanthropic mind to all that is censurable in the Roman Catholic faith—we mean that of les Soeurs de la Charité (the Sisters of Charity). Madame Dudevant does not, indeed, deny the merits of these uncloistered locomotive nuns, their services to suffering humanity, or the superiority of their disinterested pious zeal, over the mercenary cares of paid hospital servants; but she strips them altogether of the poetic charm with which the imagination loves to invest a delicate, highly educated, highly born and affluent woman, overcoming the disgust of habitual refinement, the innate repugnance of the senses, in order to devote her whole existence to a sad ministering to "all those ills that flesh is heir to."⁸ She presents us in her Soeur de la Charité with an excellent but coarse-issima sick nurse, rigidly chaste, but deriding and despising every species of delicacy and sensibility, as defects that must unfit their luckless possessor for the discharge of her duties to male patients, and even suffering her tongue to echo the oaths, slang, and almost the more offensive expressions, to which her attendance upon such patients has inured her ear.

The story is this. Rose is a young strolling actress, born, almost upon the stage, of the most profligate of affectionate mothers, and brought up behind the scenes. From innate purity she resists her mother's exhortations and commands to eke out the scanty earnings of her honest art by the ampler gains of that infamous traffic, which, in France at least, is too often combined with the profession of a public performer. At length her mother's reproaches and filial duty wring from her a loathing obedience, when the depth and dignity of her despair constrain the young profligate to whom she is sold to respect her innocence. This is a bold, we think a fine conception, and from the pen of a Scott, we can fancy such an incident as beautiful and sublime as it is overpowering. But we regret to say, that in the hands of the present writer, this scene, so difficult to manage, is not as well executed as conceived, nor yet touched with the nice delicacy requisite to allow of our extracting it. The conquered libertine places Rose first with his devotee sister, then in a convent for education, and she resolves to love her deliverer hopelessly and eternally. Her former profession being discovered, she is expelled the convent, returns to the stage, and acquires a high character alike for virtue and for talent. Here she captivates her original protector, Horace Cazalés, and they are upon the point of marriage; but the Cazalés family successfully labour to pre-[Page 290]vent so disreputable an alliance, and succeed in estranging him from the actress.

Meanwhile, Blanche is a novice in the Parisian convent, where Rose was a boarder, and a romantic friendship has sprung up between the two young girls. Blanche falls in love with the drawing-master, another libertine, who returns her passion, but not ardently enough to think of incumbering himself with a portionless wife. Chance throws in her way, amongst his drawings, a paper, written by his bosom friend Horace Cazalés, confessing his having, two or three years since, taken a shameless advantage of the imbecility of a poor idiot girl, Denise Lazare, bequeathed to his care by her dying father, to whom he, Horace, owed the preservation of his life, and stating that he had subsequently placed her in a convent at Bordeaux. This paper strangely disorders Blanche, whose recollections of anything prior to a recent violent nervous illness are quite indistinct. She shows the paper to her confessor, and reveals her confused recollections and fears; but he argues against them as nervous delusions, and the preparations for her taking the veil proceed. We will extract the scene of her profession, as again in a different style from those we have already given.

Upon this day the church, its inlaid floor waxed like that of a salon, and resplendent as a mirror, was dressed out with flowers, as for the gayest of festivals. The walls were tapestried with garlands, the pavement of the choir was strewed with rose-leaves, the vaulted roof impregnated with incense. The great silver chandeliers, the golden angels of the tabernacle and of the cross, the rosettes of the gothic frame-work, glittered with light and sunshine; and the metal flowers heaped upon the shrines, rendered the altar radiant with the splendour reflected from their brilliant surfaces. The organ poured out floods of its own full and vibratory harmony; the bell rebounded with joyous cadences in its Italian belfry; the metallic and penetrating voices of young maidens floated dyingly away, from arcade to arcade, amidst the clouds of incense and of melody. Whilst gazing upon the chapel thus dazzling, whilst breathing such perfumes, whilst inhaling the inebriating mystic humidity that seized the soul at the foot of the columns, whilst plunging in the extacy which thrilled every fibre, deluged every recess of that soul, it might have been difficult to guess that a poor girl in the vigour of her age, in the first bloom of her beauty, was about to be affianced to eternal seclusion. . . .

The clergy invited to the ceremony adorned the choir with the luxury of their wealth, with the splendour of their glory. . . . . The galleries were thronged with the numerous friends of the community, as an author fills the pit of the theatre with friends to applaud his piece; the back of the chapel was occupied by the nuns in long black mantles; the pupils and boarders filled the middle portion, separated by gratings from the other two; and the crowd that had been unable to make way into the[Page 291]galleries, pressed into that part of the church whence profane eyes could not pierce the veil that divided them from the nuns.

But at a given signal, after the customary chaunts and a short address from the confessor, the Abbé P——, the black curtain glided back upon its rods, and the whole chapter of the Augustine nuns was seen, ranged in a semicircle of stalls. Alone, kneeling before a praying desk, the novice, richly attired, enveloped in a white Indian shawl and a silver lama veil, awaited her parents, represented, according to custom, by two kindly disposed individuals. The Abbé Causcalmon, with his dignified demeanor and venerable countenance, was invariably commissioned to play the father. He arose gravely, went forward, and offered his hand to a tall Soeur de Charité, (sister Olympie, who had brought Blanche from a Bordeaux convent to this,) who knelt amongst the spectators, and together crossing the nave of the church, they approached the novice. The worthy Abbé, accustomed to such solemnities, moved with due deliberation. Not so sister Olympie, whose presence Blanche had solicited, and who, impatient of an idle ceremony, dragged the Abbé by the arm, and, to his great discomposure hurried him forwards. . . . . . But despite her air of hurry, sister Olympie was in tears. She loved not the cloistered life, could not comprehend its use, and pitied those who were dedicated to it. . . .

The father and mother, each taking a hand of the novice, again crossed the nave, and led her to the high altar, where Monseigneur the archbishop of V—— awaited her, seated in a magnificent arm chair, and turning his back upon the Holy of Holies, before which knelt the multitude.

Attired as for a bridal day, radiant in diamonds, satin, lace, and flowers, the novice, trembling like a leaf beaten by the winds, advanced with difficulty to a cushion placed at Monseigneur's feet. The rich dress, taken from the convent treasury only for such occasions, heightened the elegance of her lofty stature, now timidly bent, and the dazzling whiteness of her bare arms and shoulders. Her heart throbbed under the belt of pearls, and when sister Olympie awkwardly threw back the veil which had concealed that lovely face from all eyes, she seemed a beautiful alabaster virgin from the chisel of Canova. A murmur of admiration, regret, and pity, arose from the throng that pressed forward to look upon her.

"My dear daughter," said the archbishop, "what do you ask?"

The father and mother answered, "We present our beloved daughter to the minister of the Lord, that she, now the betrothed of Christ, may become his bride."

"It is well," returned the prelate, "let her approach, and may the Lord give ear to her prayers!"

The novice arose.

"You are affianced to the Lord, my dear daughter."

"Yes, father," answered sister Blanche, so softly and timidly, that scarce could the sound of her voice be heard.

"Since when?"

"More than three years."

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"Have you reached the age at which you can dispose of yourself?"

"I am upwards of twenty-one years old.

"What is your name, my dear sister?"

"Sister Blanche."

"That is your conventual name; but your name amongst men?"

"Blanche.—I never knew" . . . . .

"Denise Lazare," said sister Olympie, in audible accents.

The effect of this name seemed magical upon several persons near the altar. The Abbé P——, who stood upon its steps, uttered an exclamation of surprise, and hastened towards the novice with a vivacity not belonging to his age. Sister Blanche shuddered as though a red-hot iron had touched her; and her pale face was crimsoned. She half arose, as if to protest against sister Olympie's sentence. But suddenly, casting her bewildered eyes around, she grasped the Abbé P——'s arm, and clinging to it with all her strength she stretched out her other hand towards a man, lividly pale, who had detached himself from the crowd, and stood before her, motionless, his hair on end, his lips blue. Then, collecting all the courage inspired by terror and distraction,

"'Tis he, 'tis he!" she exclaimed, seeking to hide herself under the folds of her confessor's white official robe, and fell senseless upon the richly flowered carpet of the altar.

The pale man, in whom the reader will have recognized Horace Cazalés, had stood petrified from the moment the novice's veil was removed. But when she recognized him, when she had blasted him with her dreadful gaze, he sprang towards her, and would have followed sister Olympie, who, in her robust arms, was carrying Blanche off toward the choir, had not the Abbé P——, with his air of blended mildness and severity, seized him by the coat.

"No scandal, sir," said he to Horace in an under tone. "I know every thing. I will have the honour of waiting upon you in the course of the day; withdraw."

Horace Cazalés is now persuaded by his devout sister, that it is his duty, forgetting the actress Rose, to marry his former victim; as is Blanche by a young ascetic Jesuit confessor, substituted for the unmanageably rational Jesuit, Abbé P——, that it is her's to efface her unconscious pollution by the Church's sanction, and to save her polluter's soul by accepting his hand. She dies of agitation and suffering upon the evening of her wedding-day, and Rose again forsakes the theatre to take the veil in the convent—the superior who had expelled her being changed,—where she had known and loved Blanche.

The reader will have observed that there is much to dislike as well as to like in Rose et Blanche. It is less animated and interesting in its progress than Indiana and Valentine; but what we feel most disposed to censure is, that Rose, who, surrounded by vice, had conceived and loved virtue as something poetically beautiful and heroic, finds it so dull, so prosaically commonplace[Page 293]in the devotee's chateau, and in the convent, during her first residence there, that we cannot help fearing she should repent her resistance to her mother's will. Nor is this irksome feeling relieved by representations of her self-satisfaction in her own good conduct, during her second theatrical career. Then we see her first engrossed by her love for Horace, and willing to sacrifice to him her hardly earned reputation, nay, in her secret heart, even her long high-prized virtue, and afterwards broken-hearted by his desertion, and the death of Blanche. Has our authoress no suspicion of the secret and proud self-enjoyment of arduous virtue?

The next of our authoress's publications is a collection of tales, to which the longest, Le Secretaire Intime, gives its name: and, as the shorter tales are merely so many, not very interesting, versions of the authoress's favourite theses, to wit, virtue without absolute chastity, and the difficulty to the heart of woman of loving a second time after the disappointment of its first affections, to the Secretaire Intime we shall confine out[sic] attention; the rather that we here find, what we suspect to be George Sand's or Madame Dudevant's beau ideal of wedded life.

This is the story of a young Frenchman (Count St. Julien,) of a noble but decayed family, austerely educated by a conscientious Catholic priest, who runs away from his father's dilapidated ci-devant chateau in disgust upon learning that his mother had, in the days of her youth, been frail. On the road he falls in with a beautiful Italian princess, in a rather theatrical costume, but the actual reigning sovereign of dominions, some few miles square, in Friuli; he pleases her fancy, and is engaged as her confidential secretary. Princess Quintilia Cavalcanti immediately becomes to her new secretary an object of admiration, curiosity, perplexity and suspicion. She is incomparably beautiful, intellectual, zealous in her sovereign duties, and learned, and almost equally giddy, coquettish and frivolous; whilst her frank good humour too often degenerates into a sort of hail-fellow-well-met manner, into masculine coarseness, for—horresco referens,⁹ but the truth must be told—the beautiful princess smokes! St. Julien is immediately assailed with reports of her licentiousness and cruelty. A French traveller boasts of having had a bal d'opera¹⁰ intrigue with her at Paris. A story is current at her court of a certain Max, the illegitimate son of a German prince, and her first love, who had unaccountably disappeared after a public quarrel with her, and was believed to be buried in a certain pavilion, further notorious as the usual scene of her assignations. An equerry intimates that he has been a favoured lover, and owes his life, as a discarded one, solely to his extreme dis-
vol. xiv. no. xxviii.x[Page 294]cretion; and a page, whom the princess persists in treating as a child, and admitting to the familiarity of a child, incessantly rallies St. Julien upon his stupidity and dulness, in not uniting the post of favourite to that of confidential secretary. A thousand accidents confirm these degrading ideas of Quintilia, which are contradicted only by want of actual evidence, and by her apparent tranquil consciousness of self-approbation. The unhappy secretary meanwhile is madly in love with his princess, utterly at a loss whether to think her the first of created beings, or another Catherine II. of Russia, jealous of every body, and thoroughly miserable. At length he hazards a declaration of his passion, which is received with irony, and followed by a confession of his uncertainties about her character. Some days afterwards, the princess sends for him, desires him to turn his love into friendship, and, to prove her value for this last sentiment from him, gives him an explanation, which, however, explains nothing, except, perhaps, some of the writer's peculiar notions. The passage that seems to bear this interpretation is as follows:—

Do not take me for a virtuous woman, Julien. I know not what virtue is; I believe in it as I do in Providence, without defining or comprehending it. I know not what it is to struggle against oneself; I never had occasion to do so; I never subjected myself to principles; I have never felt a want of them; I never was hurried further than I chose to go; I have fully indulged all my fancies, and never found myself in danger. A man who feels in his soul no shameful wound requiring concealment may drink to intoxication, and lay bare to view all the recesses of his conscience. A woman who does not love vice need not fear it; she may traverse its mire without a single stain upon her gown;¹¹ she may touch the foulness of soul of others, as the sister of charity touches the leprosy in the hospital. She has the privilege of toleration and pardon: if she does not use it she must be wicked. To be chaste and wicked is to be cold, to be chaste and kind is to be good. I never thought this difficult for well governed minds.

We will add an extract or two, exhibiting princess Quintilia as she appears to St. Julien and the reader. She has been for months shut up in her cabinet with her secretary, studying the philosophy of government, preparing codes of law, maturing projects for promoting the happiness of her subjects.

Six months had passed thus. One evening the work was finished; the princess had been more serious and thoughtful than usual; she wrote with her own hand a last page in the register that Julien offered her. While she wrote, Ginetta, (a favourite waiting maid,) who had stolen softly into the room, waited anxiously, her quick eye glancing interrogatively, now at the door where Julien perceived the skirt of Galeotto (the page), now at the darkened and knitted brow of the prin-[Page 295]cess. The princess laid down her pen absently, buried her head in her hands, took the pen up again, played a moment with a lock of her hair that had broken loose, started, wrote a few figures, signed the register, closed and pushed it away. Then rising, she turned to Ginetta, and stuck the pen amidst her black locks. The chambermaid uttered a cry of joy. "Have you done at last, madam?" she exclaimed. "Will that beautiful hand quit the pen to resume the scepter and the fan? . . . May I toss to the winds the ugly pen that you have placed in my hair, and that feels as heavy as lead?"

"Make an auto-da-fé¹² of it an thou wilt," answered Quintilia; "I work no more this year."

She now, to the mortification of St. Julien, gives herself up to mirth with Ginetta and Galeotto, and devotes her attention as exclusively to inventing dresses for a fancy ball, as she had previously done to legislation and political economy.

The ball was magnificent. Thanks to one of the princess's most whimsical devices, the whole court represented an immense collection of butterflies and other insects. Variegated tight dresses fitted close to the shape; great wings of different materials, adjusted by invisible wires, were unfolded behind the shoulders, or along the back; and no one could sufficiently admire the correctness of the tints and shades, the cut and position of the wings; even the countenance of each insect was imitated by the head-dress of the personifier. . . . .

The princess herself had regulated the choice and the distribution of the costumes. She had consulted twenty naturalists, and turned over every entomological work in her library, to obtain a degree of perfection, capable of maddening with delight all professors of natural history. . . .

The apartments were hung and carpeted with flowers, and amongst garlands of roses, silken ladders were hidden, fixed to the walls or hanging from the roof. The boldest insects climbed up these fragile supports, and displayed themselves and their wings below the ceiling or between the pillars. . . . Quintilia, surrounded by professions of love and adoration, gave herself up to the pleasure of being admired, with a youthfulness of intoxication that distracted St. Julien.

The favourite librarian, a profound naturalist, now affects to take a red scarabeus or criocère¹³ for the ghost of a scarabeus that he had philosophically slain; the princess is amusing herself with the scene, which seems ending in a joyous recognition, when the Abbate Scipione, who acts as master of the ceremonies, leads her aside to the balcony, where St. Julien is lurking angry and unseen, to tell her that the red scarabeus is masked contrary to order, and that nobody knows who he is. She indignantly orders him to be turned out after telling his name.

"Sir," said the abbate to the criocère, with an arrogance assumed for the first time in his life, "who are you? Her highness insists upon knowing."

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The stranger whispered his name to the master of the ceremonies, but he was not affected by it as the librarian had been. "I do not know you," said he, "and as you are not invited, I am commanded to show you out."

"First tell the princess my name," rejoined the stranger, "and if she then commands me to withdraw . . . ."

* * * * *

"Rosenheim!" exclaimed the princess violently, "did I hear aright? Speak louder. Or, no! no! rather speak lower,—Rosenheim?"

"Rosenheim," repeated the abbate, ready to faint.

But the princess, instead of crushing him with her anger, sprang with a loud cry of joy to his neck, and forcibly embraced him, ejaculating the while: "Ah! l'abbate! my dear abbate!"

This mysteriously introduced Rosenheim proves in the end to be the murdered Max himself, who is privately married to Quintilia, and prefers injuring her reputation by stolen interviews, to appearing openly as her husband. And this we apprehend to be Madame Dudevant's notion of conjugal felicity; an opinion strongly corroborated by an observation of the old librarian, the confidant of Max and Quintilia, who is commissioned to reveal the state of affairs to St. Julien, prior to his final dismissal from the court; a fate which he had justly brought upon himself by a mad attempt upon the princess's person, as well as by his impertinent prying into her secrets. The librarian ends his explanation with these words:—

This union continues so beautiful and so pure, that it proves the excellence of those laws of Lycurgus which obliged husbands to visit their wives with all the precautions employed by lovers, to avoid detection.

The last novel upon our list has made its appearance since our remarks upon the preceding ones were written; the space which these have already occupied warns us to be brief in what we have to say of this new production of our prolific authoress. In powerful writing and vigorous portraiture, Jacques bears more resemblance to Indiana and Valentine, than to its three immediate predecessors; and one reason of this may be, that the object of it is the same with those two remarkable productions. Decidedly, Madame Dudevant is so much more at home in her delineations of matrimonial miseries, (of which in fact Jacques is but a third picture,) than in any other field, that she would well deserve to be called the Anti-matrimonial Novelist, if such a title implied any enviable distinction. Notwithstanding the repeated disclaimers which we have seen she has made of the imputed (fairly enough, we think) tendency of her works, she has in this new one put the following declaration into the mouth of the hero, which[Page 297]must be received, we suppose, as a proof that her own sentiments on the subject remain unaltered.

I have not changed my opinion, I have not become reconciled to society, and marriage I still look upon as one of its most odious institutions. I doubt not that it will be abolished, if mankind make any progress towards justice and reason; a more humane and not less sacred tie will replace it, and secure the existence of the children who shall be born to one man and one woman, without enchaining for ever the liberty of either. But men are too coarse (grossiers) and women too cowardly (lâches) to demand a law more noble than the law of iron which rules them; to beings without conscience and without virtue, heavy chains are necessary. In this age it is impossible to realise the ameliorations which a few generous spirits dream of; these spirits forget that they are a century in advance of their contemporaries, and that before the law can be changed, man himself must be changed.

His actions, however, are not in unison with his professions; he marries—and is punished accordingly.

In the present instance, the authoress has illustrated the impossibility of constant love, and wedded happiness, by the fate of a union, the counterpart of which is certainly not of frequent occurrence in actual life. The husband, Jacques, is a man, who, having lived through the tempest of Napoleon's triumphs and fate, and had some score of impassioned intrigues in as many years, becomes, at the age of thirty-five, tired of active life and turns philosopher, and fancies it happiness to lie on the sofa and smoke hour after hour by the side of his wife; and the lady is a pretty, ignorant, romantic school-girl of seventeen, who has nothing upon earth with which to occupy her solitude except her love and admiration of her silent, smoking husband. Jacques himself is, we must confess, a personage the prototype of whom we never had the good luck to meet with, or hear of. Men there are still, we doubt not, even in these degenerate days, who can drink a whole company under the table, and walk steadily away. But that a boy of fifteen, the first time he pollutes his lips with tobacco or alcohol, should smoke and swill brandy, at the discretion of a whole regiment, without perceptible effect upon head, stomach, or nerves, is a physiological phenomenon as startling, as his laming, in a previously determined manner, a professed duellist, the very first time he wields a sabre. One who begins so is not to be judged by common rules; wherefore we have not a word to say upon the probability of his committing suicide, to enable his faithless wife to marry her paramour. The character of this personage, the fickle, impetuous, selfish Octave, is true to nature; as is, we fear, the passion he inspires in the tender heart of the sweet but silly heroine, Fernande. Many of the minor characters are admirable sketches. The rough veterans of the Imperial army are hit off with a spirited, a masculine hand.