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had only two pair of stockings, and I was obliged to wash one pair every morning that I might have clean ones to act in every night. I also managed everything in the house. I got up at six daily, and at eight o'clock all the beds were made; afterwards I went to La Halle to buy our dinner, and I was an honest cook, was I not, mamma?"

"That you were," replied the mother, with her mouth full.

"Only once," said Rachel, "I was guilty of thieving: what I bought at fourpence I set down as fivepence, and going on steadily in this way at the end of a month I made a profit of three francs."

"And what did you do with those three francs?" asked the poet, with mock severity.

"Oh!" exclaimed the mother, "she bought a Molière with them."

"Yes," said Rachel, "I had got a Racine and a Corneille, and I wanted a Molière. I bought it with my three francs, and then I confessed my crime."

Some of the guests now went away, and the bonne returned. Sarah continued to abstain from eating, and to chatter German. Rachel reproved her, persevered with stories of her youth, and presently made some punch and set it alight, putting the candles under the table in order the better to see the pretty blue flame as it was burning; when this pastime was over she played with Alfred de Musset's sword-stick, and drawing the blade out of its sheath she picked her teeth with it. But one sentence sufficed to put an end to all this vulgarity and folly, and to bring poetry and the instinct of art upon the

scene.

The poet said, "How beautifully you read the letter in the fifth act to-night! You were greatly moved."

"Yes," replied Rachel, "I felt as if I were shattered-breaking into bits-and yet I don't care for the tragedy of 'Tancrède.' It is false."

"You prefer the tragedies of Corneille and Racine," said the poet.

"I like Corneille," Rachel replied, "though he is sometimes trivial and

sometimes turgid-he is not true to nature. The line in the Horace'On peut changer d'amant mais non changer d'époux,'

appears to me coarse and common." "Not the less true for that," said De Musset.

"Unworthy of the poet, at any rate," said Rachel. "But speak to me of Racine the noble, the beautiful,—I adore him! And do you know I am resolved to act Phèdre" (she struck the table with her fist as she spoke). "They say I am too young and too thin, and more such nonsense; but I reply, it is the greatest part in all Racine, and I am determined to play it."

"You may be wrong there," said Sarah.

"Let me alone," said Rachel, "I mean to do it; if people tell me I am too thin, I say they are absurd. A woman possessed by an infamous passion, yet prepared rather to die than yield to it—a woman withering away in scorching fires and bitter tears-such a woman cannot be expected to look as plump as Madame Paradol. It would be a contradiction in nature. I have read the part ten times within the last eight days. I don't know how I should act it, but I tell you that I feel it in me. The newspapers may write what they please, but they will not disgust me with it. They are at a loss what to invent in order to injure me, instead of giving me encouragement and help; but I will act it, though only four persons should be present to see it." She then made a grand tirade against the journalists.

"My

Her mother interrupted her. dear," said she, "you have been talking too much. This morning you were up at six. I don't know what possesses you. You have gabbled all day, and you have been acting this evening. You will be ill."

"Leave me alone," said Rachel ; "it makes me feel that I am alive." She turned to De Musset and said, "Shall I fetch the book, and shall we read the tragedy both together?"

"What could be more delightful?" said the poet.

But Sarah observed that it was halfpast eleven.

"Well," said Rachel, "who prevents you from going to bed?"

Accordingly Sarah went to bed, and Rachel left the room, but speedily returned with a volume of Racine in her hands. Her demeanour had undergone a total change: it had become solemn and religious; she seemed as one administering sacred rites. She took her seat next the poet and snuffed the candle. Her mother dozed off comfortably, with a smile on her face. Rachel bowed her head over the volume as she opened it, and said, "How I love this Racine! When I once get the book in my hand, I could go on reading for two days without stopping to eat or drink." The two now began their reading with the volume placed between them.

"D'abord," writes De Musset, "elle récite d'un ton monotone comme une litanie. Peu à peu elle s'anime. Nous échangeons nos remarques, nos idées sur chaque passage. Elle arrive enfin à la déclaration. Elle étend son bras droit sur la table; le front posé sur la main gauche, appuyée sur son coude, elle s'abandonne entièrement. Cependant elle ne parle encore qu'à demi-voix. Tout à coup ses yeux étincellent; le génie de Racine éclaire son visage; elle pâlit, elle rougit. Jamais je ne vis rien de si beau, de si intéressant; jamais, au théâtre, elle n'a produit sur moi tant d'effet. La fatigue, un peu d'enrouement, le punch, l'heure avancée, une animation presque fiévreuse sur ces petites joues entourées d'un bonnet de nuit, je ne sais quel charme inouï répandu dans tout son être, ces yeux brillants qui me consultent, un sourire enfantin qui trouve moyen de se glisser au milieu de tout cela; enfin, jusqu'à cette table en désordre, cette chandelle dont la flamme tremblote, cette mère assoupie près de nous, tout cela compose à la fois un tableau digne de Rembrandt, un chapitre de roman digne de Wilhelm Meister, et un souvenir de la vie d'artiste qui ne s'effacera jamais de ma mémoire."

It was now past midnight, and

Rachel's father came home from the

Opera. He was hardly seated before he addressed some brutal words to his daughter, and ordered her to leave off reading. Rachel shut up the book, saying, "It is intolerable: I will buy a match-box, and I will read alone in my bed." Tears rolled down her cheeks.

It was intolerable to the poet to see such a creature so treated: he rose and took his leave, full of emotion and admiration, and before he went to bed he wrote down an account of the scene, which he addressed to a lady well known in Paris for her wit and beauty, and who had a high appreciation of his genius. She still lives, and is still witty and still pretty; he used to call her playfully his "Marraine," for she

was

a great many years older than himself but he seems to have anticipated the fact of her surviving him. We owe to her the preservation of one of the most curious fragments of biography ever published. To all lovers of art this picture of the poet and the actress side by side, drawing inspiration from each other as the pages of Racine glowed under their touch, must be full of interest. To those who remember Rachel's grand interpretations of the classical French dramatists, who remember the beauty of her declamation, her fire, her sublime passion, her statuesque dignity, which made her small frame seem at times colossal, the scene here set down is a golden treasure received from the hands of the poet. The contrast between her actual life and her ideal representation woven so curiously into unity is strange, exciting, painful and yet beautiful; for no sooner did the player and the poet concentrate their thoughts upon their art than it conquered all the rest and the sordid facts and mean surroundings disappeared under the enchantment of exalted imagination.

The Théâtre Français was the favourite temple of worship of De Musset, and there he studied objectively the emotions which, when he suffered them within himself, were too passionate for his frame, and sometimes destroyed his sense.

The most beautiful of his lyrics, however, grew out of his own affliction; they are the harmonious moanings of an irretrievable sorrow, of a lost faith, of a great, ruined passion. They were written at the age of twenty-five, and are known as Les Nuits. They include "La Nuit de Mai," "de Décembre," "d'Octobre," and "d'Août." "La Nuit d'Octobre" is well known through the passionate recitation of Delaunay and Favart: "La Nuit de Décembre" is not less poetical; the oppressive gloom of the winter season invests it: it describes that strange impression which haunted the poet in all his misery of a figure by his side, whose aspect was the counterpart of his own: the figure was dressed in black, and its expression was that of mournful regret. It came too late to be a warning it was too sad to be a consolation; every disorder of his mind his strained imagination projected this image before him, and the sight of it was accompanied by anguish. He was a child when it first appeared to him. He saw it for the second time at the age of fifteen.

in

:

"Comme j'allais avoir quinze ans,
Je marchais un jour, à pas lents,
Dans un bois, sur une bruyère.
Au pied d'un arbre vint s'asseoir
Un jeune homme vêtu de noir,
Qui me ressemblait comme un frère.

"Je lui demandai mon chemin;
Il tenait un luth d'une main,

De l'autre un bouquet d'églantine.
Il me fit un salut d'ami,
Et, se détournant à demi,

Me montra du doigt la colline."

In the poet's first love-sorrow the figure appeared again, sad and anxious. With one hand it pointed to heaven; in the other it held a sword; it breathed only one sigh, and disappeared like a dream.

In the midst of unholy, wild festivity

the shape next showed itself

"A l'âge où l'on est libertin,
Pour boire un toast en un festin,
Un jour je soulevai mon verre.
En face de moi vint s'asseoir
Un convive vêtu de noir,

Qui me ressemblait comme un frère.

"Il secouait sous son manteau

Un haillon de pourpre en lambeau,
Sur sa tête un myrte stérile.
Son bras maigre cherchait le mien,
Et mon verre, en touchant le sien,
Se brisa dans ma main débile."

The sterile myrtle and the emaciated arm were the fatal anticipations of the poet's conscience working among scenes of riot and clamour in some momentary isolation of thought. A year passed before the image was seen again; it was then at the death-bed of his father. Its eyes were deluged with tears; it was like "les anges de douleur."

"Je m'en suis si bien souvenu
Que je l'ai toujours reconnu
A tous les instants de ma vie.
C'est une étrange vision,

Et cependant, ange ou démon,
J'ai vu partout cette ombre amie."

It followed him to Italy; he saw it in the stormy days of his travel; it sometimes rose to perplex a sunny hour:

"A Florence au fond des palais,
A Brigues dans les vieux châlets,
Au sein des Alpes desolées ;

*

A Venise, à l'affreux Lido

Où vient sur l'herbe d'un tombeau
Mourir la pale Adriatique."

Wherever he went the vision pursued him :

"Partout où j'ai voulu dormir,
Partout où j'ai voulu mourir,
Partout où j'ai touché la terre,
Sur ma route est venu s'asseoir
Un malheureux vêtu de noir,

Qui me ressemblait comme un frère."

An episode of great beauty, but too long and too continuous in its flow to furnish extracts, follows this stanza. It describes the fluctuations of that un

happy passion for the woman who subdued his soul, which ended in despair; the fraternal shape of sorrow glides in last the poet questions the vision, and at the hours of sharpest affliction. At his passionate appeal is answered

"Ami, je suis la Solitude."

This was not a dream conjured up in the hour of poetical composition. The poem is a true record, and it is difficult

to conceive anything more pathetic. These lyrical pieces were written at the early age of twenty-five, and nothing of the poet's at a later day surpassed them either in passion or in perfection of

verse.

Heine, always cruel in his satire, said of De Musset when he was thirty years old, "C'est un jeune homme d'un beau passé." But there was truth in those bitter words. At the age of thirtyseven, De Musset ceased to write; at forty-seven the burthen of his sorrows and faults was lifted from him, and he died suddenly in the night, of heart disease, on the 1st of May, 1857, at Paris.

It was after his death that the "Nuit d'Octobre " was produced upon the stage of the Théâtre Français at the celebration of his birthday, while his marble bust, crowned with laurel, looked on still and calm, as he never could be at any instant of his troubled life.

The performance of a long dialogue in verse, with no change of scene, and little action, depending wholly on the

beauty of poetry and the movement of passion, was felt to be hazardous even by French artists for a French audience, but the success was complete, and the theatre is crowded at every representation of this piece. It was bravely risked during the last season, when dramatic art showed its full perfections at the Opéra Comique, in London; and it warmed the cold blood of English audiences, and established the fame of the French poet with many who had never even heard his name before. His birthday is annually celebrated at the Comédie Française, by a performance of pieces exclusively of his writing. It is an occasion when the theatre is always filled with spectators of literary distinction, and with renowned artists. There is a certain sense of exaltation in these honours duly paid to the dramatist and poet; but it is accompanied by a profound melancholy as the memorial of great gifts misused, of the promise of youth ending in the blight of manhood, and of a fine imagination overthrown.

THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON.

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "A DAUGHTER OF HETH,” etc.

CHAPTER VII.

ATRA CURA.

"O gentle wind that bloweth south, To where my love repaireth, Convey a kiss to his dear mouth, And tell me how he fareth!' "My dear, you are unphilosophical. Why should you rebuke Bell for occasionally using one of those quaint American phrases, which have wandered into this country? I can remember a young person who had a great trick of quoting Italian-especially in moments of tenderness-but that was a long time ago and perhaps she has forgotten-"

And

"It is shameful of you," says Queen Titania, hastily, "to encourage Bell in that way. She would never do anything of the kind but for you. you know very well that quoting a foreign language is quite a different thing from using those stupid Americanisms which are only fit for negroconcerts."

"My dear, you are unphilosophical. When America started in business on her own account, she forgot to furnish herself with an independent language; but ever since she has been working hard to supply the want. By and by you will find an American language-sharp, concise, expressive-built on the diffuse and heavy foundations of our own English. Why should not Bell use those tentative phrases which convey so much in so few syllables? Why call it slang? What is slang but an effort at conciseness?"

Tita looked puzzled, vexed, and desperate; and inadvertently turned to Count von Rosen, who was handing the sugar-basin to Bell. He seemed

to understand the appeal, for he immediately said

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'Oh, but you do know, that is not the objection. I do not think Mademoiselle talks in that way, or should be criticised about it by anyone; but the wrong that is done by introducing the slang words is, that it destroys the history of a language. It perverts the true meaning of roots-it takes away the poetry of derivations—it confuses the student."

"And who thought of students when the various objects in life were christened? And whence came the roots? And is not language always an experiment, producing fresh results as people find it convenient, and leaving students to frame laws as they like? And why are we to give up succinct words or phrases because the dictionaries of the last generation consecrated them to a particular use? My dear children, the process of inventing language goes on from year to year, changing, modifying, supplying, and building up new islands out of the common sand and the sea. What to-day is slang, tomorrow is language, if one may be permitted to parody Feuerbach. And I say that Bell, having an accurate ear for fit sounds, shall use such words as she likes; and if she can invent epithets of her own-

"But, please, I don't wish to do anything of the kind," says Bell, looking quite shamefaced.

That is just the way of those women: interfere to help them in a difficulty, and they straightway fly over to the common enemy, especially if he happens to represent a social majority.

I began to perceive about this stage of our journey that a large number of

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