A strange
coldness
seized her heart.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 to v10 - Cal to Fro
Touched by the mother's lamentations, Adam's heart is
filled with the desire to restore the dead girl to life. Here ends the
poem, which the author did not live to finish.
In Espronceda's poems the spirit of the man is reflected: a spirit
of fire, a flame lurid and obscured at times by smoke, but a flame
that always aspires. In his poems, too, is to be found the best his-
tory of his unsettled and adventurous life; of which the chief events
to be recorded are his journeyings, now voluntary, now as an exile,
to Lisbon, to Paris, to London, and back again to Madrid, and the
part he took in the political movements of which they were in gen-
eral the result.
An incident characteristic of the poet is related of his first visit
to Lisbon. When the vessel on which he was a passenger arrived in
port, the health officer, boarding her, proceeded to collect a small tax
which it was the custom to demand from the passengers. When
Espronceda's turn arrived, the poet took from his pocket a dollar, all
the money he possessed, and handed it to the officer, who returned
him the change. The poet tossed the coins lightly into the water,
in order, as he said, that he might not "enter so great a capital with
so small a sum of money. "
During his residence in London, Espronceda devoted himself with
ardor to the study of the English poets, more particularly of Byron,
whose influence is clearly traceable in his works. Here the passion-
ate lament entitled 'Elegy to Spain' was written. Here, too, the
unhappy passion which inspired the 'Canto to Teresa' reached the
fatal culmination which was to prove a source of unending remorse
to both the guilty lovers.
The accession to power in 1840 of the liberal party, whose prin-
ciples he advocated, seemed to promise Espronceda at last leisure to
take his just place in literature; a place, according to the judgment
of Valera, -a cautious critic,- beside Goethe, Byron, and Leopardi.
The promise, however, was never realized. His health had been
undermined by a life often of privation and always irregular; and
## p. 5552 (#118) ###########################################
5552
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
before he could take his seat he was attacked by an inflammation of
the larynx, and died after four days' illness, on the 23d of May,
1842, at the age of thirty-two years.
Mary J. Serraus
TO SPAIN: AN ELEGY
ow solitary is the nation now
How
Η That peopled countries vast a former day!
That, all beneath her sovereignty to bow,
From East to West extended once her sway!
Tears now profuse to shed, unhappy one,
Queen of the world! 'tis thine; and from thy face,
Enchanting yet in sorrow, there is none
Its overwhelming traces to erase.
How fatally o'er thee has death poured forth
Darkness and mourning, horrible and great!
And the stern despot in his maddened wrath
Exulted wildly o'er thy low estate.
Nothing or great or beautiful he spared,
My country! - the young warrior by him fell,
The veteran fell, and vile his war-axe glared,
Pleased all its fury o'er thee to impel.
Even the pure maiden fell beneath the rage
Of the unpitying despot, as the rose,
Condemned the summer's burning sun to engage,
Her bloom and beauty withering, soon must close.
Come, O ye inhabiters of all the earth,
And contemplate my misery! can there,-
Tell me! -be any found of mortal birth
Bearing the sorrows I am doomed to bear?
―――
I, wretched, banished from my native land,
Behold, far from the country I adore,
Her former glories lost and high command,
And only left her sufferings to deplore.
Her children have been fatally betrayed
By treacherous brethren, and a tyrant's power;
## p. 5553 (#119) ###########################################
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
5553
And these her lovely fertile plains have made
Fields o'er which only lamentations lower.
Her arms extended wide, unhappy Spain!
Her sons imploring in her deep distress:
Her sons they were, but her command was vain,
Unheard the traitor-madness to repress.
Whate'er could then avail thee, tower or wall,
My country! still amid thy woes adored?
Where were the heroes that could once appall
The fiercest foe? where thy unconquered sword?
Alas! now on thy children's humbled brow
Deeply is shame engraved, and on their eyes,
Cast down and sorrowfully throbbing now,
The tears alone of grief and mourning rise.
Once was a time for Spain, when she possessed
A hundred heroes in her hour of pride;
And trembling nations saw her manifest
Her power and beauty, dazzling, by their side.
As lofty shows itself in Lebanon
The cedar, so her brow she raised on high;
And fell her voice the nations round upon,
As terrify a girl the thunders nigh.
But as a stone now in the desert's wild
Thou liest abandoned, and an unknown way
Through strangers' lands, uncertain where, exiled,
The patriot's doomed unfortunate to stray.
Her ancient pomp and power are covered o'er
With sand and weeds contemptuous; and the foe,
That trembled at her puissance before,
Now mocks exulting and enjoys her woe.
Maidens! your flowing locks disheveled tear,
To give them to the wandering winds; and bring
Your harps in mournful company to share
With me the sorrowful laments I sing.
Thus banished from our homes afar away
Still let us weep our miseries. O Spain,
Who shall have power thy torments to allay?
Who shall have power to dry thy tears again?
X-348
## p. 5554 (#120) ###########################################
5554
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
THE SONG OF THE PIRATE
THE
HE breeze fair aft, all sails on high,
Ten guns on each side mounted seen,
She does not cut the sea, but fly,
A swiftly sailing brigantine;
A pirate bark, the Dreaded' named,
For her surpassing boldness famed,
On every sea well known and shore,
From side to side their boundaries o'er.
The moon in streaks the waves illumes;
Hoarse groans the wind the rigging through;
In gentle motion raised, assumes
The sea a silvery shade with blue;
While singing gaily on the poop,
The pirate captain, in a group,
Sees Europe here, there Asia lies,
And Stamboul in the front arise.
Sail on, my swift one! nothing fear;
Nor calm, nor storm, nor foeman's force
Shall make thee yield in thy career,
Or turn thee from thy course.
Despite the English cruisers fleet,
We have full twenty prizes made;
And see, their flags beneath my feet
A hundred nations laid.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
There blindly kings fierce wars maintain
For palms of land, when here I hold
As mine, whose power no laws restrain,
Whate'er the seas infold.
Nor is there shore around whate'er,
Or banner proud, but of my might
Is taught the valorous proofs to bear,
And made to feel my right.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
## p. 5555 (#121) ###########################################
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
5555
Look, when a ship our signals ring
Full sail to fly, how quick she's veer'd!
For of the sea I am the king,
My fury's to be feared;
But equally with all I share
Whate'er the wealth we take supplies;
I only seek the matchless fair,
My portion of the prize.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty:
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
I am condemned to die! I laugh;
For if my fates are kindly sped,
My doomer from his own ship's staff
Perhaps I'll hang instead.
And if I fall, why what is life?
For lost I gave it then as due,
When from slavery's yoke in strife
A rover I withdrew.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
My music is the north wind's roar,
The noise when round the cable runs,
The bellowings of the Black Sea's shore,
And rolling of my guns.
And as the thunders loudly sound,
And furious as the tempest rave,
I calmly rest in sleep profound,
So rocked upon the wave.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
## p. 5556 (#122) ###########################################
5556
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
(1812-1876)
F MY hair must turn gray, a thousandfold sooner let it be
with the dust of highways than that of musty tomes," said
Alphonse Esquiros; and the words show an energy which
always longed to accomplish something of practical utility, and which
expended itself in too many directions to be adequately successful in
any one.
For his contribution to literature is too meritorious not to
win appreciation, yet so scanty that we wonder why he did not leave
us more.
Esquiros first made himself known as a poet. He was very young
only twenty- when his little volume of odes and sonnets, 'Les
Hirondelles,' attracted Victor Hugo's admiration and friendship. “A
true poet's book," Hugo called it; "the fair beginning of a young
man; a swarm of charming verses on radiant wing. "
Then Esquiros engaged in journalism, and at the same time pre-
pared a historical novel, Charlotte Corday,' founded on the tragic
life of the Revolutionary heroine. This true story, strengthened by
an imagination which presented both Charlotte and her victim Marat
sympathetically, was very popular. Esquiros invested both murderous
figures with a fine ideality which made them seem victims rather
than sinners; and he made them symbolic too,-their final meeting
the inevitable clash between the Gironde and the Mountain. In the
simple, direct style there is no falsetto; and yet, as has been pointed
out, Esquiros here deserts the crisp French romanticism for a touch
of the sentiment we associate with our English Laurence Sterne.
With his skill in story-telling and his poetic quality, his feeling
for delicate emotion and grace of form, Esquiros combined much of
the reformer's spirit; and that brought him into trouble.
The same
year that Charlotte Corday' appeared (1840), he published too
'L'Évangile du Peuple,' a religious and political work, in which Jesus
is portrayed as a socialistic reformer in harmony with revolutionary
spirits. Naturally. this revival of revolutionary thinking was disap-
proved by the government, and its author was severely punished. He
was sentenced to the payment of a fine of 500 francs and to an
imprisonment of eight months. While confined in Sainte-Pélagie he
diverted himself with poetic composition, and wrote 'Les Chants du
Prisonnier,' pretty reminiscences of his early life. He wrote, too,
several semi-socialistic works, - 'Les Vierges Martyres' (The Virgin
I
## p. 5557 (#123) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5557
Martyrs), 'Les Vierges Folles' (The Foolish Virgins), and 'Les Vierges
Sages' (The Wise Virgins).
Esquiros was a Parisian, and much of his life was spent in the
centre of the political storms of his country. He was ardently patri-
otic, and his mind was always strongly diverted from literature to
politics, in which he stoutly advocated radical and socialistic reform.
Soon after his release he became a democratic member in the Legis-
lative Assembly, where he continued until, upon the overthrow of
the government, he found himself exiled.
His series of historical and political works,—'L'Histoire des Monta-
gnards' (History of the Montagnards: 1847), 'L'Histoire des Martyrs
de la Liberté' (History of the Martyrs of Liberty: 1851), and 'La Vie
Future au Point de Vue Socialiste (The Future Life from the Social-
ist's Standpoint: 1857),- although often eloquent and always earnest,
are considered superficial in thought. He was a man of feeling and
imagination rather than of analysis and synthesis, and philosophy
was not his true vocation. One quality in which he excelled found
exercise now that he was sent away from France: he had the fac-
ulty, not usual with Frenchmen, of understanding a foreign point of
view, of studying other lands and peoples with intuitive sympathy.
For years he lived in England, where he made many friends and was
for some time professor of French literature at Woolwich. He thor-
oughly investigated the different interests and industries of the coun-
try, the various forms of religion, the departments of government,
the army and navy; and obtained a just and comprehensive knowl-
edge of English life, which he embodied in serious and interesting.
studies which ran through a long series in the Revue des Deux
Mondes. They were translated into English, and in book form,
'L'Angleterre et la Vie Anglaise (England and English Life), and
'Les Moralistes Anglaises' (The English Moralists), were greatly
enjoyed on both sides of the Channel.
He spent some time in Holland too, and of this one result was a
delightful volume, 'La Néerlande et la Vie Hollandaise' (The Nether-
lands and Dutch Life: 1861), in which he gathered together a great
deal of information about that interesting little land and gave it
graphic presentation. This too was translated into English, and 'The
Dutch at Home' is still a popular book.
In 1869 Esquiros returned to France, and was soon after elected
democratic deputy from Bouches-du-Rhône. The next year came the
downfall of the Empire, after which he was appointed Administrateur
Supérieur from the same department. Something about Esquiros is
suggestive of Malesherbes; and in this position he showed similar
integrity and fearless energy, until like Malesherbes his virtues
proved his own undoing, and he was driven to resign.
## p. 5558 (#124) ###########################################
5558
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
The narrative talent which makes his works on foreign lands such
pleasant reading, and his two novels Charlotte Corday' and 'Le
Magicien always interesting, is especially striking in his one little.
volume of short stories. 'Le Château Enchanté' (The Enchanted
Castle), 'Le Mariage Fatal (The Fatal Marriage), and the others,
are romantic tales, told with a convincing simplicity and earnest
realization of the pathos of human life. Perhaps, on the whole, the
most striking quality of Alphonse Esquiros was his broad sympathy.
THE DEATH OF MARAT
From Charlotte Corday'
ON
N THE evening of the 13th of July, after leaving Du Perret,
Charlotte Corday started to return to her hotel, and crossed
the Palais Royal. It was still quite light. Everything
sparkled in the mild reddish glow which the setting sun shed.
along the galleries and on all the little shops. In the clear win-
dows of a cutlery shop especially, the steel blades glittered brill-
iantly. Charlotte Corday stopped. After looking a few minutes
at the sharp murderous instruments, she entered the shop.
There was one large knife with an ebony handle exposed for
sale, and Charlotte Corday tried the blade with her finger.
sheath lay beside it in the case. The price was three francs.
She paid it. Then she hid the knife, in its sheath, under the
red fichu which covered her throat.
As it was a beautiful evening, she went out into the garden
and sat down on a bench in the shade of the chestnut-trees. A
little child was playing near, gathering sand in its red apron.
The stranger's face pleased him; he drew near, smiled, hovered
about the bench, courting attention. Beauty attracts children.
Then, becoming quite familiar at last, he bravely dropped back
his little blond curly head on the lady's lap. Charlotte took him
in her arms and gave him a melancholy look. In the refreshing
breezes of the evening, she felt many tender and profound
thoughts at sight of this little being, sitting innocently on her
knees. In spite of herself she thought of the joys of maternity,
of the family, of love. She told herself that perhaps she was
mad, thus to sacrifice to vain chimeras the sweet and facile hap-
piness offered by nature. The agitations into which events and
public affairs had thrown her for the past six months subsided
## p. 5559 (#125) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5559
under the limpid gaze of this little creature; her eyes filled with
tears before his ingenuous smile; fresh and charming recollections
of that early age rushed wildly to her heart. At sight of so
much serenity, grace, forgetfulness, universal pardon, painted on
the child's face, she felt her fierce resolution soften, and her
vengeance slipping from her hands.
Now the prying, inquisitive little fingers of the child, which
for a moment had been investigating under her red fichu, drew
out the sinister knife for a plaything. At sight of it Charlotte
grew pale, rose, set the child on the ground, and went away;
first casting an unquiet glance around and replacing the knife
under her fichu, and the fatal secret in her breast. At the en-
trance to the garden she met a cabman, whose horses were rest-
ing before the door of a house. "Citizen Coachman," she asked,
can you tell me, if you please, where Citizen Marat lives? "
«<
"Rue des Cordeliers, No. 30;" and fearing this woman might
forget the address, the cabman wrote it himself in pencil on a
bit of white paper. This done, Charlotte Corday went back to
her hotel.
The next day Du Perret called as he had promised, and after
chatting with her for about a quarter of an hour, took her to
the minister. But Charlotte Corday found that she could not
draw her friend's papers from the hands of the administration.
Then she took leave of Du Perret, thanking him, and forbidding
him to call again. "You know what I told you yesterday," she
added. "Fly as quickly as you can. Fly this very night, for
to-morrow it will be too late. "
The claims of friendship satisfied, she turned all her strength
and resolution toward the true object of her journey. That
morning she had addressed the following letter to Marat by post:
"Citizen: I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for the
country makes me think that you will be interested to know
the unhappy events in that part of the Republic. I will call
upon you about one o'clock. Be so good as to receive me and
grant me a moment's interview. I will show you how to render
CHARLOTTE CORDAY. "
France a great service.
A perfidious intention like a knife-blade was hidden under the
last sentence. Receiving no answer, Mademoiselle Corday wrote
again, about four o'clock that afternoon:
-
## p. 5560 (#126) ###########################################
5560
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
"I wrote you this morning, Marat. Did you receive my letter?
I cannot believe so, since I am refused admittance at your door.
I hope you will grant me an interview to-morrow. I repeat that
I have just come from Caen. I wish to tell you secrets most
important to the safety of the Republic. Moreover, I am being
persecuted for the cause of liberty. I am unhappy. That alone
gives me a right to your protection. CHARLOTTE CORDAY. "
The note written, she folded it and placed it in her breast.
This second message must be given to Marat's housekeeper, if he
still refused to see her. At a quarter of seven Charlotte Corday
took a cab on the Place des Victoires. "Where to? " asked the
driver. "Rue des Cordeliers, No. 30," answered a voice clear
and gentle as a child's.
The cab jogged along for a quarter of an hour, and then
stopped before a grim, dull-looking house, where, to follow the
language of the Girondists, the monster of the Mountain had
established his den. Marat's house at No. 30 Rue des Cordeliers
(now Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine) is still standing, and has
retained its former character. The monolithic mass, pierced with
rather high windows, draws the attention by its rigid, gloomy,
and solitary aspect. Dwellings as well as men have a physi-
ognomy. Providence doubtless chose this house from among all
others, for its air of fitness as witness and sombre setting of
one of the most tragic scenes of the great Revolutionary drama.
Since then it has been repaired to some extent, but no amount
of freshening can remove its sadness. Before the 13th of July
this sadness was a presentiment; since then it has been a mem-
ory. Still on the wall in pale letters are the words "ou la m»
the remnant of that stern inscription "La fraternité, l'indivisi-
bilité, ou la mort. "
-
2
Alas! This great word, in which all the others are lost, is
itself becoming effaced under the file of time. As one of the
ancients said, "death dies" (mors moritur). The front door, in
its frame of black paint, gives the whole house a funereal air.
A kind of square vestibule, with a wretched porter's lodge to
the right, leads to a damp little court where the dank mossy
pavement sends to the surface a cold sweat, as it were, in time of
rain. This court is bounded by a wing of the building, streaked
with cracks and mold. There is a well in one of the angles.
On the right, a staircase of greasy stone steps, surmounted by
## p. 5561 (#127) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5561
an iron railing, leads up to a large landing lighted by a double
casement. Under the stairs the eyes plunge into a sordid hollow,
where there is a confusion of old household utensils, and where
cellar doors open confusingly like shadowy mouths. This house
Iwas made for some sinister event.
Charlotte, trim and alert, stepped out of the cab before
the porte-cochère. Afterwards, the neighbors remembered their
surprise at seeing a young woman with a green ribbon in her
hair getting out of a carriage. First of all she had to brave the
cross-grained portress in her lodge, a veritable female Cerberus,
who, knowing that her tenant was ill and much beset, pitilessly
refused to let her enter. Charlotte Corday insisted. Subdued
by her urgent and resolute tone, the portress finally allowed her
to go up-stairs.
Marat was living upon the first floor. The staircase conducted
to a long landing, at the end of which was an obscure kitchen
window, covered with iron bars, beside a door painted yellow.
This grim grating must have vividly touched Charlotte Corday's
imagination, and she fancied Marat in his lodging like a wild
beast in its cage.
She stopped near the barred window with its menacing air,
before the door to the left.
A strange coldness seized her heart.
Her enemy was behind this light partition; and behind it too was
her own future, the scaffold all ready and threatening! There
was still time to retreat. She could return to Caen or sail to
England. Easy, admissible joys held out loving arms to the
young and beautiful woman, either under the trees of Normandy
or on the white shores of Great Britain. The struggle before
her was one of those irrevocable struggles where, like the bee,
the victor leaves his life in the wound he inflicts.
The sill of this door once crossed, she could never retrace her
steps. This door upon which she was about to knock was the
door to her tomb. She hesitated. The most fearless hand must
needs tremble before this perilous entrance, over which, in let-
ters visible to her excited imagination, she read the terrible sen-
tence of the damned- "Leave all hope at the door. " True, she
had dreamed, the blow once struck, of escaping and gaining a
seaport; but this was so doubtful a chance, so light and fragile
a thread to support the weight of her crime, that she could
scarcely trust it. To shake the wood of this door was to awaken
the dull and terrible sound which comes from a coffin-lid when
## p. 5562 (#128) ###########################################
5562
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
touched. And there was something horrible, too, in this calm.
moment preceding so furious and violent an action as the mur
der of a man. She felt the need of gathering all her strength
to hold the knife in her delicate white hands. She stood erect
and motionless like the statue of Judith. Her hand seemed to
weigh a hundred pounds. However, some one was coming up
the stairs behind her, and the fixed resolution at the bottom of
her heart conquered. The hesitations of the avenging arm before
this fatal door ceased, and Charlotte Corday knocked.
Marat was lying in his bath. The bath-room was dimly lighted
by a window on the court. The only furniture was a block of
wood, upon which papers, pens, and a lead inkstand were thrown
pell-mell. Marat was writing. He was signing a petition to the
administration in behalf of a poor widow with four children who
had asked the aid of the People's Friend.
For several days, as we have said, Marat had not been able
to stay out of the bath without being consumed by sharpest
sufferings. There the agitated and volcanic little man tried to
take the attitude and repose of the tomb where he was soon to
rest. In these moments of solitude, preyed upon by horror of
the death which was slowly and surely taking possession of his
perishing body, Marat was pierced to the heart by an invisible
sword, and bled within of an incurable wound. All his life this
man had kept his sufferings to himself.
As he neared the tomb his griefs surged up out of his breast
and suffocated him. He glanced drearily over his life of cruci-
fixion. When he remembered the ills he had endured for the
cause of the Revolution, he asked himself if it would not have
been better to have given himself to the calm and serious work
of science. In mind he entered again his little room at Ver-
sailles, where the birds came to pick up the crumbs on his
window-sill and where the trees cast their green shadows. Then
he thought sadly how little joy, and that frothy and shadowed,
was brought to the heart by the puissance of success in civil
storms. Marat the persecuted, who in time had made himself a
persecutor, offered in this moment a striking and terrible exam-
ple of what he himself had once written: -
"One would be tempted to accuse Heaven and to deny its
justice, if there were not some consolation at sight of frightful
tyrants themselves suffering the ills which they inflict upon
others. "
## p. 5563 (#129) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5563
The great executioner of Divine justice had fallen into the
cold and painful hands of the final torture. The blood of the
2d of September was dripping back upon his heart. Disease
showed itself subtle and merciless to him, and played with his
expiring body as with an elected victim, who in his one death
must expiate all the violent deaths in which the popular influence
of his newspaper had given him a sort of moral complicity.
God purifies by fiery coals and by the bed of thorns, before
he withdraws from the world those whose hateful mission has
been to purify by the sword.
Suddenly Marat heard in the ante-chamber the harsh voice of
his housekeeper, contesting a very young voice whose clear and
tempting tones reached him in his bath:
"Citizen Marat? "
"This is the place, but he is not at home. "
"I must see him. I have just come from Caen. I wrote him
this morning. "
"I tell you he cannot receive any one.
He is ill. Call again
in a few days. "
"I implore you to give him my name. He must have had
my letter.
I am sure he will not refuse me a short interview. "
The housekeeper, a rather nervous and neutral nature, gently
but decidedly continued to refuse; and Charlotte, murmuring, was
already turning back toward the door, which the woman seemed
anxious to close behind her.
Now a gentle emotion entered Marat's heart with this fresh
voice, which he thought he must have heard before. This young
voice took him back to the better springtime years of his youth.
Impressed by its purity, which made it seem the natural music
of a beautiful spirit, he called to his friend, "Let her come in. "
"But, citizen, you are worn out with business. You are suf-
fering. The doctor has forbidden you to see any one. "
"The doctors are ignorant fellows, who can do nothing to
cure me. I won't be a slave to them. "
"But you should not admit every chance comer like that.
There are rumors of assassination. You know yourself that the
Royalists and the Girondists are plotting. Marat, you once told
me that you were to die by the hand of a woman. "
An old servant of Marat's named Catherine, who claimed to
be a sorceress and to divine the future, had predicted his violent
death. "Take heed," she had added, "against girls in red fichus. "
## p. 5564 (#130) ###########################################
5564
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
"True," " answered Marat after a silence and a bitter sigh;
"but I have no faith in such follies. Women don't like me well
enough to kill me. ”
«< Well, I shall send away this intruder. "
"No, I tell you; let her come in. This girl comes from
Caen, where the rebel deputies are. She wrote me this morning.
She is unhappy. " Marat emphasized the last words. Then the
woman grumblingly obeyed, and showed the unknown into the
bath-room. When Charlotte Corday entered, Marat had his head
inclined upon his naked breast.
The gloomy little room is at the back of the house; heavy
silence reigns there night and day; a window, then of heavy
divisions with dull glass, received light from the court.
The woman stood motionless near the bath. The Gironde and
the Mountain, as represented by Charlotte Corday and Marat, had
a terrible struggle before them. Charlotte already bore signs of
victory in her brilliant eyes, her robust health, her bright color,
her magnificent arm and firm and resolute hand. Marat lay in
his bath with outstretched arms; a white sheet draped the tub in
careless folds. It looked like a bier. The woman stood looking
fixedly. Her face had the fatal and extraordinary beauty called
forth by an heroic deed. The old servant closed the door of the
dark and narrow room, and left Charlotte almost touching Marat.
All at once Marat uttered a great cry- Help! Help! " and
having uttered it, turned his head aside and died. The house-
keeper and some servants of the house rushed to the bath-room.
They found Marat with great drops of blood welling from his
side, his eyes open, his tongue moving but speechless. The
murderous knife had fallen on the floor. Charlotte Corday was
standing near the window. At first she had put her hand to her
head; then, calm, severe, and haughty, she seemed to be spell-
bound beside the corpse. The pride of success, the realization of
the immense thing she had accomplished, plunged her into a
moral transport. In killing Marat she had killed the plebeian
king of the Revolution.
―――――
«<
## p. 5565 (#131) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5565
THE POET'S LITTLE HOME
From The Enchanted Castle>
THE
HERE is a narrow two-story house in one of the suburbs of
Berlin, where about fifty years ago Theodore Wilhelm and
his wife Vertua were living. They were a young couple,
very poor but happy, for Wilhelm and Vertua loved each other.
One evening the young wife was sewing at her window, when
the needle paused between her fingers, the work fell on her
apron, and a tear rolled down her cheek. At the same moment
the bell rang over her head. Vertua rose, wiped her red eyes,
and opened the door with a smile on her lips. It was Wilhelm
returning.
"I was sewing and forgot all about the time," she said, throw-
ing her arm around her husband and receiving his kiss.
« We
won't have much of a supper to-day; but then we don't care. "
While saying this, she placed on the table a dish of boiled pota-
toes and some dry nuts.
"You must be out of money," remarked Wilhelm gloomily.
"No, I have some," she said, shaking some copper coins in
her apron pocket.
"I think I have found a place," went on Wilhelm, in a tone
not very hopeful. "If I accept it, I will begin work to-morrow. "
"What place? " asked Vertua.
"I am promised the position of head of the orchestra in a
small theatre. The salary is not very much, but as I know a
little about painting I can act as decorator at the same time.
Then, as I still have great faith in my literary talent, I will
induce them to play some of my compositions there. "
Vertua smiled indulgently at her husband's golden dreams.
Their meal was tranquil and gay. Love, great worker of mira-
cles, found a way to change the water in their pitcher to a wine
better than that of the wedding at Cana.
After supper Theodore Wilhelm spoke of writing. Vertua
dared not tell him that there was no oil for the lamp.
"Bah! " said she. "It's too fine an evening to light that hor-
rid wick. Let us stay at the window and watch the stars, the
lights of the good God. "
Theodore Wilhelm understood that he was reduced to the state
of the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, who went without working at
night, non avendo candele per scriver i versi suoi.
## p. 5566 (#132) ###########################################
5566
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
«< Perhaps I would have been wiser," he said, "to have stuck
to my first studies. By this time I would have been a coun-
selor. "
"Why these regrets, dear? "
"At least you would have a servant and new clothes," con-
tinued Wilhelm, who was cut to the heart by his wife's depriva-
tions.
"I don't need anything," interrupted Vertua, with a smile
which she tried to make natural. "If I don't wear my fine
clothes, it is because I don't think I need them in order to please
you. "
The next morning Vertua awoke before dawn, and crept
softly out of bed to get things ready for her husband. Her eyes
reviewed sadly the shabby black coat, white on the seams and on
the back of the cuffs; the shapeless shoes, and the worn cravat.
In vain she brushed them, caught up broken threads with her
needle, touched the garment here and there with ink,—she could
never restore the irreparable injury of years. Just before Wil-
helm started out, he looked at himself in the mirror.
"You are all right," said Vertua in a confident voice. "That
coat looks quite new, and the hat seems fresh enough to have
been bought yesterday. "
The two lovers exercised a kind of divine trickery to deceive
each other as to their wretched state.
Theodore Wilhelm obtained a position in the orchestra of a
little theatre where he was the only musician, but he lost it
again in a few days. Then he tried various callings, which cost
much to his self-love and which barely satisfied the first needs of
life.
Ten years later, the same man was the most popular author
of all Germany.
In the early days of his success, Wilhelm plunged his lips
eagerly in this cup of gold; but it soon transformed him, and he
fell into a bored and dreary frenzy. Satiety brought disgust.
His celebrity dazed him. Long before this, he had moved from
the little house in the suburb to a rich and commodious mansion
in the city. One evening Vertua took his hand in hers and said
to him:
-:
"We are not happy any more. Happiness was to love each
other, and now that we are rich we no longer do so. This
miserable gold has destroyed all the charm of our home. When
## p. 5567 (#133) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5567
we were poor I used to see you all day. Now other people have
you. You are called here and there, you are invited by the
whole town, you are sought after by women, and I am unhappy.
Are you yourself content? No, Wilhelm, acknowledge the truth.
This life wearies you; you regret the time when we suffered the
bitter privations of life together. "
"You are right, Vertua. For a long time I have thought all
that you have just said, but I have never dared to tell you.
When we were living in our little house the necessity of fighting
outside evils calmed the agitation of my spirit. The struggle
was good for me, and helpful. Now I am afraid of going mad.
No, I have never suffered so much as since I have been delivered
from the hard necessities of life and delivered to myself. My
cruel imagination is an enemy ten times more insupportable than
poverty. Fame is killing me. I am no longer free, now that I
am celebrated. I am stifling under this cape of gold, which
Divine justice has thrown on my shoulders to punish my foolish
ambitions. "
me.
"I too hate this glory, as a rival who has made you desert
Since you have given yourself up to it, you hardly care for
me. But I do not ask you to relinquish it; I know what such
ties mean.
However much one curses, he has never the strength
to relinquish them. But let us do one thing. That little house
in the suburb, of which you were just speaking, I have been
renting for the last ten years without telling you so; our old
furniture, which I pretended to sell, is all there just as we left
it. Let us go back and spend the day to-morrow in this old
nest of our early love. "
Wilhelm threw his arms around Vertua, in gratitude for this
happy thought.
The next morning they rose before the sun and fled to the
little house in the suburb. A gentle emotion touched them even
to tears, as they entered the two rooms where they had passed
the bitter, beautiful days of delightful youth. The straw chairs
were neatly ranged as when Vertua's hand took care to keep
them so. Vertua opened the oaken wardrobe, which was nearly
all the furniture in the place, and drew out Wilhelm's old coat,
so often inked over on the seams, and handed it to her husband
to put on.
"I never saw you look so handsome," she said, gazing at him
with delight.
## p. 5568 (#134) ###########################################
5568
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
She herself laid on the bed her veil, her velvet bonnet, her
cashmere shawl, her dress trimmed with lace, and put on again
the simple cap, the fichu, and the linen blouse, in which Wilhelm
had loved her.
After this, Vertua prepared the breakfast with her own hands,
as in the days when she had no other servant than her activity
of twenty years. She set the table with two pewter spoons, two
flowered delft cups, and two coarse linen napkins. The milk was
boiling on the chafing-dish, with its white foam gathering on top.
For the first time in ten years, Theodore Wilhelm felt hun-
gry. A rustic perfume of youth and sentiment entered his heart.
The little birds came in at the window as in the old days, and
picked the dry bread which Vertua crumbled for them under the
table.
Wilhelm and Vertua sat opposite each other as in their happy
time; their knees touched under the little pine table. Their
breakfast was delicious. They felt themselves back in the old
love, when their hearts were young and black care evaporated in
a ray of sunshine.
Breakfast was short, and after it Wilhelm drew his violin from
its case and practiced his lesson for the evening, as he had done
when employed in the orchestra of the theatre. Vertua, who
had not sung for ten years, accompanied him with her voice. It
was a simple and touching piece which suited their mood. The
little room was all stirred with it, and the birds responded from
the roof.
But Wilhelm had scarcely finished the selection when the
sound of applause was heard under the windows. Some friends
or some inquisitive people (how know which? ) had followed
Vertua and her husband.
"We are discovered," the poet murmured sadly.
"Alas! " said Vertua; "I was afraid of it. "
"Not to be able to go where one wants or to do what one
chooses without being spied upon; to suffer everybody's follies
because one is said to have talent; to be forced to abjure calm
of spirit; charm in one's home; love in one's heart: what is it
all?
filled with the desire to restore the dead girl to life. Here ends the
poem, which the author did not live to finish.
In Espronceda's poems the spirit of the man is reflected: a spirit
of fire, a flame lurid and obscured at times by smoke, but a flame
that always aspires. In his poems, too, is to be found the best his-
tory of his unsettled and adventurous life; of which the chief events
to be recorded are his journeyings, now voluntary, now as an exile,
to Lisbon, to Paris, to London, and back again to Madrid, and the
part he took in the political movements of which they were in gen-
eral the result.
An incident characteristic of the poet is related of his first visit
to Lisbon. When the vessel on which he was a passenger arrived in
port, the health officer, boarding her, proceeded to collect a small tax
which it was the custom to demand from the passengers. When
Espronceda's turn arrived, the poet took from his pocket a dollar, all
the money he possessed, and handed it to the officer, who returned
him the change. The poet tossed the coins lightly into the water,
in order, as he said, that he might not "enter so great a capital with
so small a sum of money. "
During his residence in London, Espronceda devoted himself with
ardor to the study of the English poets, more particularly of Byron,
whose influence is clearly traceable in his works. Here the passion-
ate lament entitled 'Elegy to Spain' was written. Here, too, the
unhappy passion which inspired the 'Canto to Teresa' reached the
fatal culmination which was to prove a source of unending remorse
to both the guilty lovers.
The accession to power in 1840 of the liberal party, whose prin-
ciples he advocated, seemed to promise Espronceda at last leisure to
take his just place in literature; a place, according to the judgment
of Valera, -a cautious critic,- beside Goethe, Byron, and Leopardi.
The promise, however, was never realized. His health had been
undermined by a life often of privation and always irregular; and
## p. 5552 (#118) ###########################################
5552
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
before he could take his seat he was attacked by an inflammation of
the larynx, and died after four days' illness, on the 23d of May,
1842, at the age of thirty-two years.
Mary J. Serraus
TO SPAIN: AN ELEGY
ow solitary is the nation now
How
Η That peopled countries vast a former day!
That, all beneath her sovereignty to bow,
From East to West extended once her sway!
Tears now profuse to shed, unhappy one,
Queen of the world! 'tis thine; and from thy face,
Enchanting yet in sorrow, there is none
Its overwhelming traces to erase.
How fatally o'er thee has death poured forth
Darkness and mourning, horrible and great!
And the stern despot in his maddened wrath
Exulted wildly o'er thy low estate.
Nothing or great or beautiful he spared,
My country! - the young warrior by him fell,
The veteran fell, and vile his war-axe glared,
Pleased all its fury o'er thee to impel.
Even the pure maiden fell beneath the rage
Of the unpitying despot, as the rose,
Condemned the summer's burning sun to engage,
Her bloom and beauty withering, soon must close.
Come, O ye inhabiters of all the earth,
And contemplate my misery! can there,-
Tell me! -be any found of mortal birth
Bearing the sorrows I am doomed to bear?
―――
I, wretched, banished from my native land,
Behold, far from the country I adore,
Her former glories lost and high command,
And only left her sufferings to deplore.
Her children have been fatally betrayed
By treacherous brethren, and a tyrant's power;
## p. 5553 (#119) ###########################################
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
5553
And these her lovely fertile plains have made
Fields o'er which only lamentations lower.
Her arms extended wide, unhappy Spain!
Her sons imploring in her deep distress:
Her sons they were, but her command was vain,
Unheard the traitor-madness to repress.
Whate'er could then avail thee, tower or wall,
My country! still amid thy woes adored?
Where were the heroes that could once appall
The fiercest foe? where thy unconquered sword?
Alas! now on thy children's humbled brow
Deeply is shame engraved, and on their eyes,
Cast down and sorrowfully throbbing now,
The tears alone of grief and mourning rise.
Once was a time for Spain, when she possessed
A hundred heroes in her hour of pride;
And trembling nations saw her manifest
Her power and beauty, dazzling, by their side.
As lofty shows itself in Lebanon
The cedar, so her brow she raised on high;
And fell her voice the nations round upon,
As terrify a girl the thunders nigh.
But as a stone now in the desert's wild
Thou liest abandoned, and an unknown way
Through strangers' lands, uncertain where, exiled,
The patriot's doomed unfortunate to stray.
Her ancient pomp and power are covered o'er
With sand and weeds contemptuous; and the foe,
That trembled at her puissance before,
Now mocks exulting and enjoys her woe.
Maidens! your flowing locks disheveled tear,
To give them to the wandering winds; and bring
Your harps in mournful company to share
With me the sorrowful laments I sing.
Thus banished from our homes afar away
Still let us weep our miseries. O Spain,
Who shall have power thy torments to allay?
Who shall have power to dry thy tears again?
X-348
## p. 5554 (#120) ###########################################
5554
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
THE SONG OF THE PIRATE
THE
HE breeze fair aft, all sails on high,
Ten guns on each side mounted seen,
She does not cut the sea, but fly,
A swiftly sailing brigantine;
A pirate bark, the Dreaded' named,
For her surpassing boldness famed,
On every sea well known and shore,
From side to side their boundaries o'er.
The moon in streaks the waves illumes;
Hoarse groans the wind the rigging through;
In gentle motion raised, assumes
The sea a silvery shade with blue;
While singing gaily on the poop,
The pirate captain, in a group,
Sees Europe here, there Asia lies,
And Stamboul in the front arise.
Sail on, my swift one! nothing fear;
Nor calm, nor storm, nor foeman's force
Shall make thee yield in thy career,
Or turn thee from thy course.
Despite the English cruisers fleet,
We have full twenty prizes made;
And see, their flags beneath my feet
A hundred nations laid.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
There blindly kings fierce wars maintain
For palms of land, when here I hold
As mine, whose power no laws restrain,
Whate'er the seas infold.
Nor is there shore around whate'er,
Or banner proud, but of my might
Is taught the valorous proofs to bear,
And made to feel my right.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
## p. 5555 (#121) ###########################################
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
5555
Look, when a ship our signals ring
Full sail to fly, how quick she's veer'd!
For of the sea I am the king,
My fury's to be feared;
But equally with all I share
Whate'er the wealth we take supplies;
I only seek the matchless fair,
My portion of the prize.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty:
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
I am condemned to die! I laugh;
For if my fates are kindly sped,
My doomer from his own ship's staff
Perhaps I'll hang instead.
And if I fall, why what is life?
For lost I gave it then as due,
When from slavery's yoke in strife
A rover I withdrew.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
My music is the north wind's roar,
The noise when round the cable runs,
The bellowings of the Black Sea's shore,
And rolling of my guns.
And as the thunders loudly sound,
And furious as the tempest rave,
I calmly rest in sleep profound,
So rocked upon the wave.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
## p. 5556 (#122) ###########################################
5556
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
(1812-1876)
F MY hair must turn gray, a thousandfold sooner let it be
with the dust of highways than that of musty tomes," said
Alphonse Esquiros; and the words show an energy which
always longed to accomplish something of practical utility, and which
expended itself in too many directions to be adequately successful in
any one.
For his contribution to literature is too meritorious not to
win appreciation, yet so scanty that we wonder why he did not leave
us more.
Esquiros first made himself known as a poet. He was very young
only twenty- when his little volume of odes and sonnets, 'Les
Hirondelles,' attracted Victor Hugo's admiration and friendship. “A
true poet's book," Hugo called it; "the fair beginning of a young
man; a swarm of charming verses on radiant wing. "
Then Esquiros engaged in journalism, and at the same time pre-
pared a historical novel, Charlotte Corday,' founded on the tragic
life of the Revolutionary heroine. This true story, strengthened by
an imagination which presented both Charlotte and her victim Marat
sympathetically, was very popular. Esquiros invested both murderous
figures with a fine ideality which made them seem victims rather
than sinners; and he made them symbolic too,-their final meeting
the inevitable clash between the Gironde and the Mountain. In the
simple, direct style there is no falsetto; and yet, as has been pointed
out, Esquiros here deserts the crisp French romanticism for a touch
of the sentiment we associate with our English Laurence Sterne.
With his skill in story-telling and his poetic quality, his feeling
for delicate emotion and grace of form, Esquiros combined much of
the reformer's spirit; and that brought him into trouble.
The same
year that Charlotte Corday' appeared (1840), he published too
'L'Évangile du Peuple,' a religious and political work, in which Jesus
is portrayed as a socialistic reformer in harmony with revolutionary
spirits. Naturally. this revival of revolutionary thinking was disap-
proved by the government, and its author was severely punished. He
was sentenced to the payment of a fine of 500 francs and to an
imprisonment of eight months. While confined in Sainte-Pélagie he
diverted himself with poetic composition, and wrote 'Les Chants du
Prisonnier,' pretty reminiscences of his early life. He wrote, too,
several semi-socialistic works, - 'Les Vierges Martyres' (The Virgin
I
## p. 5557 (#123) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5557
Martyrs), 'Les Vierges Folles' (The Foolish Virgins), and 'Les Vierges
Sages' (The Wise Virgins).
Esquiros was a Parisian, and much of his life was spent in the
centre of the political storms of his country. He was ardently patri-
otic, and his mind was always strongly diverted from literature to
politics, in which he stoutly advocated radical and socialistic reform.
Soon after his release he became a democratic member in the Legis-
lative Assembly, where he continued until, upon the overthrow of
the government, he found himself exiled.
His series of historical and political works,—'L'Histoire des Monta-
gnards' (History of the Montagnards: 1847), 'L'Histoire des Martyrs
de la Liberté' (History of the Martyrs of Liberty: 1851), and 'La Vie
Future au Point de Vue Socialiste (The Future Life from the Social-
ist's Standpoint: 1857),- although often eloquent and always earnest,
are considered superficial in thought. He was a man of feeling and
imagination rather than of analysis and synthesis, and philosophy
was not his true vocation. One quality in which he excelled found
exercise now that he was sent away from France: he had the fac-
ulty, not usual with Frenchmen, of understanding a foreign point of
view, of studying other lands and peoples with intuitive sympathy.
For years he lived in England, where he made many friends and was
for some time professor of French literature at Woolwich. He thor-
oughly investigated the different interests and industries of the coun-
try, the various forms of religion, the departments of government,
the army and navy; and obtained a just and comprehensive knowl-
edge of English life, which he embodied in serious and interesting.
studies which ran through a long series in the Revue des Deux
Mondes. They were translated into English, and in book form,
'L'Angleterre et la Vie Anglaise (England and English Life), and
'Les Moralistes Anglaises' (The English Moralists), were greatly
enjoyed on both sides of the Channel.
He spent some time in Holland too, and of this one result was a
delightful volume, 'La Néerlande et la Vie Hollandaise' (The Nether-
lands and Dutch Life: 1861), in which he gathered together a great
deal of information about that interesting little land and gave it
graphic presentation. This too was translated into English, and 'The
Dutch at Home' is still a popular book.
In 1869 Esquiros returned to France, and was soon after elected
democratic deputy from Bouches-du-Rhône. The next year came the
downfall of the Empire, after which he was appointed Administrateur
Supérieur from the same department. Something about Esquiros is
suggestive of Malesherbes; and in this position he showed similar
integrity and fearless energy, until like Malesherbes his virtues
proved his own undoing, and he was driven to resign.
## p. 5558 (#124) ###########################################
5558
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
The narrative talent which makes his works on foreign lands such
pleasant reading, and his two novels Charlotte Corday' and 'Le
Magicien always interesting, is especially striking in his one little.
volume of short stories. 'Le Château Enchanté' (The Enchanted
Castle), 'Le Mariage Fatal (The Fatal Marriage), and the others,
are romantic tales, told with a convincing simplicity and earnest
realization of the pathos of human life. Perhaps, on the whole, the
most striking quality of Alphonse Esquiros was his broad sympathy.
THE DEATH OF MARAT
From Charlotte Corday'
ON
N THE evening of the 13th of July, after leaving Du Perret,
Charlotte Corday started to return to her hotel, and crossed
the Palais Royal. It was still quite light. Everything
sparkled in the mild reddish glow which the setting sun shed.
along the galleries and on all the little shops. In the clear win-
dows of a cutlery shop especially, the steel blades glittered brill-
iantly. Charlotte Corday stopped. After looking a few minutes
at the sharp murderous instruments, she entered the shop.
There was one large knife with an ebony handle exposed for
sale, and Charlotte Corday tried the blade with her finger.
sheath lay beside it in the case. The price was three francs.
She paid it. Then she hid the knife, in its sheath, under the
red fichu which covered her throat.
As it was a beautiful evening, she went out into the garden
and sat down on a bench in the shade of the chestnut-trees. A
little child was playing near, gathering sand in its red apron.
The stranger's face pleased him; he drew near, smiled, hovered
about the bench, courting attention. Beauty attracts children.
Then, becoming quite familiar at last, he bravely dropped back
his little blond curly head on the lady's lap. Charlotte took him
in her arms and gave him a melancholy look. In the refreshing
breezes of the evening, she felt many tender and profound
thoughts at sight of this little being, sitting innocently on her
knees. In spite of herself she thought of the joys of maternity,
of the family, of love. She told herself that perhaps she was
mad, thus to sacrifice to vain chimeras the sweet and facile hap-
piness offered by nature. The agitations into which events and
public affairs had thrown her for the past six months subsided
## p. 5559 (#125) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5559
under the limpid gaze of this little creature; her eyes filled with
tears before his ingenuous smile; fresh and charming recollections
of that early age rushed wildly to her heart. At sight of so
much serenity, grace, forgetfulness, universal pardon, painted on
the child's face, she felt her fierce resolution soften, and her
vengeance slipping from her hands.
Now the prying, inquisitive little fingers of the child, which
for a moment had been investigating under her red fichu, drew
out the sinister knife for a plaything. At sight of it Charlotte
grew pale, rose, set the child on the ground, and went away;
first casting an unquiet glance around and replacing the knife
under her fichu, and the fatal secret in her breast. At the en-
trance to the garden she met a cabman, whose horses were rest-
ing before the door of a house. "Citizen Coachman," she asked,
can you tell me, if you please, where Citizen Marat lives? "
«<
"Rue des Cordeliers, No. 30;" and fearing this woman might
forget the address, the cabman wrote it himself in pencil on a
bit of white paper. This done, Charlotte Corday went back to
her hotel.
The next day Du Perret called as he had promised, and after
chatting with her for about a quarter of an hour, took her to
the minister. But Charlotte Corday found that she could not
draw her friend's papers from the hands of the administration.
Then she took leave of Du Perret, thanking him, and forbidding
him to call again. "You know what I told you yesterday," she
added. "Fly as quickly as you can. Fly this very night, for
to-morrow it will be too late. "
The claims of friendship satisfied, she turned all her strength
and resolution toward the true object of her journey. That
morning she had addressed the following letter to Marat by post:
"Citizen: I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for the
country makes me think that you will be interested to know
the unhappy events in that part of the Republic. I will call
upon you about one o'clock. Be so good as to receive me and
grant me a moment's interview. I will show you how to render
CHARLOTTE CORDAY. "
France a great service.
A perfidious intention like a knife-blade was hidden under the
last sentence. Receiving no answer, Mademoiselle Corday wrote
again, about four o'clock that afternoon:
-
## p. 5560 (#126) ###########################################
5560
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
"I wrote you this morning, Marat. Did you receive my letter?
I cannot believe so, since I am refused admittance at your door.
I hope you will grant me an interview to-morrow. I repeat that
I have just come from Caen. I wish to tell you secrets most
important to the safety of the Republic. Moreover, I am being
persecuted for the cause of liberty. I am unhappy. That alone
gives me a right to your protection. CHARLOTTE CORDAY. "
The note written, she folded it and placed it in her breast.
This second message must be given to Marat's housekeeper, if he
still refused to see her. At a quarter of seven Charlotte Corday
took a cab on the Place des Victoires. "Where to? " asked the
driver. "Rue des Cordeliers, No. 30," answered a voice clear
and gentle as a child's.
The cab jogged along for a quarter of an hour, and then
stopped before a grim, dull-looking house, where, to follow the
language of the Girondists, the monster of the Mountain had
established his den. Marat's house at No. 30 Rue des Cordeliers
(now Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine) is still standing, and has
retained its former character. The monolithic mass, pierced with
rather high windows, draws the attention by its rigid, gloomy,
and solitary aspect. Dwellings as well as men have a physi-
ognomy. Providence doubtless chose this house from among all
others, for its air of fitness as witness and sombre setting of
one of the most tragic scenes of the great Revolutionary drama.
Since then it has been repaired to some extent, but no amount
of freshening can remove its sadness. Before the 13th of July
this sadness was a presentiment; since then it has been a mem-
ory. Still on the wall in pale letters are the words "ou la m»
the remnant of that stern inscription "La fraternité, l'indivisi-
bilité, ou la mort. "
-
2
Alas! This great word, in which all the others are lost, is
itself becoming effaced under the file of time. As one of the
ancients said, "death dies" (mors moritur). The front door, in
its frame of black paint, gives the whole house a funereal air.
A kind of square vestibule, with a wretched porter's lodge to
the right, leads to a damp little court where the dank mossy
pavement sends to the surface a cold sweat, as it were, in time of
rain. This court is bounded by a wing of the building, streaked
with cracks and mold. There is a well in one of the angles.
On the right, a staircase of greasy stone steps, surmounted by
## p. 5561 (#127) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5561
an iron railing, leads up to a large landing lighted by a double
casement. Under the stairs the eyes plunge into a sordid hollow,
where there is a confusion of old household utensils, and where
cellar doors open confusingly like shadowy mouths. This house
Iwas made for some sinister event.
Charlotte, trim and alert, stepped out of the cab before
the porte-cochère. Afterwards, the neighbors remembered their
surprise at seeing a young woman with a green ribbon in her
hair getting out of a carriage. First of all she had to brave the
cross-grained portress in her lodge, a veritable female Cerberus,
who, knowing that her tenant was ill and much beset, pitilessly
refused to let her enter. Charlotte Corday insisted. Subdued
by her urgent and resolute tone, the portress finally allowed her
to go up-stairs.
Marat was living upon the first floor. The staircase conducted
to a long landing, at the end of which was an obscure kitchen
window, covered with iron bars, beside a door painted yellow.
This grim grating must have vividly touched Charlotte Corday's
imagination, and she fancied Marat in his lodging like a wild
beast in its cage.
She stopped near the barred window with its menacing air,
before the door to the left.
A strange coldness seized her heart.
Her enemy was behind this light partition; and behind it too was
her own future, the scaffold all ready and threatening! There
was still time to retreat. She could return to Caen or sail to
England. Easy, admissible joys held out loving arms to the
young and beautiful woman, either under the trees of Normandy
or on the white shores of Great Britain. The struggle before
her was one of those irrevocable struggles where, like the bee,
the victor leaves his life in the wound he inflicts.
The sill of this door once crossed, she could never retrace her
steps. This door upon which she was about to knock was the
door to her tomb. She hesitated. The most fearless hand must
needs tremble before this perilous entrance, over which, in let-
ters visible to her excited imagination, she read the terrible sen-
tence of the damned- "Leave all hope at the door. " True, she
had dreamed, the blow once struck, of escaping and gaining a
seaport; but this was so doubtful a chance, so light and fragile
a thread to support the weight of her crime, that she could
scarcely trust it. To shake the wood of this door was to awaken
the dull and terrible sound which comes from a coffin-lid when
## p. 5562 (#128) ###########################################
5562
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
touched. And there was something horrible, too, in this calm.
moment preceding so furious and violent an action as the mur
der of a man. She felt the need of gathering all her strength
to hold the knife in her delicate white hands. She stood erect
and motionless like the statue of Judith. Her hand seemed to
weigh a hundred pounds. However, some one was coming up
the stairs behind her, and the fixed resolution at the bottom of
her heart conquered. The hesitations of the avenging arm before
this fatal door ceased, and Charlotte Corday knocked.
Marat was lying in his bath. The bath-room was dimly lighted
by a window on the court. The only furniture was a block of
wood, upon which papers, pens, and a lead inkstand were thrown
pell-mell. Marat was writing. He was signing a petition to the
administration in behalf of a poor widow with four children who
had asked the aid of the People's Friend.
For several days, as we have said, Marat had not been able
to stay out of the bath without being consumed by sharpest
sufferings. There the agitated and volcanic little man tried to
take the attitude and repose of the tomb where he was soon to
rest. In these moments of solitude, preyed upon by horror of
the death which was slowly and surely taking possession of his
perishing body, Marat was pierced to the heart by an invisible
sword, and bled within of an incurable wound. All his life this
man had kept his sufferings to himself.
As he neared the tomb his griefs surged up out of his breast
and suffocated him. He glanced drearily over his life of cruci-
fixion. When he remembered the ills he had endured for the
cause of the Revolution, he asked himself if it would not have
been better to have given himself to the calm and serious work
of science. In mind he entered again his little room at Ver-
sailles, where the birds came to pick up the crumbs on his
window-sill and where the trees cast their green shadows. Then
he thought sadly how little joy, and that frothy and shadowed,
was brought to the heart by the puissance of success in civil
storms. Marat the persecuted, who in time had made himself a
persecutor, offered in this moment a striking and terrible exam-
ple of what he himself had once written: -
"One would be tempted to accuse Heaven and to deny its
justice, if there were not some consolation at sight of frightful
tyrants themselves suffering the ills which they inflict upon
others. "
## p. 5563 (#129) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5563
The great executioner of Divine justice had fallen into the
cold and painful hands of the final torture. The blood of the
2d of September was dripping back upon his heart. Disease
showed itself subtle and merciless to him, and played with his
expiring body as with an elected victim, who in his one death
must expiate all the violent deaths in which the popular influence
of his newspaper had given him a sort of moral complicity.
God purifies by fiery coals and by the bed of thorns, before
he withdraws from the world those whose hateful mission has
been to purify by the sword.
Suddenly Marat heard in the ante-chamber the harsh voice of
his housekeeper, contesting a very young voice whose clear and
tempting tones reached him in his bath:
"Citizen Marat? "
"This is the place, but he is not at home. "
"I must see him. I have just come from Caen. I wrote him
this morning. "
"I tell you he cannot receive any one.
He is ill. Call again
in a few days. "
"I implore you to give him my name. He must have had
my letter.
I am sure he will not refuse me a short interview. "
The housekeeper, a rather nervous and neutral nature, gently
but decidedly continued to refuse; and Charlotte, murmuring, was
already turning back toward the door, which the woman seemed
anxious to close behind her.
Now a gentle emotion entered Marat's heart with this fresh
voice, which he thought he must have heard before. This young
voice took him back to the better springtime years of his youth.
Impressed by its purity, which made it seem the natural music
of a beautiful spirit, he called to his friend, "Let her come in. "
"But, citizen, you are worn out with business. You are suf-
fering. The doctor has forbidden you to see any one. "
"The doctors are ignorant fellows, who can do nothing to
cure me. I won't be a slave to them. "
"But you should not admit every chance comer like that.
There are rumors of assassination. You know yourself that the
Royalists and the Girondists are plotting. Marat, you once told
me that you were to die by the hand of a woman. "
An old servant of Marat's named Catherine, who claimed to
be a sorceress and to divine the future, had predicted his violent
death. "Take heed," she had added, "against girls in red fichus. "
## p. 5564 (#130) ###########################################
5564
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
"True," " answered Marat after a silence and a bitter sigh;
"but I have no faith in such follies. Women don't like me well
enough to kill me. ”
«< Well, I shall send away this intruder. "
"No, I tell you; let her come in. This girl comes from
Caen, where the rebel deputies are. She wrote me this morning.
She is unhappy. " Marat emphasized the last words. Then the
woman grumblingly obeyed, and showed the unknown into the
bath-room. When Charlotte Corday entered, Marat had his head
inclined upon his naked breast.
The gloomy little room is at the back of the house; heavy
silence reigns there night and day; a window, then of heavy
divisions with dull glass, received light from the court.
The woman stood motionless near the bath. The Gironde and
the Mountain, as represented by Charlotte Corday and Marat, had
a terrible struggle before them. Charlotte already bore signs of
victory in her brilliant eyes, her robust health, her bright color,
her magnificent arm and firm and resolute hand. Marat lay in
his bath with outstretched arms; a white sheet draped the tub in
careless folds. It looked like a bier. The woman stood looking
fixedly. Her face had the fatal and extraordinary beauty called
forth by an heroic deed. The old servant closed the door of the
dark and narrow room, and left Charlotte almost touching Marat.
All at once Marat uttered a great cry- Help! Help! " and
having uttered it, turned his head aside and died. The house-
keeper and some servants of the house rushed to the bath-room.
They found Marat with great drops of blood welling from his
side, his eyes open, his tongue moving but speechless. The
murderous knife had fallen on the floor. Charlotte Corday was
standing near the window. At first she had put her hand to her
head; then, calm, severe, and haughty, she seemed to be spell-
bound beside the corpse. The pride of success, the realization of
the immense thing she had accomplished, plunged her into a
moral transport. In killing Marat she had killed the plebeian
king of the Revolution.
―――――
«<
## p. 5565 (#131) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5565
THE POET'S LITTLE HOME
From The Enchanted Castle>
THE
HERE is a narrow two-story house in one of the suburbs of
Berlin, where about fifty years ago Theodore Wilhelm and
his wife Vertua were living. They were a young couple,
very poor but happy, for Wilhelm and Vertua loved each other.
One evening the young wife was sewing at her window, when
the needle paused between her fingers, the work fell on her
apron, and a tear rolled down her cheek. At the same moment
the bell rang over her head. Vertua rose, wiped her red eyes,
and opened the door with a smile on her lips. It was Wilhelm
returning.
"I was sewing and forgot all about the time," she said, throw-
ing her arm around her husband and receiving his kiss.
« We
won't have much of a supper to-day; but then we don't care. "
While saying this, she placed on the table a dish of boiled pota-
toes and some dry nuts.
"You must be out of money," remarked Wilhelm gloomily.
"No, I have some," she said, shaking some copper coins in
her apron pocket.
"I think I have found a place," went on Wilhelm, in a tone
not very hopeful. "If I accept it, I will begin work to-morrow. "
"What place? " asked Vertua.
"I am promised the position of head of the orchestra in a
small theatre. The salary is not very much, but as I know a
little about painting I can act as decorator at the same time.
Then, as I still have great faith in my literary talent, I will
induce them to play some of my compositions there. "
Vertua smiled indulgently at her husband's golden dreams.
Their meal was tranquil and gay. Love, great worker of mira-
cles, found a way to change the water in their pitcher to a wine
better than that of the wedding at Cana.
After supper Theodore Wilhelm spoke of writing. Vertua
dared not tell him that there was no oil for the lamp.
"Bah! " said she. "It's too fine an evening to light that hor-
rid wick. Let us stay at the window and watch the stars, the
lights of the good God. "
Theodore Wilhelm understood that he was reduced to the state
of the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, who went without working at
night, non avendo candele per scriver i versi suoi.
## p. 5566 (#132) ###########################################
5566
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
«< Perhaps I would have been wiser," he said, "to have stuck
to my first studies. By this time I would have been a coun-
selor. "
"Why these regrets, dear? "
"At least you would have a servant and new clothes," con-
tinued Wilhelm, who was cut to the heart by his wife's depriva-
tions.
"I don't need anything," interrupted Vertua, with a smile
which she tried to make natural. "If I don't wear my fine
clothes, it is because I don't think I need them in order to please
you. "
The next morning Vertua awoke before dawn, and crept
softly out of bed to get things ready for her husband. Her eyes
reviewed sadly the shabby black coat, white on the seams and on
the back of the cuffs; the shapeless shoes, and the worn cravat.
In vain she brushed them, caught up broken threads with her
needle, touched the garment here and there with ink,—she could
never restore the irreparable injury of years. Just before Wil-
helm started out, he looked at himself in the mirror.
"You are all right," said Vertua in a confident voice. "That
coat looks quite new, and the hat seems fresh enough to have
been bought yesterday. "
The two lovers exercised a kind of divine trickery to deceive
each other as to their wretched state.
Theodore Wilhelm obtained a position in the orchestra of a
little theatre where he was the only musician, but he lost it
again in a few days. Then he tried various callings, which cost
much to his self-love and which barely satisfied the first needs of
life.
Ten years later, the same man was the most popular author
of all Germany.
In the early days of his success, Wilhelm plunged his lips
eagerly in this cup of gold; but it soon transformed him, and he
fell into a bored and dreary frenzy. Satiety brought disgust.
His celebrity dazed him. Long before this, he had moved from
the little house in the suburb to a rich and commodious mansion
in the city. One evening Vertua took his hand in hers and said
to him:
-:
"We are not happy any more. Happiness was to love each
other, and now that we are rich we no longer do so. This
miserable gold has destroyed all the charm of our home. When
## p. 5567 (#133) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5567
we were poor I used to see you all day. Now other people have
you. You are called here and there, you are invited by the
whole town, you are sought after by women, and I am unhappy.
Are you yourself content? No, Wilhelm, acknowledge the truth.
This life wearies you; you regret the time when we suffered the
bitter privations of life together. "
"You are right, Vertua. For a long time I have thought all
that you have just said, but I have never dared to tell you.
When we were living in our little house the necessity of fighting
outside evils calmed the agitation of my spirit. The struggle
was good for me, and helpful. Now I am afraid of going mad.
No, I have never suffered so much as since I have been delivered
from the hard necessities of life and delivered to myself. My
cruel imagination is an enemy ten times more insupportable than
poverty. Fame is killing me. I am no longer free, now that I
am celebrated. I am stifling under this cape of gold, which
Divine justice has thrown on my shoulders to punish my foolish
ambitions. "
me.
"I too hate this glory, as a rival who has made you desert
Since you have given yourself up to it, you hardly care for
me. But I do not ask you to relinquish it; I know what such
ties mean.
However much one curses, he has never the strength
to relinquish them. But let us do one thing. That little house
in the suburb, of which you were just speaking, I have been
renting for the last ten years without telling you so; our old
furniture, which I pretended to sell, is all there just as we left
it. Let us go back and spend the day to-morrow in this old
nest of our early love. "
Wilhelm threw his arms around Vertua, in gratitude for this
happy thought.
The next morning they rose before the sun and fled to the
little house in the suburb. A gentle emotion touched them even
to tears, as they entered the two rooms where they had passed
the bitter, beautiful days of delightful youth. The straw chairs
were neatly ranged as when Vertua's hand took care to keep
them so. Vertua opened the oaken wardrobe, which was nearly
all the furniture in the place, and drew out Wilhelm's old coat,
so often inked over on the seams, and handed it to her husband
to put on.
"I never saw you look so handsome," she said, gazing at him
with delight.
## p. 5568 (#134) ###########################################
5568
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
She herself laid on the bed her veil, her velvet bonnet, her
cashmere shawl, her dress trimmed with lace, and put on again
the simple cap, the fichu, and the linen blouse, in which Wilhelm
had loved her.
After this, Vertua prepared the breakfast with her own hands,
as in the days when she had no other servant than her activity
of twenty years. She set the table with two pewter spoons, two
flowered delft cups, and two coarse linen napkins. The milk was
boiling on the chafing-dish, with its white foam gathering on top.
For the first time in ten years, Theodore Wilhelm felt hun-
gry. A rustic perfume of youth and sentiment entered his heart.
The little birds came in at the window as in the old days, and
picked the dry bread which Vertua crumbled for them under the
table.
Wilhelm and Vertua sat opposite each other as in their happy
time; their knees touched under the little pine table. Their
breakfast was delicious. They felt themselves back in the old
love, when their hearts were young and black care evaporated in
a ray of sunshine.
Breakfast was short, and after it Wilhelm drew his violin from
its case and practiced his lesson for the evening, as he had done
when employed in the orchestra of the theatre. Vertua, who
had not sung for ten years, accompanied him with her voice. It
was a simple and touching piece which suited their mood. The
little room was all stirred with it, and the birds responded from
the roof.
But Wilhelm had scarcely finished the selection when the
sound of applause was heard under the windows. Some friends
or some inquisitive people (how know which? ) had followed
Vertua and her husband.
"We are discovered," the poet murmured sadly.
"Alas! " said Vertua; "I was afraid of it. "
"Not to be able to go where one wants or to do what one
chooses without being spied upon; to suffer everybody's follies
because one is said to have talent; to be forced to abjure calm
of spirit; charm in one's home; love in one's heart: what is it
all?
