Edmond
Schérer
died in 1889.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v22 - Sac to Sha
## p. 12855 (#277) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12855
DECLARATION AND DEPARTURE
From The Trumpeter of Säkkingen'
Α
THIS morning meal the baron
Sat, deep poring o'er a letter
Which the day before had reached him.
From afar a post had ridden,
From the Danube, deep in Suabia,
Where the baby river ripples
Gleeful through a narrow valley.
Lofty crags jut sharply o'er it,
And its limpid waters mirror
Clear and bright their rugged outlines,
And the tender green of beech-woods.
Thence the messenger had ridden.
This the purport of the letter:
-
"My old comrade, do you ever
Think of Hans von Wildenstein?
Down the Rhine and down the Danube
Many drops of clearest water
Must have run to reach the ocean,
Since we lay beside our watch-fires,
In our last campaign together.
And I mark it by my youngster,
Who has grown a lusty fellow,
And his years count four-and-twenty.
First, as page, he went to Stuttgart,
To the duke; and then to college
To old Tübingen I sent him.
If I reckon by the money
He has squandered, it is certain
He must be a mighty scholar.
Now by me at home he tarries,
Chasing deer and hares and foxes;
And when other sport is lacking,
Chasing pretty peasant-maidens:
And 'tis time that he were broken
To the wholesome yoke of marriage.
Now, methinks, you have a daughter
Who a fitting bride would make him.
'Twixt old comrades, such as we are,
Many words are surely needless;
So, Sir Baron, I would ask you
## p. 12856 (#278) ##########################################
12856
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
Would it please you if my Damian
To your castle rode a-wooing,
Rode a-wooing to the Rhineland?
Send me speedy answer. -Greetings
From old Hans von Wildenstein.
Postscript. -Do you still remember
That great fray we fought at Augsburg
With the horsemen of Bavaria ?
And the rage of yon rich miser
And his most ungracious lady?
Why, 'tis two-and-thirty years since! "
Toilsomely the baron labored
At his comrade's crabbed writing,
And a full half-hour he puzzled,
Ere he mastered all its import.
Laughing then he spake :-"These Suabians
Are in sooth most knowing devils!
They are lacking in refinement,
Somewhat coarse in grain and fibre,
Yet of wit and prudence plenty
In their rugged pates is garnered.
Many a brainless coxcomb's noddle
They could stock and never miss it.
And my valiant Hans manœuvres
Rarely, like a veteran statesman.
His poor, mortgaged, moldering owl's-nest
By the Danube would be bolstered
Bravely by a handsome dowry.
Yet the scheme deserves a hearing.
Far and wide throughout the kingdom.
Are the Wildensteins respected,
Since with Kaiser Barbarossa
To the Holy Land they journeyed.
Let the varlet try his fortune! "
To the baron entered Werner.
Slow his gait and black his jerkin,
As on feast-days. Melancholy
Sat upon his pallid features.
Jestingly the other hailed him:
"I was in the act of sending
Honest Anton out to seek you.
Pray you, mend your pen and write me,
As my trusty scribe, a letter,
Letter of most weighty import.
---
## p. 12857 (#279) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12857
For a knight has written asking.
Tidings of my lady daughter,
And he seeks her hand in marriage
For his son, the young Sir Damian.
Tell him, then, how Margaretha
Has grown tall and fair and stately.
Tell him but you need no prompting:
- -
Fancy you a painter-paint him,
Black on white, her living image,
Fairly, and forget no detail.
Say, if 'tis the youngster's pleasure,
I shall make no opposition
If he saddle and ride hither. "
"If he saddle and ride hither- »
Spake young Werner, as if dreaming.
To himself; and somewhat sharply
Quoth the baron, "But what ails you
That you wear a face as lengthy
As a Calvinistic preacher's
On Good Friday? Has the fever.
Once more taken hold upon you? "
Gravely made reply young Werner:-
"Sire, I cannot write the letter;
You must seek another penman,
Since I come myself to ask you
For your daughter's hand in marriage. "
:-
"For my daughter's hand in marriage ? »
Gasped the baron, sore bewildered
In his turn; and wryly twitching
Worked his mouth, as his who playeth
-
On a Jew's-harp. Through his left foot.
Shot a bitter throb of anguish.
"My young friend, the fever blazes
In your brain-pan like a furnace.
Go, I rede you, to the garden,
Where there plays a shady fountain.
If you dip your head beneath it
Thrice, the fever straight will vanish. "
"Noble sir," rejoined young Werner,
"Spare your gibes. You may require them,
Peradventure, when the wooer
Out of Suabia rideth hither.
## p. 12858 (#280) ##########################################
12858
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
Sober come I, free from fever,
On a very sober errand;
And of Margaretha's father
Ask, once more, her hand in marriage. ”
Darkly frowning spake the baron:-
"Do you force me, then, to tell you
What your own wit should have taught you?
Sore averse am I to meet you
With harsh earnest; for the pike-thrust,
That so late your forehead suffered,
Have I not forgotten; neither
In whose service you received it.
Yet he only may look upward
To my child, whose noble lineage
Makes such union meet and fitting.
For each one of us has nature
Limits strait and wise appointed,
Where, within our proper circle,
We may fitly thrive and prosper.
From the Holy Roman Empire
Has come down the social order
Threefold,- Noble, Burgess, Peasant:
Each, within itself included,
From itself itself renewing,
Full of health abides and hearty.
Each is thus a sturdy pillar
Which the whole supports, but never
Prospers any intermixture.
Wot ye what that has for issue?
Grandsons who of all have something
Yet are altogether nothing;
Shallow, empty, feeble mongrels,
Tottering, unloosed and shaken
From tradition's steadfast foothold.
Sharp-edged, perfect, must each man be;
And within his veins, as heirloom
From the foregone generations,
He should bear his life's direction.
Therefore equal rank in marriage
Is demanded by our usage,
Which, by me, as law is honored,
And across its fast-fixed ramparts
I will have no stranger scramble.
## p. 12859 (#281) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12859
Item: Shall no trumpet-blower
Dare to court a noble maiden! "
Thus the baron. Sorely troubled
By such serious and unwonted
Theoretic disquisition,
Had he pieced his words together.
By the stove the cat was lying,
Hiddigeigei, listening heedful,
With his head approval nodding
At the close. Yet, musing, pressed he
With his paw upon his forehead,
Deep within himself reflecting:-
"Why do people kiss each other?
Ancient question, new misgiving!
For I thought that I had solved it,—
Thought a kiss was an expedient
Swift another's lips to padlock,
That no word of cruel candor
Issue forth. But this solution
Is, I fear me, quite fallacious;
Else my youthful friend most surely
Would long since have kissed my master. "
-
To the baron spake young Werner,
And his voice was low and muffled:-
"Sire, I thank you for your lesson.
In the glamour of the pine-woods,
In the May month's radiant sunshine,
By the river's crystal billows,
Did mine eyes o'erlook the ramparts
Raised by men, which lay between us.
Thanks for this reminder timely.
Thanks, too, for the hours so joyous
I have spent beneath your roof-tree.
But my span is run: the order
'Right about! ' your words have given me.
And in sooth, I make no murmur.
As a suitor worthy of her
One day I return, or never.
Fare you well! Think kindly of me. "
So he said, and left the chamber,
Knowing well what lay before him.
Long, with troubled mien, the baron
Scanned the door through which he vanished.
"Sooth, it grieves me sore," he muttered.
## p. 12860 (#282) ##########################################
12860
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
"If the brave lad's name were only
Damian von Wildenstein! "
Parting, bitter hour of parting!
Ah, who was it first conceived thee?
Sure, some chilly-hearted mortal
By the distant Arctic Ocean.
Freezing blew the North Pole zephyrs
Round his nose; sore pestered was he
By his wife, unkempt and jealous.
E'en the whale's delicious blubber
Tickled not his jaded palate.
O'er his ears a yellow sealskin
Drew he; in his fur-gloved right hand
Grasped his staff, and nodding curtly
To his stolid Ylaleyka,
Uttered first those words ill-omened,—
"Fare thee well, for I must leave thee. "
Parting, bitter hour of parting!
In his turret chamber, Werner
Girded up his few belongings,
Girded up his slender knapsack,
Threw a last regretful greeting
To the whitewashed walls familiar-
Loth to part, as from old comrades.
Farewell spake he to none other.
Margaretha's eyes of azure
Dared he never more encounter.
To the castle court descending,
Saddled swift his faithful palfrey;
Then there rang an iron hoof-fall,
And a drooping, joyless rider
Left the castle's peace behind him.
In the lowland by the river
Grows a walnut-tree. Beneath it
Once again he reined his palfrey,—
Once again he grasped his trumpet.
From his sorrow-laden spirit
Upward soared his farewell greeting,
Winged with saddest love and longing.
Soared-ah, dost thou know the fable
Of the song the swan sang dying?
At her heart was chill foreboding,
But she soug the lake's clear waters
## p. 12861 (#283) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12861
Yet once more, and through the roses,
Through the glistening water-lilies,
Rose her plaintive song regretful:—
"Fairest world, 'tis mine to leave thee;
Fairest world, I die unwilling! "
Thus he blew. Was that a tear-drop
Falling, glancing, on the trumpet?
Was it but a summer rain-drop?
Onward now! His spurs relentless
In his palfrey's flanks he buried,
And was borne in rousing gallop
To the outskirts of the forest.
SONG: FAREWELL
From The Trumpeter of Säkkingen >
THIS
HIS is the bitterness of life's long story,—
That ever near the rose the thorns are set;
Poor heart, that dwells at first in dreams of glory,
The parting comes, and eyes with tears are wet.
Ah, once I read thine eyes, thy spirit's prison,
And love and joy in their clear depths could see:
May God protect thee! 'twas too fair a vision;
May God protect thee! it was not to be.
Long had I borne with envy, hate, and sorrow,
Weary and worn, by many a tempest tried;
I dreamed of peace and of a bright to-morrow,
And lo! my pathway led me to thy side.
I longed within thine arms to rest; then, risen
In strength and gladness, give my life to thee:
May God protect thee! 'twas too fair a vision;
May God protect thee! it was not to be.
Winds whirl the leaves, the clouds are driven together,
Through wood and meadow beats a storm of rain:
To say farewell 'tis just the fitting weather,
For like the sky, the world seems gray with pain.
Yet good nor ill shall shake my heart's decision;
Thou slender maid, I still must dream of thee!
May God protect thee! 'twas too fair a vision;
May God protect thee! it was not to be.
## p. 12862 (#284) ##########################################
12862
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
SONGS OF HIDDIGEIGEI, THE TOM-CAT
From The Trumpeter of Säkkingen'
I
Y THE storms of fierce temptation
Undisturbed I long have dwelt;
Yet e'en pattern stars of virtue
Unexpected pangs have felt.
Β΄
Hotter than in youth's hot furnace,
Dreams of yore steal in apace;
And the Cat's winged yearnings journey,
Unrestrained, o'er Time and Space.
Naples, land of light and wonder,
Cup of nectar never dry!
To Sorrento I would hasten,
On its topmost roof to lie.
Greets me dark Vesuvius; greets me
The white sail upon the sea;
Birds of spring make sweetest concert
In the budding olive-tree.
Toward the loggia steals Carmela,-
Fairest of the feline race,—
And she softly pulls my whiskers,
And she gazes in my face;
And my paw she gently presses;
Hark! I hear a growling noise:
Can it be the Bay's hoarse murmur,
Or Vesuvius's distant voice?
_____
Nay, Vesuvius's voice is silent,
For to-day he takes his rest.
In the yard, destruction breathing,
Bays the dog of fiendish breast,-
Bays Francesco the Betrayer,
Worst of all his evil race;
And I see my dream dissolving,
Melting in the sky's embrace.
-
## p. 12863 (#285) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12863
II
EARTH once was untroubled by man, they say;
Those days are over and fled,
When the forest primeval crackling lay
'Neath the mammoth's mighty tread.
Ye may search throughout all the land in vain
For the lion, the desert's own;
In sooth we are settled now, 'tis plain,
In a truly temperate zone.
The palm is borne, in life and in verse,
By neither the Great nor the Few:
The world grows weaker and ever worse,
'Tis the day of the Small and the New.
When we Cats are silenced, ariseth the Mouse,
But she too must pack and begone;
And the Infusoria's Royal House
Shall triumph, at last, alone.
III
NEAR the close of his existence
Hiddigeigei stands and sighs;
Death draws nigh with fell insistence,
Ruthlessly to close his eyes.
Fain from out his wisdom's treasure,
Counsels for his race he'd draw,
That amid life's changeful measure
They might find some settled law.
Fain their path through life he'd soften:
Rough it lies and strewn with stones;
E'en the old and wise may often
Stumble there, and break their bones.
Life with many brawls is cumbered,
Useless wounds and useless pain;
Cats both black and brave unnumbered
Have for naught been foully slain.
Ah, in vain our tales of sorrow!
Hark! I hear the laugh of youth.
Fools to-day and fools to-morrow,
Woe alone will teach them truth.
## p. 12864 (#286) ##########################################
12864
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
All in vain is history's teaching:
Listen how they laugh again!
Hiddigeigei's lore and preaching
Locked in silence must remain.
IV
SOON life's thread must break and ravel;
Weak this arm, once strong and brave;
In the scene of all my travail,
In the granary, dig my grave.
Warlike glory there I won me;
All the fight's fierce joy was mine:
Lay my shield and lance upon me,
As the last of all my line.
Ay, the last! The children's merit
Like their sires' can never grow:
Naught they know of strife of spirit;
Upright are they, dull and slow,
Dull and meagre; stiffly, slowly,
Move their minds, of force bereft;
Few indeed will keep as holy
The bequest their sires have left.
Yet once more, in days far distant,
When at rest I long have lain,
One fierce caterwaul insistent
Through your ranks shall ring again:-
"Flee, ye fools, from worse than ruin! "
Hark to Hiddigeigei's cry:
Hark, his wrathful ghostly mewing:-
"Flee from mediocrity! "
## p. 12865 (#287) ##########################################
12865
EDMOND SCHÉRER
XXII-805
(1815-1889)
BY VICTOR CHARBONNEL
L
DMOND SCHÉRER was at once a very learned theologian, a very
profound philosopher, a very vigorous writer. What makes
him especially interesting is the crisis in his faith and in
his thought which led him to abandon theology for philosophy and
literature. He is one of those great spirits, very numerous in our
century, who have delivered themselves from the formulas of an
unquestioning and passive faith, and sought with absolute sincerity
the religion of the conscience.
Edmond Schérer was born at Paris, in 1815. His family was of
Swiss descent, and held the Protestant faith. He early manifested
an ardent love of reading: his school tasks suffered somewhat from
it. Moreover, his father sent him to England to be with the Rev.
Thomas Loader of Monmouth. This earnest clergyman had a salu-
tary influence upon the young man; he inspired him with the love
of duty and of work, he made a Christian of him. When Edmond
Schérer, after an absence of two years, was about to leave England,
he determined to become a shepherd of souls; and besides, he now
understood the language admirably, and had made a study of Eng-
lish literature.
He then entered upon the course of the Faculty of Theology at
Strasbourg, where celebrated professors were among the instructors,
notably Édouard Reuss. When his theological studies were over, he
retired for several years, and published his first writings.
Owing to the reputation thus achieved, he was elected in 1845
professor in the School of Liberal Theology at Geneva. The instruc-
tion he gave at that time had no small renown. But one of the
fundamental doctrines of the School of Liberal Theology was faith
in the full inspiration of the Bible. He soon declared himself unable
to accept it, and spoke of resigning his chair.
In his remarkable article, the Crisis of the Faith,' he protested
against the abuse of authority in religious things, and affirmed the
duty of personal examination, of unrestricted investigation, of religion
founded on criticism. Thenceforward, according to Sainte-Beuve, he
was "an indefatigable intelligence, ever advancing in ceaseless evo-
lution. "
## p. 12866 (#288) ##########################################
12866
EDMOND SCHÉRER
Having resigned his professorship in 1850, he became, with Colani,
the head of the new French school of liberal Protestantism, and took
a most active part in editing the Review of Theology and Christian
Philosophy, of Strasbourg. His articles and his studies gave rise to
violent discussions. Assuredly he recognized that "if there is any-
thing certain in the world, it is that the destiny of the Bible is
closely linked with the destiny of holiness upon the earth. ” But he
whom he called with full conviction a great Christian-a Goethe or
a Hegel in intellectual power and literary talent, but carrying the
Evangel in his heart-was "he who will let fall like a worn-out gar-
ment all that is temporary in the faith of past ages, all that criticism
has victoriously assailed, all that divides the churches, but who shall
know at the same time how to speak to men's consciences, how to
revive the love of the truth, how to find the word of the future,
while disengaging all that is identical, eternal in the Christianity of
all ages. "
Suddenly in 1860, a volume that he published under the title
'Miscellanies of Religious Criticism,'-containing vigorous studies of
Joseph de Maistre, Lamennais, Le P. Gratry, Veuillot, Taine, Proud-
hon, Renan, revealed in the theologian a very searching critic.
Sainte-Beuve hailed the book with many encomiums, and placed the
author in "the front rank of French writers. "
Also, the contradictions perceptible between different parts of this
work clearly show that Edmond Schérer continually sought his way;
and that he tended towards that philosophical rather than theologi-
cal conception, which makes of Christianity the perfect and defini-
tive religion, but not the absolute and complete truth. Christianity
appeared to him the result of a long elaboration of the human con-
science, destined to prepare further elaborations; in a word, one of
the phases of universal transformation. The theory of the evolu-
tion of the human mind became his new religion.
But if he ceased to be an orthodox believer, Edmond Schérer was
always a man of noble moral faith, a true Christian; and he, was
so throughout his work of literary criticism. When the newspaper
Le Temps was established in 1861, he did a share of the editing; he
wrote for it political articles, and above all studies in literature.
They showed the talent of a writer, the force of a thinker; and the
prodigious extent of knowledge manifested in the care he took to
attack all subjects, to reduce them to two or three essential points,
to discuss them exhaustively, to give a concise opinion in regard
to ideas and a firm judgment in regard to literary qualities, and
that with reference to works that chance brought to his notice. How-
ever, the preoccupations of a high morality of art, frankness and recti-
tude,—in a word, virtue and character,—were still more perceptible
## p. 12867 (#289) ##########################################
EDMOND SCHERER
12867
in his work. "He held," says M. Gréard, "that there is an infection
of the taste that is not compatible with honesty of the soul. He
reckoned among the virtues of a man of letters of the first rank, self-
respect and decency, that supreme grace. " » And Sainte-Beuve consid-
ers him a true judge, who neither gropes nor hesitates, having in
his own mind the means of taking the exact measure of any other
mind.
His literary criticism forms a collection of several volumes, bear-
ing the title 'Studies in Contemporary Literature. ' His other prin-
cipal works are 'Criticism and Belief' (1850), 'Letters to my Pastor'
(1853), Miscellanies of Religious Criticism' (1860), 'Miscellanies of
Religious History' (1864); and a considerable number of articles for
the newspapers and magazines.
Edmond Schérer died in 1889. He had taken for rule the maxim
of Emerson: "Express clearly to-day what thou thinkest to-day; to-
morrow thou shalt say what thou thinkest to-morrow. " To this rule
he was ever faithful.
He was grandly sincere.
Victor Charbonnel.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
FROM REVIEW OF WOMAN IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY,' BY THE
GONCOURTS
I
COULD have wished this book of the brothers Goncourt a little
different: not abler, more instructive, better supported with
facts, for no man ever had a firmer grasp on his eighteenth
century than these authors; not juster in its appreciations, be-
cause, captivated as they were by the graces of that corrupt
century, their judgment of it was none the less rigorous. I could
only have wished that they had not proceeded so exclusively by
means of description and enumeration; and that in the many
pictures that pass before our eyes, the characteristic feature,
the association, the anecdote, had not taken the form of simple.
allusions, had not so often been indicated by a simple refer-
ence to some book I had not under my hand, to some engraving
I have no time to look up among the cartoons of the Imperial
Library. In a word, I should have liked more narratives and
more citations. With this reservation, I willingly recognize that
## p. 12868 (#290) ##########################################
12868
EDMOND SCHERER
the volume of the brothers Goncourt is one of those works that
most fully enable us to understand the century of which it treats;
which at least make us enter most fully into its innermost life,
its intellectual character. An epoch is not wholly known when
its literature is known; it does not even suffice us to read the
memoirs of those who lived in it: there are, besides, endless
details of manners, customs, dress; a thousand observations upon
the different classes of society and their condition; a thousand
nothings, unnoticed as the very air we breathe, yet having their
value and making their contribution to the complete effect. Now
the brothers Goncourt, with praiseworthy zeal and discretion, have
brought all this together. They have done for the eighteenth
century what learned pedants with fewer resources but with no
more ability have done for past civilizations: they have recon-
structed it by means of the monuments.
This volume on the woman of the eighteenth century is to
be followed by three others, dealing with man, the State, and
Paris at the same epoch. To say truth, however, the woman is
already the man, she is already the State itself, she is the whole
century. The most striking characteristic of the period under
consideration is, that it personifies itself in its women. This the
brothers Goncourt have recognized. "The soul of this time,"
say they in their somewhat exuberant style, "the centre of the
world, the point whence everything radiates, the summit whence
all descends, the image after which all things are modeled, is
woman. Woman in the eighteenth century is the principle that
governs, the reason that directs, the voice that commands. She
is the universal and inevitable cause, the origin of events, the
source of things. Nothing escapes her, and she holds everything
in her hand: the king and France, the will of the sovereign and
the power of opinion. She rules at court, she is mistress at the
fireside. The revolutions of alliances and systems, peace, war,
letters, arts, the fashions of the eighteenth century as well as its
destinies, all these she carries in her robe, she bends them to
her caprice or her passions. She causes degradations and pro-
motions. No catastrophes, no scandals, no great strokes, that
cannot be traced to her, in this century that she fills up with
prodigies, marvels, and adventures, in this history into which
she works the surprises of a novel. " The book of the brothers
Goncourt furnishes proof of these assertions on every page. It
sets forth on a small scale, but in a complete way, that epoch of
—
## p. 12869 (#291) ##########################################
EDMOND SCHERER
12869
which they have so truly said that it is the French century par
excellence, and that all our roots are found in it. This volume
puts a finger on its meanness, its greatness, its vices and its
virtues. It is the vices that are the most conspicuous. The
corruption of the eighteenth century has become proverbial. To
tell the truth, this corruption is the result of a historical situa-
tion. What is meant by the France of the eighteenth century is
a particular class of society, the polite and brilliant world. The
theme of history has always gone on enlarging. In old times
there was no history save that of conquerors and lawgivers.
Later we have that of the courts and of the nobility. After
the French Revolution, it is the nations and their destinies who
occupy the first plane. In the eighteenth century the middle
class has already raised and enriched itself, the distinction of
ranks is leveled; there is more than one plebeian name among
those that adorn the salons: nevertheless, society is still essen-
tially aristocratic; it is chiefly composed of people who have
nothing to do in the world save to enjoy their hereditary privi-
leges. The misfortune of the French nobility has always been
thus to constitute a dignity without functions. It formed not so
much an organic part of the State as a class of society. Con-
fined within the limits of a narrow caste, it had reduced life to
a matter of elegant and agreeable relations.
Hence the French salon, and all those graces of conversation,
all those refinements of mind and manners, that make up its
inimitable character. Hence at the same time, something arti-
ficial and unwholesome. Life does not easily forego a serious
aim. It offers this eternal contradiction: that, tending to happi-
ness, it nevertheless cannot adopt that as its special object with-
out in that very act destroying the conditions of it.
These men, these women, who seemed to exist only for those
things that appear most enviable,— grace and honor, love and
intelligence, these people had exhausted in themselves the
sources of intelligence and love. This consummate epicurism
defeated its own object. These virtues, limited to the virtues
of good-fellowship, were manifestly insufficient to uphold society.
This activity, in which duty, effort, sacrifice, had no place, con-
sumed itself. Extinguish the soul, the conscience, as useless
lights, and lo, all is utter darkness! The intellect was to have.
taken the place of everything; and the intellect has succeeded
only in blighting everything, and in blighting itself before all.
―――――――
## p. 12870 (#292) ##########################################
12870
EDMOND SCHÉRER
Only one demand was made of human destiny,- pleasure; and it
was ennui that responded.
That incurable evil of ennui - the eighteenth century betrays
it everywhere. That was its essential element, I had almost said
its principle. This explains its agitations, its antipathies, its fur-
tive sadnesses, the boldness of its vices. It floats about, finding
no object worth its constancy. It undertakes everything, always
to fall back into a profounder disenchantment. Each fruit it
gnaws can only leave a more bitter taste of ashes. It shakes
itself in the vain effort to realize that it is alive. It is sorrow-
ful, sorrowful as death, and has not even the dignity of melan-
choly. It finds all things spectacular; it watches itself live, and
that experiment has ceased to interest it. Lassitude, spiritual bar-
renness, prostration of all the vital forces,- this is all that came
of it. Then a well-known phenomenon makes its appearance.
Man never pauses: he goes on digging, he scoops out the very
void; no longer believing anything, he yet seeks an unknown
good that escapes him. Dissipation, even, pursues a fleeting
dream. It demands of the senses what they can never yield.
Irritated by its miscalculations, it invents subtleties. It seasons
libertinism with every kind of infamy. It becomes savage. It
takes pleasure in bringing suffering upon the creatures it annihi-
lates. It enjoys the remorse, the shame, of its victims. Its vanity
is occupied with compromising women, with breaking their hearts,
with corrupting them if it can. Thus gallantry is converted into
a cynicism of immorality. Men make a boast of cruelty and of
calculation in their cruelty. Good style advertises villainy. But
even this is not enough. Insatiable appetites will demand of
crime a certain savor that vice has lost for them. "There is,"
as the brothers Goncourt truly say,- "there is an inexorable logic
that compels the evil passions of humanity to go to the end of
themselves, and to burst in a final and absolute horror. This
logic assigned to the voluptuous immorality of the eighteenth
century its monstrous coronation. The habit of cruelty had be-
come too strong to remain in the head and not reach the senses.
Man had played too long with the suffering heart of woman not
to feel tempted to make her suffer more surely and more visibly.
Why, after exhausting tortures for her soul, should he not try
them upon her body? Why not seek grossly in her blood the
delights her tears had given? The doctrine sprang up, it took
shape: the whole century went over to it without knowing it; it
-
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was, in its last analysis, nothing more than the materialization.
of their appetites: and was it not inevitable that this last word
should be said, that the erethism of ferocity should establish itself
as a principle, as a revelation; and that at the end of this pol
ished and courtly decadence, after all these approaches to the
supreme torture of woman, M. de Sade, with the blood of the
guillotines, should set up the Terror in Love? "
This then is the eighteenth century: a century brilliant rather
than delicate, pleasure-loving without passion, whose void forever
goes on emptying itself, whose blunted vices seek a stimulus in
crime, whose frivolity becomes in the end almost tragical; a cen-
tury of impotence and of decline, a society that is sinking and
putrefying.
Let us not forget, however, that judgments made wholly
from one point of view are like general ideas: they can never
do more than furnish incomplete notions. Things can always
be considered on two sides, the unfavorable and the favorable.
The eighteenth century is like everything else: it has its right
side as well as its wrong. I am sorry for those who see in it
only matter for admiration: its feet slipped in the mire. I am
sorry for those who do not speak of it without crossing them-
selves: the eighteenth century had its noble aspects, nay, its grand
aspects.
And in the first place, the eighteenth century is charming.
Opinions may differ as to the worth of the elegance, but that
its elegance was perfect cannot be denied. The inadequacy of
the comme il faut, and of what is called good society, may be
deplored; but there is no gainsaying that the epoch in question
was the grand model of this good society. France became in
those days its universal school, as it were its native country. It
makes of fine manners a new ethics, composed of horror for
what is common, the desire to find means of pleasing, the art of
attention, of delicacy in beauty, of the refinements of language,
of a conversation that does not commit itself to anything, of a
discussion that never degenerates into a dispute, of a lightness
that is in reality only moderation and grace. The good-breeding
of the eighteenth century does not destroy egoism, but it dissim-
ulates it. Nor does it in the least make up for the lost virtues,
but it vouchsafes an image of them. It gives a rule for souls.
It acquires the dignity of an institution. It is the religion of
an epoch that has no other.
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EDMOND SCHERER
This is not all. One feels a breath of art passing over this
century. If it does not create, still it adorns. If it does not
seek the beautiful, it finds the charming. Its character is not
grand, but it has a character.
It has set a seal upon all that it has produced: buildings,
furniture, pictures. When, two or three years ago, an exhibition
brought together the works of the principal painters of the
French school in the eighteenth century, the canvases of Greuze,
of Boucher, of Watteau, of Fragonard, of Chardin, great was the
astonishment to find so much frankness under all that affectation,
originality in that mannerism, vitality in that conventional school
of art. We should never lose sight of one thing: the epoch
under consideration had what was lacking in some other epochs,
-in the Empire, for example,- an art and a literature. That
is not enough to make a great century, but it can aid a century
to make a figure in history.
But observe what still better characterizes French society
before the Revolution. That society is animated with intellect-
ual curiosity. It has the taste for letters, and in letters the taste
for new things, for adventures. It devours voyages, history, phi-
losophy. It is concerned about the Chinese and the Hindus;
it desires to know what Rome was, and what England is; it
studies popular institutions and the faculties of the human under-
standing. The ladies have great quartos on their dressing-tables
(that is the accepted size). Nothing discourages them. They
read Raynal's 'Philosophic History,' Hume's 'Stuarts' [History
of England], Montesquieu's 'Spirit of Laws. ' But it is with
the sciences that they are most smitten. It is there that their
trouble of mind is best diverted. Fontenelle discourses to them
on the worlds, and Galiani on political economy. The new arts,
the progress of industry, excite their enthusiasm. They wish to
see all, to know all. They follow courses, they frequent labora-
tories, they assist at experiments, they discuss systems, they read
memoirs. Run after these charming young women,- they go
to the Jardin des Plantes to see a theriac put together; to the
Abbé Mical to hear an automaton speak; to Rouelle to witness
the volatilization of the diamond; to Réveillon, there to salute
Pilâtre de Rozier, before an ascension. This morning they have
paid a visit to the great cactus that only blossoms once in fifty
years, this afternoon they will attend experiments upon inflam-
mable air or upon electricity. Nothing even in medicine or
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anatomy is without attraction for their unfettered curiosity: the
Countess de Voisenon prescribes for her friends; the Countess de
Coigny is only eighteen, and she dissects!
This tendency to hyper-enthusiasm is a sign of mobility; and
mobility is one of the distinguishing features of the eighteenth
century. It has had a result that has not been fully noted. The
eighteenth century had its crisis; or if you will, its conversion.
A day came when it turned against itself. The change was per-
haps not very profound, but it was very marked.
From having
the man of nature constantly preached to them, they wished to
resemble him somewhat. The men gave up the French coat
and ceased to carry the sword. The women laid down their hoops,
they covered their bosoms, they substituted caps for towering
head-dresses, low-heeled for high-heeled shoes, linen for brocade.
Simplicity was pushed to pastoralism. Their dreams took the
form of idyls. They had cottages, they played at keeping dai-
ries, they made butter. But the true name of this new cult,
whose prophet was Jean-Jacques, is sensibility. They talked
now only of attraction, affinity, sympathy. It is the epoch of
groups in bisque, symbols: hearts on fire, altars, doves. There
are chains made of hair, bracelets with portraits. Madame de
Blot wears upon her neck a miniature of the church where her
brother is buried. Formerly beauty was piquant, now it aspires
to be "touching. " Its triumph is to "leave an emotion. " The feel-
ings should be expansive. Every woman is ambitious to love like
Julie. Every mother will raise her son like Émile. And since
it is the Genevese philosopher who has revealed to the world
the gospel of sensibility, upon him most of all will that gift
be lavished with which he seems all at once to have endowed
French society. His handwriting is kissed: things that belonged
to him are converted into relics. "There is not a truly sympa-
thetic woman living," exclaims the most yirtuous of the beau-
ties of those days, "who would not need an extraordinary virtue
to keep her from consecrating her life to Rousseau, could she
be certain of being passionately loved by him! "
All this has the semblance of passion, but little depth. It
would seem, in truth, that the eighteenth century was too frivo-
lous ever to be truly moved. And nevertheless it has been moved,
it has had a passion, perhaps the most noble of all- that of
humanity. Pity, in the times that precede it, appears almost as
foreign to polite society as the feeling for nature. Who, in the
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seventeenth century, was agitated if some poor devil of a vil-
lager was crushed by the taxes, if a Protestant was condemned
to his Majesty's galleys? Who troubled himself about the treat-
ment of the insane, about the régime of prisons, the barbarities
of the rack and the wheel? The eighteenth century, on the con-
trary, is seized with an immense compassion for all sufferings.
It is kindled with generous ideas; it desires tolerance, justice,
equality. Its heroes are useful men, agriculturists, benefactors
of the people. It embraces all the nations in its reforms. It
rises to the conception of human solidarity. It makes itself
a golden age where the philosopher's theories mingle with the
reveries of the mere dreamer. Every one is caught by the
glorious chimera. The author of 'La Pucelle' has his hours of
philanthropy. Turgot finds support in the salons. Madame de
Genlis speaks like Madame Roland or Madame de Staël. Utopia,
a Utopia at once rational as geometry and blind as enthusiasm,—
the whole of the French Revolution is there already.
The eighteenth century has received the name of the philo-
sophical century, and with good reason if an independent spirit
of inquiry is the distinguishing feature of philosophy. It rejected
everything in the nature of convention and tradition. It declared
an implacable war on what is called prejudice. It desired truths
that stand on their own legs. It sought in man, in the mere
nature of things, the foundation of the true and the good. The
doctrines of this epoch are not exalted, but they have that
species of vigor that the absence of partiality gives. The prob-
lem of problems, for this century, is how to live; and to the
solution of that problem it brings only natural methods. The
men of those times, to use the expression of the brothers Gon-
court, "keep themselves at the height of their own heart, without
aid, by their own strength. Emancipated from all dogma and
system of belief, they draw their lights from the recesses of their
own hearts, and their powers from the same source. " There are
some who "afford in this superficial century the grand spectacle
of a conscience at equilibrium in the void, a spectacle forgotten
of humanity since the Antonines. " The Countess de Boufflers,
with whom M. Sainte-Beuve has lately made us acquainted, had
maxims framed and hung in her chamber; among them might
be read such words as the following: "In conduct, simplicity and
sense. In methods, justice and generosity. In adversity, cour-
age and self-respect. Sacrifice all for peace of mind. When an
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important duty is to be fulfilled, consider perils and death only
as drawbacks, not as obstacles. " See what thoughts made up the
daily meditations of a woman of the world. Adversity was sup-
ported with cheerful courage. Old age was accepted without
pride or effort, without surprise or consternation. One detached
oneself little by little, composed oneself, conformed to the changed
condition, extinguished oneself, discreetly, quite simply, with de-
corum, and so to speak with spirit. Let us take care when we
speak of the eighteenth century-let us take care not to forget
the trials of the emigration and the prisons of the Terror!
I have spoken of the greatness and the debasement of the
epoch that the brothers Goncourt set themselves to interpret.
If there is some contradiction between the two halves of the
picture, I am not far from thinking that this very contradiction
might well be a proof of correctness. Human judgments are
true only on the condition of perpetually putting the yes by the
side of the no.
