Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (29 page)

Among those still alive was Horace Bianchon, then a house-surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu, who has since become a foremost luminary in the Paris School of Medicine: he is too well-known today for it to be necessary to give a portrait of him or to detail his character and mental qualities. Next came Léon Giraud, a profound philosopher and bold speculator who investigates all systems, judges them, expounds and formulates them and brings them to the feet of the idol he worships: HUMANITY. He is always great, even in the errors he commits, for these are ennobled by his good faith. This intrepid worker and conscientious scholar has become the leader of a moral and political school of thought on the merits of which only time will be able to pronounce. Even though his convictions have marked out a destiny for him in spheres alien to those into which his companions have ventured, he has none the less remained their faithful friend.

Art was represented by Joseph Bridau, one of the best painters of the young school. Were it not for the secret woes to which his too impressionable disposition condemns him,
Joseph, who for that matter has not spoken his last word, might well have carried on the tradition of the great Italian masters: he has Roman line and Venetian colour. But Cupid plays havoc with him. The shafts of love not only transfix his heart but also his brain, disturb the tenour of his life and set him off on the strangest of zigzag courses. If his mistress of the moment makes him too happy or too wretched, Joseph will sometimes exhibit sketches in which colour impairs purity of line, and sometimes pictures which he has persisted in finishing when weighed down with imaginary sorrows, and in these he has been so concerned with line that colour, with which he can achieve any effect he likes, is virtually absent. He is constantly disappointing both the public and his friends. Hoffmann would have adored him for his bold advances in the domain of art, for his caprices and his flights of imagination. When he displays all his qualities, he excites admiration and enjoys it and then he takes umbrage when he receives no praise for unsuccessful works, in which his inner eye sees all that the eye of the public finds lacking. Whimsical to a degree, he has been seen by his friends to destroy a completed picture to which he thought he had given too much finish. ‘It’s over-done,’ he would say, ‘It’s beginner’s work.’ Occasionally original and sublime, he is capable of all the felicities and infelicities found in those nervous temperaments who are perfectionists to the point of morbidity. He has an intellect akin to that of Sterne but lacks Sterne’s capacity for hard work. His witticisms and sallies of thought have unprecedented pungency. He is eloquent and knows what love means, but he brings the same capriciousness to affairs of the heart as to his style in painting. He was well-beloved in the ‘Cénacle’ for precisely those characteristics which philistines would have condemned.

Then there was Fulgence Ridal, one of the authors of our time most endowed with comic verve, a poet unconcerned with fame, tossing only his most commonplace productions on to the stage and jealously withholding his finest dramas from public scrutiny and keeping them for his own delectation and that of his friends, only requiring from the public the
money he needed to preserve his independence and relapsing into idleness as soon as he obtained it. Lazy, as productive as Rossini, obliged, like all great comic poets, like Molière and Rabelais, to consider the obverse and reverse side, the pros and cons of everything, he was a sceptic, able to laugh at everything, as indeed he did. Fulgence Ridal is a great practical philosopher. His knowledge of people, his genius for observation, the contempt he feels for fame which he calls empty show, have not withered his heart. As active in others’ interests as he is indifferent about his own, if he bestirs himself it is for a friend. In order not to give the lie to his truly Rabelaisian countenance, he does not hate good cheer but does not go out of his way to find it; he is at once melancholy and gay. His friends call him the ‘regimental pet’, and nothing describes him better than this sobriquet.

Three others, at least as outstanding as the four friends thus painted in profile, were destined to succumb one after the other: Meyraux first of all, who died after initiating the famous discussion between Cuvier and Saint-Hilaire over a momentous question which was to divide the world of scientists into two camps behind these men of equal genius. He died some months before the former, who stood out for narrow, analytical science as against the pantheistic Saint-Hilaire who is still alive and is revered in Germany. Meyraux was a friend of that Louis whom a predictable death was soon to snatch from the world of intellectuals. To these two men, both marked out for death, both of them little known today despite the immense range of their learning and genius, must be added Michel Chrestien, a republican with far-reaching ideas who dreamed of a European federation and in 1830 was to take a prominent place among the idealists of the Saint-Simonian movement. A political thinker of the calibre of Saint-Just and Danton though simple and gentle as a girl, gifted with a melodious voice which would have delighted Mozart, Weber or Rossini and whose rendering of some of Béranger’s songs was sufficient to fire men’s hearts with poetry, love or hope, Michel Chrestien, as poor as Lucien, Daniel and all his other friends, earned his living with the
unconcern of a Diogenes. He drew up tables of contents for important books, prospectuses for publishers, but was as mute about his doctrines as the grave is mute about the secrets of the after-life. This gay bohemian of the intellectual life, a great political thinker who might perhaps have changed the face of the world, was to die like a common soldier in the massacre of the Cloister of Saint-Merri. A bullet fired by some tradesman or other killed one of the noblest creatures who ever trod on the soil of France. Michel Chrestien died fighting for doctrines other than his own. The federation he planned was a greater threat than republican propaganda to the aristocracies of Europe; it was more rational and less extravagant than the appalling ideas in favour of unbridled liberty proclaimed by those insensate young men who put themselves forward as the heirs of the National Convention. This noble plebeian was wept for by all who knew him, and there is no one among them who does not frequently think of this great, unknown politician.

These nine persons composed a fraternity in which esteem and friendship kept the peace between the most conflicting ideas and doctrines. Daniel d’Arthez, a nobleman from Picardy, was as convinced a supporter of monarchy as Michel Chrestien was a champion of European federalism. Fulgence Ridal made fun of the philosophical doctrines of Léon Giraud, who in his turn prophesied to d’Arthez the destruction of Christianity and the family. Michel Chrestien, who believed in the religion of Christ, the divine promulgator of the law of equality, defended the immortality of the soul against the scalpel-wielding Bianchon, a superlatively analytical mind. They all argued without quarrelling. They were without vanity, having no other audience than their own group. They told one another about their work and consulted one another with the amiable good faith of youth. If a serious matter was in dispute, the opponent gave up his own opinion in order to enter into his friend’s ideas and was the better qualified to help him because he was unprejudiced about a cause or a work which was outside his speciality. Almost all of them were gentle and tolerant, and these two attributes gave clear proof
of their superior quality. Envy, an ignoble accumulation of disappointed hopes, frustrated talents, failures and wounded pretensions, was unknown to them. Besides, they were all advancing along different paths. And so those newly admitted, like Lucien, to their society, felt quite at ease. Genuine talent is always simple and good-natured, open and unconstrained; its epigrams foster wit in others and never seek to injure self-esteem. Once the first shyness born of respect was dispelled, the company of these exceptional young men brought infinite satisfaction. Familiarity was no bar to the consciousness each one had of his own value, and each one held his neighbour in profound esteem; in short, since each of them felt that he might alternately do or be done good turns, none of them made any fuss about accepting them. Their conversation, full of charm and free of restraint, covered all sorts of subjects and their words went as lightly as winged shafts to the heart of the matter. Their great outward poverty stood in singular contrast to the splendour of their intellectual riches. None of them gave a thought to material realities except as an excuse for friendly pleasantries. One day when the cold weather had set in before its time, five of d’Arthez’s friends came along, each prompted by the same thought, carrying logs under their cloaks, just as when at a country picnic each guest, being expected to provide some item of food, brings a pie. All of them being endowed with that moral beauty which transforms the outer man and, no less than labours and vigils, gives a divine glow to the faces of the young, they had those slightly irregular features to which chastity of life and the flame of thought impart shapeliness and purity. They were distinguished by a poetic breadth of forehead. Their bright, keen eyes bore witness to an unsullied life. The sufferings due to poverty, whenever they could be detected, were so gaily endured, so enthusiastically accepted by all, that they in no way impaired that serenity of countenance peculiar to young people still innocent of grave transgressions who have not stooped to any of those cowardly compromises which are wrested from men by poverty impatiently supported, the desire to succeed at all cost and the facile complacency with which men of letters
accept or pardon acts of treachery. What makes friendships indissoluble and doubles their charm is a feeling not found in love – the feeling of certainty. These young people were sure of one another: the enemy of one became the enemy of all; they would have sacrificed their most urgent interests in obedience to the sacred solidarity which united their hearts. One and all were incapable of disloyalty; they could meet any accusation with a stout denial and defend one another without misgivings. Equally noble-hearted and equally strong in their convictions, they could think what they liked and say what they liked in matters both intellectual and scientific; hence the innocuousness of their intercourse and their gaiety in conversation. Since they were certain of understanding one another, they gave free reign to their wit, and so there was no formality between them: they confided their joys and sorrows to one another and freely expressed their thoughts and tribulations. The charming and delicate attentions which make La Fontaine’s fable,
The Two Friends,
a treasure-trove for exalted souls were a matter of habit with them. Their circumspection in admitting a newcomer to their sphere is therefore understandable. They were too conscious of greatness and happiness to disturb it by admitting new and unknown elements.

This community of feeling and interests lasted for twenty years without any clash or misunderstanding. Death alone, in robbing them of Louis Lambert, Meyraux and Michel Chrestien, was able to diminish this noble constellation. When the latter succumbed in 1832 Horace Bianchon, Daniel d’Arthez, Léon Giraud, Joseph Bridau and Fulgence Ridal, despite the danger involved, went to move his body from Saint-Merri in order to pay him their last respects in defiance of political fanaticism. During the night they accompanied these cherished remains to the cemetery of Père-Lachaise. Horace Bianchon recoiled before none of the difficulties and broke through them all; he petitioned cabinet ministers, confessing his long-standing friendship with the departed federalist. It was a moving scene, which remained in the memory of the few friends who accompanied the five celebrities to Michel’s grave. When you
take a walk through that elegant cemetery you will see a plot purchased in perpetuity from which rises a mound of turf with a black wooden cross over it, and on this cross is engraved in red letters the name of Michel Chrestien. It is the only monument in this style. The five friends thought that such simplicity was the best homage they could pay to this simple man.

And so, in this cold garret, the finest dreams of fellow-feeling found expression. There a fraternal group, all of them equally proficient in their respective sphere of knowledge, enlightened one another in mutual good faith, withholding nothing, not even their less worthy thoughts, all of them being of wide learning and all tested in the crucible of adversity. Once admitted among these choice spirits and accepted as an equal, Lucien was the representative in it of poetry and beauty. He read sonnets to them and these were admired. They would ask him for a sonnet, just as he would beg Michel Chrestien for a song. Thus it was that Lucien discovered in the rue des Quatre Vents an oasis in the desert of Paris.