BLADE TO BLADE
To Monsieur de Canalis:
Monsieur,--You are certainly a great poet, and you are something more,--an honest man. After showing such loyal frankness to a young girl who was stepping to the verge of an abyss, have you enough left to answer without hypocrisy or evasion the following question?
Would you have written the letter I now hold in answer to mine,--
would your ideas, your language have been the same,--had some one whispered in your ear (what may prove true), Mademoiselle O.
d'Este M. has six millions and does intend to have a dunce for a master?
Admit the supposition for a moment. Be with me what you are with yourself; fear nothing. I am wiser than my twenty years; nothing that is frank can hurt you in my mind. When I have read your confidence, if you deign to make it, you shall receive from me an answer to your first letter.
Having admired your talent, often so sublime, permit me to do homage to your delicacy and your integrity, which force me to remain always, Your humble servant, O. d'Este M.
When Ernest de La Briere had held this letter in his hands for some little time he went to walk along the boulevards, tossed in mind like a tiny vessel by a tempest when the wind is blowing from all points of the compass. Most young men, specially true Parisians, would have settled the matter in a single phrase, "The girl is a little hussy."
But for a youth whose soul was noble and true, this attempt to put him, as it were, upon his oath, this appeal to truth, had the power to awaken the three judges hidden in the conscience of every man. Honor, Truth, and Justice, getting on their feet, cried out in their several ways energetically.
"Ah, my dear Ernest," said Truth, "you never would have read that lesson to a rich heiress. No, my boy; you would have gone in hot haste to Havre to find out if the girl were handsome, and you would have been very unhappy indeed at her preference for genius; and if you could have tripped up your friend and supplanted him in her affections, Mademoiselle d'Este would have been a divinity."
"What?" cried Justice, "are you not always bemoaning yourselves, you penniless men of wit and capacity, that rich girls marry beings whom you wouldn't take as your servants? You rail against the materialism of the century which hastens to join wealth to wealth, and never marries some fine young man with brains and no money to a rich girl.
What an outcry you make about it; and yet here is a young woman who revolts against that very spirit of the age, and behold! the poet replies with a blow at her heart!"
"Rich or poor, young or old, ugly or handsome, the girl is right; she has sense and judgment, she has tripped you over into the slough of self-interest and lets you know it," cried Honor. "She deserves an answer, a sincere and loyal and frank answer, and, above all, the honest expression of your thought. Examine yourself! sound your heart and purge it of its meannesses. What would Moliere's Alceste say?"
And La Briere, having started from the boulevard Poissoniere, walked so slowly, absorbed in these reflections, that he was more than an hour in reaching the boulevard des Capucines. Then he followed the quays, which led him to the Cour des Comptes, situated in that time close to the Saint-Chapelle. Instead of beginning on the accounts as he should have done, he remained at the mercy of his perplexities.
"One thing is evident," he said to himself; "she hasn't six millions;
but that's not the point--"
Six days later, Modeste received the following letter:
Mademoiselle,--You are not a D'Este. The name is a feigned one to conceal your own. Do I owe the revelations which you solicit to a person who is untruthful about herself? Question for question: Are you of an illustrious family? or a noble family? or a middle-class family? Undoubtedly ethics and morality cannot change; they are one: but obligations vary in the different states of life. Just as the sun lights up a scene diversely and produces differences which we admire, so morality conforms social duty to rank, to position.
The peccadillo of a soldier is a crime in a general, and vice-
versa. Observances are not alike in all cases. They are not the same for the gleaner in the field, for the girl who sews at fifteen sous a day, for the daughter of a petty shopkeeper, for the young bourgoise, for the child of a rich merchant, for the heiress of a noble family, for a daughter of the house of Este. A
king must not stoop to pick up a piece of gold, but a laborer ought to retrace his steps to find ten sous; though both are equally bound to obey the laws of economy. A daughter of Este, who is worth six millions, has the right to wear a broad-brimmed hat and plume, to flourish her whip, press the flanks of her barb, and ride like an amazon decked in gold lace, with a lackey behind her, into the presence of a poet and say: "I love poetry; and I would fain expiate Leonora's cruelty to Tasso!" but a daughter of the people would cover herself with ridicule by imitating her. To what class do you belong? Answer sincerely, and I will answer the question you have put to me.
As I have not the honor of knowing you personally, and yet am bound to you, in a measure, by the ties of poetic communion, I am unwilling to offer any commonplace compliments. Perhaps you have already won a malicious victory by thus embarrassing a maker of books.
The young man was certainly not wanting in the sort of shrewdness which is permissible to a man of honor. By return courier he received an answer:--
To Monsieur de Canalis,--You grow more and more sensible, my dear poet. My father is a count. The chief glory of our house was a cardinal, in the days when cardinals walked the earth by the side of kings. I am the last of our family, which ends in me; but I
have the necessary quarterings to make my entry into any court or chapter-house in Europe. We are quite the equals of the Canalis.
You will be so kind as to excuse me from sending you our arms.
Endeavor to answer me as truthfully as I have now answered you. I