第6章

DANIEL D'ARTHEZ

A few days after this conversation Blondet and Rastignac, who knew d'Arthez, promised Madame d'Espard that they would bring him to dine with her.This promise might have proved rash had it not been for the name of the princess, a meeting with whom was not a matter of indifference to the great writer.

Daniel d'Arthez, one of the rare men who, in our day, unite a noble character with great talent, had already obtained, not all the popularity his works deserve, but a respectful esteem to which souls of his own calibre could add nothing.His reputation will certainly increase; but in the eyes of connoisseurs it had already attained its full development.He is one of those authors who, sooner or later, are put in their right place, and never lose it.A poor nobleman, he had understood his epoch well enough to seek personal distinction only.He had struggled long in the Parisian arena, against the wishes of a rich uncle who, by a contradiction which vanity must explain, after leaving his nephew a prey to the utmost penury, bequeathed to the man who had reached celebrity the fortune so pitilessly refused to the unknown writer.This sudden change in his position made no change in Daniel d'Arthez's habits; he continued to work with a simplicity worthy of the antique past, and even assumed new toils by accepting a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, where he took his seat on the Right.

Since his accession to fame he had sometimes gone into society.One of his old friends, the now-famous physician, Horace Bianchon, persuaded him to make the acquaintance of the Baron de Rastignac, under-secretary of State, and a friend of de Marsay, the prime minister.

These two political officials acquiesced, rather nobly, in the strong wish of d'Arthez, Bianchon, and other friends of Michel Chrestien for the removal of the body of that republican to the church of Saint-Merri for the purpose of giving it funeral honors.Gratitude for a service which contrasted with the administrative rigor displayed at a time when political passions were so violent, had bound, so to speak, d'Arthez to Rastignac.The latter and de Marsay were much too clever not to profit by that circumstance; and thus they won over other friends of Michel Chrestien, who did not share his political opinions, and who now attached themselves to the new government.One of them, Leon Giraud, appointed in the first instance master of petitions, became eventually a Councillor of State.

The whole existence of Daniel d'Arthez is consecrated to work; he sees society only by snatches; it is to him a sort of dream.His house is a convent, where he leads the life of a Benedictine; the same sobriety of regimen, the same regularity of occupation.His friends knew that up to the present time woman had been to him no more than an always dreaded circumstance; he had observed her too much not to fear her;but by dint of studying her he had ceased to understand her,--like, in this, to those deep strategists who are always beaten on unexpected ground, where their scientific axioms are either modified or contradicted.In character he still remains a simple-hearted child, all the while proving himself an observer of the first rank.This contrast, apparently impossible, is explainable to those who know how to measure the depths which separate faculties from feelings; the former proceed from the head, the latter from the heart.A man can be a great man and a wicked one, just as he can be a fool and a devoted lover.D'Arthez is one of those privileged beings in whom shrewdness of mind and a broad expanse of the qualities of the brain do not exclude either the strength or the grandeur of sentiments.He is, by rare privilege, equally a man of action and a man of thought.His private life is noble and generous.If he carefully avoided love, it was because he knew himself, and felt a premonition of the empire such a passion would exercise upon him.

For several years the crushing toil by which he prepared the solid ground of his subsequent works, and the chill of poverty, were marvellous preservatives.But when ease with his inherited fortune came to him, he formed a vulgar and most incomprehensible connection with a rather handsome woman, belonging to the lower classes, without education or manners, whom he carefully concealed from every eye.

Michel Chrestien attributed to men of genius the power of transforming the most massive creatures into sylphs, fools into clever women, peasants into countesses; the more accomplished a woman was, the more she lost her value in their eyes, for, according to Michel, their imagination had the less to do.In his opinion love, a mere matter of the senses to inferior beings, was to great souls the most immense of all moral creations and the most binding.To justify d'Arthez, he instanced the example of Raffaele and the Fornarina.He might have offered himself as an instance for this theory, he who had seen an angel in the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.This strange fancy of d'Arthez might, however, be explained in other ways; perhaps he had despaired of meeting here below with a woman who answered to that delightful vision which all men of intellect dream of and cherish; perhaps his heart was too sensitive, too delicate, to yield itself to a woman of society; perhaps he thought best to let nature have her way, and keep his illusions by cultivating his ideal; perhaps he had laid aside love as being incompatible with his work and the regularity of a monastic life which love would have wholly upset.