第24章

Between the window and the grate stood a long table littered with papers,and opposite the fireplace there was a cheap mahogany chest of drawers.A second-hand carpet covered the floor--a necessary luxury,for it saved firing.A common office armchair,cushioned with leather,crimson once,but now hoary with wear,was drawn up to the table.Add half-a-dozen rickety chairs,and you have a complete list of the furniture.Lucien noticed an old-fashioned candle-sconce for a card-table,with an adjustable screen attached,and wondered to see four wax candles in the sockets.D'Arthez explained that he could not endure the smell of tallow,a little trait denoting great delicacy of sense perception,and the exquisite sensibility which accompanies it.

The reading lasted for seven hours.Daniel listened conscientiously,forbearing to interrupt by word or comment--one of the rarest proofs of good taste in a listener.

"Well?"queried Lucien,laying the manu on the chimney-piece.

"You have made a good start on the right way,"d'Arthez answered judicially,"but you must go over your work again.You must strike out a different style for yourself if you do not mean to ape Sir Walter Scott,for you have taken him for your model.You begin,for instance,as he begins,with long conversations to introduce your characters,and only when they have said their say does deion and action follow.

"This opposition,necessary in all work of a dramatic kind,comes last.Just put the terms of the problem the other way round.Give deions,to which our language lends itself so admirably,instead of diffuse dialogue,magnificent in Scott's work,but colorless in your own.Lead naturally up to your dialogue.Plunge straight into the action.Treat your subject from different points of view,sometimes in a side-light,sometimes retrospectively;vary your methods,in fact,to diversify your work.You may be original while adapting the Scots novelist's form of dramatic dialogue to French history.There is no passion in Scott's novels;he ignores passion,or perhaps it was interdicted by the hypocritical manners of his country.Woman for him is duty incarnate.His heroines,with possibly one or two exceptions,are all alike;he has drawn them all from the same model,as painters say.They are,every one of them,descended from Clarissa Harlowe.And returning continually,as he did,to the same idea of woman,how could he do otherwise than produce a single type,varied only by degrees of vividness in the coloring?Woman brings confusion into Society through passion.Passion gives infinite possibilities.Therefore depict passion;you have one great resource open to you,foregone by the great genius for the sake of providing family reading for prudish England.In France you have the charming sinner,the brightly-colored life of Catholicism,contrasted with sombre Calvinistic figures on a background of the times when passions ran higher than at any other period of our history.

"Every epoch which has left authentic records since the time of Charles the Great calls for at least one romance.Some require four or five;the periods of Louis XIV.,of Henry IV.,of Francis I.,for instance.You would give us in this way a picturesque history of France,with the costumes and furniture,the houses and their interiors,and domestic life,giving us the spirit of the time instead of a laborious narration of ascertained facts.Then there is further scope for originality.You can remove some of the popular delusions which disfigure the memories of most of our kings.Be bold enough in this first work of yours to rehabilitate the great magnificent figure of Catherine,whom you have sacrificed to the prejudices which still cloud her name.And finally,paint Charles IX.for us as he really was,and not as Protestant writers have made him.Ten years of persistent work,and fame and fortune will be yours."By this time it was nine o'clock;Lucien followed the example set in secret by his future friend by asking him to dine at Eldon's,and spent twelve francs at that restaurant.During the dinner Daniel admitted Lucien into the secret of his hopes and studies.Daniel d'Arthez would not allow that any writer could attain to a pre-eminent rank without a profound knowledge of metaphysics.He was engaged in ransacking the spoils of ancient and modern philosophy,and in the assimilation of it all;he would be like Moliere,a profound philosopher first,and a writer of comedies afterwards.He was studying the world of books and the living world about him--thought and fact.His friends were learned naturalists,young doctors of medicine,political writers and artists,a number of earnest students full of promise.

D'Arthez earned a living by conscientious and ill-paid work;he wrote articles for encyclopaedias,dictionaries of biography and natural science,doing just enough to enable him to live while he followed his own bent,and neither more nor less.He had a piece of imaginative work on hand,undertaken solely for the sake of studying the resources of language,an important psychological study in the form of a novel,unfinished as yet,for d'Arthez took it up or laid it down as the humor took him,and kept it for days of great distress.D'Arthez's revelations of himself were made very simply,but to Lucien he seemed like an intellectual giant;and by eleven o'clock,when they left the restaurant,he began to feel a sudden,warm friendship for this nature,unconscious of its loftiness,this unostentatious worth.