They made the baker bake hot rolls, They went to the chemist's, and with their They kicked the physic all down the street; They went to the school-room and tore the books, They munched the puffs at the pastry-cook's. They sucked the jam, they lost the spoons, They offered a prize for the laziest boy, Never do to-day what you can Put off till to-morrow, one of them ran; Was another law which they did devise. They passed a law to have always plenty A magic lantern for all to see, A boat, a house that went on wheels, A real live giant, a roc to fly, A saw and a hammer, and no complaints. Nail up the door, slide down the stairs, Kattler-wheeler-whiler-wuss; They governed the clock in Lilliput-land, Just as they wished the time to go. They never waited for king or for cat; There was a levee in Lilliput town, Every one rode in a cab to the door, The place was covered with silver and gold, Her Majesty knighted eight or ten, Nuts, and nutmeg (that's in the negus); Conjuring tricks with the poker and tongs, His voice was gruff, his pinafore tight, She frowned and ordered him up to bed; They made them learn all sorts of things O but they gave them tit-for-tat ! The Constitution! The law! The crown! The Queen is Jill, and the King is John; MATTHEW BROWNE DISAPPOINTED AMBITION. From Balzac's Petites Misères de la Vie Conjugals. [HONORÉ DE BALZAC, the greatest of French novelists, was born in 1799 at Tours, and died at Paris in 1850. His early training was in the office of an advocate, where he acquired that intimate knowledge of commercial and notarial business which appears so frequently in his novels. After ten years of poverty and hard toil, in which he literally lived on "three sous for bread, two for milk, and three for firing," working for the press without success and devouring books at the pub lic libraries, Balzac conceived a great scheme of making his fortune at the business of printing. With borrowed money and a partner, he brought out some onevolume editions of French classics, which fell dead from the press, and Balzac became bankrupt. At about the age of thirty, he produced the first of that series of successful novels of every day life which have made his name famous. Under the general title of La Comédie Humaine, he wrote the most true and graphic pictures of the nineteenth century as seen in French life and character in city and country which have ever appeared. With great minuteness and sometimes tedious fidelity, his books abound in subtle portraitures of character, pictures of fashion, of intrigue, glimpses of luxury and splendor, keen and merciless dissections of human folly and pride. His wonderful gift of language, great range of knowledge, observation and sympathy, occasional light humor and close power of description and analysis are conspicuous. His chief defect is too much indulgence in detail, and a tendency to depict the morbid side of human nature.] A young man quit his natal city in the depths of one of the departments. He felt that glory, no matter what kind, awaited him: suppose that of a painter, a novelist, a journalist, a poet, a great statesman. A GREAT MAN FROM THE COUNTRY. Adolphe has discovered that the most admirable trade is that which consists in buying a bottle of ink, a bunch of quills, twelve francs and a half, and in selling and a ream of paper, at a stationer's for the two thousand sheets in the ream over again, for something like fifty thousand francs, after having, of course, written upon each leaf fifty lines replete with style and imagination. This problem,-twelve francs and a half metamorphosed into fifty thousand francs, at the rate of five sous a line urges numerous families who might advantageously employ their members in the retirement of the provinces, to thrust them into the vortex of Paris. He The young man who is the object of this exportation, invariably passes in his natal town, for a man of as much imagination as the most famous author. has always studied well, he writes very nice poetry, he is considered a fellow of parts: he is besides often guilty of a charming tale published in the local paper, which obtains the admiration of the department. their son has come to Paris to learn at His poor parents will never know what great cost, namely: That it is difficult to be a writer and to understand the French language short of a dozen years of herculean labor: That a man must have explored every sphere of social life to become a genuine novelist, inasmuch as the novel is the private history of nations: That the great storytellers, Æsop, Lucian, Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, La Fontaine, Le Sage, Sterne, Voltaire, WalYoung Adolphe de Chodoreille-that ter Scott, the unknown Arabians of the we may be perfectly understood-wished Thousand and One Nights, were all men to be talked about, to become celebrated, of genius as well as giants of erudition. to be somebody. This, therefore, is ad- Their Adolphe serves his literary apdressed to the mass of aspiring individ-prenticeship in two or three coffee-houses, uals brought to Paris by all sorts of vehi- becomes a member of the Society of Men cles, whether moral or material, and who of Letters, attacks, with or without reason, rush upon the city one fine morning with men of talent who don't read his articles, the hydrophobic purpose of overturning assumes a milder tone on seeing the poweverybody's 's reputation, and of building erlessness of his criticisms, offers novelettes themselves a pedestal with the ruins they to the papers which toss them from one are to make, until disenchantment follows. to the other as if they were shuttle-cocks: As our intention is to specify this peculi- and, after five or six years of exercises arity so characteristic of our epoch, let more or less fatiguing, of dreadful privaus take from among the various person- tions which seriously tax his parents, he ages the one whom the author has else- attains a certain position. where called This position may be described as fol lows: By means of a sort of reciprocal support extended to each other, and which an ingenious writer has called Mutual Admiration, Adolphe often sees his name cited among the names of celebrities, either in the prospectuses of the book-trade, or in the programmes of newspapers which announce their speedy appearance. Publishers print the title of one of his works under the deceitful heading "In Press," which might be called the typographical menagerie of bears. Chodoreille is sometimes mentioned among the promising young men of the literary world. Adolphe de Chodoreille remains eleven years in the ranks of the promising young men: he finally obtains a free entrance to the theatres, thanks to some dirty work or certain articles of dramatic criticism: he tries to pass for a good fellow; and as he loses his illusions respecting glory and the world of Paris, he gets into debt and his years begin to tell upon him. A paper which finds itself in a tight place asks him for one of his bears revised by his friends. This has been retouched and revamped every five years, so that it smells of the pomatum of each prevailing and then forgotten fashion. To Adolphe it becomes what the famous cap which he was constantly staking, was to Corporal Trim, for during five years "Anything for a Woman" (the title decided upon) "will be one of the most delicious productions of our epoch." In eleven years, Chodoreille is regarded as having written some respectable things, five or six tales published in the dismal magazines, in ladies' newspapers, or in works intended for children of the tenderest age. As he is a bachelor, and possesses a coat and a pair of black cassimere pantaloons, and when he pleases may thus assume the appearance of an elegant diplomate, and as he is not without a certain intelligent air, he is admitted to several more or less literary salons: he bows to the five or six academicians who possess genius, influence or talent, he visits two or three of our great poets, he allows himself in coffee-rooms, to call the two or three justly celebrated women of our epoch by their christian names; he is on the best of terms with the blue stockings of the second grade,-who ought to be called socks-and he shakes hands and takes glasses of absinthe with the stars of the smaller newspapers. Such is the history of every species of ordinary men-men who have been denied what they call good luck. This good luck is nothing less than unyielding will, incessant labor, contempt for an easily won celebrity, immense learning, and that patience which, according to Buffon, is the whole of genius, but which certainly is the half of it. You do not yet see any indication of a petty annoyance for Caroline. You imagine that this history of five hundred young men engaged at this moment in polishing the paving stones of Paris, was written as a sort of warning to the eightysix departments of France; but read these two letters which lately passed between two girls differently married, and you will see that it was as necessary as the narrative by which every true melodrama was until lately expected to open. You will divine the skilful manoeuvres of the Parisian peacock spreading his tail in the recesses of his native village, and polishing up, for matrimonial purposes, the rays of a celebrity which, like those of the sun, are only warm and brilliant at a distance. "You have not yet written to me, and it's real unkind in you. Don't you remember that the happiest was to write first and to console her who remained in the country? Since your departure for Paris, I have married Monsieur de la Roulandière, the president of the tribunal. You know him, and you can judge whether I am happy or not, with my heart saturated, as it is, with our ideas. I was not ignorant what my lot would be: I live with the ex-president, my husband's uncle, and with my mother-in-law, who has preserved nothing of the ancient parliamentary society of Aix but its pride and its severity of manners. I am seldom alone. I never go out unless accompanied by my mother-in-law or my husband. We receive the heavy people of the city in the evening. They play whist at two sous a point, and I listen to such conversations as these: 'Monsieur de Vitremont is dead, and leaves two hundred and eighty thousand francs,' says the associate judge, a young man of forty-seven, who is as entertaining as a north-west wind. Are you quite sure of that?' The that refers to the two hundred and eighty thousand francs.' A little judge then holds forth, he runs over the investments, the others discuss their value, and it is definitely settled that if he has not left two hundred and eighty thousand, he has very near it. Then comes a universal concert of eulogy heaped upon the dead man's body, for having kept his bread under lock and key, for having shrewdly invested his little savings accumulated sou by sou, in order, probably, that the whole city and those who expect legacies may applaud and exclaim in admiration, 'He leaves two hundred and eighty thousand francs!' Now everybody has rich relations of whom they say 'Will he leave anything like it?' and thus they discuss the quick as they have discussed the dead. They talk of nothing but the prospects of fortune, the prospects of a vacancy in office, the prospects of the harvest. seven, and with a dowry of two hundred thousand francs, capture and captivate a truly great man, one of the wittiest men in Paris, one of the two talented men that our village has produced-what a piece of luck was this! You now circulate in the most brilliant society of Paris. Thanks to the sublime privileges of genius, you may appear in all the salons of the faubourg St. Germain, and be cordially received. You have the exquisite enjoyment of the company of the two or three celebrated women of our age, where so many good things are said, where the happy speeches which arrive out here like Congreve rockets, are first fired off. You go to the baron Schinner's, of whom Adolphe so often spoke to us, whom all the great artists and foreigners of celebrity visit. In short, before long, you will be one of the queens of Paris, if you wish. You can receive, too, and have at your house the lions of literature, fashion and finance, whether male or female, for Adolphe spoke in such terms about his illustrious friendships and his intimacy with the favorites of the hour, that I imagine you giving and receiving honors. With your ten thousand francs a year, and the legacy from your aunt Carabas, with the twenty thousand francs that your When we were children, and used to husband earns, you must keep a carriage, look at those pretty little white mice in and as you go to all the theatres without the cobbler's window in the rue St. Mac-paying, as journalists are the heroes of all lou, that turned and turned the circular cage in which they were imprisoned, how far I was from thinking that they would one day be a faithful image of my life! Think of it, my being in this condition. I who fluttered my wings so much more than you, I whose imagination was so vagabond! My sins have been greater than yours, and I am the more severely punished. I have bidden farewell to my dreams: I am Madame la Presidente in all my glory, and I resign myself to giving my arm for forty years to my big awkward Roulandière, to living meanly in every way, and to having forever before me two heavy brows and two wall-eyes pierced in a yellow face, which is destined never to know what it is to smile. But you, Caroline dear, you who, between ourselves, were admitted among the big girls while I still gamboled among the little ones, you whose only sin was pride, you, who, at the age of twenty the inaugurations so ruinous for those who keep up with the movement of Paris, and as they are constantly invited to dinner, you live as if you had sixty thousand francs a year! Happy Caroline! I don't wonder you forget me! I can understand how it is that you have not a moment to yourself. Your bliss is the cause of your silence, so I pardon you. Still, if, fatigued with so many pleasures, you one day, upon the summit of your grandeur, think of your poor Claire, write to me, tell me what a marriage with a great man is, describe those great Parisian ladies, especially those who write; oh, I should so much like to know what they are made of: don't forget anything, unless you forget that you are loved, under any circumstances, by your poor Claire Jugault." |